This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
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Any lifetime that is spent without seeing the master
Is either death in disguise or a deep sleep.
The water that pollutes you is poison;
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Did I not say to you, “Go not there, for I am your friend; in this
mirage of annihilation I am the fountain of life? ”
Even though in anger you depart a hundred thousand years
from me, in the end you will come to me, for I am your goal.
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Lord, said David, since you do not need us,
why did you create these two worlds?
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218
I have a fire for you in my mouth, but I have a hundred seals
on my tongue.
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216
Bring wine, for I am suffering crop sickness from the vintage;
God has seized me, and I am thus held fast.
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I closed my eyes to creation when I beheld his beauty, I became
intoxicated with his beauty and bestowed my soul.
For the sake of Solomon’s seal I became wax in all my body,
and in order to become illumined I rubbed my wax.
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A true lover is proved such by his pain of heart;
No sickness is there like sickness of heart.
The lover's ailment is different from all ailments;
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Rise, lovers, that we may go towards heaven; we have seen this world, so let us go to that world.
No, no, for thought these two gardens are beautiful and fair, let us pass beyond these two, and go to that Gardener.
Let us go prostrating to the sea like a torrent, then let us go foaming upon the face of the sea.
Let us journey from this street of mourning to the wedding feast, let us go from this saffron face to the face of the Judas tree blossom.
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Be helpless, dumbfounded,
Unable to say yes or no.
Then a stretcher will come from grace
To gather us up.
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