Time for desolation

Eaten by flame,
and smoked out into the sky.
This is most fortunate.
What's unlucky is not to change and disappear.
This way leads through humiliation and contempt.
We have tried the fullness of presence.
Now it's time for desolation.
Love is pulling us out by the ears to school.
Love wants us clean of resentment
and those impulses that misguide our souls.
We are asleep, but Khidr keeps sprinkling
water on our faces.
Love will tell us the rest 
of what we need to know soon.
Then we'll be deeply asleep
and profoundly awake
simultaneously, like cave companions.

 -- Rumi, from "The Knots Untie"