Any Chance Meeting

In every gathering, in any chance meeting

on the street, there is a shine,

an elegance rising-up.

Today, I recognized that that jewel-like beauty

is the presence, our loving confusion,

the glow in which watery clay

gets brighter than fire,

the one we call the Friend.

I begged, “Is there a way into you,

a ladder?”

“Your head is the ladder.

Bring it down under your feet.”

The mind, this globe

of awareness, is a starry universe that when

you push off from it with your foot,

a thousand new roads come clear, as you yourself

do at dawn, sailing through light.

Rumi, Any Chance Meeting, Say I Am You, Athens, GA: Maypop, 1994, p. 29

The mind is a globe of awareness, a starry universe indeed. But it isn’t the be-all or end-all: it’s the push-off point. The thousand new roads aren’t inside it  because roads are meant for walking, not contemplating while sitting in place.