#Safi 'Alishah

[loneberry]

Some beautiful examples of later Persian ghazals. Yes, the pain is both the illness and the remedy. I hope to continue my study of Islamic mystical literature and Sufi metaphysics.

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Journal notes:

This is the double life I live—one life lived in the realm of the phantom, where I talk to invisible entities that feel more alive to me than my life, like William Blake talking to the angels and dead people all day, to the chagrin of his wife. Agha Shahid Ali writes, “See angels pour the Word through a sieve forever.” I can hear it. Water is the language of angels. Teresa of Ávila writes, “There are certain spiritual things which I can find no way of explaining more aptly than by this element of water…” It flows from the source. Didn’t that language undo me, when the sound of the waterfall appeared in the meditation recording? The Word flows through the sieve of the world. I can’t catch it. Help me, o lord, drink directly from the source, to feel no pity for the martyrs of love but only for those who will never know the delicious taste of suffering for love.