Tuesday, March 17, 2009

YOU CAN DO IT!

"Our ability to achieve what we so wish to accomplish is poised precariously upon our self-esteem, and our self-esteem is constrained by our self-image which is a sliver of who we are. Consequently the unfurling of the bounty of who we are potentially is blocked by our refusal to recognize all the dimensions of our being."

Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan


The above quote is very typical of the way that Pir Vilayat spoke all the time. It came to mind after I had a nice conversation with my best friend the other day and we were noticing how vast the vision of Pir Vilayat had been. He often spoke in very broad terms but with very specific objectives, explaining in a concrete manner just what was possible for the person who was willing to follow his lead and deeply explore the inner workings of the mind and soul. One of the points about this teaching of his, that we both noted over and over, was that following his lead took courage.

As I have pointed out in previous blogs, any time that you challenge your idea of who you are, there will be instant psychic resistance. Your personality is quite happy with who it thinks you are and does not like change. So, to follow Pir Vilayat's dictum above, and reach for those dimensions of being that we refuse to recognize, is to go into areas of extreme psychic peril.

He had a number of very simple examples that he used to illustrate what he was eager for his students to understand. One of them was the following: A mother has a small child in her lap and is looking at a picture book. On the page before them is an illustration of a tree. Hidden in the leaves but still visible is a pixie and the child is trying to see it but cannot. The mother keeps encouraging the child to find the pixie, which is very obvious to her but not to the child. Suddenly the child spots the pixie and his face lights up in delight. And the mother hugs the child and tells it how wonderful it is for having discovered the pixie in the tree.

This little illustration seems simple to our adult minds. Obviously the child will have a hard time seeing the pixie in among all that foliage. I wonder though if you can also see that it applies to the adult mind just as well. It is very easy to say, "Yes, I understand what the teacher means." Our task is to ignore this voice that insists it already understands and to truly do the work of discovery that is open to all.

As a spiritual guide myself I am often struck by how long it sometimes takes a person to see something that, to me, is very obvious. I have learned patience but I also wonder what I personally am not seeing. Now, that is a humbling thought. But it is also the kind of thought that helps me along and pushes me over and over again into that precarious ground where the mind is unsure of what it is experiencing and wants to recoil from an examination of the next step in its development.

One thing that my friend noted, in our conversation, that I hadn't really known about the Pir was that he was always surprised when people acted generously or wisely. He was so used to people operating from the small ego and demanding their own version of acknowledgment of the self that when people acted with compassion and understanding he was genuinely surprised; delighted too of course but mostly surprised. I am pretty sure that what surprised him was this very idea of his student acting with courage.

Some of you may know that I am a professional hypnotist. I will not explain how hypnosis works here, perhaps in another blog but for now I will tell you one thing that all hypnotists know. What we do is work with the subconscious and because of this we also know that the subconscious has one job and one job only – its job is self protection. For the purposes of this discussion we can say that its job can only be fulfilled if it protects our version of ourselves that we hold dear. Pir Vilayat used to say that one of the purposes of the meditations and practices that he prescribed was to re-program the personality. Hypnosis is essentially the same. Only in the case of hypnosis it is very case specific while meditation is much more general. Both have their uses.

What excites me is noting that our modern culture is working hard to discover ways to access these unrecognized dimensions of being and implement them in ever more creative ways. The growing acceptance of hypnosis as a viable therapy is only one of these ways. We make a lot of missteps and false starts but we keep trying. If it were not so the Self Help section of bookstores would be empty. We really want to know how to be who we really are. The most important thing you can do is to keep asking, never totally accept your personal version of who you are. It is an amazing experience when you discover that not only are you magnificent, you are also quite capable of manifesting this magnificence.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

My hypnosis teacher and I were experimenting with the Ultra-Height hypnosis, which briefly, allows the client to go to higher realms and get the needed information him or her self, and the hypnotist just assists in the trip to get there, and does not even need to know the problem.

I went to the 'higher realms' and came back with all sorts of information feeling really good. As I was driving to my sister's house, I became concerned and said to my self 'I hope I don't get aggravated and lose this good feeling' and at that point, I said to myself out loud in the car, and believe me, it was not me,
'BE WHO YOU ARE, NOT WHO YOU THINK YOU ARE'.

and I am trying.

Anonymous said...

This blog comes at a most opportune time. I am trying hard to be who I truly am and thought I was making progress. But I awoke in the middle of the night with the "old me", the old thought patterns, trying their best to lure me back. My past religious upbringing was that small voice reminding me that I was a bad person for not following "The Rules"! Attending to my breathing pattern and really looking at those surfacing thoughts made for a short night of sleep, but I did overcome. I can see this will be an ongoing battle.

Blessings and love to you.....

Sandra Starflower said...

Thank you, Phillip, for your succinct clarity, openness, and honesty. When I hear the truth as it is written here, my soul rests in a deep knowing. I exist as I am and that is good enough. Not to suggest that I need to stop growing but just that I must truly accept all parts of my self before I can change.

Love.....and more love......Sandey