INTRODUCTION Presence
THE PRACTICE OF PRESENCE invites us to a conscious relationship with God. Faith, righteous action, ethics, and social justice are all founded upon a state in which the human being remembers God. Yet, the capacity to remember God is related to the ability to be awake, to be here. To act with intention (niyah), with reflection (tafakkur), with self-vigilance (taqwa), and with beneficence (ihsan) presumes a state of conscious presence. This theme runs through all the great spiritual traditions. It goes by many names—awakening, recollection, mindfulness, remembering, zhikr—and by no name at all. This awakened state of consciousness opens us to awe and wonder. It adds further dimensions to being in this world.
We find this state in all traditions wherever we find true reverence, an awareness of the sacred, but in Islam all of life is made sacred. So many of the practices of Islam can be understood as ways requiring and developing presence: performing ablutions (wudu), offering the ritual prayer (salaah), the courtesy (adab) of our relationships. For the purposes of our reflections we shall call it presence.
Presence signifies the quality of consciously being here. It is the activation of a higher level of awareness that allows all our other human functions—such as thought, feeling, and action—to be known, developed, and harmonized. Presence is the way in which we occupy space, as well as how we flow and move. It shapes our self-image and emotional tone. It determines the degree of our alertness, openness, and warmth. Presence decides whether we leak and scatter our energy or embody and direct it.
I HAVE BEEN SPEAKING OF PRESENCE as a human attribute, with the understanding that it is the presence of God reflected through the human being. We can learn to activate this presence at will. Once activated, it can be found both within and without. Because we find it extending beyond the boundaries of what we thought was ourselves, we are freed from separation, from duality. We could then speak of being in this presence.
My own experience has proven to me that the practice of presence is an essential means to live a fully human life here and now and to know those qualities that are described as “spiritual.”
Through knowledge, practice, and understanding, this presence can be awakened. Eventually, we will not be without it—whether in speaking or moving, whether in thinking or feeling.
Presence is the point of intersection between the world of the senses and the world of the Spirit. May we never cease to discover its beauty and power.
CHAPTER ONE The City of Separation
If your experience still comes from the well of your own subconscious, by your own inner faculties—as long as a trace of you remains in you—you have not attained your purpose. Know that there is a knowledge and a certainty that comes through Spirit alone. Spirit plus nothing: That is your highest destiny.”
CHAPTER TWO Soul Work, Reflecting Spirit
Abundance is seeking the beggars and the poor, just as beauty seeks a mirror. Beggars, then, are the mirrors of God’s abundance, and they that are with God are united with Absolute Abundance. RUMI, MATHNAWI I: 2745, 2750
Most education ignores the human soul, or essential Self. This essential Self is not some vague entity whose existence is a matter of speculation, but our fundamental “I,” which has been covered up by social conditioning and the superficiality of our rational mind.
We are made to know ourselves; we are created for this self-awareness; we are fully equipped for it. What could be more important than to know ourselves?
This Spirit is not to be understood as a metaphysical assertion requiring belief, but as something we can experience for ourselves. What if you, as a human being, represent the final result of a process in which this Spirit has evolved better and better reflectors of itself? If the human being is the most evolved carrier of the Creative Spirit—possessing conscious love, will, and creativity—then our humanity is the degree to which this physical and spiritual vehicle, and particularly our nervous system, can reflect or manifest Spirit.
At one end is the false and artificial self-construct of the person who has not known him- or herself, who has not made the inner journey of self-knowledge; at the other end of the spectrum is a more natural, spontaneous Self without artifice. As we become relatively free of the identification with our social programming and conditioning, we come to know the purified subjectivity or awareness that is our innate nature. This essential Self will be found to have the attributes of Spirit, including the capacity for conscious choice, unconditional love, and fundamental creativity.
Some important spiritual issues of our time are whether or not the Work needs the support of a tradition and to what extent such traditions are viable in the pluralist, postmodern world. Today there is a resistance to religious and traditional language by a great number of intelligent people. This is a resistance not necessarily to the truths religious language formerly expressed, but to the cheapening and conventionalizing of Reality. For Reality, after all, is what we mean by God. When the wonder of this Reality is traded for slogans and self-righteousness, it is not surprising that many turn from religion.
CHAPTER THREE Self, Heart, and Spirit
Let the Jesus of your Spirit ride the donkey; Don’t make your Jesus carry the donkey. RUMI, MATHNAWI II: 1853-5
Life is not just this bioenergetic vitality, but a spiritual vitality that is eternal, and we are that. This life span that we know on earth is said to be one chapter in the story of Life. This eternal Life reflects through us.
Beyond this “I” or conscious mind is a vast realm, part of which can be called the subconscious. Commonly, it is viewed as a kind of warehouse of buried memories, conditioning, complexes, drives, and obsessions. At the same time, there is a supraconscious mind that lies beyond the conventional experience of “I”; it is a realm of intuitions, inner knowing, sublime inspiration. From a spiritual perspective these subconscious and supraconscious realms are what is traditionally referred to as the heart, the source of wisdom and subtle perceptions. It is infinite, at least compared to the conscious mind, and is spontaneously in communication with other minds and Mind-at-large.
The other polarity that needs clarification involves the false self and the essential Self. The basic premise of this book is that the conscious mind is largely identified with the false self (an nafs al-ammara), which is the product of fear and selfishness. We can disidentify with this false self and through presence realize our identity with the essential Self (an nafs al-mutmainna). The terms false self and essential Self are relative. From the perspective of the essential Self we feel our unity with everything through Love and through the finer faculties of mind.
The false self is the result of existential angst; at the most fundamental level the soul feels unloved, unsafe, and unable to trust in Life. This is a problem of perception and awareness, because the false self is unable to perceive the meaningfulness of events and is unaware of the Divine Mercy operating in every detail of existence.
The movement from the false self to the essential Self is also a widening and deepening of conscious awareness in the subconscious and supraconscious realms. The sense of the inner life expands qualitatively and the self becomes aware of qualities and meanings that it had not been aware of. Outer life becomes transformed by these new perceptions, and the self realizes that it is living in a meaningful and beneficent Reality.
Spiritual attainment is a process of becoming complete by allowing the mind and heart to respond to the highest levels of Spirit. Spiritual maturity is not a process of personal development, because the “person” on whom such development is based is a superficial identity.
Only slowly and painfully did I begin to learn that the real Work is to serve, to pay attention to how other human beings can be helped toward freedom and love by being an example of those qualities without expectation of any recognition or reward.
First, the Spirit is most concentrated in the human heart, when the human turns toward it and realizes it within. By turning toward our own experience, by cultivating a vigilance regarding our own states, we can come to know ourselves, and therefore know the Spirit we reflect.
Second, wherever two or more are gathered in remembrance, the collective resonance of hearts uplifts one and all. The gifts of the Spirit are communicated from one heart to another. This is rarely achieved to the same extent when one is alone. Friendship and brotherhood are the outcome of our communion under the light of this Truth.
CHAPTER FOUR Creative Energy and Human Capacities
How we perceive the world depends to some extent on how we understand it. Our ideas shape our experience of reality, and it is with our ideas of reality that we should begin if we are going to be at home in the world of spiritual wholeness and unity. Ideas alone may not bring us into that unified reality, but those ideas rooted in meaninglessness, disunity, and separation need to be weeded out. They distort our perceptions and bias us against seeing the perfection of what actually is.
Traditional wisdom conceives of the Whole in terms of a single Creative Power acting on different levels through different means, or reflectors, to produce an infinite variety of creative results. In other words, everything that exists is the manifestation of a single Source of Life and Being. My teachers were stubbornly and untiringly insistent on this point and I cannot be less so. Everything they had to say pointed back to this essential truth, just as every point on a circumference finds its meaning in the center. One Creative Power acting on different fields produces different effects, and life is one of these effects. The creative energy of life is reflected in different ways depending on what embodies it, what reflects it. There is only one cosmic energy, but as this one energy meets various reflectors it is transformed into different capacities or qualities—just as different electrical appliances reflect a single electrical energy in the form of motion, sound, heat, or light.
With true consciousness, in contrast to passive awareness, the present moment is a wide space. Daydreams, nagging memories, and the beckoning of an imaginary future have less of a hold on us, because the present is perceived as it is, in the perfection of its many dimensions. This is awareness conscious of itself. True consciousness is knowing that you are.
A conscious presence is the perception from a state of wholeness; it encompasses thought, feeling, and bodily awareness. Conscious presence is the light of soul behind the fragmentation and unresolved conflicts of the personality. It can therefore unify and harmonize all other fragments and capacities, because it transcends them.
CHAPTER FIVE Balancing the Outer and the Inner
The personality is our superficial identity, our learned behavior and attitudes; it is tied to the conditions of outer life, to approval and disapproval, like and dislike, praise and blame. We are working so that this essence, which can truly say “I am,” may come forward in the midst of life.
The transformation with which inner work is concerned allows the “I” to exist more independently as a pure presence or witness. The slavery to like and dislike is diminished to the extent that our feeling of “I” is grounded in pure Being and not in things. The need to achieve our own specialness, for instance, or to receive attention from others, is experienced as less important as a stable inner presence develops. This inner presence is satisfying in itself; it enables nonattachment, equanimity, and greater objectivity.
You have scattered your awareness in all directions, and your vanities are not worth a bite of cabbage. The root of every thorn draws the water of your attention toward itself. How will the water of your attention reach the fruit? Cut through the evil roots, cut them away, Direct the Bounty of God to spirit and to insight, not to the knotted and broken world outside. Mathnawi V: 1084–86
Whoever makes all cares into a single care, the care for simply being present, will be relieved from all cares by that presence, which is a reflection of Spirit.
If remembering presence becomes our single care, then we will waste less of our inner energy.
Our work is to cross a threshold into emptiness and stillness. It is like entering an empty room that proves to hold a great presence. The apparent emptiness of simple presence is richer than the crowded experience of ordinary personality. We can either be empty with Spirit or full of ourselves. The barriers before us include our thoughts and emotions, our psychic and worldly busyness, our house of idols, occupying us to no end. Our habits and conditioning keep us intoxicated and dull. If we accept the barriers, we will fail to cross the threshold. To cross the threshold from habits and conditioning to emptiness, which is the receptive quality of the soul, we must become still and patient. We must give up certain impulses and let go again and again. This is the way we come into our essential Self. We leave behind our compulsive egos, embodying the “I am” and selflessness at the same time.
The “I am” is selfless in that it holds no special idea of itself, does not justify itself, and is not envious, resentful, or proud. Because it already feels secure in the infinitely merciful Spirit, it can accept the annihilation of what is false in the ego personality. If we are rooted in presence, we are capable of letting go of the demands of the ego. If we are not secure in the emptiness of pure presence, we will cling to events and things, to lies and fears. But in a state of presence, free of the coercions of the ego, we can become our most authentic selves.
CHAPTER SIX The Power of Being
THERE IS SOMETHING NONEXISTENT, something that cannot be touched, seen, or even thought, and yet this nothing is more important than anything else. It is the fathomless source of all qualities and all possibilities.
Everything that seems to exist, in both the material and psychological worlds, derives its qualities from a single source of Being. Everything we desire, everything that motivates us is in reality without any existence of its own and depends on a single source of Being.
Without Being our activity becomes chaotic, delinquent, purposeless, and wasteful. Any act without the fragrance of Being is lost. Being is the integrity of everything. It is like a finer energy that has the power to organize coarser energies. Being is more energized than any activity or function, and it is larger than life. It is the reservoir of possibilities, the creative energy that propels our actions. No effort, activity, attraction, or satisfaction in itself is Being. Being calls from another direction, from the realm of potential beyond our awareness. Being is the domain of quality. Whatever we do with Being embodies qualities and attributes more purely and intensely. We can bring quality into the details of life if we
remember to be and act with precision. If we can consciously be at that point where the horizontal force of active choice meets the vertical force of Being, a certain “something,” larger than life, will be activated. This “something” can be felt in anything produced by the hands and heart of a conscious human being—in works of art, in a well-tended garden, in food prepared with love.
Every relationship can have this quality if we offer ourselves willingly, if we accept that we are channels, and if we accept being empty and aware. This is charisma, or the ability to put into action the divine attributes of the heart. The One Being, in its unlimited generosity and compassion, initiates recollection in us and begins the process of transformation through which we are guided to spiritual maturity. This offering of Being to us is Mercy. This Is-ness, this Mercy—whatever name we give to it—preceded us ontologically. We arose out of it, not it out of us. Or as it is said: God’s love for us preceded our love for him. As much as we are the servants of Spirit, Spirit is our servant when we make our connection to it. This connection is made through presence, which is a receptivity to the energies of possibility.
CHAPTER SEVEN Voluntary Attention
WHY STUDY ATTENTION? What is the faculty of attention? It could almost be said that a human being is whatever his or her attention is focused on. As the quote above tells us, whatever occupies our attention—whether inwardly or outwardly, whether profound or trivial—is what we are at that moment. Therefore, if we are attentive only to the outer world, we forfeit our own inner life. On the other hand, if we are excessively introverted, we cut ourselves off from the impressions of the outer world that could enrich and enliven us. If we attend only to the material world, we sacrifice the spiritual. If we think we can focus exclusively on the spiritual, we might lose ourselves in a world of dreams that never connect with Reality.
HOW DIFFICULT IT CAN BE to simply pay attention. The moment we notice something, our attention is captured; there is no effort. Effort enters when we try to sustain attention. We can bring ourselves to a state of attention, but we cannot keep it from dissolving. If we are honest, we must admit our capacity for voluntary attention is small. Under the temporal conditions in which the human mind usually functions, attention is fragile and often dispersed. If we are truly gathered at the center of our own Being, a greater capacity for attention seems to arise. It feels as if the true source of attention is outside time, and when we are inwardly gathered and centered, attention seems to be more under our command. When we feel centered, the higher energies of our psyche are able to organize the lower energies and lend them a coherence they normally lack. At the same time, however, the lower energies (like and dislike, all the impacts of environment and conditioning) are able to disorganize the higher ones and introduce into them something of the incoherence of the lower levels. Out of this clash between higher being and lower distractions comes the struggle to keep our attention on something.
In my early years of spiritual training, I did conscious physical work with a group and a teacher—building stone walls, weeding a garden, cooking a meal. At the end of a day of conscious work my teacher would say, “Maybe now you have a little free attention.” Hours upon hours of patient activity without identification seemed to generate a finer energy, one that could actually sustain free attention.
LIFE CAN BE a training ground for attention. It is our responsibility to use our everyday conditions as an opportunity for the development of attention. We can learn to develop attention in at least four major directions: the outer and the inner, the narrow and the wide.
We can begin with attention to the sensations of our own physical organism, because sensation is the interface between the outer and the inner, the material and the psychological. We can sustain a sense of our physical presence through being aware of sense impressions: sound, touch, smell, and the sense of our own bodiliness, especially our breathing. We can notice how our attention moves between the outer world and our inner world. The outer world is the source of all kinds of impressions that we can receive more consciously. The more we consciously receive these impressions, the more we will be enlivened by them, because they are a kind of food for the nervous system and can be better digested with the “enzymes” of conscious awareness.
Bringing our attention fully and willingly to emotional contractions and blockages has a transformative power. The validity of the current psychological technique known as “focusing” is based in the self-healing power of voluntary attention as it engages, at first nonverbally, with a “felt sense” of one’s psychological state. Gradually, through this sustained, nonjudging state of attention, insights may arise about one’s condition, and healing or some degree of transformation may be attained.
CHAPTER EIGHT Meditation: The Refinement of Attention
THE RELIGIOUS CONDITIONING OF MY YOUTH had created in me an image of a universe divided between heaven and hell, between redemption and damnation. Heaven was the destination of the virtuous, mostly those who had been saved by belief in the doctrines of the Church. Once I had certain experiences that showed me deeper levels of reality and the mind, this conditioning lost its power over me. I simply could not take it seriously, because it did not correspond with the levels of reality I had experienced. I experienced a cosmic Love and meaningfulness, but the clouds of heaven and gates of hell were nowhere in sight. There was a self-created hell, the illusions constructed by our habitual desires and patterns of false thinking; and there was a fundamental, underlying reality that felt whole and beneficent. I began to search for an explanation that made sense.
CHAPTER NINE The Tyranny of the False Self
what a human being is. The false self does not know that it is asleep; consequently, what appreciation can it have for awakening? It consists of our fears and defenses, likes and dislikes, expectations, opinions, attitudes, and preoccupations, and we take it to be ourselves. This self could be called the compulsive or defensive self. It wants whatever will support its illusions, and it hates and fears whatever threatens them.
CHAPTER TWELVE The Essential Self He who knows himself knows his Lord. PROPHET MUHAMMAD
The essential Self is an objective reality, but it cannot be known in a state of sleep, any more than the ordinary facts of reality can be known in a dream. In the Qur’an it is written that the Divine said, “And I breathed My Spirit into Adam” (Qur’an: 38:72). We are each enlivened by this in-breath. The essential Self can be understood as this individualization of Spirit. It, however, is such a fine and subtle energy that it can be obscured by coarser energies of our existence, the energies of thought, desire, instinct, and sensation. These are the veils over our essential Self, the substances of intoxication that numb us to it.
Submission, the true spiritual attitude, is being actively receptive to an intelligence that is greater than ours. It is an intention of gracefulness and surrender, of seeing the world as a stage, of seeing the Divine as the director. Submission has something to do with relaxing tensions, both superficial and deep. The most profound relaxation is that within Spirit.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Polishing the Mirror of Awareness There is a polish for everything, and the polish for the heart is the remembrance of God. PROPHET MUHAMMAD, PEACE AND BLESSINGS UPON HIM
MEVLANA JALALUDDIN RUMI SAID, “Let go of your worries and be completely clear-hearted, like the face of a mirror that contains no images. When it is empty of forms, all forms are contained within it. No face would be ashamed to be so clear.” Rumi is reminding us that we can be clear-hearted only when we have polished the mirror. The mirror of awareness can become free of all images, especially those of ourselves. The spiritual process, practically speaking, can be understood as consciously polishing the mirror of awareness. This mirror is like a sensitive screen on which appear our thoughts, desires, fears, expectations, and conditioning, and on which Spirit may also purely reflect.
Only through being conscious, aware of the context of experience, can we discern what we habitually hold in our awareness. If human awareness is like a mirror, this mirror is normally filled with the contents of our sensory and psychological experience. Because it is so habitually filled with experience, and because our attention is so absorbed in these contents, the mirror of awareness itself is overlooked.
Actually, the mirror is only a partial metaphor for human awareness, because unlike a mirror, this awareness can reflect many levels of reality in addition to the physical—emotions, thoughts, and subtler perceptions such as intuition—and it can reflect these different levels selectively or simultaneously. There are many levels of being, but each level participates in the One Being.
In meditation we learn to focus our attention on the sensitive screen of awareness, rather than becoming absorbed in its contents. Thoughts and feelings are the contents of the mirror, not the mirror itself. To the extent that we are collected and awake, we can see them as images in the mirror.
This mirroring capacity is limited by the condition of the mirror. Its reflective capacity is reduced by a residue that accumulates upon it: the quantity and quality of our images, thoughts, and feelings. The mirror of pure awareness is obscured by layers of emotional and mental conditioning. Just as polishing transforms a mineral or stone into a reflective object, regularly wiping clean the mirror of awareness will allow a human being to reflect the light of Being itself. The spiritual process can be understood as learning to consciously reflect more and more of this Being. If we could clear the inner mirror, the light of Being would be reflected outwardly, pouring out of our eyes.
IN POLISHING THE MIRROR OF THE HEART, the most obvious accretions are our compulsions and negative feeling states—the demands of the false self. We must first recognize, respect, and surrender these negative states. Recognizing them leads us to release them, and each surrender is a little death. Through this process of letting go with each breath, we can become free of the compulsive mind, experiencing a new freedom with a new depth and a new height.
One of the first things to observe is the continuous presence of like and dislike, the grinding clash of opposites. We are continually preferring one thing to another, and this leads to anxiety and resentment in different degrees. We are normally so absorbed with our likes and dislikes, desires and frustrated desires that we rarely notice or question them, so we remain in unconscious slavery.
For example, sometimes the mirror of awareness is obscured by a compulsive neediness. There are people who are compelled to constantly seek attention from others. At every opportunity, in order to hold another’s attention, they tell people about their problems, their experiences, and their opinions. In such a state, preoccupied with the compulsive neediness of their personality, they are not receptive to what the wider Reality offers. Their mirror is obscured by this overwhelming need to receive attention.
Because the ego is completely preoccupied with itself—with its concepts, opinions, emotions, and gratification—it shuts itself off from the spiritual world and from greater Being.
The ego does not know it is asleep. It judges everything from its own perspective. It has created an imaginary world apart from the real world.
TO DISCOVER THE DIFFERENT LEVELS on which this polishing needs to occur and how the mirror itself might be polished, we need to pass over the threshold between our society’s distorted norms and…
This is society’s means of hypnotizing and enslaving us. Can any soul discover itself when filled with the preoccupations of that commercial culture? In the psychological domain, psychic material (thoughts, emotions, likes, and dislikes) can obscure the mirror. A compulsive thought—a criticism, for instance, repeated unconsciously—can contribute to an accumulation of conditioning. Unexamined likes and dislikes layer the heart with expectation. Even pleasant…
We can regularly ask ourselves: What is my inner life really like? How much am I controlled by ambition, secrecy, hypocrisy, and distorting desire? Without indulging either in guilt or in mindless innocence, we can use the Work to purify the inner self of conditioning, negativity, and hypocrisy in order to act more purely, authentically, and spontaneously. The Work is to bring the outer and the inner into harmony. On the level of relationships and ethics, all compulsive relationships, manipulation of others, and actions that lead to greater separateness will obscure the mirror. Our heedlessness and thoughtlessness in ethical matters and human relationships will trap and entangle us. All our relationships should be governed by conscious reflection and a sensitive heart. These are the keys to conscience. In the material world our activity can more or less reflect order and harmony. This requires attention to our intention. If our intention is clear and sound, and if it is periodically remembered and reaffirmed, there will be a mental, emotional, and practical…
When we have come to know Being, we see that it is vaster and wider than the space previously occupied by thinking alone. Actually, thoughts themselves are not a problem any more than are sense perceptions, such as vision, hearing, or tasting. If we learn to be present to all these impressions, if we are conscious, if we are gathered to our own “I,” we are increasing a Divine Presence in the world. The important thing is not to let…
Is this asking the impossible? Can we polish the thoughts from the mirror and become this simple presence? Can we be so reflective that our…
The prophets have also come to warn of the effects of actions that are not in harmony with this real world. To be fully human, the prophets have said, is to live consciously, in the presence of the Divine on many levels of Being. If we cut ourselves off from this Whole, if we lose respect and love for the One, we fall into fragmentation and conflict. Our false sense of separation and our consequent slavery to like and dislike veil this real world from us. This world and worldliness are based on a false separation. We can choose illusion or Reality, depending on whether we decide to polish our mirrors. In the world of the Spirit, the human being is a witness. The mirror is for witnessing not only the outer, visible world, but the inner, invisible worlds where spiritual qualities abide. Through the sensitive screen of our own awareness, we behold moment by moment and flash by flash the manifestation of infinite beauty, and that beauty need never be absent from the mirror. What may appear in the mirror at a given moment is a gift and should never be underestimated or taken for granted. As we polish away conditioning, concepts, and the false, reacting self, wherever we turn there is the face of Reality. “There is a polish for everything,” said Muhammad, peace and blessings upon him, “and the polish for the heart is the remembrance of God” (Bukhari).
CHAPTER FIFTEEN Listening Within Since in order to speak, one must first listen, learn to speak by listening. RUMI, MATHNAWI I: 1627
IT IS POSSIBLE to restructure the brain so that there is more conscious awareness. This has been called polishing the mirror, awakening from sleep, cultivating the witness, and developing the real “I.” Through changing the energy level of the brain, we can activate a different kind of brain function—a finer attention that stands above routine, habitual thought, feeling, and behavior. This presence—this conscious, listening mind—not only opens a window on our experience, it also connects us to the source of will. Attention can be called the first act of the will. It establishes the relationship between observer and experience, raising the level of experience and…
But few people manage to sustain the fresh edge of sensitive awareness through the circumstances of their daily life. Instead they settle for routines and habits. A change in vibration occurs when we move from passive attention to active attention. When our attention is passive, we are merely reacting to random stimuli in the environment and within our own psychology. We are weakened and fragmented by the various demands that occupy our attention. An active attention, on the other hand,…
harmonized presence. A change in energy level has taken place. This active attention creates more and more energy of its own kind and brings increasing freedom from the processes within the mind. It allows us to listen in on our thoughts more clearly…
Through this process we are freed from the servitude to habitual thoughts and feelings. Many unconscious motivators—such as envy, resentment, and fear—lose some of their power over us. We are taken out of the darkness and brought into the light of awareness, where emotional contradictions can be seen and…
Conscious listening takes place on a different level, a viewpoint from which thinking, feeling, and behaving can be observed. If we practice this listening when we are quiet and still, focused only on the task of listening, we will see how we move from being identified with the process of thinking to being aware and relatively free of thought. Occasionally we have a moment of observing the process of thought itself. Once we have practiced it enough to know it, we can attempt to introduce more of this listening into the midst of life. Occasionally we will catch ourselves at the end of a process of thinking and will awaken from it in much the same way as we awaken from a dream. So much of our waking time is spent unconsciously identified with the process of thinking, out of touch with the present moment and situation, living in our heads.
IF WE HAVE CULTIVATED the observer in ourselves, we will notice times when our mental processes are not functioning creatively or harmoniously. This observer can begin to see when we carry resentment in the form of habitual complaints, when we indulge in self-pity or self-judgment, or when we play old recordings with negative themes.
Not only is the present moment obscured, but the contents of my own mind may not be known because my “I” is so absorbed in what is going on. In this state of identification with mechanical talking, negative emotional loops prevail; the Life force is imprisoned; a rich emotional and spiritual life is not possible.
This somewhat unconscious functioning of the mind is quite productive when we are involved in solving problems, asking real questions, or focusing ourselves through creative effort. In most creative processes, from art to engineering, there is a phase of looking clearly at what there is, asking what is needed, formulating the question or clarifying the intention—in other words, doing all the necessary homework—and then letting go, even forgetting about the whole thing. This is when the subconscious mind can do its hidden, most creative work.
When we live with a real question and a sense of purpose, the whole mind is more likely to function harmoniously and creatively.
More and more we will also begin to have experiences of pure presence free of thought. Opening to life without preconception, without the veil of habitual thought, we will perceive Being. Our brains have been programmed through evolution to perceive differences. Being is fundamentally changeless and eternal, and therefore quite easy for the brain to ignore. But we can train our attention to perceive Being at the same time that it perceives change and differences. If we learn to include this awareness of Being, we will be living more fully in the present moment. Against the background of this Being or Presence, our preoccupations and obsessions will become clearer to us and we will be able to work with them better, provided we have the knowledge and willingness to do so.
AS A CERTAIN PSYCHOLOGICAL SPACE opens up within us through conscious presence, we begin to live differently. Thought, instead of being a largely unconscious process absorbing our awareness and presence, becomes creative and effective. It recognizes possibilities and builds images.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN The Dance of Personality The Sufi’s book is not of ink and letters; it is nothing but a heart white as snow. RUMI, MATHNAWI II: 159
The mind’s expansive dimension (which we might call the soul, or higher Self) is spontaneously in communication with the Divine. The lower self can be understood to include intellect, emotions, and the sense of self they produce, the ego. The personality is just one aspect of this ego self.
Personality is something we develop to relate to our environment. I am a soul, an awareness, and I have a body, and I also have a personality. As with the body, we need the personality to get around in this world. It is the acquired and artificial complex of habits of relating to other human beings. We relate to other people through certain roles, and there is a tendency for the role to take over.
WE NEED NOT wear our hearts on our sleeves or insist that complete openness in society is always desirable. The deeper levels of the heart can be shared only when there is a certain trust, and openness is not always appropriate. The heart needs a doorkeeper, and this too is the function of a discriminating personality. Some people delight in the play of their personalities—in the interaction of their social self with another’s. If this play develops out of something in ourselves that is conscious, it can be full of life, joy, and humor. But if it is only the interaction of shells, what real human contact is there? Is personality itself a form of aliveness, or is it a form of habit and mechanicality?
We would do well to ask ourselves about the origins of our behavior. Does it come from the mechanical habits of the personality, or is it spontaneously guided by the heart?
Jesus, peace and blessings upon him, said, “The gentle [not the ‘meek’] will inherit the earth.” The Greek word for gentle also has the meaning of “well trained.” It is useful for us to examine and observe the impulses of the personality, the compulsive ego, in our relationships. We must see how this results in disharmony and observe our inner states at the moment of action. Harmony is possible when we empty ourselves of ourselves.
It is useful to remember another saying of Muhammad: “God gives a high rank to him who is gentle in everything” (at-Tirmidhi).
This practice begins with respect. We can respect the carpet that is walked on, the cup that is drunk from, the candle that bears light. In times past a dervish wouldn’t “put out” a candle; he would “put it to rest.” A dervish, knowing that the word dervish also means “threshold,” always paused in remembrance before stepping over the threshold. In this respect for inanimate things is the recognition of an identity between the observer and what is observed. Although the material world is not taken as the final Reality, it is considered a manifestation of Spirit and therefore worthy of respect.
The personality can either serve to be the reflecting lamp of our Essence—magnifying or focusing the light of the soul—or be the bushel that hides that light. Every human being carries a seed of the Essence that is meant to be actualized. This Essence has no limits; those are imposed only by the condition of the vehicle that carries it.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Gathering the Fragmented Self
Spiritual attainment is a fundamental transformation of the “I” from a separate, limited, and contracted identity into a rich and infinite one. It is a movement from separation to union.
Fragmentation
We are forever in parts and yet wish to be whole. We are distracted and yet wish to concentrate; we are scattered and yet wish to be focused. We are scattered to the extent that we yield our “I” to every impulse. We say “my” likes or dislikes, “my” feelings, and “my” pain, and we diminish that “I” to the proportions of our momentary personal reactions. This “I” becomes enfeebled and is absorbed in all these passing states.
We are fragmented when we wander from our own center. When our attention is merely reacting to outer events, or when it is being dominated by something, it loses contact with its own source.
IF WE LOSE CONTACT with our sense of purpose, we lose our own coherence; our thoughts, feelings, and actions become incoherent, even self-contradictory. Feelings or motivations that once supported our goals abandon us, leaving us helpless and irresolute. Life seems a continuous struggle, requiring a certain amount of effort just to keep up. The struggle of life is largely a struggle to get organized, to gather a coherence within ourselves. The distractions and demands of outer life can diminish our presence. All transient pleasures come to their inevitable end, and all good intentions face continual assaults.
The ritual prayer—which integrates a series of postures, a mental invocation, an emotional disposition, and a transcendent awareness—can be a magnificent example of the gathering of attention. The congruence on many levels, which is the fruit of gathering and recollection, leads to peace within. When this peace has gathered sufficient strength it can face the world in a new way.
The secret to developing an integrated self is to intentionally extend awareness to more than one function at a time. Each function that comes into awareness adds another coordinate to our conscious existence. If, for instance, we are fully occupied with an emotion and become aware of our breathing or our physical sensations, we have generated more presence.
If we can gather ourselves to that nondimensional point of our own identity, everything is subordinated to this point, this “I.” As this “I,” this capacity for presence, develops, it becomes our connection to infinite Life.
THERE ARE TWO PRACTICAL CURRENTS in the process of gathering and mobilizing the mind: an inner movement and an outer one. Because we have been dispersed in things, including thoughts and feelings, we can first gather ourselves inwardly to the core of ourselves, to that dimensionless point that was described in chapter twelve, “The Essential Self.” So the first step is to gather all attention, awareness, and will toward that nondimensional point of contact with Spirit and listen within. We can come to this point only in nakedness and ignorance, leaving behind all thought, accomplishment, and power. Otherwise our attention will be dispersed in all these things. Having directed our attention toward our essence in meditation, we are rejuvenated from within ourselves. It is not necessary to have direction or intention in meditation, beyond the intention to be gathered, but sooner or later we face the necessity of action. It is only after creating an inner vacuum that we can again turn outward with the fullness of presence.
Collectedness carried into action can include a degree of intention. We may begin in the awareness of stillness, but if we wish to extend that awareness we must decide on some purposeful activity for ourselves. Both the decision and the act of carrying it out are the fruit of this gathering and mobilizing. We can learn to gather and mobilize all that is within our awareness.
In this bringing together, all outer things are reminders of Being itself: Wherever you look is the face of the Friend. Eventually this process can become circular—presence welling up inside us and moving outward, the outer world being consciously recognized and returned to its source through our awareness. We live for Spirit and Spirit sustains us.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Mysteries of the Body We are bees, and our bodies are the honeycomb: we have made the body, cell by cell, like beeswax. RUMI, MATHNAWI I: 1813
WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE of being embodied? And what is it that is embodied?
On the one hand, here “I” am; on the other hand, everything—including this “I”—is a manifestation of the One Energizer of All Life. To say that there is no self is only as true as saying there is no car, no flower, no earth. All these phenomena are aspects of this wholeness. Something exists that is individualized, and yet this individualization is somehow integral to the whole.
It is as beautiful for a child to take a grandparent’s hand as it is for a young man to feel a young woman’s breast. It is beautiful to embrace and feel the life in another body. It is beautiful to kneel and kiss the ground in worship.
This “sensing” is a means by which we can use the body to develop greater presence. When the energy of consciousness is blended with the energy of the body, the whole organism is spiritualized, raised to another level of experience. The practice of sensing, sustaining presence in the body, allows emotions to be more harmonious and thoughts less obsessive. The powerfully positive effects of many diverse systems of bodywork can be traced back to this simple practice of sensate awareness, of blending conscious energy with the energies of the body. Sensing brings Spirit into the organism.
The martial arts of the Far East, such as aikido and tai chi chuan; sacred dances of all kinds, especially the movements taught by Gurdjieff and the whirling of the Mevlevi Sufis; ritual prayer, such as the Islamic Salaah—all consciously respect, integrate, and develop awareness of the body. All of these sacred means use the body as a medium for the expression of the creative powers of the soul. Furthermore, they produce an integration of all the faculties—not only the physical, but the emotional, the mental, and the spiritual. The martial arts of the Far East teach a presence of mind through balance and alertness. You cannot delude yourself about being present when you have a physical opponent putting you to the test. If you daydream, you will find yourself an instant victim. These disciplines train the consciousness as much as the body.
The movements that Gurdjieff brought from Sufi and other sources in Central Asia cannot be performed through thinking, but only by allowing a deeper moving intelligence to take over.
The Islamic ritual prayer, practiced five times a day, is a sequence of standing, bowing, prostrating, and kneeling, accompanied by prescribed verbal affirmations and verses from the Qur’an selected and recited by the individual. The prayer is understood to be valid only when performed with a mindful witnessing. Physically, it exercises the major joints (especially the spinal column), massages the intestinal tract, transmits a reflex to the liver, regulates the breath, and stimulates the frontal cortex of the brain as it is brought low to the ground, while momentarily leaving the heart in a higher position than the brain. Salaah is a form that integrates mindfulness, mental precision, affirmation, devotion, and stretching. Done five times a day for a lifetime, it has profound effects on the body and the soul.
Refining Our Nervous System
Some simple guidelines can be instructive; many illnesses and dangers can be avoided and the whole organism can be naturally harmonized when the soul is awake and loving.
One of the ways in which our brain waves can be regulated is through conscious breathing. The alpha state is facilitated by a naturally deep and balanced breath, with equal inhalation and exhalation. The beta state is the product of irregular and shallow breathing. The usually unconscious theta state can be facilitated by increasing the length of time of exhalation, as in many forms of chanting or singing.
An even finer food is the food of impressions—all the sense perceptions processed by the nervous system. Here, too, consciousness is the elixir that transforms lead to gold, the unexamined life into eternal Life, here and now. If we could awaken to the sounds, smells, sights, and sensations of our environment and purely receive these impressions with sensitive awareness, we would experience more life, and we would activate our nervous system more completely. So much of our nervous system has remained dormant because we are asleep to life. We experience life not as it is but through the medium of associations, preconceptions, and expectations.
Our nervous system has capacities for a much subtler and more perceptive relationship to life, but we have let ourselves be numbed. Any one of the senses has the capacity to awaken these subtle faculties. Frankincense in the liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church awakens the heart. The bell that is struck and fades at the beginning of Zen meditation stimulates the center between the eyebrows. The drumbeats of the shaman contain a bundle of frequencies that rhythmically stimulate the nervous system. The subtle intonations and changes of pitch in some forms of Qur’anic recitation awaken many levels of mind and heart.
Purification leaves the body, especially the nervous system, in a more responsive state. Hunger reduces the need for sleep and increases wakefulness. Eating our fill hardens the heart, while hunger opens the heart and increases detachment. In hunger some of the veils between us and what is real are removed; remembrance becomes a way of life. Fasting has been a catalyst for awakening in all sacred traditions. In their book Open Secret, John Moyne and Coleman Barks translate a Rumi saying this way: “If the brain and belly are burning clean with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN Faithfulness and Gracefulness The inner search is from You. The blind are cured by Your gift. Without our searching, You gave us this search. RUMI, MATHNAWI I: 1337–38
Faith is neither blind nor irrational; it can be understood as trust substantiated by knowledge.
Faith is understood to have an aspect of knowledge—a knowledge confirmed by the heart. The principle of faith is the knowledge of the Unseen, the Beneficent Being, a knowledge through the heart, or subtle faculties, because the spiritual Reality is obvious neither to the senses nor to the intellect.
Humanity suffers from its own incompleteness. We suffer from being fragments and being fragmented to the extent that we feel lonely, dependent, afraid, and in conflict with ourselves, and subject to desires that must be controlled. Much of human life is a succession of states of grasping, clutching, and yearning. The original meaning of healing was “to make whole.” We can be healed of our separateness through our contact with something whole. We can know we are not separate from the whole, and we can know the universe through knowing ourselves. This is a statement of faith, or hope substantiated by knowledge.
Suppose that each of us has a certain quantity of psychic energy available to us during our lifetime—or during a single day, for that matter. This quantity of psychic energy is being spent continually in all the trivial interests, petty anxieties, titillations, excitements, and disappointments that life brings. If we could coax our own being into a greater state of order and harmony, so that we could participate fully in what the moment brings and yet not suffer needless anxieties and distractions, and if we were to order our lives around a single value of magnetic power, the power of higher Being, it would not be surprising if we were to possess an unusual power of thought and feeling. If we make all our cares into a single care, the care for being tangibly in contact with the Source of Life—that Life, that Creative Power, will attend to all our cares.
Grace
The French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil (1909–1943) said, “We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but the grace to transform them.” Often when we wish our troubles would disappear, we are ignoring what could change in ourselves. We are confused between the need to change the outer circumstances, which may not be to our liking, and the need to change the way we relate to them.
If we could see the arising of all events as opportunities to know and develop the qualities in ourselves, would we live in resentment toward what arises in each moment? With a center of gravity in Essence, a yes arises—the yes of recognition, rather than the no of resentment. Difficulty is first recognized, even before it is transformed. Trouble becomes a reminder that we can tap the infinite qualities of the Creative Power.
CHAPTER TWENTY The Alchemy of Effort The porter runs to the heavy load and takes it from others, knowing burdens are the foundation of ease and bitter things the forerunners of pleasure. See the porters struggle over the load! It’s the way of those who see the truth of things. RUMI, MATHNAWI II: 1834–36
But faith does not exist apart from the need for action. In the Qur’an, the phrase “those who keep the faith [alathi amanoo] and do the righteous work [of reconciliation and wholeness] [wa amiloo as salihaati]” occurs innumerable times. Faith engenders action and is completed by it. Action is often overcoming resistance and obstacles.
Whenever we affirm something within ourselves through a real decision, we will inevitably bring into play a denying force, both within and without. If we affirm the wish to concentrate, we will encounter some distraction. If we affirm the wish to be active, we will encounter our passivity. If we decide to give, we will encounter that which withholds, and so forth. We have within us a yes and a no, and this is the basis of all conscious, spiritual work. Something in us affirms while something else denies. We usually deal with our environment through personality, which consists of conditioning, acquired habits, and likes and dislikes.
With faith, which is really submission to our higher Self, our essential Self can more and more become the affirming force in our lives, and the personality itself can then be cultivated and brought into service.
Our work is to awaken and realize a spiritual will and presence, a Being that is not coerced by like and dislike, by the incessant demands of the personality.
On the one hand all the impulses of the ego, arising from the history of our interaction with the world, represent a necessary force in life. The power of selfhood is not an essentially evil power, but it can go to excess when it divorces itself from the unity of Life. In this condition of separation, the ego-driven self becomes chaotic and antagonistic to Life.
The secret of transformation is the moment-by-moment alchemy of impulse. This may manifest itself as restraint in action and speech, as courtesy, self-discipline, generosity, subtlety, or patience. It is as if some thorny brambles appeared in our garden that we cut down to make room for the fruits and vegetables that will nourish us. Eventually there is the possibility, too, for a rose garden that represents pure beauty and spiritual fragrance, requiring the most conscious care. The power behind the ego is like that. It is not to be killed; it should be allowed to return in ever new and spiritualized forms.
Our real Self, our hidden treasure, is beyond our awareness and our personality, but we can find a channel to it. This channel is created through the presence of finer energies in us, and these energies are the result of a certain work. Their presence in our nervous system helps us to connect to subtler states of Being.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Aim and Self-Knowledge The mouse soul is nothing but a nibbler. To the mouse is given a mind proportionate to its need, for without need, the Almighty God doesn’t give anything to anyone. Need, then, is the net for all things that exist: man has tools in proportion to his need. So, quickly, increase your need, needy one, that the sea of abundance may surge up in loving-kindness. RUMI, MATHNAWI II: 3279–80; 3292
Muhammad, as well, recommended archery as one of the most beneficial pastimes. Through the coming together of archer, arrow, and target, three may become one—but without the target, archer and arrow become meaningless. So, too, in the inner life. Without an aim, or target, the necessary creative tension does not exist. We do not practice, and we waste the substance of our will and attention. And yet the aim is just one aspect of a whole, to be included within this present moment without obscuring it. Having a definite aim is a reminder, not a limitation. If this aim has developed out of a spiritual yearning, rather than from some demand of the ego, it has the possibility of connecting us with a greater purpose, with the Work of bringing heaven down to earth. Such a truly spiritual aim would involve the activation of presence or Love; it would in some way contribute to the awakening of our true human capacity rather than merely attaining the ego’s illusions and desires.
Witnessing our envy, resentment, pride, and hypocrisy helps to lessen our own illusion of separation.
For instance, someone who has a tendency to overeat or has some compulsive habit such as smoking or gossiping can decide to work with this tendency. If we are habitually critical of others, we can try to bear with some of those things we dislike. If we are impatient, we can practice patience. If we often fail to complete cycles, we can determine to complete them. If we sometimes do not keep our word, we can decide to do more than we say. If we are stingy and neglect to pay our share, we can cultivate generosity. If we are resentful or bitter, we can practice gratitude.
work on awakening is to extract attention or awareness from the stream of events, to cultivate an awareness that includes events, thoughts, and feelings but is not totally absorbed or identified with them. It involves an intention above all to be actively receptive, to be alive with sensitivity and attention, not to be thoroughly identified with one’s conditioning. Our intention to be awake is helped by deciding to interrupt our unconsciousness by setting intentional alarms for ourselves.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Emancipation from Fear
Look at yourself, trembling, afraid of non-existence: know that non-existence is also afraid that God might bring it into existence. If you grasp at worldly dignities, it’s from fear, too. Everything, except love of the Most Beautiful, is really agony. It’s agony to move towards death and not drink the water of life. RUMI, MATHNAWI I: 3684–87
As Rumi says, much of human life is really agony—disguised and unconscious, perhaps, but nevertheless a low-grade agony prolonged by fears and unfulfilled desires. The human condition is governed by fear. We are afraid of imaginary losses and difficulties that we may never encounter. A nameless undercurrent of fear runs through many of our relationships. One man may fear his neighbor’s children; employers may fear the people they employ; workers may be afraid of their boss; and the boss may be afraid of someone’s lawyer, who in turn may be afraid of his own son. Surrounded with our material comforts and lulled by our imagined independence, we are unlikely to realize the extent of the fears that control us. Yet unconsciously we carry unreasonable and imaginary fears that not only wear away at our happiness but also prevent the inflow of Spirit.
Too often we childishly cover our eyes and ears, when what we need to do is squarely face our fears. We might, for instance, tell the subconscious, “You are afraid of not being loved and so you hide your real self. You play a role, afraid to show yourself as you are. But meanwhile you suffer this abandonment in your imagination a thousand times. Wouldn’t it be better to be abandoned once rather than a thousand times? And wouldn’t it be better not to have to pretend? Isn’t your real self more lovable than your role-playing self? How did you ever talk yourself into living this lie? Why not face the possibility of loss, once and for all? What is there to lose?”
In the spaciousness of presence we are using the faculty of will, of conscious choice, by reframing the situation in a way that will allow transformation.
WE MAY ALSO STRUGGLE with what could be considered justifiable fears. We have fears of loss, pain, disability, and death. These can be transformed only by the human being who has come to know what it means to “die before you die.” In the discipline of transformation, this expression means coming to know our spiritual home, our eternal Self. It is not a metaphor but an accurate description of a psycho-spiritual truth.
When we are connected with this Love, we are free of fear and of the domination of the lower self and the thoughts it generates. As Rumi said, “Thinking is powerless in the expression of love.” Love is reckless and does not count the cost; it expresses itself through courage and self-sacrifice. Often our fear is a lack of love. To be free of fear we must love very much.
THE STATE OF EMANCIPATION toward which we are journeying can be described as freedom from the fear of loss. It is understood that Life flows to us from an unstinting Source of grace that will never lessen its giving as long as we are open to receiving. The people and things that are so precious to us are embodiments of qualities, and these qualities are derived from this beneficent Source. What we are so afraid of losing are qualities that we have invested in the particular forms we are attached to. We have confused these qualities with the forms we have discovered them in. Their beauty is like the beauty of sunlight that falls upon a brick wall: Sunlight fell upon the wall; the wall received a borrowed splendor. Why set your heart on a piece of earth, simple one? Seek out the source which shines forever. Rumi, Mathnawi II: 708–09
The wall may crumble or be torn down, but the sun will always return to shine. To be spiritually mature is to be free of the fear of loss, knowing that we are connected to the Source of all generosity.
Unfortunately, certain translators have used the word fear in relation to God. But is God to be literally feared? In the Qur’an the word taqwa is often translated as “fear,” but it would be better translated as “vigilance,” “awe,” or “God consciousness.” It is the awareness of being in the presence of the Beloved; it is an impeccable alertness that keeps us aware of the consequences of our actions. In the presence of the Beloved, one’s attention should be absorbed in the Beloved. A lover who was always fretting distractedly in the presence of his or her beloved would not be a lover at all. The lover has only one fear, and that is the fear of offending the Beloved (which includes harming other people). The fear of God frees the lover of all other fears. This is the only kind of fear appropriate for one who is courting the Truth.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Suffering: Imaginary and Real
Those in denial exist in a world of self-created illusions, rarely glimpsing the real world, the world the heart knows. Beyond the concatenation of absurd and meaningless facts created by the false self, there is a world of abundant generosity and mercy. Beyond the comfortless zone of temptation and testing described by the religions of fear, and beyond that sentimental version of Reality based merely in wishful thinking, there is the real world of grace and rigor, where souls are created.
The Sufis have described a unified Reality comprising finer and finer levels of subtlety, which can be experienced by the human heart and consciousness. This Reality has attributes that can be classified into two main categories: Mercy and Stringency, or Rigor. On the one hand are qualities of beneficence, mercy, intimacy, and beauty; on the other, qualities of majesty, power, and wrath. The qualities of Mercy, however, take precedence over the qualities of Stringency, and the Stringency ultimately is in service to Mercy. In this truly holistic view of Reality, both tenderness and destructiveness have their place. In a hadith qudsi, one of the sayings transmitted by the prophet Muhammad, God says, “Take refuge in My Mercy from My Wrath. Take refuge in Me from Me.” In other words, while suffering is a very real aspect of life, we can take refuge in the Divine from this suffering.
One of the most common practices among Sufis is to begin their activities by inwardly reciting the phrase “In the name of God, the Most Compassionate and Merciful.” From the non-dualistic perspective of esoteric spirituality this means “Let me be and manifest Compassion and Mercy, since there is no other agent than the infinitely Compassionate One.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Overcoming Self-Centeredness Help this headstrong self disintegrate; that beneath it you may discover unity, like a buried treasure. RUMI, MATHNAWI I: 678–83
THERE IS AN UNDERLYING ATTITUDE that cripples and blinds us. It can be so pervasive that we don’t often question it. This attitude is a distortion of the natural order created by our insecurity and need for attention, by our sense of separateness, by our ignorance of the unity of all Life. The problem, in a way, is quite simple: We think of ourselves too often and in the wrong way. The result is self-importance (or its opposite: self-hatred) and greed. Whenever we think we are better than others or whenever we think, “I want,” we are thinking of ourselves in the wrong way. When we can think differently—“my family needs this, my body needs this, my work needs this, help me to meet these needs, help me to reflect your abundance”—we can open to the inflow of spiritual energy.
The more we consciously bear suffering and pain, the more we will enter the presence of the One. When we are suffering we can remember to take refuge in the One. Having decided to enter the fire of Love, we learn to take whatever is given to us without complaint.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Die Before You Die
The mystery of “Die before you die” is this: that the gifts come after your dying, and not before. Except for dying, you artful schemer, no other skill impresses God. One Divine gift is better than a hundred kinds of exertion. Your efforts are assailed from a hundred sides, and the favor depends on your dying. The trustworthy have already put this to the test. Mathnawi VI: 3837–40
What you thought was your self was an isolated fragment of your mind, containing contradictory desires, conditioning, and obsessions. With awareness and love this false self can dissolve like ice in sunlight. Submission is the lower self recognizing the essential Self and acting on its guidance. It is overcoming the resistance offered by the lower self. It is to drop the hesitation, doubts, fears, equivocation, rationalizations, resentment, and suspicions that keep us from expressing the qualities of the Creative Power.
At a higher stage, once union has been glimpsed, the mere sense of separation from the Beloved becomes an even greater suffering than our ordinary psychological suffering. Only then can we unify our conscious awareness with our essential Self and access our finest intuition. The impulses arising in us will be authentic and appropriate—those of a true human being.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Freedom of the Soul Two stones cannot occupy the same space, but two fragrances can. KABIR HELMINSKI
We may be restricted by not being able to be in Katmandu because we must be in Boston. At best we might be able to acquire enough financial independence to allow us to move around more freely, but perhaps that independence will cost us time and effort. This is the nature of the space-time prison we live in. The first freedom is the realization that the material world can never satisfy us, although we are more or less indentured to it. The material world, which is under so many laws and restrictions, does little for our Being. Even if we learn to manipulate this material world very well, it does not necessarily bring us closer to Life itself. However much we can do in this world is not enough.
Unless we consciously break up certain patterns and maintain our flexibility, we may suffer emotional restriction. The person whose Essence is not enslaved by the personality will be less invested in the personality and therefore less protective of its own false image. Someone who has learned to become “nothing” will be able to manifest Spirit with a greater range of qualities.
Ultimate servanthood is ultimate freedom. Muhammad said, “Make all your cares into a single care and God will see to all your cares. Be mindful of Him and He will be at your side” (at-Tirmidhi). The servanthood of the spiritual world is the servanthood to Love, which is no bondage at all, because it is so satisfying in itself.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN What We Love We Will Become
But there is a love greater than attraction or sharing, and it is said to be the love for Spirit—objective love, or agape. Spirit within us can love Spirit in everything. In this love we are loving what we essentially are. The duality between you and “the other” dissolves, and what remains is a field of love. Love is seeking itself.
It is the degree of Spirit in anything that is its beauty. Sometimes we mistake glamour, the imitation of beauty, for real beauty. What is beauty, if it is not purity, radiance, and depth? The experience of love will activate our conscious and subconscious faculties.
The Infinite One was a hidden treasure that longed to be known, and it created the seen and the unseen worlds in order that its treasure might be discovered. If we ask ourselves what this treasure contains, we might say the divine names, or attributes of the One. We possess a faculty called the active imagination. If we are awake to the perfection of the moment, we may begin to perceive directly what lies behind it, behind appearances and form. To be awake to the moment is to be awake to the qualities that are manifesting through the moment. We know these qualities because they are buried within our own subconscious mind, or heart.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Love the Transformer
Love is reckless; not reason. Reason seeks a profit. Love comes on strong, consuming herself, unabashed. Yet in the midst of suffering Love proceeds like a millstone, hard-surfaced and straight-forward. Having died to self-interest, she risks everything and asks for nothing. Love gambles away every gift God bestows. RUMI, MATHNAWI VI: 1967–70
Any creative act is an act of love. The Absolute Creator was the first to create out of love, creating both the visible and the invisible worlds.
This Beloved, which most people know only in the first moments of romantic love, is in fact present in many faces and guises as our capacity for love grows. This capacity transforms us and makes us more alive. We are never so alive as when we are in love, so why should we restrict this love to the almost impossible conditions of romantic love? Can’t we be lovers all the time?
Love is not the goal of anything; it is the cause of everything, including our own final transformation. Every human being’s yearning to know and to relate is the action of love itself guiding us back to our own source. If we will be faithful, it will transform us by connecting us to the highest qualities of the Spirit, which are the creative, Life-giving qualities of Love itself. It is the maker of true individuality, an individuality that finds its own greatest fulfillment in its communion with Spirit.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE The Religion of Love Without cause God gave us Being; without cause give it back again. Gambling yourself away is beyond any religion. Religion seeks grace and favor, but those who gamble these away are God’s favorites, for they neither put God to the test, nor knock at the door of gain and loss. RUMI, MATHNAWI VI: 1971–74
In the religion of love the ego is not “killed” but is transformed into a servant of the heart. We will not be closer to God after we have snuffed our every desire, including those that are part of a healthy human life. It does no good to torture the soul.
To recognize and follow your master desire can lead to a life of deep purpose and integrity. And yet for the lover who is sincere and true, the transformative power of Love is relentless. The attributes of will and consciousness you thought you developed to be a better person are eventually recognized as the effect of the Beloved on the lover. And all that you thought you loved—other people, the beauty of nature, all that held meaning for you—turns out to be veils the Beloved wore. The lover comes to know, mysteriously, how everything is a gift of Being, and with this realization gratitude grows.
And finally, everything except love is devoured by Love.
My religion is to be alive through Love: To live only from this animal soul and head is disgrace. The sword of Love sheds the dust from the lover’s soul. Only love’s blade can sever us from our sins. When the carnal dust is gone, my moon shines: the moon of my spirit appears in an open sky. For so long I’ve been beating this drum of love for You whom I adore to the melody of See how my life depends on dying. Rumi, Mathnawi VI, 4059–62
CHAPTER THIRTY Worship: Contact with the Infinite Water says to the dirty, “Come here.” The dirty one says, “I am so ashamed.” Water says, “How will your shame be washed away without me?” RUMI, MATHNAWI II: 1366–67
Whatever commands our attention is our master, and we are surrounded by forces that command our attention. Whatever takes our attention is what we unconsciously serve. These are the idols of worship that separate us from what truly deserves our attention. Anything can become an idol—anything we mindlessly serve and, in a sense, worship, whether consciously or unconsciously.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE Refining the Psyche
The five spiritual senses are all connected. They’ve grown from one root. As one grows strong, the others strengthen, too: each one becomes a cupbearer to the rest. Seeing with the eye increases speech; speech increases discernment in the eye. As sight deepens, it awakens every sense, so that perception of the spiritual becomes familiar to them all. RUMI, MATHNAWI II: 3236–39
At the beginning of spiritual work, and for as long as it takes, it is necessary to go through a process of deconditioning: meticulously observing the influences of our conditioning, learning more and more to see things as they are. Simultaneously, it is necessary to cultivate our more sensitive and conscious capacities.
A good poet must recognize the difference between the metaphor that is an easy cliché and the one that has an unexpected quality of appropriateness. The psychic must recognize the difference between an image that comes from the personal subconscious—from memory or association—and the impression that is surprising and carries the feeling that the target is being contacted. As this begins to happen, a spectrum of subtle impressions may be received that include sensual, emotional, and other kinds of information. Often there will be a sense of emotional involvement with what is being received. The artist will have a peculiar sense of being “on.” The seeker of wisdom may find that the knowledge found within affects the feelings profoundly and may even be accompanied by visions, celestial sounds, or delightful fragrances.
The heart perceives the Spirit that moves in everything and apprehends the soulfulness of each thing. This is because everything in existence is the manifestation of a single source: the absolute Divine Essence. This Absolute in motion is called Spirit, which is experienced as Love in its many subtleties.
The mind can be understood as a substance that can exist in various states, just as H2O can exist as ice, water, steam, vapor, and humidity. As ice its solidity limits it, and it must follow the physical laws of a solid; as water it can flow. As humidity, however, it exists in a subtle, interpenetrating state, occupying a much greater expanse. I noticed and experienced for myself this level of being clearly through my teacher. In Suleyman Dede’s presence I felt at one with him, and through him at one with everything. We were not practicing this as an explicit exercise, but for me the result of contact with such a human being was that I dissolved. The same functional me, who could cut wood or edit a manuscript, existed, but some part of me had dissolved and yet was still present. I would take a walk from the farm where we were staying deeper into the country or in the direction of town, and both experiences were equally soaked with Spirit. Then it occurred to me that this state was like sugar dissolving in water. The sugar, which was me, had become invisible, and yet it was there; it could be tasted. When I returned to my teacher, all I could say was, “Thanks for helping me to dissolve like sugar in water.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO Service Within the Divine Milieu Each moment contains a hundred messages from God: To every cry of “Oh Lord,” He answers a hundred times, “I am here.” RUMI, MATHNAWI I: 1578
WHEN WE ARE AWARE of the abundance of Life, synchronous events unfold in the continuum of time; Love brings together what needs to be brought together. Often in the Middle East my companions and I would find ourselves more clearly in that space of imminent meaning and grace.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE What Sufism Is
Beginning from its roots at the time of Muhammad, Sufism has organically grown like a tree with many branches. These branches generally do not see one another as rivals. In the world today diverse groups exist under the name of Sufism.
If Sufism has a central method, it is the development of remembrance and love of God. Presence can begin to awaken us from our enslavement to the world and our own psychological processes, and cosmic Love can comprehend the Divine. Love is the highest activation of intelligence, for without it nothing great would be accomplished, whether spiritually, artistically, socially, or scientifically.
Abu Muhammad Muta’ish says: “The Sufi is one whose thought keeps pace with his foot, that is, he is entirely present: his soul is where his body is, and his body where his soul is, and his soul where his foot is, and his foot where his soul is. This is the sign of presence without absence. Others say on the contrary: ‘He is absent from himself but present with God.’ It is not so: he is present with himself and present with God.”
Those who accept the responsibilities of dervishhood, of spiritual brotherhood and sisterhood, create an environment in which human dignity and character can fully flourish. Such a community is not only the ripened fruit of the Sufi process, it is also the means by which the process is sustained. Such circles of remembrance offer hope for the future of humanness on this planet.