separation pains…

Just exactly what is this longing that pulls us thru life: love, devotion, bhakti, I keep wondering, as I find (and lose) my self again and again, stumbling, and face down in the mud.
And in those moments sometimes poems make some sense of the “non-sense” 🙂

And… Rumi says:
“A true Lover is proved such by his pain of heart; No sickness is there like sickness of heart. The Lover’s ailment is different from all ailments; Love is the astrolabe of God’s mysteries. A Lover may hanker after this love or that love, but at the last he is drawn to the King of Love.

However much we describe and explain love, when we fall in love we are ashamed of our words. Explanation by the tongue makes most things clear, but Love unexplained is clearer. When pen hasted to write, on reaching the subject of love it split in twain. When the discourse touched on the matter of love, pen was broken and paper was torn. Naught but Love itself can explain love and lovers.

The creed of Love is a Way unto itself, by itself. It cannot be compared to any other path. It has its own religion, its own worship and its own code of conduct. And to round it up we could say that its religion is sacrifice of self for the sake of the Beloved, its worship is the unceasing contemplation of the Beloved, and its code of conduct is to seek only the pleasure of the Beloved.
(Mevlana Rumi, the Mathnavi)

Bulleh Shah [1680 AD – 1752 AD] was a great sufi mystic-poet born in Uch Gilaniyan, a settlement in present day Bahawalpur district of Punjab, Pakistan. When he attained to youth, he was already in the grip of an intense longing and uncontrollable restlessness for union with the Divine Beloved. He met his destined spiritual guide, Shah Inayat Qadiri of Lahore, and grew in the stations of Love. But what brought the wildly surging waves of the river of desire to rest in the serene ocean of union, was the final annihilation that came to him through separation from his Pir. This is also reminiscent of what passed between Mevlana and Shams Tabriz. As the most excellent verses that Mevlana composed came from the tongue of one maddened by Love, dictated by a heart seared by separation in Love, so is the best of Bulleh Shah’s poetry an outpouring of his love-ravaged heart.

Bulleh Shah sings of his agony in separation from his Pir:

source: Naila Amat-un-Nur http://www.nazr-e-kaaba.com/

And Rabia, who said, “My Beloved is always with me” described the pain of separation from and the joy of reunion with the Divine in terms of separation from and longing for an absent lover – sometimes in rather direct terms:

“I pray to God that you fall in love With someone as cold and indifferent as you are. Then you may understand The pain of love, the sufferings and tortures of separation, and you may appreciate my devotion.”

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