Day Two: Ten days of Persian Influence

 SEARCH THE DARKNESS

Sit with your friends; dont go back to

sleep.

Dont sink like a fish to the bottom of the sea.

Surge like an ocean,

dont scatter yourself like a storm.

Life's waters flow from darkness.

Search the darkness, dont run from it.

Night travelers are full of light,

and you are, too; dont leave this

companionship.

Be a wakeful candle in a golden dish,

dont slip into the dirt like quicksilver.

The moon appears for night travelers,

be watchful when the moon is full.

-Rumi

translated by Kabir Helminski

I've chosen another Rumi passage to reflect on today.  I was struck by the lines "surge like an ocean, dont scatter yourself like a storm".  It has got me thinking about what it means to live deep.  I spend so much time on the internet, looking up anything I want to know but I also usually speed read what I find there and half the time dont even read all the text.  I like pictures.  I like blogs with pictures.  I feel like my attention is diffuse. I think it is getting harder to zoom in and focus; such is my habit of flitting from this to that.  This is not what I think it means to live deep. I want to live deeply. Just like Thoreau, who wrote in Walden

I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life...to put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

~Henry David Thoreau

The culture I live in encourages breadth.  Lots of experience, lots of difference and diversity, lots of stimulation, lots of everything.  Masses of information.  Masses of material objects. Masses of choice. There isnt much any more that points us towards the depths.  Perhaps understandably because life usually manages to send us there - via pain of one sort of another.  That is where many of us grow and become wiser, deeper.  But how else, I wonder?

So after thinking for a little while these are some of the ways that might lead to "surging like an ocean":
*doing things over and over.  Not always seeking the new or novel
* to know and accept both light and shade within myself and others
* to know my limits. to set limits by making deliberate choices.  To keep boundaries
*to have high hopes and to set realistic goals to move towards these
* to work towards mastery of a few skills rather than trying everything
*to love questions and to live with them
*to be able to sit with pain, mine and others
*to be able to critically reflect.
*To know what I value and let what matters most to me to shape my choices
*to be curious about everything (and respectful and restrained, where appropriate)
*to listen well
*to wonder
*to enjoy solitude

Well, that is just for starters.  I'm sure I will think more about this as the day goes on.  What about you?  What do you think about living deeply and how do you cultivate this within your own soul?