For 800 years the Sufi philosopher/poet Rumi has been soothing seekers with his words, “The wound is the place where the light enters you.”
Have you thought about why the wound is where the light enters you?
And what the light actually is?
I want to offer my current understanding of this for your consideration.
Here is the poem:
“I said: What about my eyes?
He said: Keep them on the road.I said: What about my passion?
He said: Keep it burning.I said: What about my heart?
He said: Tell me what you hold inside it?I said: Pain and sorrow.
He said: Stay with it. The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
Another version finishes a little differently:
“Don’t turn your head. Keep looking at the bandaged place. That’s where the light enters you.”
In this version it is not the wound itself, but the “bandaged place” that is emphasized.
Rumi seems to be saying that resisting or denying the wound, ignoring how we feel, and covering or bandaging the pain and sorrow that is held in the heart won’t help us. It might even create obstacles to the light entering us. But that’s just the beginning of the story.
The light, I like to believe, is the light of clarity. It is the illuminating light in which we can see ourselves clearly. It is the light of self-realization.
Why would pain and sorrow help us see ourselves clearly?
“Don’t turn your head. Keep looking…”
Even full of pain and sorrow, even covered with bandages, the light of clarity will come, if we don’t turn our head.
In the text, the first two questions are met with direct answers:
I said: What about my eyes?
He said: Keep them on the road.
I said: What about my passion?
He said: Keep it burning.
You know where you’re going, so keep going.
You know what you want, so keep wanting.
Simple enough.
Then it gets more interesting when the third question is met with another question:
I said: What about my heart?
He said: Tell me what you hold inside it?
With your eyes on the road, and your passion burning, you’re well prepared to allow for whatever you find in your heart. Oh, it’s pain and sorrow? That’s OK. Even pain and sorrow provide the light of clarity if you don’t resist.
So don’t panic. Stay with it. It will give way to the light of clarity, because the essence of who you are is NOT pain and sorrow, but joy. This is an important distinction, and an aspect of the poem that I had always missed until an opening in my awareness allowed me to see it.
Your pain and sorrow will lead you to the clarity of who you really are because EVERYTHING will lead you to the clarity of who you really are… if you let it.
It’s a hard way to get that light into you, and there are easier ways available, but it’s the way most people have been doing it for at least 800 years. It’s how I have done it too. There’s a reason we call it a “BREAK-through”.
Twenty years of providing therapy showed me that many people will not “let the light enter”, will not surrender to the undeniable truth of their basic goodness, and will refuse to lay their burdens down, until the “pain and sorrow” in their heart breaks down their resistance.
Hence Rumi’s clear and unambiguous instruction, “Stay with it.”
OK. For how long?
Until the Light gets in.
And then what?
I’m certain that Rumi did not intend to create a cult of eternal suffering. You’re not meant to worship the pain and sorrow in your heart forever, or to indulge an endless fascination with every wound. You’re instructed to “stay with it” until the realization of who you really are, the “Light”, can enter you.
Do not conflate suffering with light. They are not twinned. They have a dynamic relationship with one another in human beings, but this relationship is not a given, and is constantly evolving. You have a role in its evolution.
This light of clarity, of self-realization, is always right there illuminating your true essence as joy, showing it to you, ready to enter you in the moment you allow it.
Most people won’t allow it until they exhaust themselves with pain and sorrow. “Stay with it…”
What if the answer to the teacher’s question had been… Joy?
What if I said: “What about my heart?”
And He said: “Tell me what you hold inside it?”
And I said: “It’s full of joy.”
What would He say then?
Would He say, “Hm, you better go find some pain and sorrow, ‘cuz that’s where the light enters you.”
I don’t think so.
I think He might say: “Ah, you have allowed the light of clarity and self-realization to enter you. How wonderful. Welcome home. Are you enjoying this life as fully as you might? Have you discovered yet that there is no limit to your joy, and to the growth and discovery and expansion that joy provides?”
There’s a popular belief today, a very old and persistent belief actually, rooted in the religious dogmas of the ages, that joy and suffering are bound together in equal measure, and also that growth or reward is a product of struggle or sacrifice.
These are self-fulfilling truths for those who believe and enact them, but they are not absolute. Not even close.
Plenty of people are living overwhelmingly joyful lives, with little suffering. And plenty of people are benefiting from the exhilarating growth that comes with the choice to embrace joy.
Rumi knew that joy is our nature, and he knew that pain and sorrow will sometimes be part of our life experience, and that this provides valuable contrast, prompting us always to let the light in, to remember again our essence.
His words soothe those who have not yet come to fully realize their essence as joy, and encourage those who know better but have temporarily wandered into the weeds, as we all will from time to time, only to experience the satisfaction of returning, again and again, with “eyes on the road” and “passion burning”, to our true Self.