A New Day .

I wrote in an earlier post that I would be soon converting this blog to video and I am almost ready. My wife and I are experimenting with our Canon HG10 Digital Camcorder camera. We hope to be good to go by sometime this weekend, inshAllah and the creek don't rise.

I have re-started chi kung and integrated healing classes. The classes are held weekly and are between 1 hour to 2 hours long. Each class is $10.00 for singles and $15.00 for couples. The classes cover a wide range of chi kung and healing modalities using the the actual problems of the students and volunteers in the classes. Many of the classes will be videoed and shown on the blogs and YouTube. If you would like to know more about the classes or would like to attend please contact me by email, Rivgibeaut@gmail.com or by phone 412-576-2332.

Rumi offers you some wine in the poems that follow. Have a drink of the wine that does not come from a bottle.

If your knowledge of fire has been turned
to certainty by words alone,
then seek to be cooked by the fire itself.
Don't abide in borrowed certainty.
There is no real certainty until you burn;
if you wish for this, sit down in the fire.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Ze âtesh az `elmet yaqin shod az sokhan
pokhtagi ju dar yaqin manzel ma-kon
Tâ na-suzi nist ân `ayn al-yaqin
in yaqin khvâhi dar âtesh dar neshin

-- Mathnawi II :860-861
Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski
"Rumi: Daylight"
Threshold Books, 1994
Persian transliteration courtesy of Yahyá Monastra




"Not Here"

There's courage involved if you want
to become truth. There is a broken-

open place in a lover. Where are
those qualities of bravery and sharp

compassion in this group? What's the
use of old and frozen thought? I want

a howling hurt. This is not a treasury
where gold is stored; this is for copper.

We alchemists look for talent that
can heat up and change. Lukewarm

won't do. Halfhearted holding back,
well-enough getting by? Not here.

-- Version by Coleman Barks
"The Soul of Rumi"
HarperSanFrancisco, 2001

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Brother! To be a lover you must have pain!
Where is your pain? Sincerity and patience require
a man. Where is the man?
How much longer will your invocation be
congealed and your meditation paralyzed? Where
are passionate cries and a yellow face?
I am not looking for the elixir or gold. Where
is a receptive piece of copper? How can even a
lukewarm disciple attain passionate love? What
then if he's cold?

-- Translation by William C. Chittick
"The Sufi Path of Love"
State University of New York Press, Albany, 1983