We take in words everyday. Some circle around us, some leave before we really see them, and some plant themselves deep within our soul. There are words we have lived with a long time. Words that heal our soul over and over. There are poems, quotes, or errant sentences that strike a chord in us that reverberates forever. Every time we pick it up or run across it again we are startled or overcome, sometimes to tears. There are words that have that ability for all of us. I think all of us have come across the answers to our questioning, we just don’t know how or which question they link up to. These are mysteries that need solving.

Today is my birthday and I wanted to share this beautiful poem by Kabir. These are words I have lived with a long time. And every time I reread it I am reminded why. It speaks to my soul. It cuts across all the vagaries and hang-ups and gets to the essence of who I am and what I believe. This poem unshackles me. I have always loved poetry and the way it uses a minimum of words to convey the deepest and most delicate thoughts. This poem reminds me of something Jung use to say about how we have to actually slay the dragon, not think, hope, and then go back to mom’s house for a cup of coffee, talking about what we might have done. We have to actually get up and do it, face our biggest fears again and again. This poem is a beautiful urging to heed the call and go to work in the depths of our soul.

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.

Jump into experience while you are alive!

Think…and think…while you are alive.

What you call “salvation” belongs to the time before death.

If you don’t break the ropes while you’re alive,

do you think

ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic

just because the body is rotten –

that is all fantasy.

What is found now is found then.

If you find nothing now,

you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.

If you make love with the divine now, in the next life

you will have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,

Believe in the Great Sound!

Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for,

it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that

does all the work.

Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.

Translation by Robert Bly