Bawa Muhaiyaddeen says, Do not ever fight or argue, because for God there are no fights and no arguments. For that One everything is love; everything is in the form of love, compassion, and truth. May God provide you with the blessings and grace to live in that state. 87 CLOSE TO BEING TRUE How can we know the divine qualities from within? If we know only through metaphors, its like when children ask what sex feels like and you answer, Like candy, so sweet. The suchness of sex comes with being inside the pleasure. Whatever you say about mysteries, I know or I dont know, both are close to being true. Neither is quite a lie. W H AT H U RT S T H E S O U L ? We tremble, thinking were about to dissolve

Loving God is the only pleasure. Other delights turn bitter. What hurts the soul? To live without tasting the water of its own essence. People focus on death and this material earth. They have doubts about soul water. Those doubts can be reduced! Use night to wake your clarity. Darkness and the living water are lovers. Let them stay up together. 88 When merchants eat their big meals and sleep their dead sleep, we night-thieves go to work. Love is the way messengers from the mystery tell us things. Love is the mother. We are her children. She shines inside us, visible-invisible, as we lose trust or feel it start to grow again. HIDDEN INSIDE Hiding is the hidden purpose of creation. Bury your seed and wait. After you die, all the thoughts you had will

The heart is the secret inside the secret. Call the secret language and never be sure what you conceal. Its unsure people who get the blessing. 89 Climbing jasmine, opening rose, nightingale song, these are inside the chill November wind. They are its secret. How did you discover mine? Your laugh. Only the soul knows what love is. This moment in time and space is an eggshell with an embryo crumpled inside, soaked in spirit-yolk, under the wing of grace, until it breaks free of mind to become the song of birds and their breathing. If everyone could see what love is, each would set up a tentpole in the ocean. The worlds population pitched and living easily within the sea! What if inside every lovers tear you saw the face of the Friend: Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha, the impossible-possible philosopher,

90 They try to say what you are, spiritual or sexual? They wonder about Solomon and all his wives. In the body of the world, they say, there is a soul and you are that. But we have ways within each other that will never be said by anyone. Come to the orchard in spring. There is light and wine and sweethearts in the pomegranate flowers. If you do not come, these do not matter. If you do come, these do not matter. 91