40 Rules of Love by Shams Tabrizi.
If you've read Forty Rules of Love, you're probably familiar with these rules and how beautiful and significant they are, as well as the divine power they wield and how much they shift your perspective. Personally, I believe that these rules were liberating; each of the 40 rules contained essence of freedom, love, life, relationship, loneliness, ego, intellect, and so on!
But these are the rules, I would like to follow more and more.
Intellect and Love are made of different materials. Intellect ties people in knots and risks nothing, but Love dissolves all tangles and risks everything. Intellect is always cautious and advice, ‘Beware too much ecstasy,’ whereas Love says, ‘Oh, never mind! Take the plunge!’ Intelligence does not easily break down, whereas Love can effortlessly reduce itself to rubble. But treasures are hidden among ruins. A broken heart hides treasures.
The two sides of the coin, intellect and love. But the extreme wild side of a broken heart. Let’s find a balance.
Loneliness and solitude are two different things. When you are lonely, it is easy to delude yourself into believing that you are on the right path. Isolation is better for us, as it means being alone without feeling lonely. But eventually, it is best to find a person who will be your mirror. Remember only in another person’s heart can you truly see yourself and the Presence of God within you.
Though, the idea of God varies from one to one, loneliness and solitude also varies from one to one. Do we really need a person to find solitude when we haven’t found solitude within ourselves? but the idea of a person is nice as well.
East, west, south, or north makes little difference. No matter what your destination, just be sure to make every journey a journey within. If you travel within, you’ll visit the whole full World and beyond.
A journey within a journey, never stop finding yourself, try to know yourself, travel within, travel outside but embrace.
Hell is in the here and now. So is heaven. Quit worrying about hell or dreaming about heaven, as they are both presents inside this very moment. Every time we fall in Love, we ascend to heaven. Every time we hate, envy, or fight someone, we tumble straight into the fires of hell.
My absolute favorite, shows the reality of world and human interaction. Everything is here for us to experience already.