Daily Meditation: May Your Soul Be Happy

We all need help maintaining our personal spiritual practice. We hope that these Daily Meditations, prayers and mindful awareness exercises can be part of bringing spirituality alive in your life.

Today's meditation features a poem by Sufi mystic Rumi, translated by A. J. Arberry. "Ode 2180" is a celebration of the escape from fear and seclusion into a state of joy and security. May your soul be happy as you journey onward.

Ode 2180 by Rumi

From these depths depart towards heaven;
may your soul be happy, journey joyfully.
You have escaped from the city full of fear and trembling;
happily become a resident of the Abode of Security
If the body’s image has gone, await the image-maker; if the
body is utterly ruined, become all soul.
If your face has become saffron pale through death, become a
dweller among tulip beds and Judas trees.
If the doors of repose have been barred to you, come, depart
by way of the roof and the ladder.
If you are alone from Friends and companions, by the help of
God become a saheb-qeran. [lord of happy circumstance].
If you have been secluded from water and bread, like bread
become the food of the souls, and so become!