Lord, said David, since you do not need us,

why did you create these two worlds?

Reality replied: O prisoner of time,

I was a secret treasure of kindness and generosity,

and I wished this treasure to be known,

so I created a mirror: its shining face, the heart;

its darkened back, the world;

The back would please you if you've never seen the face.

Has anyone ever produced a mirror out of mud and straw?

Yet clean away the mud and straw,

and a mirror might be revealed.

Until the juice ferments a while in the cask,

it isn't wine. If you wish your heart to be bright,

you must do a little work.

My King addressed the soul of my flesh:

You return just as you left.

Where are the traces of my gifts?

We know that alchemy transforms copper into gold.

This Sun doesn't want a crown or robe from God's grace.

He is a hat to a hundred bald men,

a covering for ten who were naked.

Jesus sat humbly on the back of an ass, my child!

How could a zephyr ride an ass?

Spirit, find your way, in seeking lowness like a stream.

Reason, tread the path of selflessness into eternity.

Remember God so much that you are forgotten.

Let the caller and the called disappear;

be lost in the Call.

As regards feeling pain, like a hand cut in battle,

consider the body a robe

you wear. When you meet someone you love, do you kiss their clothes? Search out

who's inside. Union with God is sweeter than body comforts.

We have hands and feet

different from these. Sometimes in dream we see them.

That is not

illusion. It's seeing truly. You do have a spirit body;

don't dread leaving the

physical one. Sometimes someone feels this truth so strongly

that he or she can live in

mountain solitude totally refreshed. The worried, heroic

doings of men and women seem weary

and futile to dervishes enjoying the light breeze of spirit.

When it's cold and raining,

you are more beautiful.

And the snow brings me

even closer to your lips.

The inner secret, that which was never born,

you are that freshness, and I am with you now.

I can't explain the goings,

or the comings. You enter suddenly,

and I am nowhere again.

Inside the majesty.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other"

doesn't make any sense.

The reader looks at the screen to read what's been written

Only to realize that it's nothing but the universe reading itself

Looking into the omnipotent mirror that is consciousness

Delightfully rejoicing in the lucid understanding that the painter, canvas, and painting

Are ultimately one and the same, waves upon cosmic ocean, all emanating from the same fabric of infinity expressing itself everywhere and everywhen as everyone and everything