People are distracted by objects of desire, and afterwards repent of the lust they've indulged, because they have indulged with a phantom and are left even farther from Reality than before. Your desire for the illusory is a wing, by means of which a seeker might ascend to Reality. When you have indulged a lust, your wing drops off; you become lame and that fantasy flees. Preserve the wing and don't indulge such lust, so that the wing of desire may bear you to Paradise. People fancy they are enjoying themselves, but they are really tearing out their wings for the sake of an illusion.

Oh you, straying heart, just come! Oh you, aching liver, just come! If the path to the gate is closed, Take the way by the wall, but come!

Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love. In the depths there is a spring with all the water your heart is thirsty for.

I looked in temples churches and mosques. But I found the Divine within my heart.

This is what love does and continues to do. It tastes like honey to adults and milk to children.

O, Great Spirit, open my eyes, open heart's wings, open my ears to your voice in all things.

Without you the instruments would die. One sits close beside you. Another takes a long kiss. The tambourine begs, Touch my skin so I can be myself. Let me feel you enter each limb bone by bone, that what died last night can be whole today. Why live some soberer way, and feel you ebbing out? I won't do it. Either give me enough wine or leave me alone, now that I know how it is to be with you in constant conversation.