waking to the void

You could string a hundred endless days together,

My soul would find no comfort from this pain.

You laugh at my tale? You may be educated

But you haven't learned to love till you're insane.

#1901: From Rumi's Kolliyaat-e Shams-e Tabrizi

Last night I felt I was floating freely inside a void. It's a feeling I'd like to stay in touch with, reach out for whenever I need it. It has been likened to our experience inside the maternal womb, floating in the amniotic fluid, free of cares or concerns, all our needs met and no demands being made. Well, that at least is the ideal.

Here is a passage from the Mathnawi which adds some useful imagery to the idea inside today's quatrain:

Seeing a man who was tilling the earth,
a fool, unable to control himself, cried out,
"Why are you ruining this soil?"
"Fool," said the man, "leave me alone:
try to recognize the difference
between tending the soil and wasting it.
How will this soil become a rose garden
until it is disturbed and overturned?"

Mathnawi IV: 2341-2345, version by Camille and Kabir Helminski

Sometimes we need a little shaking up, some unsettling experience, to move us out of the dream into which we've been educated.