Not A Review Of The Forty Rules Of Love
This is my first encounter with a Sufi character and Shams makes a really good one. I was surprised at the similarities between Shams of Tabriz and Eckhart Tolle’s narration in The Power of Now. They both disregard the widely adopted notion of god as a supreme being who hand made everything in the universe, instead they believe that god lies ‘within’ and the path to him is one of reflection. That all the ancient stories told full of miracles might never have happened and in fact, it matters not whether they did or not, only the moral of the story does. They did not just remind me of each other, they sometimes used the same vocabulary, one of which was “to die before death’ which for Shams described as the Sufi’s way and which Eckhart believes was true enlightenment.
Truth be told, I found more consistency in The Power of Now than in Shams’ attitude towards god, although he would say that god is not separate from us, he would often refer to him as an external entity, that he did things for/because of, or an entity that he loves. Tolle on the other hand refused to even call the thing he was talking about god, did not use pronouns, really sticking to the notion of it being one with everything and everyone, of it being eternal, so instead of god he would use "The Being" referring to it being the truth of one's being.
Two important factors play here in my confusion, the first is my ignorance of the Sufi way and my inability to bypass apparent inconsistencies to feel fully satisfied with his message, I do get Shams’ message though, and I am fairly satisfied. The second one is the limitations of language, it is impossible to describe what is claimed to be, by definition, indescribable. (yes I know what I just wrote and it is obvious, thank you)
This is a beautiful story. The inner story of Rumi and Shams is embedded of the outer story of Ella. Ella gets exposed to this story by reading a book “Sweet Blasphemy”. Sweet Blasphemy takes up more of the book than Ella’s story, but the outer story added much flavor to the whole thing. Shams is a Sufi mystic, and is totally unrelatable to the modern world, but getting exposed to his story and how he transformed Rumi through a more the relatable, initially very mainstream character in Boston is 2008 was a great way to do so.
I enjoyed this book very much. It was successful in putting me in a special isolated mental space for most of the time reading it, which is often needed.
Truth be told, I found more consistency in The Power of Now than in Shams’ attitude towards god, although he would say that god is not separate from us, he would often refer to him as an external entity, that he did things for/because of, or an entity that he loves. Tolle on the other hand refused to even call the thing he was talking about god, did not use pronouns, really sticking to the notion of it being one with everything and everyone, of it being eternal, so instead of god he would use "The Being" referring to it being the truth of one's being.
Two important factors play here in my confusion, the first is my ignorance of the Sufi way and my inability to bypass apparent inconsistencies to feel fully satisfied with his message, I do get Shams’ message though, and I am fairly satisfied. The second one is the limitations of language, it is impossible to describe what is claimed to be, by definition, indescribable. (yes I know what I just wrote and it is obvious, thank you)
This is a beautiful story. The inner story of Rumi and Shams is embedded of the outer story of Ella. Ella gets exposed to this story by reading a book “Sweet Blasphemy”. Sweet Blasphemy takes up more of the book than Ella’s story, but the outer story added much flavor to the whole thing. Shams is a Sufi mystic, and is totally unrelatable to the modern world, but getting exposed to his story and how he transformed Rumi through a more the relatable, initially very mainstream character in Boston is 2008 was a great way to do so.
I enjoyed this book very much. It was successful in putting me in a special isolated mental space for most of the time reading it, which is often needed.
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