The Dissolving of a Hundred Thousand Aspects of Ego is Needed to Fully Know Enlightenment

Let us away . . .

                                                                        You and I.

You should wish to have a hundred thousand sets

of moth wings,

So you could burn them away

one set a night

Rumi

For Rumi, moth wings represent ego,  the sense that we are each a separate self, full of unmet needs. The candle flame is symbolic of God, the All, the Ultimate Reality of which each of us is a unique mirror.  Night represents the intimacy of divine union, when the individual ego merges with the All through love. Whenever ego burns up and unites with God, there is enlightenment, the sense of non-duality, a realization that we are simply a mirror in which the Divine knows Itself. Many people think that the goal of spiritual transformation is to get rid of  ego, once and for all.  But Rumi understands that we can only know the All by having something to contrast It with; that is, the individual ego.  Without the continual dissolving of our false sense of separation into the Ultimate Reality of union, how could we ever truly know that union? And without the flaming of ego, how could we ever know the gorgeous radiance of enlightenment?  Therefore, the great Sufi mystic prays that a different aspect of ego might manifest itself and burn up each night, thereby guaranteeing a continually fresh experience of enlightenment.

Photo:  Long's Peak flames in alpenglow light, Bear Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, November 18, 2011