Rumi and the Essence of Being Human
What is the secret that connects the individual soul to spiritual Reality? Author, esteemed spiritual teacher and longtime translator of Rumi, Kabir Helminski, shares how the sacred poetry of Rumi can be viewed through a contemporary lens to illuminate universal truths.
Kabir Helminski
Kabir Helminski is an author of several books including the book we are discussing in this program, The Mysterion: Rumi and the Secret of Becoming Fully Human. He is also the translator of numerous books of Sufi literature and especially Rumi and the co-director, with his wife, Camille Helminski, of the Threshold Society, a nonprofit organization dedicated to sharing the knowledge and practice of Sufism. As the publisher of Threshold Books for some twenty years, he was largely responsible for making Rumi the most widely read poet of our time. Kabir’s translations of Rumi are among the most popular and respected for their literary faithfulness and beauty. Kabir Helminski is a respected teacher, a Shaikh of the Mevlevi Order, which traces back to Rumi.
website:Sufism.org
#kriyayoga #meditation #rumi #essentialself #oneness #sufism
COMMENTS FROM OUR GUEST: It’s very meaningful for me to hear what touched you. Thank you all for your diligent preparations that helped to deepen our conversation.
THE YOGA HOUR TEAM COMMENTS: I was moved by the depth of the conversation with Kabir Helminski on his book The Mysterion: Rumi and the Secret of Becoming Fully Human. He considers Rumi a genius of spirituality and was easily able to recite poems by memory illustrating topics throughout the discussion. Kabir began by sharing Rumi's message that the most important truth of the human being is to realize the connection to the Divine within us, the essential Self. The teachings of Yoga tell us the same. We live in a unified reality in the vibration of Divine Love. The Rumi poem that resonated strongest with me was the sun's transformation of the stone into a ruby. I highly recommend this podcast.
DR. TRUJILLO’S COMMENTS: I found the language in Kabir Helminski’s book, as well as in our conversation, to be really beautiful. This is illustrated when he discussed Rumi’s message that we live in a unified reality with Divine mercy, generosity, beauty, and love as the bottom line of that reality. We are given individuality in order to discover this Oneness. He also described a human being as the ripened fruit on the tree of existence, the culmination of conscious love expressing itself within the world. The way that he incorporated Rumi’s prose and poetry into our discussion was very moving.