Spiritual Portal

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, A meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
Who violently sweep your house.
empty of his furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought the shame, the malice,
meet  them at the door laughing, and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī, Mevlânâ/Mawlānā, Mevlevî/Mawlawī, and more popularly simply as Rumi, was a 13th-century Persian poet, Hanafi faqih, Islamic scholar, Maturidi theologian, and Sufi mystic originally from Greater Khorasan in Greater Iran. Wikipedia

Until the soul has completely worked out the effects of egoistic prenatal and postnatal actions, and has found liberation, one should not deliberately seek exit from the bodily house; he would still have to come back to finish the karma he left undone.

~Paramahansa Yogananda