In Jalaluddin Rumi's Masnavi, the lion tasks a wolf with dividing their prey: a wild ox, a goat, and a hare. The wolf suggests a proportional split, assigning the largest animal to the lion and smaller ones to himself and the fox. The lion, however, kills the wolf for his audacity in maintaining a sense of duality—the 'I and we' ($من و ما$)—in the presence of the King. Rumi explains that this story is an allegory for the spiritual path, where the seeker must undergo fana (annihilation of the ego) before the Divine. To retain one's 'selfhood' in the presence of God is a form of spiritual rejection. Rumi emphasizes that true existence is found only by passing beyond the 'no' ($لا$) of the individual self into the 'except' ($الا$) of the Divine Face, echoing the Quranic principle that everything perishes except the Divine.