Emotional Hospitality and Personal Transformation in Rumi's The Guest House

Abstract

Rumi's The Guest House employs an exceptional and challenging metaphor to explore the human emotional spectrum. By invoking the image of a guest house that unfolds to a new visitor every day, Rumi articulates what can only be described as radical acceptance of every emotional state - be it joyful or painful. The current work attempts to conduct a close reading of The Guest House to perform 'Sufi metaphysics and emotional psychology' in conjunction with modern selfintegration theory. Rumi's perception of pain is examined to demonstrate it as an abscess - a constrictive element of the psyche that, instead of remaining permanently with the subject, bursts open to release the underlying pent-up psyche. Work employs pain alongside modern theories of suffering to bring to light Rumi's concept of pain suffering as a conduit to conscientious metamorphosis. To make a case for the poem and Rumi's other writings, the 'emotional regulation and the theory of the shadow' is introduced as a framework. The current research aims to illustrate the conscious state of emotional hospitality and its path to inner completion, as proposed in the work. Ultimately, the study seeks to demonstrate The Guest 
House as a unified model of literature, spirituality, and psychology.