Bewilderment

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“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment”

-Rumi

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Since sometimes one definition of "bewilderment" may be ONLY confusion as in one of the first dictionary definitions, I want to add the following:

Since too often westerners (or anyone who believes they are expert or better than the other) may have experiences which lead to confusion...I am imaging Rumi trying to help us out by describing a kind of "bewilderment" which ultimately leads to more expansive understanding. Some other interpretations for this term are as follows:

General Synonyms include: bafflement, confusion, daze, discombobulation, disorientation, perplexity, surprise
Under Entry: amazement
Definition: state of surprise
Synonyms: admiration, astonishment, awe, confoundment, confusion, marvel, one for the books, perplexity, shock, something else, stopper, stunner, stupefaction, wonder, wonderment...

See the beautiful, thoughtful questions in the comments below and my lesser response as well...add your own. Thanx for coming by...


“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and books that are written in a foreign tongue.

Do not now seek the answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything.

Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

-Rilke

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“The reality of the other person is not in what he reveals to you, but in what he cannot reveal to you. Therefore, if you would understand him, listen not to what he says but rather to what he does not say.”

-Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam

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Another morning and I wake with thirst for the goodness I do not have. I walk out to the pond and all the way God has given such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord, I was never a quick scholar, but sulked and hunched over my books past the hour and the bell; grant me, in your mercy, a little more time. Love for the earth and love for you are having such a long conversation in my heart. Who knows what will finally happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, except to be told to pack nothing, except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning.

-Mary Oliver

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What I know for sure is less and less...

The odd connection between perfection
and foolishness, like the pelican
diving for his fish.

...How...we glimpse
our holiness.

What I know is less and less.
What I want is more and more:

you against me—
your ferocious tenderness—

love like a star,
once small and far,
now huge, now near.

-Lee Robinson

* photo from Parabala