Rumi’s love for GOD was a fiery one, with a constant weeping and longing for God’s mysteries. Love for anything other than God is not real Love: ‘Wherever I put my head that is my place of worship. No matter where I am, that is where God is. Vineyards, roses, nightingales, the Sema and loving . . . They are all symbols, the reason is always Him.’ GOD is the Beloved and Rumi bewails his separation from Him, as the Ney(Flute) weeps at its separation from the reed bed whence it came and longs for return. He experienced love and passion both through his solitary asceticism and his communal engagements and said: ‘The way of God’s Messenger is the way of Love. We are the children of Love. Love is our mother.’ It was in his solitariness that he became most open to the truest union with God, and it was in his separation from all things except God that he became like a ball of fire. And while such a sense of burning would prove difficult for many to bear, Rumi, considered it an essential part of passion, and not complaining was viewed as a tradition of loyalty. To him, those who profess a love of God must necessarily accompany their statement of ‘I love’ with a sense of furious burning—this is the price one must willingly pay for being close to God or in union with Him: ‘I was raw; I am now cooked and burnt.’
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