I came across this website recently: https://www.spiritawake.net/forgive-the-dream/ when someone emailed it to me and asked me some questions about some of my Hafiz poems-renderings that they found posted there. There are some of my favorites here, though a couple may be too challenging for some.

Reading a poem slowly and out loud may help crack open any kind of a koan in a poem. And there are really a lot of koans, or buried treasure, in mystical verse. Also, reading a poem you like slowly and out loud will let it give to you more— to reveal a golden utility; and it will help your eye look more glad, and your heart to applaud existence more. 

That same day, I wrote the backstory/history to a specific poem posted there that especially interested my correspondent. Then I posted it on an international chat-website connected to Meher Baba, where I offer things now and then. Here, I’m sharing that post— almost verbatim, that is in italics below. 

For context, I considered Eruch my living spiritual teacher. He struck me as someone truly enlightened; he had an extraordinary awareness. I spent time with him over a 20 year stretch when I visited India once and sometimes twice in a year; that began in the late ‘70s. And the last 12 years of Eruch’s life, he invited me to stay with him in his private household. Moreover, he asked me if he could: “Call me to be with him in India when he knew it was best."

I never questioned that, or asked him to explain it. I simply trusted him, and allowed it. Staying with him resulted in my being able to walk with him hundreds of times alone in the very early morning— sometimes for miles. On these walks, he invited me to ask him anything that was in my heart, which often resulted in conversations about Hafiz, Rumi, Kabir, God, Meher Baba, and other great saints ... and about anything a half-sane munchkin might want to know, and then might share with others.

Eruch was the human being closest to Meher Baba. He had been with Baba since he was a young man, up until Baba's passing. His full name was Eruch Byramshaw Jessawala. I have mentioned him several times in my blogs here. Part of his greatness to me was that though he had extraordinary power and wisdom, he appeared perfectly normal, as you could see watching some videos of him if you searched his name. If you do want to watch one, I would suggest one titled:  To Be Natural.  It is rather short, some five minutes in length. 

Eruch was, and still is, one of the roots and foundations of all my poems. I speak about how Eruch choreographed my coming to work with Hafiz, followed by Rumi, in the Introduction of my book, The Purity of Desire, 100 Poems of Rumi. In it, I go into some detail about how Eruch got me deeply plugged into poetry. The Intro is titled: The Wing Comes Alive In His Presence. And that Intro is mostly about Rumi, but then Eruch too!  

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One morning when walking with Eruch, we walked in silence longer than usual. Then seemingly out of the total blue he responded to some of my thoughts, and said: “Forgive the Dream.” 

I love those 3 words, and thought this was something Carl Jung or Meher Baba might have said to someone who had something of an agile esoteric mind, and who was having to live with some of the arrows that all of us get shot into us in our lives— and sometimes shot deep. 

“The Dream” in this context could mean the illusion that separates us from God, or our truest ultimate Self. And what a psychological jam one would be in if they could not forgive a dream.

I then used those 3 words for the title, and as part of this Hafiz poem-rendering of mine (you can see on this above link) that has become rather famous, and you can see presented online in different ways if you Google: “Forgive the Dream Hafiz.”  

Someone sent me this poem today, and thus now, I’m sharing some of its history.

And I later recited this poem to Eruch, when I thought it was complete, before it got published by Penguin in my book, The Gift. 

His comment was:

“Wonderful. Wonderful, and so true!”

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I can understand how after Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe read a Hafiz poem (he was said to have loved Hafiz) of this caliber and tenderness and truth, he could say (and did say): “Hafiz has no peer.” 

Daniel Ladinsky here, cowboying up till the end, with the gold dust the Moon put in my saddlebags to get to the market to help feed, help free, help people understand more and more via Hafiz, Rumi, and love— until we can also Forgive the Dream.