heartsteps

1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate
it, but it’s yours to keep for the entire period.

2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a
full-time informal school called, “life.”

3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a
process of trial, error, and experimentation. The
“failed” experiments are as much a part of the
process as the experiments that ultimately “work.”

4. Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A
lesson will be presented to you in various forms
until you have learned it. When you have learned it,
you can go on to the next lesson.

5. Learning lessons does not end. There’s no part of
life that doesn’t contain its lessons. If you’re
alive, that means there are still lessons to be
learned.

6. “There” is no better a place than “here.” When
your “there” has become a “here”, you will simply
obtain another “there” that will again look better
than “here.”

7. Other people are merely mirrors of you. You
cannot love or hate something about another person
unless it reflects to you something you love or hate
about yourself.

8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have
all the tools and resources you need. What you do
with them is up to you. The choice is yours.

9. Your answers lie within you. The answers to
life’s questions lie within you. All you need to do
is look, listen, and trust.

10. You will forget all this.

It’s the old rule that drunks
have to argue
and get into fights.
The lover is just as bad:
he falls into a hole.
But down in that hole he finds
something shining,
worth more than any amount
of money or power.
Last night the moon came
dropping her clothes
in the street.
I took it as a sign to start singing,
falling up into the bowl of sky.
The bowl breaks.
Everywhere is falling
everywhere.

Nothing else to do.

Here’s the new rule:
break the wineglass, and
fall toward the glassblower’s
breath.

Rumi