What happened to my forty years of devotion?

https://chatgpt.com/share/69599c86-fc88-800a-bb37-f852125fd5b6

Chatgpt

Rumi

Masnavi

Rumi answers this question very directly and very sharply in the Masnavi, and the passage you’ve shown is already part of that answer. Let me unfold it the way Rumi himself would—moving from image → diagnosis → remedy.

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1. Rumi accepts the question as valid

“If there is no thievish mouse in our barn,

where is the corn of forty years’ works of devotion?”

Rumi does not dismiss this complaint. He treats it as an honest spiritual bewilderment:

• I prayed for decades.

• I fasted, bowed, remembered God.

• Why do I not feel inwardly rich, stable, transformed?

This is not hypocrisy speaking; it is bewildered sincerity.

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2. Rumi’s core answer: there is a mouse

The first line gives the key:

“First avert the mischief of the mouse,

then show fervour in garnering the corn.”

Rumi’s answer is not:

• “You didn’t pray enough”

• “God didn’t accept it”

• “Spiritual rewards are invisible”

His answer is:

Your barn is real.

Your corn is real.

Your loss is real.

And the thief is real.

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3. Who is the mouse?

In the Masnavi, the mouse has three overlapping identities:

1. Ghaflah (heedlessness)

Moments of prayer performed:

• Without presence (ḥuḍūr)

• Without attention

• On autopilot

Rumi quotes the hadith:

“No prayer is complete without presence.”

A prayer without presence still counts outwardly,

but inwardly it leaks.

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2. The nafs wearing religious clothing

This is more dangerous.

Rumi repeatedly warns that the ego can:

• Pray

• Fast

• Preach

• Perform charity

…while quietly stealing the meaning of all of it.

The mouse is not outside religion;

it lives inside the barn.

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3. Distraction between acts

Rumi emphasizes between moments:

• Prayer → distraction

• Dhikr → self-admiration

• Worship → resentment

• Service → expectation of reward

The barn is not guarded between deposits.

So the corn never accumulates.

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4. Why forty years still vanish

Rumi’s logic is brutally simple:

Accumulation requires continuity of presence.

You are imagining devotion like money in a bank:

• Deposit → deposit → interest → wealth

Rumi says devotion works like grain in a barn:

• If the barn is breached,

• the longer the time,

• the more attractive it becomes to mice.

Forty years does not protect the corn;

it invites more theft.

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5. “Bit by bit” — why nothing remains

Notice Rumi’s precision:

“Why is the daily sincerity not being stored, bit by bit?”

Rumi’s answer:

• Because presence is not continuous

• Because sincerity is momentary

• Because vigilance lapses immediately afterward

A single moment of:

• Pride

• Self-satisfaction

• Comparison

• Complaint

• Forgetfulness

…can undo much of what was gained.

Not because God is harsh —

but because the heart is porous.

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6. The deeper teaching: prayer is not the grain — presence is

This is subtle but essential.

Rumi does not say:

Prayer is the corn.

He implies:

Presence is the corn.

Prayer is only the fieldwork.

If presence is absent:

• You are sowing husks

• Or filling a barn with air

So forty years of prayer without presence yields:

• Habit

• Identity

• Reputation

• Memory

But not stored inward nourishment.

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7. Rumi’s practical remedy (not despair)

Rumi does not say: “Stop praying.”

He says:

1. First kill the mouse

• Guard attention

• Notice inner theft

• Interrupt heedlessness gently but firmly

2. Then gather the corn

• One sincere moment

• Fully present

• Is worth years of distracted devotion

Rumi explicitly says elsewhere in the Masnavi:

One moment of real presence

is better than years of imitation.

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8. Why this teaching is hopeful, not crushing

This passage terrifies only the mechanical worshipper.

For the sincere seeker, it is liberating:

• You have not “failed”

• Nothing is wrong with God

• The path still works

• But quality, not quantity, stores grain

Even one guarded prayer can begin accumulation.

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Final synthesis (Rumi’s answer in one paragraph)

Rumi would say: Your forty years were not wasted, but they were unguarded. The barn exists, the corn exists, but the mouse of heedlessness, ego, and distraction steals continuously. Prayer without presence leaks meaning, and devotion without vigilance cannot accumulate. First protect the heart from inner theft; then even a little sincerity will begin to remain. One moment of true presence can store more than decades of unattended acts