Who Says Words With My Mouth?
All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that,
and I intend to end up there.
This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I'll be completely sober. Meanwhile,
I'm like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?
Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.
This poetry, I never know what I'm going to say.
I don't plan it.
When I'm outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.
--Rumi
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that,
and I intend to end up there.
This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I'll be completely sober. Meanwhile,
I'm like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?
Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.
This poetry, I never know what I'm going to say.
I don't plan it.
When I'm outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.
--Rumi
Labels: thoughts
posted by Nate Mecham at 11:53 PM
4 Comments:
Rumi was an Islamic poet/philosopher. As far as I understand it, Islamic philosophy was built around the revelations given through Muhammad, however there were questions that the religion didn't answer, and some questions that were created by it.
Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
Never in my life has such a question arisen when I didn't think I knew the answer. And in result I wonder, have I wanted just a sip of an answer as badly? Has any answer given me such power?
Have I a gift? or have I been robbed?
A lot of poets and religionists and philosophers find it obvious that "I" am something other than my body. I just don't buy it. I don't think that I am something other than my body. I don’t think it’s necessary; I think the brain is a sufficient explanation of consciousness. At the very least, my spirit and my body are integrally connected. But I prefer the explanation that doesn't assume the separate existence of a spirit – even one that is no more “me” than my body.
I prefer just me. Physically and completely and indivisibly me.
If body-independent spirit is the primary me, why does resurrection make any difference?
And what of Smith's suggestion that spirit is matter, just like everything else we know of? A different degree of matter, but still matter.
So --
I am not from elsewhere, I have always been where I am. If I feel stuck in a prison, I am that prison just as much as I am the one feeling stuck within. I say words with mouth, which is me. I look (but not out) with eyes, which are me. And the soul is brain with the totality of speech and sight and hearing and taste and touch and smell and thought and remembering -- all of which are physical experiences involving sound waves, visible electromagnetic light energy, physical particles, chemical reactions, etc.
I see when they saw.
-Cory aka
thecause
great halloweenie costume.
see mine?
it was neat. not as neat as my wifes tho. :)
-C
"If an American is concerned only about his nation, he will not be concerned about the peoples of Asia, Africa, or South America. Is this not why nations engage in the madness of war without the slightest sense of penitence? Is this not why the murder of a citizen of your own nation is a crime, but the murder of citizens of another nation in war is an act of heroic virtue? "
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Great philosophies beyond the "I have a dream" base are out there too. Just don't expect to catch them on the tvee.
-Cory
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