Rumi and Live Conscious

Rumi said: “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

What do Live Conscious and Rumi have in common? The beloved Rumi, actually now one of the most widely read poets in America, was a 13^th century Sufi poet. The most enduring symbol of Sufi belief is the veil, or the “Paradox of the Veil.” This veil is a barrier between humans and True Reality, and overcoming it, or seeing past it, is the aim of the Sufi.

Sufism, a philosophy of love, harmony and beauty, aims to expand our souls until the realization of the beauty of all creation enables us to experience and express harmony.

Seeing past the veil—in order to find harmony—is what Live Consious has in common with this ancient philosophy. The veil, in western terms, is the blind spot in our own lives that keeps us from living as we want to live, loving as we want to love, and from making ourselves happy even though we live in an imperfect world.

Seeing Beyond The Veil

The image above is one we use in our retreats. It shows a rhinoceros that has completed several landscape paintings, each of which has a rhino horn painted in the image. The horn is in all of his paintings because this is how the rhino sees “reality.” Everywhere he looks he sees his own horn. He doesn’t realize that, for others, the horn is not part of the view, but simply his perspective.

We do the same thing with our own filters—beliefs and prejudices—believing that our interpretations of the world are “right” and “true.” Our filters are our barriers—each of us locked into seeing the world in our own way, while thinking our view is the right view.

Others’ interpretations and perceptions are as true for them as ours are for us. When we learn to see through our filters, or realize they are made up, we stop erecting barriers that keep us from connecting with and understanding other people. Then we can experience and express harmony.

It is one thing to intellectually understand what I’m saying. It’s a whole other thing to embody this understanding in the way we live our lives. And this is what Live Conscious offers us—a philosophy and practice that continuously reminds us how to see through our own veils.

Raising Consciousness

This way of living in the world is not a quick fix—it’s not a matter of reading an article and changing your life overnight. As my husband describes it, this is a practice that requires us to choose the level of consciousness we drink from. He refers to it as “sipping.” All day long, sipping from a more conscious perspective, one that allows us to see beyond our own unconscious filters so that we see the ways other people are different from us without making them wrong.

We hear from many of you that what we write is helpful. We give these writings freely in an attempt to share with you a way to promote more peace in the world, but I am reaching out now to ask you to take a more substantial step toward living this way.

This will require a more substantial commitment from you. It will take an immersion into this practice. And this will mean taking a week out of your busy schedule in order to alter your life. And if you do this, you will grow, and as a result, others around you will grow. And this is how we all make a larger contribution.

Are you ready?   https://liveconscious.com/retreats/personal-growth-retreat-winter/

Please give us a call.