The Guest House

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By bipolaretaeus

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Really love this way of mindfulness thinking. It’s comforting 🙂 If you didn’t know, this is written by a 13th century poet called Jallaluddin Rumi about life’s journey. I’m sure we can all relate and learn something?

The Guest House: Poem (Meaning and Interpretation)

In The Guest House, Rumi is using the metaphor of a guest house to form an image that each day is an opportunity to experience something new in our lives, even if it’s unexpected. And just like the house guest whose arrival at our guest house can sometimes make us uncomfortable, our life too can get frustrating at times.

So we wait impatiently for these unpleasant house guests to leave so that we can put our house back just like it was before they arrived. However, if we treat the house guests with warmth, generosity, and courage, we can learn invaluable lessons from the experience. To summarize, Rumi is explaining to us that the entirety of human experience is valuable and that we should cherish each moment that is presented to us.

The Guest House: Correlation to Mindfulness

When we correlate this poem to the concept of mindfulness, we realize that our mind too is like the guest house. Thoughts arrive one after the other just like house guests. Some make us happy, some make us sad, and some make us downright uncomfortable. And then we try our best to avoid these uncomfortable thoughts, inadvertently giving them more strength and control over us. But if we take Rumi’s advice and face these uncomfortable thoughts with acceptance and courage instead of contempt, not only will these thoughts lose their power and control, but we’ll learn an invaluable lesson from the experience.