Peace, one and all…
If you are a man, come out and look [for the Real]
Pass by anything that comes to distract you.
Do not pause day or night at any of these stages.
Don’t be delayed by fellow travellers or the caravan.
Go seek Truth like Abraham, the Friend of God!
Turn night to day and day to night [in ceaseless striving].
Stars and moon and the brightly shining sun
represent the senses, imagination, and brilliant intellect.
Turn away from all of these, O traveller, and keep going.
Just keep saying, ‘I love not they that set’.
And like Moses, Imran’s son, follow this path.
Strive until you hear, ‘Truly, I am God’.
While still facing your mountain of unreal existence,
your cry, ‘Show me!’ encounters, ‘You can’t see Me’.
True Reality is amber pulling at your essence of straw.
If not for your self’s mountain, what distance the path?
If theophany were to strike this mountain of ‘existence’,
it would be abased like the dust of the road.
A beggar is a king from one divine attraction.
In an instant a mountain is a mound of straw.
Follow Master Muhammad’s path in his ascension.
Go explore and observe all of the mighty signs.
Come out from the courtyard of Umm Hani.
Say with certainty, ‘Who sees me [has seen the Real]‘.
Transcend the universe’s constricted corner.
Remain in the ‘closeness of two bow’s lengths’.
God will then give you anything you desire.
He will show you ‘things as they really are’
Mahmud Shabistari, The Garden of Mystery 186-199
