Here are some of the inspirational stories from The Prophet,
Written by Khalil Gibran,
Revealing insights into the impulses of the human heart and mind.
The essays are free of dogma,
And I invite you to enjoy them as a modern addition to the classic sacred wisdom traditions.
Before we begin,
Please take your time to make yourself as comfortable as possible.
It might feel good to stretch your arms above your head and feel that stretch all the way down to your toes.
And if you wish,
You can pretend to yawn and feel how that becomes a signal for your mind and your body that it's time to rest.
Whenever you feel ready,
Allow your eyes to close.
And if it feels good,
You can enjoy a few gentle and slow breaths.
Breathing in.
And as you breathe out,
Allow yourself to sink a little deeper into your bed.
Beginning to release,
Beginning to let go.
For now,
There's nothing to have to do or fix or change.
Just the chance to let go and release from all preoccupations.
At any time,
You can defocus your attention from my voice and let yourself drift off to sleep.
Or you can simply listen and let the story be a soothing guided meditation.
Listening to a sleep story without any effort at all can be as soothing and as replenishing as sleep itself.
Now let's continue with stories from the Prophet.
Then a hermit who visited the city once a year came forth and said,
Speak to us of pleasure.
And he answered,
Saying,
Pleasure is a freedom song,
But it is not freedom.
It is the blossoming of your desires,
But it is not their fruit.
It is a depth calling unto a height,
But it is not the deep nor the high.
It is the caged taking wing,
But it is not space encompassed.
I,
In very truth,
Pleasure is a freedom song.
And I fain would have you sing it with fullness of heart.
Yet I would not have you lose your hearts in the singing.
Some of your youth seek pleasure as if it were all,
And they are judged and rebuked.
I would not judge nor rebuke them.
I would have them seek.
For they shall find pleasure,
But not her alone.
Seven are her sisters,
And the least of them is more beautiful than pleasure.
Have you not heard of the man who was digging in the earth for roots and found a treasure?
And some of your elders remember pleasures with regret,
Like wrongs committed in drunkenness.
But regret is the beclouding of the mind and not its chastisement.
They should remember their pleasures with gratitude as they would the harvest of a summer.
Yet,
If it comforts them to regret,
Let them be comforted.
And there are among you those who are neither young to seek nor old to remember.
And in their fear of seeking and remembering they shun all pleasures,
Lest they neglect the spirit or offend against it.
But even in their foregoing is their pleasure.
And thus they too find a treasure,
Though they dig for roots with quivering hands.
But tell me,
Who is he that can offend the spirit?
Shall the nightingale offend the stillness of the night?
Or the firefly the stars?
And shall your flame or your smoke burden the wind?
Think you the spirit is a still pool which you can trouble with a staff?
Oftentimes,
In denying your self-pleasure,
You do but store the desire in the recesses of your being.
Who knows but that which seems omitted today waits for tomorrow.
Even your body knows its heritage and its rightful need and will not be deceived.
And your body is the harp of your soul.
And it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it or confused sounds.
And now you ask in your heart,
How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from that which is not good?
Go to your fields and your gardens and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower.
But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.
For to the bee,
A flower is a fountain of life.
And to the flower,
A bee is a messenger of love.
And to both bee and flower,
The giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.
People of Orpheles,
Be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees.
And the poet said,
Speak to us of beauty.
And he answered,
Where shall you seek beauty and how shall you find her?
Unless she herself be your way and your guide.
And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech?
The aggrieved and the injured say,
Beauty is kind and gentle,
Like a young mother half shy of her own glory,
She walks among us.
And the passionate say,
Nay,
Beauty is a thing of might and dread,
Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us.
The tired and the weary say,
Beauty is of soft whisperings,
She speaks in our spirit,
Her voice yields to our silences like a faint light that quivers in fear of the shadow.
But the restless say,
We have heard her shouting among the mountains and with her cries came the sound of hoofs and the beating of wings and the roaring of lions.
At night,
The watchmen of the city say,
Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east.
And at noontide,
The toilers and the wayfarers say,
We have seen her leaning over the earth from the windows of the sunset.
In winter,
Say the snowbound,
She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills.
And in the summer heat,
The reapers say,
We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves and we saw a drift of snow in her hair.
All these things have you said of beauty.
Yet in truth,
You spoke not of her,
But of needs unsatisfied.
And beauty is not a need,
But an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting,
Nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart inflamed and a soul enchanted.
It is not the image you would see,
Nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.
It is not the sap within the furrowed bark,
Nor a wing attached to a claw,
But rather a garden forever in bloom and a flock of angels forever in flight.
People of Orphales,
Beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.
And an old priest said,
Speak to us of religion.
And he said,
Have I spoken this day of aught else?
Is not religion all deeds and all reflection,
And that which is neither deed nor reflection,
But a wonder and a surprise ever springing in the soul,
Even while the hands hew the stone or tend the loom?
Who can separate his faith from his actions,
Or his belief from his occupations?
Who can spread his hours before him saying,
This for God and this for myself,
This for my soul and this other for my body?
All your hours are wings that beat through space from self to self.
He who wears his morality but as his best garment were better naked.
The wind and the sun will tear no holes in his skin.
And he who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his songbird in a cage.
The freest song comes not through bars and wires.
And he to whom worshipping is a window to open but also to shut,
Has not yet visited the house of his soul whose windows are from dawn to dawn.
Your daily life is your temple and your religion.
Whenever you enter into it,
Take with you your all.
Take the plough and the forge and the mallet and the lute,
The things you have fashioned in necessity or for delight.
For in reverie you cannot rise above your achievements nor fall lower than your failures.
And take with you all men.
For in adoration you cannot fly higher than their hopes nor humble yourself lower than their despair.
And if you would know God,
Be not therefore a solver of riddles.
Rather look about you and you shall see him playing with your children and look into space.
You shall see him walking in the cloud,
Outstretching his arms in the lightning and descending in rain.
You shall see him smiling in flowers,
Then rising and waving his hands in trees.
Then Almitra spoke,
Saying,
We would ask now of death.
And he said,
You would know the secret of death,
But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
The owl,
Whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day,
Cannot unveil the mystery of light.
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death,
Open your heart wide unto the body of life.
For life and death are one,
Even as the river and the sea are one.
In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond.
And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow,
Your heart dreams of spring.
Trust the dreams,
For in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king,
Whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.
Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling,
That he shall wear the mark of the king?
Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing but to free the breath from its restless tides,
That it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountaintop,
Then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs,
Then shall you truly dance.
And now it was evening.
And Almetra said,
Blessed be this day and this place and your spirit that has spoken.
And he answered,
Was it I who spoke?
Was I not also a listener?
Then he descended the steps of the temple,
And all the people followed him.
And he reached his ship and stood upon the deck.
And facing the people again,
He raised his voice and said,
People of Orpheles,
The wind bids me leave you.
Less hasty am I than the wind,
Yet I must go.
We wanderers,
Ever seeking the lonelier way,
Begin no day where we have ended another day.
And no sunrise finds us where sunset left us.
Even while the earth sleeps,
We travel.
We are the seeds of the tenacious plant.
And it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered.
Brief were my days among you,
And briefer still the words I have spoken.
But should my voice fade in your ears and my love vanish in your memory,
Then I will come again.
And with a richer heart and lips more yielding to the spirit will I speak.
Yea,
I shall return with the tide,
And though death may hide me and the greater silence enfold me,
Yet again will I seek your understanding,
And not in vain will I seek.
If aught I have said is truth,
That truth shall reveal itself in a clearer voice and in words more kin to your thoughts.
I go with the wind,
People of Orphalese,
But not down into emptiness.
And if this day is not a fulfillment of your needs and my love,
Then let it be a promise till another day.
Man's needs change,
But not his love,
Nor his desire that his love should satisfy his needs.
Know therefore that from the greater silence I shall return.
The mist that drifts away at dawn,
Leaving but dew in the fields,
Shall rise and gather into a cloud and then fall down in rain.
And not unlike the mist have I been.
In the stillness of the night I have walked in your streets and my spirit has entered your houses.
And your heartbeats were in my heart,
And your breath was upon my face,
And I knew you all.
Ay,
I knew your joy and your pain,
And in your sleep your dreams were my dreams.
And oftentimes I was among you a lake among the mountains.
I mirrored the summits in you and the bending slopes and even the passing flocks of your thoughts and your desires.
And to my silence came the laughter of your children in streams and the longing of your youths in rivers.
And when they reached my depth,
The streams and the rivers ceased not yet to sing.
But sweeter still than laughter and greater than longing came to me.
It was the boundless in you,
The vast man in whom you are all but cells and sinews.
He in whose chant all your singing is but a soundless throbbing.
It is in the vast man that you are vast.
And in beholding him that I beheld you and loved you.
For what distances can love reach that are not in that vast sphere?
What visions,
What expectations,
And what presumptions can outsoar that flight?
Like a giant oak tree covered with apple blossoms is the vast man in you.
His might binds you to the earth.
His fragrance lifts you into space.
And in his durability you are deathless.
You have been told that even like a chain you are as weak as your weakest link.
This is but half the truth.
You are also as strong as your strongest link.
To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of ocean by the frailty of its firm.
To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy.
Aye,
You are like an ocean.
And though heavy grounded ships await the tide upon your shores,
Yet even like an ocean you cannot hasten your tides.
And like the seasons you are also.
And though in winter you deny your spring,
Yet spring,
Reposing within you,
Smiles in her drowsiness and is not offended.
Think not I say these things in order that you may say the one to the other.
He praised us well,
He saw but the good in us.
I only speak to you in words of that which you yourselves know in thought.
And what is word knowledge but a shadow of wordless knowledge?
Your thoughts and my words are waves from a sealed memory that keeps records of our yesterdays.
And of the ancient days when the earth knew not us nor herself.
And of nights when earth was upwrought with confusion.
Wise men have come to you to give you of their wisdom.
I came to take of your wisdom.
And behold I have found that which is greater than wisdom.
It is a flame spirit in you,
Ever gathering more of itself.
While you,
Heedless of its expansion,
Bewail the withering of your days.
It is life in quest of life in bodies that fear the grave.
There are no graves here.
These mountains and plains are a cradle and a stepping stone.
Whenever you pass by the field where you have laid your ancestors,
Look well thereupon.
And you shall see yourselves and your children dancing hand in hand.
Verily you often make merry without knowing.
Others have come to you to whom for golden promises made unto your faith you have given but riches and power and glory.
Less than a promise have I given and yet more generous have you been to me.
You have given me my deeper thirsting after life.
Surely there is no greater gift to a man than that which turns all his aims into parching lips and all life into a fountain.
And in this lies my honor and my reward.
That whenever I come to the fountain to drink,
I find the living water itself thirsty.
And it drinks me while I drink it.
Some of you have deemed me proud and over shy to receive gifts.
Too proud indeed am I to receive wages but not gifts.
And though I have eaten berries among the hills when you would have had me sit at your board,
And slept in the portico of the temple when you would gladly have sheltered me,
Yet was it not your loving mindfulness of my days and my nights that made food sweet to my mouth and girdled my sleep with visions.
For this I bless you most.
You give much and know not that you give at all.
Verily the kindness that gazes upon itself in a mirror turns to stone.
And a good deed that calls itself by tender names becomes the parent to a curse.
And some of you have called me aloof and drunk with my own aloneness.
And you have said,
He holds counsel with the trees of the forest but not with men.
He sits alone on hilltops and looks down upon our city.
True it is that I have climbed the hills and walked in remote places.
How could I have seen you save from a great height or a great distance?
How can one be indeed near unless he be far?
And others among you called unto me not in words and they said,
Stranger,
Stranger,
Lover of unreachable heights,
Why dwell you among the summits where eagles build their nests?
Why seek you the unattainable?
What storms would you trap in your net and what vaporous birds do you hunt in the sky?
Come and be one of us.
Descend and appease your hunger with our bread and quench your thirst with our wine.
In the solitude of their souls they said these things.
But were their solitude deeper they would have known that I sought but the secret of your joy and your pain.
And I hunted only your larger selves that walk the sky.
But the hunter was also the hunted.
For many of my arrows left my bow only to seek my own breast.
And the flyer was also the creeper.
For when my wings were spread in the sun their shadow upon the earth was a turtle.
And I the believer was also the doubter.
For often have I put my finger in my own wound.
That I might have the greater belief in you and the greater knowledge of you.
And it is with this belief and this knowledge that I say you are not enclosed within your bodies,
Nor confined to houses or fields.
That which is you dwells above the mountain and roves with the wind.
It is not a thing that crawls into the sun for warmth or digs holes into darkness for safety.
But a thing free.
A spirit that envelops the earth and moves in the ether.
If these be vague words then seek not to clear them.
Vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things but not their end.
And I fain would have you remember me as a beginning.
Life and all that lives is conceived in the mist and not in the crystal.
And who knows but a crystal is missed in decay.
This would I have you remember in remembering me.
That which seems most feeble and bewildered in you is the strongest and most determined.
Is it not your breath that has erected and hardened the structure of your bones?
And is it not a dream which none of you remember having dreamt that built your city and fashioned all there is in it?
Could you but see the tides of that breath you would cease to see all else.
And if you could hear the whispering of the dream you would hear no other sound.
But you do not see nor do you hear and it is well.
The veil that clouds your eyes shall be lifted by the hands that wove it.
And the clay that fills your ears shall be pierced by those fingers that kneaded it.
And you shall see and you shall hear.
Yet you shall not deplore having known blindness nor regret having been deaf.
For in that day you shall know the hidden purposes in things.
And you shall bless darkness as you would bless light.
After saying these things he looked about him and he saw the pilot of his ship standing by the helm and gazing now at the full sails and now at the distance.
And he said,
Patient,
Overpatient is the captain of my ship.
The wind blows and restless are the sails.
Even the rudder begs direction.
Yet quietly my captain awaits my silence.
And these my mariners who have heard the choir of the greater sea,
They too have heard me patiently.
Now they shall wait no longer.
I am ready.
The stream has reached the sea.
And once more the great mother holds her son against her breast.
People of Orphalese,
This day has ended.
It is closing upon us even as the water lily upon its own tomorrow.
What was given us here we shall keep.
And if it suffices not,
Then again must we come together and together stretch our hands unto the giver.
Forget not that I shall come back to you.
A little while and my longing shall gather dust and foam for another body.
While a moment of rest upon the wind and another woman shall bear me.
Farewell to you and the youth I have spent with you.
It was but yesterday we met in a dream.
You have sung to me in my aloneness.
And I of your longings have built a tower in the sky.
But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over and it is no longer dawn.
The noontide is upon us and our half-waking has turned to fuller day and we must part.
If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more,
We shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
And if our hands should meet in another dream,
We shall build another tower in the sky.
So saying,
He made a signal to the seamen and straightaway they weighed anchor and cast the ship loose from its moorings and they moved eastward.
And a cry came from the people as from a single heart.
And it rose into the dusk and was carried out over the sea like a great trumpeting,
Gazing after the ship until it had vanished into the mist.
And when all the people were dispersed,
She still stood alone upon the seawall,
Remembering in her heart his saying.
A moment of rest upon the wind.
