I Eat the Fruit. I May as Well Believe.

“The caravans had no food, yet food was dropping all about them. If someone had said Look, over here, they would have thought him insane. How can this happen. Am I dreaming? I walk up to the trees. I eat the fruit. I may as well believe.” Rumi, “Visions of Daquqi”

This morning, I read A Year With Rumi for the first time in a long time. It had been a while since I’ve read his poetry. For a long time, it formed a lot of my spiritual vision and practice. I wrote yesterday about how I am trying to find this balance of spirituality and occultism, or rather, just sort of figure out where I am with all of this. My Inner Wisdom knows this, and this morning, I decide to read Rumi. What’s funny is that, in the book, this part of the poem is actually from 01-26; the part for 01-27 was a little confusing, so I went back and reread the whole poem and came across this part.

“I may as well believe.”

This is sort of summing up what I am feeling, my whole countenance. This whole poem is Husam (Rumi’s friend), telling about Daquqi’s spiritual journey. When we first meet him, he is already quite “spiritual”, if you will. The interlocutor asks him why does he go about barefoot and Daquqi is shocked, saying that he isn’t walking on feet - he’s walking on love. He then tells the story of his spiritual awakening involving seven candles turning into seven men on the beach and then turning into seven trees. Everyone walks by these trees, starving, hot, calling out for food and shade.

And Daquqi is like - “there is fruit here!” But only he sees it - hence the issue. He’s worried that he’ll be considered insane. So, he decides, fuck it - I can see it, I’m hungry, I’m gonna eat it.

“I may as well believe.”

I very much feel this way. Spiritual work, the work of awakening, often feels a bit bizarre. Why does it? Because I live in the post-Enlightenment era. There was a foundational period of time for me, post-evangelicalness, where I proudly denounced the stupidity of religion and embraced skepticism and logic. This period was short, sure, but it was important. And truth be told, as I’ve always leaned a bit more to the woo-woo/fuzzy side of life, this part was a nice balance to that. It allowed me to learn more about disciplines and ideas that, during my evangelical days, had been enemies.

Eating the fruit and believing doesn’t mean I have to give that up. Inner Wisdom is calling out to me, inviting me, reminding me, that all of existence is pretty bizarre. Why fight it? Embrace it. Why go hungry when there is literally an abundance of fruit falling around me?