rumi Archives

March 28 2020

This Is The Time – More Than a Virus

Blog 30 hour work week, arundhati roy, climate change, coronavirus, COVID, COVID-19, environmental justice, Everlutionary, global citizen, hafiz, Hawah, loneliness, mystical, noam chomsky, peace education, Philosophy, poetry, poetry and prose, Positivity Not Panic, profit over people, rumi, social isolation, social justice, the poetry of yoga, world citizen

This is a time for remembering.
For slowing down.
For stopping.

This is a time for pausing long enough to see the system for what it truly is.
How we’ve been trapped by it.
How we are held prisoner to our eight-hour work days.
This could be a time to let the system reset.
Do we really want to go back to things as they used to be?

Sometimes we have to get sick to remember what it means to be healthy.
Sometimes we have to break our hip to remember what it means to walk.
Sometimes we don’t ask for the gifts in life that we receive.
Sometimes we don’t even recognize them as gifts.

So as the smoke clears.
As the cars stop.
As the buses, trains, and planes move empty.
This is a time to sit still.
To be where we are.
This is a time to not rush off to the next event, the next coffee, onto the next sports game.

Maybe in this time we will find a reticent joy of returning to the simple things.
Maybe call someone you haven’t talked to in a really long time.
Maybe even in this time we will eat a little less.
Perhaps we will meditate a little more.
Maybe read an old journal from a decade ago.

This might be a time to empty your closet.
This might be a time to resurrect old passions.
This might be a time to think, “What on Earth is going on?”

The Amazon rainforests have been burning and we haven’t stopped.
The Coral reefs around the world have been decimated and we haven’t stopped.
The Polar icecaps have been melting at a dizzying rate and we haven’t stopped.

Maybe we should take a second and reevaluate?
Why have we not yet stopped?
Why can’t we stop.

This might be a time for us to stop and watch the birds.
They have so much to teach us.
Let us listen to their songs.
Let us protect the planet.
Let us not go back to our old ways.

-written by Hawah Kasat
March 15, 2020

March 27 2020

On Love and Loneliness

Blog alone, coping with depression, depression, Everlutionary, free will, freedom, gibran, hafiz, Hawah, Hawah Kasat, isolated, J. Krishnamurti, krishnamurti, loneliness, mystical poetry, physical distancing, poetry, poetry and prose, rumi, self harm, social isolation, solitude, spoken word poetry, suicide, ultimate freedom, understanding solitude

Dedicated to J. Krishnamurti and all of those who have ever wondered if flowers get lonely.

You stood alone in the darkness, light pouring from your eyes, penetrating into the unknown, sailing into the vast waters of uncertainty. We explored the deep trenches of your wrinkles, canyons of wisdom flowing into the steeple of inquiry. Sages breathe while both alive and dead; you breathed the water directly out of the air.

We stepped delicately into the river of your life, the sail of awareness hinged to your constant presence. We discussed with you tomorrow, peered at yesterday’s shadow, and peeled away all emotional attachment to discovery.

During your greatest triumph, you were in love with being alone.

You cracked the shell of solitude, a fertile egg birthing truth. A soldier of action renouncing all that was contrary to freedom, you spilled your heart into our lives. You held us in your embrace, gushed forth as the Ganges, mouth opened, you were climbing in the downward fall. We yearned to discover how we could, as you, love being so alone…

To taste you, we needed to discover that loneliness is none other than love, masked by the need for flavor. To feel you, we needed to discover that loneliness is none other than love masked by the need for communication. To hear you, we needed to discover that loneliness is none other than love masked by the need for attention. To understand you we needed to discover that loneliness is none other than love… bare and naked, standing without protection, without shields or weapons. Loneliness is none other than love made visible through sorrow and pain. Loneliness is none other than love disguised in our need for relationship.

Loneliness is expressed through our need for each other, and in you we found that loneliness is needed for self-realization. For within the confines of our solitude we find the indivisible atom, the smallest particle, and the essence of our need. In loneliness, we find you in love.

You loved loneliness. Carried it with you as a feather tied to your heart. You would occasionally remove it for us to see that you didn’t need it to fly. We gazed you in the night sky.

Are the fireworks as captivating when you are by yourself?
Is meditation deeper when you are silent in solitude?

Reflected in your eternal eyes, we saw the shell of sight and found that inside is the freedom for which we yearn. It is a freedom to love unconditionally without fear of losing this view of paradise. For in paradise there is no comparison. There is no view that one would rather prefer to have. In paradise, you are still in love, even while lonely.

In loving, even loneliness, the shell that keeps us confined is broken. Our isolation is no more. For in our joyous solitude there is no shell, there is only the truth of our being; a shining interconnected reality toward all of creation.

To understand why we are never alone requires we embrace loneliness. This is when freedom is found; in our greatest moment of surrender… our weakness… when it has all fallen apart and we realize finally that we can never be alone.

For loneliness is a perpetual state of ultimate freedom, of barren naked love.

~Written by Hawah Kasat