So, last year I was planning a trip to Istanbul, and realized I knew nothing really about Istanbul except historical facts, names of famous landmarks, and Islam.

SO, I did what I do and googled “best books about Istanbul” (or something to that effect) and found The Bastard of Istanbul  by the extraordinary Elif Shafak.

*NOTE*

This post is not about Elif Shakaf OR the Bastard of Istanbul, but now that I have mentioned it I want to talk about it ’cause ADD. You should read it.

*END NOTE*

To make a story that never needed to be this long about the same length as it already didn’t need to be, I will tell you that, after reading  The Bastard Of Istanbul (which was so, so great) I immediately bought ALL of Shafak’s novels for my kindle, read them ALL, and here we get to the beginning of the point: The 40 Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi. Another amazing story that you should definitely read, relevant to this post because it introduced me to Shams of Tabriz and his 40 Rules of Love.

Now, most of us, especially those of us active on social media, are familiar with Rumi. If not as a famous poet, Islamic scholar, and Sufi mystic, than at least as that enigmatic name whose quotes appear on countless pictures of women sunbathing. You know who I mean:

(I know what you’re thinking, that isn’t even an ocean, that is a pool.  But I say to you, that  your judgement is clearly being clouded by your jealousy of my hat, so….)

RUMI, I knew a bit about Rumi before reading Shakaf’s novel, but didn’t know anything about his friend, mentor, and muse, Shams of Tabriz, ALSO a famous sufi-mystic, as well as dervish &  philosopher.

Besides his relationship with Rumi, Shams is probably best known (at least in western culture) for his 40 Rules of Love, which are..well, exactly what they sound like.

Tread carefully y’all, we are starting to get close to the point of all of this…

I finished the novel and began doing some research into Shams of Tabriz (and by research I mean wikipedia) . What I found were mainly personal posts re-telling the story of Shams of Tabriz and his relationship with Rumi, and while thats story is fascinating, beautiful, and pertinent,  what I really wanted was a way inside Shams’ head, to know exactly how he felt, what he was experiencing and HOW AND WHY HE CREATED THIS MAGIC THAT MOVED ME SO?!

About that magic, aka, Shams of Tabriz’s 40 Rules of Love:

I would describe his 40 Rules of Love as a practical guide to understanding life, love and ones relationship with the divine.

When I started reading the Rules, something happened. You know those moments? When for absolutely no apparent reason you just feel pulled closer to yourself? That was how I felt. As though I was accessing a secret part of me that made me a part of that secret part of you, and that tree over there, and a rock, and the sky, and EVERYTHING/ONE.

Wholeness.

I felt the memory of wholeness.

I realized right away that what I needed to do to get the answers I wanted, was simply, to sit still and be about them (them being the rules).

Easy right?

Yes.

So of course I tried to make a big dramatic event out of it.

I tried to do a “40 rules for 40 Days” meditation challenge, but after day three I realized how ridiculous I was being.  I could meditate on one rule for the rest of my life and still have new feelings, questions and understandings. I tried breaking them down into questions for me to answer in an essay format, and while this could have been useful, my jerk of an Ego made it impossible to move forward effectively. He would immediately jump in front and began to intellectualize/analyze/judge EVERY SINGLE THING I wrote down… We really know how to bully ourselves don’t we?

I thought about writing a book about my experiences with the rules…. Recording a meditation CD based around the rules…for over a year I thought about everything except JUST doing it.

So like all great/brilliant/helpful ideas I come up with daily, I let this one fade into the ether.  Like a forgotten purple Barbie pump under the bed of life. But it is always there,  just waiting for it’s Cinderella moment. Just waiting to be remembered.

Welp.

I finally remembered.

So for the past week or so, I have been incorporating the rules into my thoughts and meditations, and documenting the experience. Some brazenly profound changes have occurred, so I thought I’d dust off the old blog and share. I have no timeline, and am not sure what shape it will all take, but I am ready just to let go and let it happen. I don’t want to put any pressure on myself to “perform” (I do enough of that in every other part of my life), but I also know I have friends who are interested in this sort of thing, (Katie, Beck, Brittany, Sonia, Sarah, Mom?  I’m looking at you) and I want to share. I’m excited about this.

Okay, I’m about to cross the bridge from loquacious-ville, to ramble-town, so I’d better just stop typing n

(see what I did  there?)

(I stopped typing)

(obviously now I’ve started typing again, but we should all focus on how clever it was when I sto

*You can learn more about Shams HERE*