A great Sufi mystic, Jalaluddin Rumi, once took his students to a nearby field.
There, he showed them a field that had been completely ruined. The owner of the field had first started digging a well in one place. He dug about fifteen or twenty feet, but found no water. So he began digging in another spot. Finding no water there either, he moved again.
He must have been mad.
He dug in a third place, then a fourth. In total, he dug eight pits. The entire field was destroyed. Now he had started digging the ninth one.
Rumi said to his students, “Look at this man. If he had put all this effort into digging in just one place, then no matter how deep the water was, he would have surely found it.
But he digs ten or twenty feet and then thinks, ‘If water is not found this far, how can it be found further?’ So he moves elsewhere, thinking, ‘This place has no water.’ Again he digs ten or twenty feet, then moves again.
In this way, he has already dug eight pits. Altogether, one hundred and sixty feet have been dug—and still no water.
If he had dug those one hundred and sixty feet in a single place, water would have been guaranteed.”
Then Rumi said, “This is how you live your life. Again and again, you begin digging— you start meditation, you start a path— but you do not go deep enough.”
