The Contemplative Master's Series - Rumi

The Poetry of Place - July 17, 2014

Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.  It will not lead you astray. 

 Rumi, the 13 century Persian poet and Sufi mystic, is one of my favorite source for contemplative insight. The quote above is one that is at the core of my practice as a contemplative photographer.  If you allow yourself to be drawn in by what you truly love, you will see what your soul needs you to see.

Everyone sees the unseen in

proportion to the clarity of their heart.

    To see the landscape through the eyes of the heart is an essential element of contemplative photography and it ties in very nicely with the first quote.  It is also the focus of my visual listening exercises where I allow the landscape to open up the conversation while I just quietly sit and listen.

    This final quote from Rumi seems to refer to the metaphorical capacity of the landscape to speak directly to our hearts and it is one that I constantly remind myself of.  Absolutely everything you encounter in the landscape, any landscape, has the capacity to teach us profound truths if we open our hearts to the message.  I've added the parenthesis...

Be grateful for whoever (or whatever) comes because

each has been sent as a guide from beyond.