Discourses of Rumi

FIHI MA FIHI V 173saints, without anything disagreeable or withoutany sacrifice? How could this ever happen?What the Sheikh prescribes for you is the sameas what Sheikhs of old prescribed; that you giveup your wealth and position. Indeed, they used totell a disciple, “Leave your wife, that we may takeher,” and the disciples put up with that. As foryou, when he counsels you a simple thing, how isit that you run away?Do you not see how people are overcome byblindness and ignorance when they fall in love,how they will fawn and grovel and sacrifice alltheir wealth, seeking somehow to win the onethey want with every effort. Night and day theythink of nothing else, never wearying of their pursuit,yet wearying of everything else. Then, is thelove for the Sheikh and the love for God less thanthis?Yet, at the smallest word of advice and disciplineyou object and desert the Sheikh. Hence it isknown that you are no lover or seeker. Were youa true lover and seeker, you would put up withmany times what we have described. To yourheart, dung would become honey and sugar.