Rumi | The Moon You Are Looking for Is Inside You 1207 AFGHANISTAN 1273 TURKEY
Jalal-al-Din Mohamad Rumi is a philosopher of love. He asks us to take leave of caution and sober living to embrace the madness and oneness of divine love. A poet-philosopher, Rumi points to a place beyond thoughts and words, beyond fear and the boundaries and desires of the base self. This is the place of the heart, where renewal and transformation are possible. Rumi experienced this transformation through his love for the wandering Sufi mystic Shams of Tabriz: his teacher, friend, and likely lover. But it was with the loss of Shams and the metamorphosis of his grief into poetry that Rumi fully awoke to the ecstasy residing within him. Devastated by his loss, then transformed through his pain, Rumi left his sober life as a Muslim cleric for the intoxication of Sufi poetry, song, and most of all dance. “Dance when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you’re perfectly free.” Rumi asks us to welcome pain and loss as messengers bringing us love and renewal.