I lost my name, my fame and my mind. The sun appeared and all my shadows scattered. I chased after them but vanished as I ran. The light followed and hunted me down.
Jalaladdin Rumi, (1207-1273) Persian poet
“The whole mystical journey of the heart is described in this beautiful quote by Rumi. It’s one of his quatrains. This poem inspires me because it describes the essence of [our] journey which is that we basically have to lose identification with our relative world, of our personality, our job, who we are, our stature in the world, and engage with something other which is this supreme light that is illuminated. And, of course, illuminates all of our shadow, all of our impurities and all of our egoic identifications that we want to cover up. When that light radiance comes out, we scramble to try to cover, to try to compensate but as we do so we dissolve, we vanish because what happens is that light replaces us. Eventually that light becomes us, as Jesus said, “I am the light of the world.” He also said you are the light of the world and we see this across the traditions: that Divine Light eventually takes up residence in the devotee and they become an ambassador of that light. And in that very important last line Rumi says, “The light followed and hunted me down.” At a certain advanced stage in spiritual practice, the Divine itself pursues the human being. Once [the seeker is] sincere and once they’ve been tested, there’s a certain stage at which the Divine actually pursues a human being and uses them as an instrument infused with light. In the early stages we are seeking God but in the later stages, God is seeking us to give, with full intensity, of her/him to the human disciple.”
William Keepin, Ph.D. is a mathematical physicist, environmental scientist, and has been a practitioner on a contemplative path of Divine Love. He’s the author of Belonging to God: Spirituality, Science, and a Universal Path of Divine Love
