There is one thing in this world
that must never be forgotten.

If you were to forget
all else, but did not forget that, then you
would have no reason to worry.

But if you performed
and remembered everything else, yet forgot
that one thing, then you would have done
nothing whatsoever.
It is just as if a king sent you to the country to
carry out a specific task.

If you go and accomplish
a hundred other tasks, but do not perform that
particular task, then it is as though you performed
nothing at all.

So, everyone comes into this world
for a particular task, and that is their purpose.

If they do not perform it, then they will have done
nothing.
All things are assigned a task.

The heavens
send rain and light for the herbs of the field to germinate
and spring into life.

The earth receives the seeds and bears fruit, it accepts and reveals a hundred
thousand marvels too numerous to tell.

The mountains give forth mines of gold and silver.

All these things the heavens, the earth and the mountains
do, yet they do not perform that one thing;
that particular task is performed by us.
“We offered the Trust to the heavens,
The earth and the mountains,
They refused to carry it and were afraid of it,
But humans carried it.
Surely they are foolish and sinful.”
So, people are given a task, and when they perform
it all their sinfulness and foolishness is dissolved.
You say, “Look at all the work I do accomplish,
even if I do not perform that task.”

You weren’t created for those other tasks!

It is just as if you were given a sword of priceless Indian steel,
such as can only be found in the treasuries of
kings, and you were to treat it as a butcher’s knife
for cutting up putrid meat, saying, “I am not letting
this sword stand idle, I am using it in so many
useful ways.”

Or it is like taking a solid gold bowl
to cook turnips in, when a single grain of that
gold could buy a hundred pots.

Or it is as if you took a Damascene dagger of the finest temper to
hang a broken gourd from, saying, “I am making
good use of it. I am hanging a gourd on it. I am
not letting this dagger go to waste.”

How foolish that would be!

The gourd can hang perfectly well
from a wooden or iron nail whose value is a mere
farthing, so why use a dagger valued at a hundred
pounds?
A poet once said:
You are more precious than heaven and earth.
What more can I say?
You do not know your own worth.
God says, “I will buy you...your moments,
your breaths, your possessions, your lives. Spend
them on Me. Turn them over to Me, and their
price is divine freedom, grace and wisdom. This is
your worth in My eyes.”

But if we keep our life
for ourself, then we lose what treasures we have
been granted.

Like the person who hammered the
dagger, worth a hundred pounds into the wall to
hang a gourd upon, their great fortune was
reduced to a nail.
For Soul there is other food besides this food of
sleeping and eating, but you have forgotten that
other food.

Night and day you nourish only your
body.

Now, this body is like a horse, and this lower world is its stable.

The food the horse eats
is not the food of the rider.

You are the rider and
have your own sleeping and eating, your own
enjoyment.

But since the animal has the upper
hand, you lag behind in the horse’s stable.

You
cannot be found among the ranks of kings and
princes in the eternal world.

Your heart is there,
but since your body has the upper hand, you are
subject to its rule and remain its prisoner.
When Majnun, as the story goes, was making
for his beloved Laila’s home, as long as he was
fully conscious he drove his camel in that direction.
But when for a moment he became absorbed
in the thought of Laila and forgot his camel, the
camel turned in its tracks toward the village
where its foal was kept.

On coming to his senses,
Majnun found that he had gone back a distance
of two day’s journey.

For three months he continued
this way, coming no closer to his goal.

Finally
he jumped off the camel, saying, “This camel is
the ruin of me!” and continued on foot, singing:
My camel’s desire is now behind,
My own desire is before.
Our purposes were crossed,

Rumi