A man in prison is sent a prayer rug by his friend.
What he had wanted, of course, was a file or a crowbar or a key! But he began using the rug, doing five-times prayer before dawn, at noon, mid-afternoon, after sunset, and before sleep.
Bowing, sitting up, bowing again, he notices an odd pattern in the weave of the rug, just at the Qibla, the point, where his head touches ( in prostration/sujud).
He studies and meditates on that pattern, gradually discovering that it is a diagram of the lock that confines him in his cell and how it works.
He’s able to escape.
– a spiritual story from Rumi’s Masnavi
Source: Coleman Barks, The Essential of Rumi
Photo: A Prayer Rug
Universal Spirituality 