Our truest poems and inner-visions show "The Way"

"...'Tis from the poet's Sinai that Beauty's beams arise...

Sea and land are hidden within the poet's water and clay


A hundred new worlds are concealed in the poet-heart.

Ere tulips blossomed in the poet-brain
there was heard no note of joy or grief.

...amidst who's darkness is the Fountain of Life:
All things that exist are made more living by the poet's tears...

The poet invites the whole world to this table...

Another poet's mirror who shows beauty as ugliness...
Who's kiss robs the rose of freshness,
Who takes from the nightingale the joy of flying...
Who's magic says that death is life...
Who plunges thee in a sea of thought...
Who's garden is a mirage...
Who's beauty has no dealings with truth...
Our fire was quenched by such breath...

Where is the love whose fire is extinct,
A love that was born in the Holy Place and died in the house of idols?
Oh if thou hast the coin of poesy in thy purse,
Rub it on the touchstone of Life!

Clear-seeing thought shows the way to action,
As the lightning-flash precedes the thunder...


Thou has gathered roses from the garden of Persia
And seen the springtide of India and Iran:


Now taste a little of the heat of the desert...

Build a nest on the high mountains,

A nest embosomed in lightning and thunder...
That thou mayst be fit for Life's battle,
That thy body and soul may burn in Life's fire!"

sunset of rakaposhi

Excerpted from -The Secrets of the Self- by Muhammad Iqbal on the true nature of poetry (some small liberty to lend gender and the poet universal)

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"...love (for the "other") is rooted in the 'deep river' of faith:

It may twist and turn, fall back on itself and start again, stumble over an infinite series of hindering rocks, but at last the river must answer the call to the sea."
Howard Thurman, American Mystic

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Another type of "poet" is the clear-seeker of the True Self's state:

"The first serving of any punishing wish or act towards another always goes to the one who dishes it out!"

From "The Secret Teaching of the Ages"

It is impossible to change the relationship that you have with the world around you without changing the relationship that you have in yourself, with yourself. Before you can become the kind of human being who never again hurts another -- either in thought or deed -- you must change the relationship you have with yourself.

This is the secret teaching of the ages. Inside of it, we learn about the necessity for a new kind of mind. We learn about the possibility of a world within ourselves that is presently guarded...we have yet to scale the depths of our own ignorance.


We refuse to understand the pain that our own ignorance causes. We refuse to recognize that it's impossible for us to have the pain we have with other people without ourselves being a participant in it...we refuse the beautiful lessons that life brings to us, and instead of going through the transformation they are intended to produce for us, we become individuals who simply wrap ourselves deeper and deeper in the same nature that is the source of our suffering.

The new mind begins to discover that the reason that it continues to be a prisoner is because it continues to live from a prisoner mentality...

There is freedom in realizing -- seeing the truth of the fact -- that whatever is holding you captive right now has no right to do so. None! The split second that you see you're a captive of your own mind, you have the freedom to challenge it with the new understanding that belongs to your new, true mind -- a mind that can't be made a prisoner of anything.

Refuse to carry forward with you one more day any thought that tells you there is someone to be punished for the way you feel...(including yourself! - added by Connie)

-- Guy Finley

Excerpted from Secrets of Being Unstoppable, "Freedom to Forgive: The Power to Put the Past Behind You"