You Are Nothing (5 Sufi Poems)

1// If you think you have a self, think again. You are nothing, it is true, and your ‘thinking about thinking’ proves it.

Your thoughts are like shooting stars, colliding innocently across the sky. Cherish them. They protect you from receiving too much truth all at once. God created them for you as a blanket, to protect you from the frightening magnificence of your own being.

That is correct: you are so fantastic that even you can only handle small pieces at a time. Otherwise, God is afraid that you might explode from too much excitement...

This is why Daniel and his girlfriend stay in bed for days and days at a time; in careful preparation for their greatness once entering the streets again. After a whole weekend of sleeping, Daniel can even be found staring proudly in the mirror for hours at his own perfection.

“It must now be time for God to see me” he’d exclaim to his girlfriend.

“Yes, but please put some clothes on dear” she’d reply. “Even God is not quite ready to see you in the nude”

2// When Daniel plays the guitar it gives him shivers. He occasionally stops to laugh a little in surprise, as if God had been fingering the instrument himself. When his friends ask what he’d been laughing at, he explains that God had been trying to trick him into playing the Heavens’ great timeless melodies, instead of his own songs.

“And what’s the problem with that?” they’d reply. 

“Nothing in particular” Daniel explained. “I just like to at least pretend that I’m original, that’s all”

Your breath, your heart, your voice, are the most unique things you own. And yet one must let God take possession of them from time to time. He’ll use them freely, then secretly return them without you even knowing.

Daniel often assumes God’s been at work when he sings particularly well one morning, or can all of a sudden cry at the sight of a bird struggling to fly.

3// Love is a sweeter thing than you realise my dear. One can even receive a swollen tongue, or violent stomach ache, from too much of it.

The day Daniel first met his wife he had to make a strict schedule to defend himself from it.

“Too much of anything is bad for us my dear” he explained to her, rather convincingly. “Especially Love. It is the most dangerous of all”

“Okay” she answered, looking over their new weekly agenda. “But then isn’t making love seven times on a Monday quite a lot to handle already?”

“Yes, indeed. But we’d have been to our many churches on the Sunday, so God will still be inside me, ready to take over if I’m struggling”

4// God, if you really loved me you’d design a world that made me wealthy.

God, if you were as kind as my many religious friends claim you to be, then I wouldn’t at times feel so alone and empty.

God, if you had a soul there surely wouldn’t be so much suffering all around me.

Nonsense, she’d say. How does one hope to be deeply filled if never empty? What has wealth to do with Love, even if more money would make your life a little more easy?

And being cared for only gets one so far. Self-punishment, or punishment from others, also has its value.

Daniel reserves his Godly requests, these days, for trivial things only. A top-up of wine in his glass, or a clear sky during his morning walk, for example.

Usually, when it comes to wine, he’s forgotten how much he’s drunk anyway. And whilst walking in the early brisk air, whether its rain or shine he’ll thank God either way.

5// It was on a wet, moon-filled Friday evening that I met God. He had a brown-orange beard and the most sincere green eyes. We kissed in the fading night.

“Isn’t a woman’s love so wonderful?” he exclaimed to me.

“Yes it is” I replied. “But I don’t understand; for it is you today that has my heart, and you are clearly not a She”

“If I appear as a boy then all it means is that I’m a female in disguise”

“And if you seem to be a girl?...” I inquired, curiously.

“Then indeed, again, I could be either”

“And then what if I find you, one night, crawling on my kitchen floor in the form of a cockroach?”

“Then rest assured that I am in actual fact a lion...”

And with that their passionate love-making, in the form of conversation, ended.

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