M6:733 — گرز بر خود می‌زنی خود ای دنی / عکس تست اندر فعالم این منی

This couplet is the pivot point in a section about the necessity of annihilating the self, based on the Prophetic saying, "Die before you die." Rumi has just urged the reader to "strike the mace upon yourself, shatter 'I-ness' (manī)." This verse clarifies the nature of that spiritual battle.

The real enemy is not an external person or force, but one's own ego. When we see a fault in another—an arrogance, a selfishness, an 'I' that offends us—we are often just seeing a reflection of our own unacknowledged ego. The anger and aggression we direct outwards is, in reality, a misguided attack on ourselves. The 'other person' acts as a mirror, showing us the very 'I-ness' we must overcome within.

Rumi immediately follows this by explicitly referencing the famous story of the lion from Book 1, who saw his own reflection in a well, mistook it for a rival, and drowned himself trying to attack it. The spiritual lesson is that the path to transformation (mordan-e tabdīlī, a death of transformation) requires recognizing that the adversary we fight in the world is the projected image of our own lower self.