Contemplate:

BEWILDERMENT / Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

 

There are many guises for intelligence.

one part of you is gliding in a high

windstream,

while your more ordinary notions

take little steps and peck at the

ground.

 

Conventional knowledge is death to

our souls,

and it is not really ours.

 

It is laid on.  Yet we keep saying

that we find “rest” in these “beliefs.”

 

We must become ignorant of what we

have been taught

and instead be bewildered.

 

Run from what is profitable

and comfortable.

 

If you drink those liqueurs,

you will spill the springwater of your

real life.

 

Distrust anyone who praises you.

Give your investments money, and the interest

on the capital, to those who are

actually destitute.

 

Forget safety.  Live where you fear

to live.

Destroy your reputation.

Be notorious.

 

I have tired prudent planning

long enough.

From now on, I'll be mad.

(translated by Coleman Barks) in Cosmo DooGood's Urban Almanac 2006, p. 168.