Your Life Is Turning Upside Down? – The Emily Dahl Foundation

Your Life Is Turning Upside Down?

Be Happy, Don’t Worry – It might be a great gift!

One of our main problems is that we think only good things should happen to this body. Well, that is not going to be the way things go. 

Recently, at The Emily Dahl Foundation we encountered the stunning work of Shams of Tabriz. 

Shams of Tabriz was a Persian Sufi and roaming dervish who lived at the end of the twelfth/ early thirteenth century. He was the spiritual teacher and advisor of Rumi, and indeed it’s often said that Rumi was a professor who Shams transformed into a mystic, a lover, and a poet. There are many legends describing their meeting in Konya: Rumi was taught by Shams in seclusion for 40 days, and the period after this is described as Rumi’s ‘mysticism’, where sufis danced, played music (rabab), and drank wine. It is in this time, that the concept of “whirling dervishes” originated.

Shams of Tabriz, as is common with Sufi's, was thankful not only for what he had been given but also for all that he had been denied. 

How is it possible to be thankful for what we have been denied?

We as human beings are far from always and immediately grateful for what we have been denied, especially if we have – understandably and unwisely – invested an idea of future happiness in it and assumed it would happen.

Let’s look at this another way:  

“Instead of resisting to changes, surrender. Let life be with you, not against you. If you think ‘My life will be upside down’ don’t worry. How do you know down is not better than upside?” - Shams Of Tabriz

This short you tube video packs the key teachings of Shams of Tabriz into less than twenty minutes. 

Twenty minutes. About the same amount of time it takes to watch an episode of Friends. 

Be a Sufi for twenty minutes instead. 

If you were sitting with Shams of Tabrizi about 800 years ago having a glass of wine at some watering hole talking about your life he would most likely tell you that it is never too late to ask yourself “Am I ready to change my life, am I ready to change myself?”. However old we are, whatever we went through, it is always possible to be reborn. If each day is a copy of the last one, what a pity! Every breath is a chance to be reborn. But to be reborn into a new life, you have to die before dying.

The Emily Dahl Foundation