Lovers Are Made Aware - Sufistic: Thoughts & Readings

Lovers Are Made Aware

You make a hundred resolutions to journey somewhere,
but He draws you somewhere else.
He turns the horse's bridle in every direction
so that the untrained horse may know there is a rider.

The clever horse is well paced
because it knows a rider is mounted upon it.
He fixed your heart on a hundred passionate desires,
dissapointed you, and then broke your heart.

Since He broke the wings of your first intention,
how do you doubt the existence of the Wing-breaker?

Since His ordainment snapped the cord of your contrivance,
how can you remain blind to His Command?

Your resolutions and aims now and then are fulfilled
so that through hope your heart
might form another intention
which He might once again destroy.

For if He were to keep you completely from success,
you would despair:
how would the seed of expectation be sown?

If your heart did not sow that seed,
and then encounter barrenness,
how would it recognize its submission to Divine will?
By their failures lovers are made aware of their Lord.

Lack of success is the guide to Paradise:
Pay attention to the tradition,
"Paradise is encompassed with pain."

Mathnawi III, 4456-67
- Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, The Pocket Rumi Reader (edited by Kabir Helminski)

...via Sufistic: Thoughts & Readings