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Be it me, Allah. Alright guys, welcome back to the channel. If you're new, my name is Bobby. Guys, you see the heart in the background. Today's topic is seven life lessons from Rumi on the channel Philosophies for Life. Rumi, also known as Jalal Eddin Muhammad Rumi, was a 13th century Persian poet, mystic and scholar. He's widely regarded as one of the greatest poets in the Islamic tradition and his works have been celebrated for centuries in the Muslim world. However, in recent years Rumi's popularity has exploded in the West, particularly in the United States, where his poetry is often associated with themes of love, spirituality and self-discovery. Rumi's writings have been embraced by a diverse range of people from college students to spiritual seekers, to celebrities like Demi Moore or even Madonna. Despite his deep Islamic roots and the fact that his poetry is steeped in Sufi mysticism, many Western admirers of Rumi tend to overlook or downplay his Islamic credentials. Some critiques have accused these admirers of whitewashing Rumi's Islamic identity in order to make his work more palatable to a Western audience. Despite this criticism, Rumi's influence continues to grow in the West and his poetry remains a powerful source of inspiration for people around the world. So much for the intro, guys. Just do me the favor if you enjoy my videos. Leave them a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. With no further ado, let's have a look. Love has been cherished since the beginning of time. Many men and women tried to sing its greatness and many cultures and ideologies preached its importance, each with its own interpretation of what love is. In particular, one movement has built its whole essence on love and considers love to be the origin of life. This movement is called Sufism, meaning mysticism. It's kind of funny to me coming from a Christian Orthodox background because in the West Christianity is associated with love. If you think about love, you must think about Christianity. Love thy neighbor. This is how it is presented. Christianity is this loving, benign, pacifistic religion and Islam is always evil and bad. Arabic. Sufism began some nine centuries ago and is focused on reaching the divine. The power that created the skies, the earth, us and life as a whole through love. It means that in Sufism, we human beings are lovers. The divine is beloved and to love the divine, we need to connect back to the essence of life and understand that we and the world are one. Sufism has given the world some of its brightest minds and poets and one of these people is known as Molana Jalaladin Muhammad Rumi, arguably the best Sufi poet in history. Rumi, a Persian scholar at first, then a mystic, has written many illustrious poems depicting love and its central role as the bridge to reach the divine. Poems that are engraved in the literature books. It's very, very simple. No matter what you do in life, if you do it out of fear, out of aggression, out of stress, out of hatred, you will never accomplish anything good. It is that simple. For example, if we take something that is associated with violence, we talk about fighting. If you are hate motivated, it will only bring you so far. You need to fall in love with the martial art in order to become great. And this truly trickles down into every aspect of life. No matter what you do, if you do it out of love, you're going to be great at it. If you do it out of hate, out of fear, you're going to fail sooner or later. For eternity, his brilliance caught the eyes of people since his childhood. His father, a famous scholar back then, had personally taken the responsibility of teaching him. He deepened his knowledge at a very young age and after the death of his father, he was destined to succeed him as a scholar. But Rumi wanted to learn more, so he connected with another brilliant teacher named Al-Tarmidi and a few years. As I said in the beginning, Western outlets usually do not talk about the depth of Islamic scholarship that Rumi has underwent. As they described here, his father was a scholar himself and he initiated Rumi into scholarship. So this should be mentioned much more. Later, his teacher left him because he considered that he had nothing left to teach his student. Rumi was now a complete scholar. Rumi was adored by his followers and when he held assemblies, he had a large crowd as attendees. However, life in the divine had other plans for him. In 1244, Rumi encountered Shams Tabrizzi, a traveling Sufi duvish who changed his core understanding of life. Rumi became so fond of Shams that he neglected his students and his family and spent days and nights with him, all to grasp the essence of pure love and how to express it to reach the divine. Rumi turned from a scholar to a Sufi poet who sang for love, danced in circles, which is now called Sufi whirling or the whirling duvish, and wrote poems that are still relevant today, continuing to have a deep influence, which is why in this video, we bring you seven life lessons from the philosophy of Rumi. Number one, there is something you can do better than anyone else. Rumi says everyone has been made for some particular work and the desire for that work has been put in every heart. When Rumi was a scholar, he was brilliant. If he had remained a scholar, he likely would have made big contributions. However, it was becoming a Sufi poet that cemented his name in the history books. By using his own words, Rumi found the thing that he can do better than anyone else, the work he was made for, expressing his love for the divine, the aches of the heart and the magnitude of our inner worlds through piercing poems that would live on forever. This desire made him produce some of the greatest pieces of literature in history. It's fair to conclude that Rumi was meant to be a Sufi poet. He understood his mission, he loved it and he had the desire to fulfill it. He produced many illustrious works and he conquered millions of hearts. I believe that the truth is always simple but at the same time very complex. It reminds me of the quote of Inuitake Hiko. He's a Japanese mangaka and philosopher. I'm paraphrasing here, but he said it seems easy but it is hard. It seems hard but it is easy. Ultimately pointing out that the deepest wisdom appears simple at first but has so much depth ingrained in it. And this is why when we are talking about this statement here, it appears simple. Just do what you love. But it is so deep of course because it presupposes that you know yourself, that you truly understand what you are, who you are and why you are alive, why God created you with this love in your heart for a particular thing in this creation and this is what you should go after. Connecting with what matters to you is as relevant today as it was back then. We see many people getting caught out by default decisions and drifting away from their true essence. Thinking that what they're doing is the right thing because it's what everyone else is doing. However, all they're really doing is moving away from what makes them different and unique. We see many cases of depression among people who can't find meaning in what they do. This is something we inherit from the industrial revolution where people were considered part of a chain, a means to turn the wheels of capitalism rather than considering the individual. We wouldn't be here without it so it had to be done. Connecting back to what we consider meaningful is, according to Rumi, the only way to be useful in the best way possible for our society and ourselves. Meaning makes people feel alive and when they feel alive, they produce work that is unmatched. That is because they have the desire to do so rather than being forced to do something they don't actually agree with. Finding meaning doesn't have to be a massive, life-changing event. Finding meaning can be found in the simplest things you enjoy and give your best in. For example, you might enjoy painting if that's what wakes you up in the morning. You might enjoy your job as an accountant and that's where your heart is. Meaning is not about the what, it's about the why. Yes, absolutely. Of course, it doesn't need to be too complex for a wife, for example. The greatest meaning could be to wake up in the morning and make breakfast for the children. For a father, it could be to wake up in the morning and go to a job and provide for that family. It doesn't need to be something complex but nevertheless the essence of it is still love. Any job or task, you've found your meaning and that's where you'll give your best and be the best. Number two, you don't have to see the whole staircase. To quote Rumi, as you start to walk out on the way, the way appears. Rumi was first introduced to Sufism in his childhood. That actually reminds me of my tattoo here. I know guys, it's haram. And when you remove this letter, it says ed for the Slavic speakers among you, you probably already understood what it means. It means ed, vidi. And this is saying that my grandpa and my father would always repeat over and over again. As a kid, I didn't understand it. Ed, vidi simply means go and see. Just go out in the world and see. And I didn't understand this until 2014 when I finally left Germany and went to Australia, after that to Indonesia, after that to Thailand, South America, New Zealand and whatnot. I started traveling the world and this path started unfolding. This is how I met my wife. This is why I'm a father right now. This is why I live in Thailand. This is why I run this YouTube channel because I started YouTube during my travels. So ed, vidi, go out and see. You don't have to see the whole staircase, as the Rumi said, is such an important lesson that I learned myself in my life. We will never understand what comes next. Generally, no idea. There could be a gas leak in my flat right now. It explodes and I'm dead. I can't even finish this video. Who knows? All we got is this moment. But in this moment, we need to apply action. We need to go out and see for ourselves. As you start to walk out on the way, the way appears. Rumi was first introduced to Sufism in his childhood. His father talked to him about its ideology and spirituality, giving him a first glimpse of what will go on to dictate his life and his relationship with God. But let's fast forward a few years to his famous encounter with Shams Tabrizzi, the Persian dervish poet we mentioned in the introduction. After meeting Shams, Rumi took days, weeks and months to absorb the love that Shams was full of. After their separation, Rumi spent many years writing about the purity of that love and the essence of Sufism, all to finally dictate his most notorious work, the Masnavi. When you look at the path that Rumi has been on, you know that his success was not an accident. It was the end result of many years of step by step learning. Even when we look at the Masnavi, this wasn't something he composed overnight. In fact, it took him 15 years in all, and that doesn't even include much of his earlier work, which has also had a massive impact on the Masnavi. As I said, it appears easy, but it is hard. Now in the West, we simply see a poem about love and we take it at face value and we think, oh, that's very nice, how romantic. But to come to that day where Rumi took his pen and wrote down this poem, all of those previous years went into that poem, including of course, Islamic scholarship. Today, everyone has dreams and aspirations to do something tremendous. But for the most part, those dreams fade away. Everest is too high a climb for many and travelling the world is too costly for others. We end up dismissing those dreams because we think of it as unattainable, unachievable. But it's just a matter of perspective. Okay, so the stare to the seventh floor of a building is long, but look at what you have right in front of you. Just one small step. All you have to do is take it. Then what's next? Another small step. So take that too. And there you go. Getting closer and closer step by step to reach that seventh floor that seemed impossibly out of reach at the start. Moreover, this really simple physics, objects that are in motion tend to stay in motion. So therefore, the hardest step is the first step. This is literally the hardest step. In Jujitsu, we say the hardest belt to achieve is the white belt. People would think it's the black belt, of course, but no, it's the white belt because over 90% of people on this planet do not practice Jujitsu. So the hardest aspect is to enter that gym and actually sign up for membership. That's the hardest part. And then you start training. So therefore overthinking leads to paralysis. People overthink every step, every potential step that could come. All you have to do is take that first step and then another step and then another step. And every time you take that step, you're taking it in the moment. You're not taking a thousand steps at once. It's always one step. Teachers ask to look at what's in front of us and not what's ahead of us. The secret ingredient of success is that it can be found by anyone who remains disciplined in their small actions. True. And moreover, if you truly think about it, God is transcendent of time. God is always present. So he's not tomorrow. He's not yesterday. He's always in the now because time does not exist within God. God created time for us. So how can we connect to God if we think about tomorrow and not yesterday? And we are in our minds only if we are in prayer in the now, in the moment, we can truly connect with God. Number three, the wound is the place where the light enters you. Rumi tells us that what hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle. Through his friendship with Shams, Rumi found a new meaning. Even if you look at an atheist, the famous example that if a plane starts crashing, every atheist becomes a believer. Every atheist starts praying to something, right? And this is exactly what he points out here in hardship, in terror, in agony. This is when we are the closest to God. Joy. He made sure to make the most out of every second of Shams presence and enjoy the purity of their alignment. The school, the family gatherings, the Friday preachings, and the friendly meetings, he left it all at that time to spend time with Shams. They spent sleepless nights sharing knowledge and driving powerful discussions, talking about the divine, and exploring how to love the divine. The crowd that was once mesmerized by him when he was a scholar became disappointed with him when Rumi started dedicating his whole time to his friendship with Shams and Sufism. This is why people around Rumi became disdainful towards Shams. They threatened him, disrespected him, and made him feel uncomfortable. As far as they were concerned, he took Rumi for himself, and that's something that cannot be forgiven. Shams was fed up by the huge animosity to which he was the target, and one day, he left, leaving no sign whatsoever. Rumi could not accept this, and he did his best to get him back. He even declared that he'd reward anyone who finds out where Shams is. People saw an opportunity there to take advantage of the situation, many of them claiming they saw him in misleading places, and Rumi, even though he was aware of those lies, rewarded them regardless. For him, they gave him hope, and that was enough to be rewarded. Months later, he found him, and his son was tasked to bring him back. But that loss and temporary separation deeply wounded Rumi, something he would never forget. A wound that would be reopened when Shams disappeared again, only this time forever. Some say he left on his own, others say he was killed. However, that wound was the inspiration and the driving force behind a great deal of his work, giving him the creative outburst and energy to write no less than 70,000th poetic verses. Indeed, he suffered, but suffering got the best out of him. Suffering guided him to understand life, love and pain, three inseparable things that would become the basis of his work. Suffering is the greatest lesson in life, man. No pain, no gain. We know that from bodybuilding as well. No pain, no gain. Without any type of suffering, there is no reward whatsoever. Edit at all costs, especially with today's heavy emphasis on seeking pleasures and satisfying desires. Yep, exactly right. Because pain is something we try to avoid wherever possible. However, it's often through pain that we... This is really the society that we're living in. We are avoiding pain and this leads then to such extremes as veganism. Oh, it hurts, therefore it's bad. So because the animal experiences pain, therefore we should not eat meat. This is the logic behind it. More over every time you say something discriminatory, something bad, this of course hurts people. It hurts their feelings and this is why you can't say it anymore. This is why we're going to ban free speech as well because it hurts people. However, as long as it feels good, you can do whatever you want. Of course, there is no objective morality. Morality is subjective, they tell you. And therefore, if you want to be a man that dresses up as a woman, even though they don't understand what a woman is, go you. Oh, denying pain is denying real life. Our teeth get as pain as children when they started coming through. Understanding people can come at the cost of being disappointed Oh, when we were born, our mother suffered to birth us. And growing a project or business typically requires painful periods of dedication. Of course. Pain is necessary to see the light beyond the pain. Yes. A light that gives us a fresh perspective and... You suffer today so you can enjoy tomorrow. New gains. Even to enjoy the peace that we have, wars have to be fought. So when pain comes your way, you embrace it. It's hard. Or at least accept it. Because as it turns out, the more you accept it, the less painful it becomes. Yeah, it's not really pain anymore. It's just something that you do, you persist. The goldmine lies within you in the words of Rumi. Why are you so enchanted by this world when a mine of gold lies within you? One day, walking the streets of the city, Rumi heard some blacksmiths hitting on an iron not too far from the place where he was standing. He listened carefully to process those hits until he became overwhelmed, mesmerized by their sound. He felt it within himself. He closed his eyes, raised his hand, and started moving in circles, round and round, dancing to the sound of those hits. Blacksmiths saw him. They thought he was possessed, but the head of the group told them to keep going. For watching Rumi dancing was a beautiful blessing. Rumi didn't hear them talking though, nor new people were watching him. He was just absorbed in the moment, or more precisely... If this is really true, he was like a child, a child that does not reflect about their surroundings and simply is joyous in the moment. It's really impressive to be honest, and of course this would seem crazy to us. ...opened up to him at that time, thanks to the sound of those iron hits. He was immersed. That dance, like... That was the first techno. He turned on, became known as the whirling dervish, and many who have experienced that dance say they feel an overwhelming connection with the inner world. The whirling dervishes that Rumi performed were only... I didn't know that he was the inventor of this. ...fraction of the richness of what we have within us. The state of love, of calmness, of ease and of oneness that we experience when we connect with... But the interesting aspect here is that this whirling dervish came naturally, organically, out of Rumi when he felt the beat of those metals. However, now we try to replicate it and reinvent it yet again by copying what he did. But this is if we would copy what a child does. Sure, it might alleviate us a little bit and give us some pleasure, but the true pleasure comes of course from doing what you feel. World inside us is proof that no matter how shiny the outer world is, the real treasure is within. Nowadays, when we stay alone, we get bored fast. And when we get bored, we rush to the fastest way that will entertain us. And most of the time that's our phones, just looking for an escape. We're losing the desire to listen to our inner voices and discover the world within. We're starting to become like a precious Ming vase. Most people don't even understand that there is a world within. Beautiful on the outside, but empty on the inside. You don't see anything. And just like that vase which has nothing to support it from the inside, we're fragile and easy to break. For many of us, the moment we lose our external beauty, we lose our senses. Our inner world gives meaning, deepness, understanding, openness. And while the outer world is designed inherently to be turbulent, the inner world will bring that calmness to overcome the storms. And people really underestimate their subconscious. Even if you read something profound, it will resonate with you internally, of course. If you wouldn't have that internal world, you couldn't understand anything. Everything would just stay external. You would never absorb anything. Do you understand? If you're wondering how to reconnect with the world within, start by spending some time alone. Start listening to the voice within. Give yourself the opportunity to discover your own body by paying attention to the flow of your blood. All the great prophets, all the great masters went into isolation. Beat into a cave, beat into the desert. You have to be alone to truly listen within. And explore the thoughts that feel meaningful to you. Make sure to listen to your heart and acknowledge the existence of your soul. And this doesn't have to be a silent meditation with your eyes closed. You can move, dance, write. Whatever helps you connect with you. The world within is vast. And the roads to access it are multiple. Number five, love is within you. According to where else would it be? 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. When Rumi was pursuing knowledge to become a scholar, he had two great teachers among many. He even had the chance to travel and learn abroad. However, when Rumi met Shams, he did not leave, nor went to meet different teachers. Not because Shams held all the external knowledge about love or Sufism, but because he held the ability to destroy all the barriers that Rumi had that were preventing him from finding true love. All those long nights, long walks, countless discussions, they weren't meant to transmit love, but to free it. The moment those barriers were destroyed, Rumi became Molana, the honorary title Sufists gave him, and which means master. He became immersed by a love that was confined within him since birth. It's absolutely correct. People nowadays talk about self love. You have to love yourself before you love anybody else. This is absolutely false, of course. By loving yourself, you allow the ego back in. Or I love myself because I am so funny, I'm so good-looking, whatever it may be. True love is found within yourself. It is already existence, and this is why the description here makes perfect sense. We build barriers through traumatization or whatnot, through fear ultimately, in childhood leading up to this very day. And therefore, yet again, it's not something external that we have to absorb in order to change ourselves quite the opposite. It is already within, and now we need to purify our hearts to find that love. When you see people walking around and talking about finding love and going after it, we start imagining love as if it's a product or this thing that's independent from us. Yeah, exactly. Love is not a... Especially in this day and age, of course, because people think they can find love in one-night stands, love in other people, love in other things. It is not correct. The love is already within you. People only wish to have a car once they acknowledge its importance and existence. But if they never encountered something called a car before, they'll never pursue having one since they have no idea what a car is. Of course. But with love, you could be isolated in a mountain, you could live in any part of the world, and you would still think about it. No matter where we come from, love is not something that we have to absorb. It's already in us. Sure. Just like Rumi said, if you want to seek something, seek out and destroy the barriers that are confining the love within. That's what he did. And when he succeeded, once he got a taste of that love, he never left it nor got bored of it. You can have many barriers preventing you from tasting that love. It can be that you believe that love only enters when someone walks into your life. It could be your upbringing in an unloving environment. It could be doing something you don't enjoy and so on. So if you do want to break those barriers, listen to yourself, question your own ideas about love, question your perspectives and the cultural or societal pressures that have impacted your thoughts about what love is. Understanding those barriers will push you towards the right path. The path of finding the love that has been ingrained in you and me since we were in our mother's womb. This video truly reminds me of my past spiritual experiences because I had this encounter with the love within and I saw that it's always there. It was already there and it was me actively denying it. It is very similar to the submission to God. God is always there but the atheist denies him. Yep. This is extremely powerful and of course we all have to learn from this to let go of judgment. Why is this so important? It is important because every time you are judging you are asserting that you already know everything about the situation. You are playing God which ultimately is idolatry because you become your own God. Every single time you judge you say this is what it is. This person is like that. This situation should be like so. You have absolutely no clue how it should be and moreover it already is how it is because God created it in a certain way so every time you judge you play God. Someone comes and shares a path with you that is about to change your mindset and alter your heart completely. Most wouldn't go it. While trying to explore that path you see yourself labelled as a loser and your companion as a wrongdoer and find yourselves thrashed by the crowd. Both of you are judged severely. So imagine you are in this and you even face death potentially. Exposition. Would you have been able to handle it? Most people would give up and get back to their original path where glory and adoration was all laid out for them. Exactly. But not Rumi. He didn't bow down nor confined himself in those judgments. He knew that... I would claim because he pursued truth and the truth will always be hated by the masses. Beyond any kind of judgment there is something deeper that needs to be discovered. Something that can truly make sense of this life. He sailed against the windy crowd but paradoxically that same crowd chanted his name when Rumi's work was published and happily sang every verse of his poems. Rumi's struggle with judgment is not always the same. Humans have suffered from it since the dawn... When I was doing anti-vegan content every single day I would get death threats of those vegans yes and they would tell me how insane I am but the same people that commented a year later or so thanked me that I saved their life from malnutrition. He of time. It's always the same. And we still do to this day. You can't listen to them. And as much as we think we're open-minded judging and deciding what is right and wrong on behalf of the community is deeply entrenched in every culture. Absolutely. Awareness is key for the world to understand that judging someone is like pulling a seed from the earth. You'd think it's just a seed but that seed could have been a magnificent lemon tree who would have fed and helped countless families for generations. Sure. On the other hand if someone judges you for a path you want to take and labels every single move you make is either right or wrong just say to yourself so what? Free yourself from the fear of being judged because at the end of the day people will be people and people will judge. But then what? All the time. Usually nothing. They move on with their lives so why wouldn't you do the same and leave their judgments behind too? It's easy to let go of... You're gonna die, they're gonna die, who cares? The only thing that is worth pursuing is truth. Judgment. Human beings are social creatures but the idea of letting go of judgment is to be aware of your actions and the heartfelt knowledge that you don't need others' approval. Number seven Change yourself to change the world. In our final quote from only for this video he says yesterday I was clever so I wanted to change the world today I am wise so I'm changing myself Rumi gained a... We heard this quote before and it's absolutely correct because what does it mean to change the world? Will you go out and fix certain things outside? Of course not. The only way to change the world is changing you of course by you becoming the man or the woman that you are supposed to be destined by God you achieve that greatness like that the world around you will change. Following during his scholarly years he preached and many listened he gave advice and many applied his teachings he was an intelligent man and as a scholar it was tasked to bring change to the world something he undoubtedly achieved impacting millions of souls even after his death however he did not do so by seeing himself as clever and having a life mission of changing the world indeed it is not Rumi the scholar who brought that lasting change it was Rumi the Sufi who did so the worshipper of love the mystic poet the human being that chose to focus on himself and report about it in the most sincere way possible by producing some of what is considered by many to be the most profound and heart-piercing poems of all time history in the members Rumi today as someone who was wise enough to change himself we often hear from people about their will to change the world and it often makes you wonder how come we have this many people that have this much to say with this amount of willpower and yet we witness so little real change isn't the world supposed to be much better now we have a huge number of people willing to change the world for the good of humanity one of the key issues is that generally these people want to change everything outside of themselves exactly right but true change really comes from those who get it those are people that fell into their own desires their gluttonous degenerates and they want to change CO2 emissions or they want to change sexual politics and what not what does it mean to be a male and a female I'm not a biologist they want to change every definition in the book but they're not changing themselves change some for the better within the world more than ever before needs us to become more self-oriented to look at ourselves and say I need to change this in myself maybe not only self-oriented but introspective I need to manage my spending habits to control what I say to people and avoid hurting them or maybe to criticize less and understand more I need to acknowledge my mental wounds and heal them my challenges and mistakes and overcome them that's what we need because positive change is infectious if you change yourself and that convinces others to change they spread their influence and in time the change keeps spreading until one day it becomes global if you enjoyed this video please make sure to check out all right this is it for today's video I'm going to cut it off here the whole video can be summarized with one sentence know yourself all right but this is it for today if you enjoyed it leave it a thumbs up if you haven't subscribed already guys please do so and if you want to support this channel all the links are in the description box below thank you so much for your ongoing support guys and as always may god bless you all much love and peace