Special Plates

Notice how each particle moves.

Notice how everyone has just arrived here

From a journey.

Notice how each wants a different food.

Notice how the stars vanish as the sun comes up,

And how all streams stream toward the ocean.

Look at the chefs preparing special plates

For everyone, according to what they need.

Look at this cup that can hold the ocean.

Look at those who see the face.

Look through friends' eyes

Into the water that is

Entirely jewels.

Rumi is expressing awareness. Rumi understands that life is diverse; it's a plethora of realities and experiences. There are metaphors everywhere that point out my multiplicity. I mentally make note of them, but ignore them. It's fascinating to see myself focus on just one standard of life, the linear standard, which has a beginning and an end; every other life is out of focus. To me the distance is short, the road is bumpy and joy is limited. In fact everything seems to be limited; there's just not enough stuff to go around, or that's what I believe. I have been taught that I have one go at this method of existence and must get it right in order to make my mark and be what I was born to be, but I forget what I was born to be and allow someone else to remember for me. I get lost in the woods of judgment and my sole purpose is to survive and I make it as hard as I can on my self.

Rumi talks about diversity in his work Special Plates. Every particle or consciousness has its own plate, its own food, and moves to a different vibration. Physical consciousness shares a plate of diversity in order to expand. Water, stars and all the planets vibrate and move with me, but they express that movement in incredibly different ways. Everything is dependent on my perception, on my belief and then they become real to me. My five senses judge what is true or false in the standard back yard, I call physical life. Everything else I reject and throw in the basement of mental illusions, but in that basement particles continue to move and flow. Consciousness is always in action regardless of my awareness of it.

 That basement door is opening. I'm opening it. Now is time. Conscious particles that have been swirling around waiting for me to open that door are entering my awareness and I'm expanding. The chef of consciousness that prepares food for all life is living through me and adding desert to my table. I am sensing my expanded presence in the ant, in a rose bush and a palm tree filled with nectar. I swim in a melting pot of consciousness and hear the tones of beauty that bubble through it.

The face of a star reflects my face as I dream of bouncing on the moon just as the sun comes up. The stream of consciousness within me becomes an ocean. It's another world filled with food for thought. It's a special plate as well as a cup that holds water filled with friends and the jewels of eternity. The special plate is a plate for everyone.

http://www.shortsleeves.com/

http://halmanogue.blogspot.com/