Kahlil Gibran: The Prophet, "On Work"

Then a ploughman said, "Speak to us of Work." 

And he (Almustafa the Prophet) answered, saying: 
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You work (on your ego) that you may keep pace with the earth (הארץ ha'arets) and the soul (נְשָׁמָה Neshamah) of the earth (מלכות Malkuth, the sephirah bearing the sacred name of אדוני הארץ Adonai Ha'aretz, Lord of the Earth in the world of Atziluth). 

For to be idle (spiritually and psychologically) is to become a stranger unto the seasons (the path of the soul in its Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter), and to step out of life's procession (through Mahavan and Chotavan, the great and little rhythms of the soul, the Christ and His Bodhisattva), that marches in majesty and proud submission (Islam) towards the infinite (the Absolute). 

When you work (in the annihilation of your ego, fana) you are a flute (the reed of the spinal column that produces the Word, the Recitation) through whose heart the whispering (inquietudes) of the hours turns to music (within your soul). 

Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison (as all the awakened souls praise the Army of the Voice)? 

Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune. 

But I say to you that when you work (on your defects) you fulfil a part of (Divine Mother) earth's furthest dream (the highest hope mentioned by Nietzsche, the aspiration to become a Superman, the first covenant or agreement between the soul and divinity: to work in the Self-realization of the Being until achieving the goal), assigned to you when that dream was born (in الله Allah, the Absolute Abstract Space, when your Ain Soph asked you, “Am I not your Lord?” [Qur’an 7:172] before you entered into manifestation in this universe; and when your Ain Soph exhaled you from the great womb of the primordial emptiness or abyss and into the Tree of Life, so that He could obtain knowledge of Himself), 

And in keeping yourself with labour (on your defects) you are in truth loving life (חיה Chaiah, the Divine Mother Kundalini), 

And to love life (the Divine Mother Kundalini) through (spiritual) labour is to be intimate with life's inmost secret (the Being-Partkdolg-Duty of Gurdjieff). 

But if you in your pain call (spiritual) birth an affliction and the support of the flesh (that does not belong to Adam, but to God) a curse written upon your brow (your Sensual and Intermediate Minds), then I answer that naught but the sweat of your brow (through initiation) shall wash away that which is written (for the seven P's, the seven instances of 'peccatum,' "sins, defects, errors," written on the forehead of Dante are washed clear by ascending the seven terraces of Purgatory, the Second Mountain of Resurrection.  Ablution or wudu within Sufism and Islam also demonstrates the path of sexual purity and dissolution of lust through profound transmutation and comprehension / death of the ego). 

You have been told also (spiritual) life is darkness (ignorance), and in your weariness (like the Soothsayer in Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra) you echo what was said by the weary (those morbid disciples who have lost the meaning of their work). 

And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge (willpower, Thelema), 

And all urge (will) is blind save when there is knowledge (דעת da'ath, gnosis, marifah), 

And all knowledge is vain save when there is (spiritual) work, 

And all (spiritual) work is empty save when there is love (גדולה Gedulah); 

And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God (for this is the meaning of religare, religion). 

And what is it to work with love (גדולה Gedulah, the Innermost)? 

It is to weave the cloth (of the soul, the solar bodies, the garments of reverence within the Qur'an [7:26]) with threads drawn from your heart (since the Divine Mother only awakens and rises within the spinal column in accordance with the merits of the heart, תפארת Tipehreth), even as if your beloved (the Innermost) were to wear that cloth (through initiation). 

It is to build a (spiritual) house with affection (in scientific chastity), even as if your beloved (the Innermost) were to dwell in that house (your physical and internal bodies). 

It is to sow seeds (of charity) with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved (the Intimate Christ) were to eat the fruit (of your sacrifice). 

It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit (the רוח אלהים Ruach Elohim, גדולה Gedulah, the Innermost), 

And to know that all the blessed dead (the initiates who have completely died in their ego) are standing about you and watching (since no disciple is ever left alone on this path). 

Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, "he who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone (of יסוד Yesod by chiseling it to perfection), is nobler than he who ploughs the soil (who only plants the seeds of spirituality in מלכות Malkuth through teaching, by following the third factor: sacrifice). 

And he who seizes the rainbow (the light of Christ in the seven spiritual rays, the seven colors of the rainbow) to lay it on a (solar) cloth in the likeness of (the internal) man, is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet (who initially shows us the path of the sandals, symbol of יסוד Yesod in Kabbalah; for one thing is to be introduced to the path, another thing is to walk it)." 

But I say, not in sleep (of the consciousness) but in the over-wakefulness of noontide (when the Christ-Sun is in its zenith above our head, the Chakra Sahasrara), that the wind (of Prana) speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks (the great self-realized masters) than to the least of all the blades of grass (the newly-budded souls initiating their awakening); 

And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind (the Voice of the Silence) into a (mantric) song made sweeter by his own loving (in sexual alchemy: Allah-kimia, and meditation). 

Work is love made visible (the spiritual work is manifesting God within מלכות Malkuth). 

And if you cannot work with love (גדולה Gedulah) but only with distaste (morbidity and resentment), it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple (of initiates) and take alms (advice) of those (initiates) who work with joy (Froh, the Nordic Christ). 

For if you bake bread (in alchemy) with indifference (without careful attention and psychological works), you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger (because the quality of our transmutations resides in our psychological work and can only feed the soul when there is comprehension and the Buddhist Annihilation). 

And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes (if you do not take joy in your transmutations), your grudge distils a poison in the wine (if you do not annihilate the "I," your mind will poison the wine of God within your sexual organs). 

And if you sing though as angels (when you are not), and love not the singing (if you do not fully identify yourself with גדולה Gedulah in the sexual act through mantra), you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day (the solar forces of man) and the voices of the night (the lunar forces represented in woman, which are joined in the sacred sexual crucible).