shams tabrizi

it becomes hard to finish a sentence when everything is both true and untrue, worth saying and not worth saying.

i recoil at my own words as they arise in my mind when they are the words i have learned to expect, what i have heard about before, what others have said.  because then i believe that i am only using those words to pantomime for you, to make you think something; that would be dishonest.

doubt dissipates truth.  not because truth is something that exists absolutely, but because it is something to be entered into. and the process of entering makes the truth real.

belief in the miraculous makes the truth real.

for this time, and maybe other times, who knows, we must let go of the notion that a phenomenon signifies something–that it is a sign that an idea is or is not true. the phenomenon signifies only what we imagine it signifies.

and therefore, it can be fun to imagine what is the most miraculous thing that phenomenon could signify…and choose to believe it is true. over time, or maybe instantaneously in instances i can’t imagine, the significance we choose to believe in becomes the significance of the phenomenon.  it congeals through our feelings. our feelings become a lens for seeing truth. and then we see things that are miraculous–things that have never been seen before, or at least, have never been seen before by these eyes we use.

and then, after all, we must not believe anything.

think and not think.

experience and not experience.

it is only coincidental, i find, that these words could sound like others’ words. others may or may not have seen what i see. the words of others’ may or may not point to the things i describe.

and embracing that pushes me forward towards the center of an eternally receding sense of dwelling in the Beautiful. because the Beautiful, in my experience, is only felt when it is growing.

read this as philosophy. maybe in the future, you will have to read this as something else. in fact, you will have to, most likely.

read this as poetry too.

and i don’t foolishly believe that my asking will create your proper doing.

nor do i cling to the idea of wisdom.

or the fantasy that i have it.

or to propriety, even.

what i can say now is that i am oceans-worth happier. and my saying things has a lot of energy…that can catalyze motion. and i want to say. i am driven to say.

not because it is a prescription.
not because i should.
or because others have.
or because it will afford me things.

and yet…yes, because of these things.

not because of these things and because of them, i am driven to say and do.

i am going to find lots of ways to touch and to talk to life and to people. more than i did in the past.