The birds want to choose a king for themselves. They find Simürg (the phoenix) suitable for the kingdom. Simürg lives far away, on Mount Kaf. They all set out to go to him, bow down before him and pledge their allegiance. Before a few months have passed, half of the birds fall down dead from exhaustion. The journey is long and arduous. They have to cross seven different areas to reach their goal. Billions more birds die along the way. In the end, only thirty (simürg means thirty in Persian) of these billions of birds remain. They too are dying of exhaustion. They can no longer fly, but they have finally reached the foot of Mount Kaf. Crawling, walking, climbing, after months of traveling, they finally reach the top of Mount Kaf. In front of them is a huge palace covered in gold, made of ivory, adorned with diamonds and silver, and inlaid with emeralds and rubies. They enter the palace. The outside of the palace is nothing compared to the glitter and splendor of the inside. They are greeted by an imposing and magnificent servant, more beautiful than they have ever seen. They tell him that they have come from far away to see the king (the Phoenix) and to pay their respects and love to him. The servant takes them to a hall of great beauty and tells them to wait. After a few minutes he returns with thirty mirrors adorned with pearls. He hands these thirty mirrors to each of them. They realize that the Simürg (phoenix) they have found is none other than themselves.

Ferid al-Din Attar, in the story of the Phoenix in his work Mantiq-ut-Tayr, wants to say "He who seeks God finds himself". Firdevsi in his Shaykhnameh and Mevlana in his Mesnevi told other stories of the Phoenix. In many civilizations, from Ancient Egypt to China, in all the civilizations of Mesopotamia, in Assyria, Elam, Babylon, Sumer, in Jewish and Christian religions, this bird myth has been interpreted and the Phoenix has been symbolically described as the self-worth and self-knowledge of man.

Man's greatest journey is the journey to himself. It is the most complicated, the most complex, difficult, long, thorny, rocky. It is not easy to climb up and down one's own stairs. The inscription at the entrance of the Temple of Delphi in ancient Greece: "Know Thyself!". In the movie "The Matrix", in the scene where Neo goes to visit the Oracle, the sentence written on the kitchen door at home: "Know Yourself."

Like Yunus' "There is an I within me", the hadith says "He who knows himself knows his Lord".

The cause of man's greatest inner restlessness and inner struggle is his "I-ness" and his detachment from the whole. We have forgotten the secret that we are connected by breath to the Creator who breathed into us from his soul, that we are closer than his jugular vein. Forgetting the one who said "Man is mine, I am the secret of man" and without being aware of the relics in us, we are lost in our I-ness. He who knows himself knows his limit. He knows the infinite realm within him. As the infinite beauty, the vast expanse, the deepest mystery of the inner world is breathed in, the I-ness is replaced by SINGleness and admiration. This is where the harmony of infinity and LOVE turns into "the dance of SINGleness". The reason for the huge emptiness and restlessness within us is our disconnection with the eternal and the omniscient. Our irritability is because we forget that each of us is a part of him. This feeling of separation is the reason for our loneliness and the pain we feel. It is because we know deep down inside that every human being is our mirror, that they mirror us, that every person and event that we get angry at, that every person and event we get angry at is a part of us, a characteristic of us, another side of us.

How beautiful it is to burn like a Phoenix and enjoy the joy of being reborn from our ashes. To know that every event and person we encounter is our greatest teacher and mirror and not to take it personally. This is why one part of the world is like a fire, while another part is like a rose garden. We have to learn our lesson and understand how it relates to us, so that other doors can open on our journey of evolution and we don't encounter the same things over and over again.

As I continue on my own dusty dirt and stony paths, I intend to transform the stones and pebbles on the paths of my mirrors and you, my parts, into diamonds and emeralds, starting with myself, and to transition from darkness to the world of possibilities of light... Peaceful journeys to all of us... With love and light...

Mukaddes Pekin Başdil

Researcher-Author

Source: Denizli Haber