RUMI AND FAUST

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.    -- Rumi

Rumi was a 13th century Persian poet and that's one of his most famous poems. I come back to it again and again because I need to be reminded that out past my ego with all its judgments and opinions, all my defenses, all the ways I separate myself from other people - out beyond all that is a place of total acceptance and unconditional love, a place for me to give and receive both. Only beyond all my views and opinions am I able to meet another person without defensively maintaining a separation between I and thou. In that field I can truly embrace another person, see the same humanity in them I feel in myself. In that field, ideas, concepts, all the ordinary things I put between me and the world no longer exist. 
     I used to put great store in my mind. I still do; it certainly keeps me from being bored. But knowing things, no matter how wide a net that knowing cast, never satisfied a yearning I barely knew I had. Only suffering, the search for relief of suffering, brought me to surrender, to that point when I could experience directly the yearning inside me and come fully into the moment beyond all judgment and separation. Then there is no "I" and no "you" - my spirit is one with all that is. There isn't even any "my spirit."
     In the beginning of Goethe's Faust, Faust has been insatiable in the search for knowledge. but now he's in despair because he's mastered all branches of learning and there is nothing left for him. He makes his pact with Lucifer (who first appears as a poodle!) because the Devil promises him endless new experience. But there's a condition: the moment that Faust says, "Stay, moment, thou art so fair" the Devil will claim his soul. Of course that moment comes - for the first time in his life, Faust is satisfied, full, in the moment. The Devil doesn't win, however - in the end, in a sort of deus ex machina, the heavens open and Faust is drawn up. He's worthy of being saved because he's turned away from hollow experience and embraced a spiritual connection to the universe.
     Stay moment, thou art so fair - in that grass, the world is too full to talk about...I will wait patiently for for those moments and do what I can to make it easier for them to happen.