Ever since I started becoming increasingly aware of myself as more than a physical person with her own set of psychological programs and behavioural patterns, I have been unduly blessed with teachers and mentors along my path to self-discovery.

“This journey is like an upward moving spiral staircase,” one of my guides recently said.

“It winds and bends infinitely into the clouds. None of us can see exactly where we’re going, but as we move on up, the light becomes more expansive and illumines our vision. Everything then becomes more and more clear. However, the ego, which contains all of our thoughts about individualism and keeps us feeling small, energetically dense, and separate, is the ball and chain that keeps our feet anchored on the ground, preventing us from climbing the steps toward an indelible heaven.”

Well, three-and-a-half years later, I can say with the utmost certainty that she wasn’t wrong.

When I first embarked on this path more consciously and deliberately two-and-a-half years ago, I thought that within six months to a year, I would dissolve all of my limiting beliefs after a rigorous period of daily meditation, solitary walks in nature, reading book after book after book on non-dual teachings and the soul, and consulting with a few well-regarded spiritual teachers.

As it turned out, while all of these things helped me put most of my illusions to rest, it sooner or later became quite clear that two decades of habits were not just going to disappear like shadows on a lake at night in a matter of one or two years. This was a most humbling realization for me, and one that I still grapple with to this day. Indeed, this is a gradual process with copious ups and downs, twists, and turns.

Because books are one of my most enduring passions and things I pick up and interact with every single day, I decided to take a trip to a local used book shop one autumn afternoon to see what I could find and add to my already extensive reading list.

Not long after ruffling through a pile of dust-ridden mind, body, spirit collections, I stumbled upon the one that, unbeknownst to me at the time, was about to add more clarity to my foggy landscape. That book was called The Rumi Prescription: How An Ancient Mystic Poet Changed My Modern Manic Life, by Melody Moezzi.

In this book, the author distinctly and eloquently recalls her own spiritual journey—one that was catalyzed by mental health issues and other challenges—and discusses how her father, a fervent Rumi enthusiast, used Rumi’s verses to address piercing human challenges that ignite fear, despair, isolation, and distraction. As I read earnestly, I realized just how timeless Rumi’s messages are, and how they can so deeply cut through the time-space continuum and help us cope with what we consider to be modern-day problems. These issues I speak of come with being in a human vessel.

As time went on, I felt inspired to write down the most poignant verses and the ones that truly spoke to me. Sooner or later, I thought why not share these quotes with a wider audience? After all, as Eckhart Tolle mentioned in his book The Power of Now, when a log that has only started to burn is placed beside one that is burning more intensely, the first one will burn ever more fiercely.

So, without any further hesitation, I now present several of the most thought-provoking verses that will deliberately chip away at the ego and reveal the splendour at our core. I have included explanations and commentary of my own below each of them.

11 awe-inspiring Rumi quotes that melt the ego and bring peace:

1. “Seek the tonic nectar in the bitter sting. Go to the source of the source of your spring.”

(Here, Rumi invites us to look beyond the small, limited self, which is nothing more than a bundle of beliefs we’ve inherited and internalized from the world around us since we were young and see what is pure, fundamental, and unconditioned by past, future, thoughts, feelings, and memories. This is our core; it never changes. It is eternal. This essential part of us is always there, unscathed by time and experience. If we could only take a moment or two to pause, breathe, and feel into this subtle yet powerful inner stillness, we would know peace. Unfortunately, we cannot know peace as long as we are identified with person-hood as it is the nature of the mind and body to change from moment to moment, and eventually, to die. Only through tuning in to this intangible presence and feeling of animation can we experience the peace we are searching for.)

2. “The pen writes and writes in frantic haste,
But when it comes to Love,
the pen breaks.”

(We can write or talk about anything and everything we think we know under the sun, but no matter how much we try to conceptualize love, we will never come close to understanding it. But let’s be clear about this; for Rumi, love is impersonal. Instead, it is a state of self-realization. Love is synonymous with the understanding that all is One; that is, that all is an emanation of what the ancient Sufi’s called the Beloved. This is beyond what our minds can feasibly grasp.)

3. “Your homeland flows in every direction. Why pray facing one minuscule section?”

(We identify with a religion, nationality, or political party, because the ego-mind in the human construct is sustained and kept alive by our perceived separateness, whatever that may be. But in truth, we belong to no country, no religion, and no political party. Borders, languages, and ideologies are man-made. The presence we feel inside our own hearts is a universally-shared experience that transcends nations. The soul we essentially are has incarnated throughout time in several different suits and is not bound to any one thing, role, or place. The consciousness that we are made of is non-physical and non-local, because it is through this consciousness that we perceive any world at all, and it is by this consciousness that all things come to be as they are fundamentally in our awareness. It is the root of the root, and the wind in and beneath all of life itself, and it is the only thing that lasts when all of the physical components break down. Even the law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; it can only be transformed. We are energy. An atom is energy. Everything when broken down to it’s tiniest form, is energy, as science is quickly discovering. Therefore, there is a deeper part of us that exists beyond birth and death. Patterns in nature show us fractals. Humans are not separate from nature, so we, too, are like smaller fractals of a much larger one called Source, God, Spirit, or whatever word you want to use. Because everything is consciousness and consciousness is non-specific and non-local, we are not limited to one place.)

4. “Why seek pilgrimage at some distant shore,
When the Beloved is right next door?”

(We go to all kinds of lengths to seek joy and happiness outside of us. We buy new, shiny, and expensive cars, bigger houses in breathtaking locations, seek new and better relationships, jobs, and go on luxurious holidays. But in the final analysis, when has any one thing ever been enough for us? In life, everything changes or disintegrates at some time or another, and what makes us happy one day will eventually become old news or may even make us unhappy. What is the remedy, you ask? The wisdom and deep satisfaction of knowing ourselves so profoundly that nothing can tamper with our peace. This self-understanding is overlooked in our culture in favour of productivity, money, media, superficial pleasures, and material possessions, but it is unmistakably powerful when we tap into it, because it has far-reaching implications for our lives. It makes us humble, wise, strong, and self-assured. It helps us to know what is truly important. It animates and invigorates our tarnished bodies and minds, and it refreshes us. Best of all? It’s closer to us than the beat of our hearts.)

5. “Ego is the soul’s worst affliction. No one lives outside it’s jurisdiction.”

(Similar to what my teacher and mentor said, the ego-mind is like a ball and chain. It tries to keep us rooted in our perceived limitations for the sake of it’s own survival. It keeps us from seeing others in their true light, as well. This is part of the human condition.)

6. “Welcome every guest,
No matter how grotesque.
Be as hospitable to calamity as to tranquility.”

(Every emotion is an expression of life, no matter how unpleasant. It is a current of energy. Everything and everyone is a teacher, if we would only just listen and remain open to what life has to tell us. When we understand this, we are free to welcome anything as a guest without any attachment or resistance.)

7. “All of those severed from their source
Yearn to return as a matter of course.”

(Buried deeply within each and every one of us is the desire to end a feeling of being small and separate. No matter what we claim we want or how we go about acquiring it, what we are truly yearning for is the feeling of peace and happiness we believe we will derive from said things. This is because peace and happiness are in resonance with the nature of the soul. We long to return to our natural state of being, and we spend our entire lives serving that yearning within us in various ways.)

8. “Quit being a drop.
Make yourself an ocean.
Abandon your ego and reap the Beloveds devotion.”

(Stop playing small, which means identifying with the beliefs and thoughts you have of yourself that are rooted in other people’s opinions about you, your memories, and so on. Other people’s opinions are subjective; that is, the thoughts that formed that were more than likely passed down to them and were formed by other people’s attachments and aversions, which are the by-product of some experience they had. In addition, you are more than the sum of your own memories, most of which are murky and therefore unreliable anyway. You are more than an idea you have of yourself that is filtered through a judgment. When you truly resonate with this, you feel connected to something so much more vast and infinite.)

9. “Worse than all the lies that plague humanity
Is the ego lurking inside of me.”

(The ego, which is a universally shared experience, is the reason for what we call “original sin.” It is our downfall as a species. It not only causes trouble on a personal level but also on a global one. It incites conflict between groups and entire nations of people. Worst of all, it lurks within every single person. Before pointing the finger at your brother or sister, see it activated within yourself first. We must all take responsibility for ourselves.)

10. “Forget your plans and embrace uncertainty.
Only then will you find stability.”

(Life is mercurial. It is messy, like an abstract painting. Therefore, we can make plans, but life will do what it wants when it wants and how it wants to do it. The false sense of safety we feel when we make plans is ultimately a slippery Band-Aid. True stability comes from keeping this in mind and throwing away the sinkable life jacket we’ve been wearing. Gravity is stronger. We aren’t as powerful and as all-knowing as we believe we are. Nature is far more intelligent than we will ever be.)

11. “You went out in search of gold far and wide,
But all along you were gold inside.”

(As humans, our inclination is to seek everyone and everything in order to fill some kind of real or perceived void. However, little do we know, our true treasure lies within self-understanding. It is this self-understanding that stops us from identifying with our limitations and determines the quality of our lives. Sure, we can enjoy other people and things, but when we know and connect with our wholeness, we no longer depend on those people or things to complete us. Therefore, life is free to do as it wants without us needing to control it, run away from ourselves, and so on. This is true liberation.)

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