Chickpea to Cook
Rumi – Translated by Coleman BarksA chickpea leaps almost over the rim of the pot
where it’s being boiled.‘Why are you doing this to me?’
The cook knocks him down with the ladle.
‘Don’t you try to jump out.
You think I’m torturing you.
I’m giving you flavor,
so you can mix with spices and rice
and be the lovely vitality of a human being.Remember when you drank rain in the garden.
That was for this.’Grace first. Sexual pleasure,
then a boiling new life begins,
and the Friend has something good to eat.Eventually the chickpea will say to the cook,
‘Boil me some more.
Hit me with the skimming spoon.
I can’t do this by myself.I’m like an elephant that dreams of gardens
back in Hindustan and doesn’t pay attention
to his driver. You’re my cook, my driver,
my way into existence. I love your cooking.’The cook says,
‘I was once like you,
fresh from the ground. Then I boiled in time,
and boiled in the body, two fierce boilings.My animal soul grew powerful.
I controlled it with practices,
and boiled some more, and boiled
once beyond that,
and became your teacher.
In 2001, I met a younger man in Key West, who was a big fan of Rumi. I was homeless, and the man seemed amazed that I knew about Rumi. When I asked the man if he knew about Rumi’s teacher, Shams, who was kinda grouchy and irreverent, the man seemed even more amazed.
The man and I became friends, and as time passed, he started calling me Shams. We ran some interesting rivers together, but bye and bye he went his way and I went my way.
Around 2009, I met a younger woman in Key West, who was a big fan of Rumi, and she took to calling me Shams, and she called herself Chickpea. We met and talked from time to time about God, life, and her boyfriend, and bye and bye she went her way and I went mine.
From Wikipedia.
Shams' first encounter with Rumi
On 15 November 1244, a man in a black suit from head to toe came to the famous inn of Sugar Merchants of Konya. His name was Shams Tabrizi. He was claiming to be a traveling merchant. As it was said in Haji Bektash Veli's book, "Makalat", he was looking for something which he was going to find in Konya. Eventually he found Rumi riding a horse.
One day Rumi was reading next to a large stack of books. Shams Tabriz, passing by, asked him, "What are you doing?" Rumi scoffingly replied, "Something you cannot understand." (This is knowledge that cannot be understood by the unlearned.) On hearing this, Shams threw the stack of books into a nearby pool of water. Rumi hastily rescued the books and to his surprise they were all dry. Rumi then asked Shams, "What is this?" To which Shams replied, "Mowlana, this is what you cannot understand." (This is knowledge that cannot be understood by the learned.)
Please know, younguns. that I never once tried to make a miracle. I never once had a smidgeon of a clue of how to make a miracle. I often wonder if the miracles attributed to Jesus in the Gospels caused Christendom to fasten onto miracles and quick salvation, instead of on how Jesus in the Gospels lived and taught others to live.
In the Gospels, John the Baptist said one greater than he would come, whose sandals he was not worthy to lace, who would baptize in fire and spirit. Elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus said his baptism was in fire and he was anxious to get on with it. Nowhere in the Gospels did Jesus baptize anyone in water.
Theists: Does God Exist?RivalSi m'ait Dieus
Staff member
Premium MemberRival
Does God or do the Gods exist?
Christ advises us to cast all our cares into the bosom of our Father so that, relying on his promised
Redneck MysticIf people lived in my skin, they would know God, or something much bigger and smarter than them, exists. I have had several friends who knew, and I’m still in regular contact with two of them. One of them was in grave medical straits very recently, and out of nowhere a doctor showed up who seemed to have the skills to help him somewhat. After meeting with my friend, the doctor had a dream that convinced him to do all he could to help my friend, and the doctor told the hospital about his dream, and he and the hospital reduced their fees 90 percent. The surgeries were done and so far seem to be successful. [The friend is the fellow who does the tech work for The Redneck Mystic Podcast and my books at archive.org.]
I was raised first in a Southern Baptist sect, then in an Episcopal sect. By college, I had drifted away from church stuff. I got up each morning and faced the day, and it was pretty rough going most of the time. In early 1987, my 45th year, I knew the New Age and a geographic move were not working. Feeling out of rope and bright ideas, andI had failed in every way a man could fail, I prayed one morning, “Dear God, I do not wish to die like this, failed.” I paused, said, “I offer my life to human service.” A few tears came to my eyes, I went about my day.Around ten days later, in the wee hours, sleeping beside my new girlfriend in her home, I woke up and saw two whitish shift-shaped etheric beings hovering above me in the darkness, looking down at me. Although I saw no wings, I assumed they were angels. I heard, “This will push you to your limits, but you asked for it and we are going to give it to you? I remembered the prayer.. I saw a white flash and was physically jolted by something electrical. It happened again, and again. I was shaking all over, sweating. The beings faded out. My new girlfriend asked me what was going on? I asked her what she had heard and seen? She said saw my body lurching. I asked if she had seen or heard the angels? She said, no. I told her what had happened. She said, “Let’s go back to sleep, you strange man.”
My life began to change, slowly.
My first stint at looking inward, pointing the finger at me, instead of elsewhere, had begun in earnest.
My first stint. There would be many seasons of being stood before a mirror looking at me. The seasons would never cease.
I was steered, pushed, shoved, carried, dragged, yanked, spanked, clobbered, mangled, lifted up, corrected, redirected, sometimes encouraged, by beings far greater and smarter than me in my dreams, feelings, body sensations, ahas, voices I sometimes heard, visions, what I sometimes heard, saw, felt. Except for dreaming, it was brand new.
I saw and felt all sorts of phenomena, good, bad, ugly, beautiful, horrible, magnificent. I sometimes screwed up so bad that I was sure the Devil had claimed me, but then something happened to let me know I still was being looked after.
I experienced a 4-year dark night of the soul, 1991-1995, after being told by the same voice in my sleep one night, “With respect to St. John of the Cross, you haven’t seen anything yet,” and I was engulfed in pure, black, raw Evil, and I woke up, terrified.
The year before, a friend of my 3rd wife, they both were licensed clinical social workers, suggested I read up on St. John of the Cross. I wentI to a local bookstore and found one book about St. John of the Cross, by a Spaniard poetry professor named Antonio T. de Nicholas. I read St. John of the Cross: Alchemist of the Soul in about two days.
That’s how I learned about Christendom’s straight arrow saint Juan de la Cruz, a diminutive monk in a Carmelite monastery somewhere in Spain, who used a secret ritual and ignored all phenomenon, any one of which could have been the Devil in disguise, to go straight into God and was remade, for which was persecuted as a heretic by his own church, and was imprisoned, starved, and died.
The de Nicholas book contained Juan’s commentaries, in which he described a dark night of the soul, which was awful, but doable. For some, that was the end of it. For others, there was a much harder dark night, in which there was no light and woe be unto anyone it befell, who was not in a safe place and being helped by people who understood what was going on.
After that dream, I entered the dark night of the soul, during which the heavens opened to me, and I came to view the many phenomena as parts of myself returning to me.
In 1997, I entered what would be 16-month black night of the soul, which arrived over two days’ time, There was no light. I felt totally cut off from God and plotted my suicide daily. It was made worse by antidepressants and antipsychotic pills a psychiatrist prescribed. I learned the pills were addictive when I tried to quit them cold turkey.
The black night began to lift when I separated from my 4th wife, for whom attending church was very important. I was able to wean from the pills by cutting the dosage ¼ a week. I felt angels helping me wean. I started dreaming again.
Then began a time of extremely intense not of this world internal healing and instruction, which paled all that had come before. I was shown up close and personal that Evil and Lucifer are very real, that I had a demonic twin, and everyone has a demonic twin, and Jesus in the Gospel had a demonic twin, and part of the journey is coming to terms with that.
In early 2000, I was sent back into the world to experience many variations of what living on this world had to offer. The. good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly, the horrible and the magnificent. I did not know when I ever was not in church. I screwed up many times, and each time was picked back up and put back into a harness pulling a plow.
In 2010, I think, I had a number of email discussions with Antonio T. de Nicholas. I felt he was gifted, and perhaps he had experienced the dark night, but not the black night.
I paint this with a very large brush stroke.
Each person is unique, and thus there is no cookie cutter that stamps out lookalikes.
A poem that came as fast as I could write in my journal in the spring of 1995 still seems to sum up the big scheme.
Earth-
the sacred prism
through which souls are refracted
into their elemental parts,
purified in Holy Fire,
then one-forged
and sent on their way
to not even God knows where,
simply because they are all
unique emanations of God,
Evolving…For anyone is interested in more details, the free internet library, archive.com, funded and run by colleges in America, carries quite a few of my digitized non-fiction books and three novels. Enter Sloan Bashinsky in the search space, press Enter, and icons for my books come up. Click on an icon and the book can be read on any kind of internet device, for free, no ads, no soliciting. My angel-harnessed-and-driven younger friend, who does the tech work for the books, me told me the books are readable in 33 languages, including English, and average around 10,000 complete reads per month, per book.I currently write at two Goggle blogspots, which will become books at archive.org.
redneckmysticlawyerforpresident.blogspot.com (a mock) campaign), and grandfossil.blogspot.com, tales to my grandchildren.
I do not claim to be saved, enlightened, or special. My poop stinks just like everyone else’s. I tell Christians they are saved by Jesus to the extent they live as he lived and taught in the Gospels. I tell people that I don’t care what name they use for God. Something is out there. It has been out there a very long time, and it does not think like people think. I tell atheists, if there were no God, the topic would never come up.
sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com
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