Lou Gold wrote: ↑Wed Feb 03, 2021 10:27 pm
IMO the best we can do is to experience this Mystery of the reality as it is directly and appreciate its Mysteriousness in awe. This is something the Christian mystics such as Dionisius the Areopagitis and the author of "The Cloud of Unknowing", as well as many Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist and Sufi mystics, knew very well. This is not to stop the intellect from exploring the Mystery and attempting to understand it, but it is to put the limits to the claims of the intellect that it can know anything definitely and exhaustibly about any fundamental aspects of the Mystery beyond our direct experience of it.
I agree!
The more I mull the marvelous back-and-forth-and-circle-about dialog in this thread, the more I appreciate Henri Corbin's great translation of Ibn' Arabi
Listen, O dearly beloved!
I am the reality of the world, the centre of the circumference,
I am the parts and the whole.
I am the will established between Heaven and Earth,
I have created perception in you only in order to be the object of My Perception.
If then you perceive Me, you perceive yourself.
But you cannot perceive Me through yourself.
It is through My Eyes that you see Me and see yourself,
Through your eyes you cannot see Me.
Dearly beloved!
I have called you so often and you have not heard Me.
I have shown Myself to you so often and you have not seen Me.
I have made Myself fragrance so often, and you have not smelled Me,
Savorous food, and you have not tasted Me.
Why can you not reach Me through the object you touch
Or breathe Me through sweet perfumes?
Why do you not see Me? Why do you not hear Me?
Why? Why? Why?
For you My delights surpass all other delights,
And the pleasure I procure you surpasses all other pleasures.
For you I am preferable to all other good things,
I am Beauty, I am Grace.
Love Me, love Me alone.
Love yourself in Me, in Me alone.
Attach yourself to Me,
No one is more inward than I.
Others love you for their own sakes,
I love you for yourself.
And you, you flee from Me.
Dearly beloved!
You cannot treat Me fairly,
For if you approach Me,
It is because I have approached you.
I am nearer to you than yourself,
Than your soul, than your breath.
Who among creatures
Would treat you as I do?
I am jealous of you, over you,
I want you to belong to no other,
Not even to yourself.
Be Mine, be for Me as you are in Me,
Though you are not even aware of it.
Dearly beloved!
Let us go toward Union.
And if we find the road
That leads to separation,
We will destroy separation.
Let us go hand in hand.
Let us enter the presence of Truth.
Let It be our judge
And imprint Its seal upon our union
Forever.
Although not a poem in Arabic, this moving account of Divine “pillow talk” or munājāt (intimate discourses) by Ibn' Arabi was beautifully translated by Henri Corbin in poetic form.
Creative Sufism ‘Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, p. 174-75