What Sufism says about longing and separation
Separation is the first note the Masnavi sounds, before any doctrine. Rumi opens with a cut reed crying about the bed it was taken from, and Sufi writing keeps returning to that feeling of homesickness for somewhere not clearly located. These eight concepts from the library's Sufi collection set out where the tradition says the longing comes from, what it is for, and how it ends. One Qur'anic verse in the set complicates the rest, by denying that the distance was ever there.
Creation is God's longing to be known — 'I was a hidden treasure and I loved to be known'
A saying the Sufis treat as divine speech gives creation a motive rather than a mechanism: a hidden treasure that wanted to be known. On that reading, longing did not begin with us.
Hadith Qudsi
Listen to the reed, how it tells a tale, complaining of separations
The Masnavi's first eighteen verses are spoken by a reed flute remembering the reed bed it was cut from. Rumi's point is that the cut is exactly what lets it make a sound.
Masnavi
The soul is a stranger in this world of darkness, exiled from its true homeland of light
Suhrawardi tells the soul's story as a kidnapping. Home is a country of light, the place of exile is matter and the body, and the whole path is remembering which direction home is in.
The Tale of the Occidental Exile (Qissat al-Ghurba al-Gharbiyya)
God is nearer to you than your jugular vein
The Qur'an puts God nearer to a person than their own jugular vein. Sufi writers returned to it constantly because it makes distance the wrong word for the problem: what is missing is attention, not proximity.
Qur'an 50:16
The Valley of the Quest, where the seeker must abandon all comfort
Attar's first valley asks for possessions, reputation, ease and settled belief to be given up before the journey begins. He is honest that the cost falls at the start.
Mantiq al-Tayr (Conference of the Birds)
Ibn al-Farid wrote of wine that was pressed before the vine and grape existed — the wine of pre-eternal love
Ibn al-Farid opens his best-known poem with a wine drunk before the vine existed. The impossible date is the signal: the intoxication he means is older than anything that could be poured.
Khamriyya (The Wine Ode)
What you seek is seeking you
Rumi's line is short and makes a claim about direction. A person's wanting is offered as evidence of being wanted, not as proof of being far away.
Masnavi
Thirty birds (si-morgh) look into the mirror at journey's end and find they themselves are the Simorgh they sought
Thirty birds survive the seven valleys, look for the Simorgh, and see their own reflection. The answer is built into a Persian pun, since si morgh means thirty birds.
Mantiq al-Tayr (Conference of the Birds)
If the verse from Surah Qaf is taken seriously, longing is not a measurement of how far away God is. It is a measurement of how much attention a person has spare. That makes the reed's complaint accurate about the feeling and wrong about the cause, which may be why Rumi gives it the first word and then spends six books answering it.