#38 – The 40 Rules of Love (Part 3): Die Before Death! The Final Rules of Shams of Tabriz

In this third and final instalment of our 40 Rules of Love series, we arrive at the rules that Shams of Tabriz saved for last — and there is a reason they land differently. By now the ground has been prepared. The earlier rules cracked things open. These ones go all the way down. We begin with the power of words — not as communication, but as energy that does not disappear when spoken. Whatever leaves your mouth, good or evil, is stored somewhere in the fabric of existence and will find its way back. Shams offers one of his most practical and quietly radical prescriptions here: for forty days, think and speak only good of the person who has wronged you. Not for their sake. For yours. From there we move into time — and the extraordinary idea that it does not move in a straight line from past to future, but through us, in spirals. That eternity is not infinite time but the complete absence of it. That the present moment is not a stepping stone to somewhere else. It is the only place where anything real has ever happened or ever will. We sit with submission — not as weakness or surrender, but as the most radical form of power available to a human being. With the principle of reciprocity, that not a drop of kindness and not a speck of harm goes unreciprocated. With the instruction to live as light and empty as the number zero — because it is not what we accumulate but the consciousness of nothingness that keeps us whole. And we arrive, finally, at Rule 40. The rule that contains all the others. The one Shams left until last because perhaps nothing else needed to be said once it was understood. A life without love is of no account. Tune in for the final chapter of one of the most profound series we have explored on this podcast. And when it's done — read the book.