MORE RULES

It seems that this subject really hits a chord. A few people have spoken to me privately about it. One person was especially interesting as he is one of my Tai Chi teachers. He pointed out that Tai Chi is a system with some pretty serious rules. In Tai Chi there is a very specific way of doing everything. All movements have precise forms and all postures are very defined. Even though one of the objectives of Tai Chi is total relaxation while moving it would seem that the ideal is extremely rigid in that the actual form is very specific So my friends point was that Tai Chi, which we are both very devoted to, is based on some pretty serious rules. I had to think about that for a few days.
One of my very first realizations when I started to kind of understand Tai Chi was that when you get a movement right it feels absolutely perfect, as if one has made a movement that completely corresponds to physical perfection. If that is so, and I am really only speculating, then it would seem that Tai Chi, or perhaps any martial art properly followed, is actually a state of perfection in movement. That would then seem to mean that Tai Chi is not about following rules but about discovering perfection. What we see as rules are really a means of entering into that perfection.
The physical universe has rules. Granted they change from time to time as physics gets ever more sophisticated but some things seem pretty firm. If someone drops a big rock it is best if you are not standing under it and other things like that. But let is see if there may be other things going on besides these physical laws.

There is a basic statement in Sufism that goes like this – The state of perfect freedom is a place of no choice. What this means, as I understand it, is that perfect freedom is really a state of always being in the NOW and always making the most perfect response to any given condition or situation. In the Now, with no thoughts of previous situations or psychological baggage to demand that a person react or respond in a particular way, a person is free to respond in the most perfect manner. Each situation, condition or event will be responded to solely on it’s own merits without recourse to any personal history. This does not mean that you do not use your intelligence but it does mean that you do not judge a situation on other than what it is in the moment. This is an ideal that people know about but tend to dismiss as not very realistic or attainable. And frankly, I can think of quite a few arguments against being in this state, just from a sense of self preservation. Never the less it is worth examining. As it applies to our current discussion it is very pertinent.
In Tai Chi, one of the ideals is to be totally in the Now, not anticipating, not moving from this position to that position. It takes some time to get to this state as a person first has to discover those perfect moves within the discipline. In other words, you have to learn the choreography. And then you have to get good at it. Decades they say. But so what? If you spend decades slowly developing a sense of the Now then that is what you are doing and, once the Now is discovered, even if for a nano-second, everything changes. That is when you begin to realize that there really are no rules. Tai Chi is in truth no different from any spiritual discipline in that it requires concentration and skill. The one difference that I can see is that, unlike most other forms of meditation, you are moving – so there is a deeper incorporation of the physical realm. Other forms of meditation require physical discipline, in that one is demanding that the body be still, relaxed but still. Another difference that occurs to me, though I am not at all sure if this is true, is that making the leap into the Void is probably not possible with Tai Chi. Maybe it is but, if it is so, I have seen none of the tell tale signs one senses just before you make the transition into the Void.
What is the Void? It is the place of no thought. Perhaps I will talk about that more in another blog. For now you can think of it as a state wherein a person is privy to the thinking of the universe. And the thinking of the Universe discovers you.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

THERE ARE NO RULES

I am taking up where the last blog left off. When the two beings I mentioned in the previous blog put the thought in my mind that there are no rules I did not know quite what to do with the information. From an anarchist hippie point of view it is a glorious thought. One which can be savored and discussed and theologically developed forever. But we need some rules. Traffic rules for instance. It is nice to know when you proceed through a green light that people coming the other way will stop for the red one. Construction standards are pretty important too. When you ride in an elevator you would like to be assured that it is safe. You want to know when you purchase tires for your automobile that they meet a certain standard of reliability, that the manufacturer is following the rules. And so on. All of these things, plus many others are very obvious, so what could these beings have meant?

In Sufism there is a principle called Necessary Reality. What it is is a way of stating how the Universe organizes itself in order for it to exist. For the Universe to exist certain things must be in place. The most important thing is a means of, what I could call, Cosmic echo or feedback. The Universe has to have a means of giving itself information. Why you ask? What if it is all random and nothing is required to make any sense at all. I suppose that could be true but I prefer thinking of the Universe as intelligent. Taking that as a basic precept we can then postulate that the physical universe, with it’s various natural laws, is the means of echo for the intelligence that comprises the body of the Universe and whatever lies beyond. What is basic to this concept is limitation. What that means is that in order for some kinds of physical reality to be in place there must be certain limiting laws. Orbital mechanics for instance or the necessity of creating some kind of mobile physical unit that can explore, human bodies come to mind. Bodies have limitations too, no air no life no movement. Never the less the message was clear, There Are No Rules. What could it mean?

After almost 35 years I am still not quite sure but I have some ideas. The whole message had to do with how we see things. Looked at that way then it becomes an inquiry into societal rules. In my last blog I talked about being a pot smoking hippie. One of the basic tenants of that period was that societal rules are bogus. Of course we still used society. We drove cars and trucks, dependent on society to provide fuel and spare parts. We used the roads, sent our kids to school, etc. But society was bogus. We were on the right track but kind of misunderstood how to go about achieving our ideal. The problem was that our ideal was pretty vague. War is bad, that was fairly firm. The way that people deal with one another can be improved, we understood that but not quite how to do it. We had a continually evolving list of societal wrongs that needed righting which we studiously ignored because, after all, we had dropped out, or so we told one another. Still it was the beginning of discovering how to understand There Are No Rules.

I think I have learned a little bit since those days. Not a lot but a little bit. There Are No Rules really means, as I understand it currently, what you observe or participate in has exactly as much reality as you ascribe to it. And, there really are no rules.

I know that a lot of scriptures insist that God has rules, the ten commandments and what not, but I am beginning to think that all of these rules were assumptions that became firm reality because everybody agreed they had reality. After a few centuries the agreement seems to be a rule that is inviolable. You will notice however that society, while giving lip service to the rules, ignores them if that is convenient. Notice for instance the Conservative Christian movement that has no problem ignoring Thou Shalt Not Kill. That’s pretty simple really, don’t kill except for those dirty Muslims of course. We can kill them. We will just ignore the rule in order to kill them. So, are there rules really? Only if it is convenient.

I invite your comments.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

RULES

When I was about 32 I was living in Oregon, in Eastern Oregon, the dry part. People think that Oregon is all lush temperate rain forest but that is just a thin strip along the Pacific Coast. Most of the state is what is called high desert. Not totally desert, there are plants and trees and some precipitation but it is very dry. I was living in a small town called Hermiston, living what was known then as the hippie life. I owned a house, a small, white clapboard affair. I had a wife, a son about 8 and a daughter 2. I was working as a carpenter, making fairly good money and I was getting stoned almost every night. This was in the 70's so smoking pot, though illegal was kind of accepted and did not have the stigma it currently enjoys. Also at that time the pot we bought was not nearly as strong as what is available now so I think the culture was a bit different. In any case, one evening we had a party, not unusual as almost every Saturday night us pot-heads would gather at someone's house to get high and discuss important things, like how high we were and the best high we ever had, etc. It was all depressingly familiar and boring. On the particular night I am about to relate, someone had come with some LSD. This particular culture I was in was wary of LSD and most people did not use it. I had taken LSD a couple of times, in small doses, and liked it but was also a bit wary. This particular evening I took what was offered and waited for the experience to begin. One of the things that I had been doing at that time was reading a lot about mysticism and spirituality. I had read about meditation and kind of thought I understood. I didn't but what did I know? So, having taken the LSD, I decided to see what all the fuss was about and left the party to go to my bedroom. I sat on the bed, in what I thought was a proper meditative position, closed my eyes and waited for something to happen. About then the LSD kicked in.
I think that LSD tends to follow your intent or at least your sub conscious wants. Your mind slides into a new groove but with the old stuff guiding because that is how you understand. So a person who is subliminally paranoid of the world will have an intense experience of paranoia. What I dearly wanted was to understand why things work. That has always been my motivation, my core need. So that's what happened. I was sitting there, pretending to meditate, when my body disappeared. Richard Alpert describes a similar experience in Be Here Now. What then happened was what is called a White Light Experience. Your consciousness finds itself in a place of light. There is no point source like a sun or a lamp, everything is just light. This was scary, terrifying but I rode it out, determined to understand. Then I realized that there were two beings, one on either side, telling me things. I could not see them. There aren’t any bodies as such in this place I guess. I was aware that they were filling me with information, things that I needed to know but I could not seem to hold onto anything intellectually. On reflection I believe they were putting this information directly into my sub conscious, bypassing the critical mind entirely. I do not know how long I sat there, over an hour I think. At some point I realized that I had a choice at this moment. I could stay with these beings, leave my body behind and go into their world; or, I could return to my body and fulfill my responsibilities, responsibilities which, at this time, were fuzzy at best but seemed very important. I opted to return. As I was rediscovering my body, both beings said a last piece of advice to me. It is the only piece that I consciously remember. They both said, at the same time, "Remember, there are no rules!"
I got my body back, got up, stiffly I might add, and returned to the living room. I think I expected some kind of acknowledgment of my inner journey, some kind of notice but there was nothing, no notice at all. Everyone was just as before, stoned, telling one another how stoned they were, how this stone compared to other stoned nights. No one noticed that I had changed. But I knew. I think this was the moment when I realized that this world of stoned people was not for me. It was the moment when I slowly began to withdraw. The moment that eventually led to the dissolution of my first marriage and the beginning of the long journey to find my teacher.

MANIFESTATION

“When a desire becomes a steady thought, its success is assured.’
Hazrat Inayat Khan

Last Thursday my book, “The Sovereign Soul,” was shipped from the printers.  Now the next phase starts; marketing.  
I apologize for having been absent from this blog for so long.  I think this holding my breath, waiting for the book to be printed, so I can get started marketing, has kept me from doing anything creative.  It has been a strange time.  I have been holding the thought of the manifestation of this book in my mind, in my concentrations for 8 years and finally it is happening.  Now the hard part begins.
The very first question that my publisher asked me, when we had our single face to face meeting, was whether or not I would be willing to make myself available to market the book.  I had known this would be my responsibility and instantly answered that yes I would.  Then he spent the next half hour telling me all the reasons I should agree, which I found amusing.  Finally his wife, who was also at our sole meeting, reminded him that I had actually agreed and there was no need to persuade me.  It was my introduction to the world of publishing.  Apparently a lot of authors think that, just because they have written something amazingly compelling, it’s energy will draw readers and they have to do nothing themselves.  So this is what he was used to and I guess he didn’t even hear my instant agreement.  
Pir O Murshid’s saying above points to something quite important.  When you are manifesting something you have to stay with it, an idle wish will not do.  Many of us wish for things, all sorts of things.  We see these things or events as objects of desire  but probably unobtainable because of the various barriers in front of us.  One of my favorites is walking through a museum and seeing a painting that I would just love to live with, to own.   I can see it on my wall, delighting me for years as much of my art does.  But this is a museum piece, loved by thousands, maybe millions, so this is just an idle wish on my part.  And no, I would not want a print of the painting, that is not the same thing.  In any case, this is a wish that is unfulfillable.  There would be no point in sitting and concentrating on this object of desire because it ain’t gonna happen.  
In the case of my book however it was much different.  When I first began to write I used to secretly think of what it would be like to be famous.  I would day dream about being admired, of people asking me to sign their copies and asking me to tell them the secret of life.  The day dreams got pretty elaborate.  Still I was able to set them aside in the actual writing, striving for the most honest presentation of the issues that I could manage at the time.  Then it was finished.  That was the hardest time.  I was truly afraid to send it out to publishers.  It sat in my computer, got transferred to a new computer, but I did not send it out at all.   I did send it to some friends to read, all of whom praised it but still I did not believe.  
Finally my wife hypnotized me.  Have I ever mentioned that we are both certified hypnotists?  There is a link to our web site here.  Anyway she hypnotized me and told my subconscious that it could send the book out, that it would be okay.  Know what happened?  I sent ten proposals to ten different publishers on a Wednesday, on the succeeding Friday I got a call from the man who would turn out to be my publisher.  
Then a whole new struggle began.  I had to learn to work with an editor.  I had to learn when to give in and when to insist.  I fear I gave in too much but now I know the process and perhaps I am a somewhat better writer as a result, I hope I am.  
What was interesting and a bit dismaying was realizing that this journey of manifestation that I had begun now was somewhat out of my hands.  I had one editor at the beginning and then at the end I had two.  Both of them having their own ideas about how to say what I was teaching through my book.  I had to let a lot go, hoping that my style would come through all the changes.  It was a big lesson.  We think that we understand the laws of manifestation but usually we only see them in the light of our individual, separate wants.  We often fail to realize that what we are manifesting affects others.  Often their world must shift in order for what we want to come about.  
I am reminded of a conversation I had once with Pir Vilayat.  We used to kid him a lot because whenever he organized an outdoor meditation event with everyone sleeping in tents, it would inevitably rain.  I asked him once why he didn’t take care of that, change the weather.  I was pretty sure he could do that.  He replied that if he did that then someone else’s weather could be drastically affected and he was not wise enough to know if that mattered or not.  Makes sense.  
So be aware, when you decide to manifest something, other things have to adjust to your intent.  That doesn’t mean you should not do it.  I know my book is a good thing.  What I was not aware of until just now was what it would take to make it happen.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

Spiritual Messiness

”Balance is the keynote of spiritual attainment.”
Hazrat Inayat Khan


     Hazrat Inayat Khan came to the US in 1910 but he did not stay long.  After a brief sojourn in the UK he ended up living in Suressnes France, a suburb of Paris.  For 18 years he lectured and gave spiritual instruction to an ever expanding group of students.  These lectures are collected in a 14 volume set of books called collectively “The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan”   What has always amazed me about his lectures is the astonishingly wide array of subjects that he discussed.  Everything from war to relationships plus of course much instruction in the spiritual life and how it relates to ordinary living.  One of his constant subjects was balance, which always puzzled me.  
     Some forms of balance are obvious.  Standing up is a form of balance.  Finding the balance point of a long object, such as a ladder or a wooden plank, in order to carry it comfortably, is another.  But that is not what he is talking about.  He specifically says, many times, that the object of spirituality is a balanced life.  But what does that mean?  It has puzzled me for 25 years.  I am not sure if I understand completely yet but I do have some ideas.  
     First of all, a balanced life is not necessarily what our culture, whatever it may be, says it should be.   Societies tend to want their members to conform to some abstract ideal which is almost always restrictive.  I do not believe that balance is gained by conforming or restricting.  What I have come to believe is that a balanced life truly does have two poles.   One is living in the world and the other is a calm awareness of our celestial being.   And that is where the title of this essay comes from.  
     People who follow some kind of spiritual path tend to look up to the celestial spheres and to take their clues for living from those realms.  We also tend to accept definitions of how we should live based on the assumptions of the particular spiritual society we happen to be in.  Even though Sufism, to which I belong, is supposed to be without compulsion, still people tend to create cultural assumptions and patterns of expected behavior.  It is a natural tendency of humans to want to know that others around them have the same or a similar response to worldly events.  We also want to know that when we say something the response will be within a certain framework.   Fortunately or unfortunately, people doing real spiritual work also tend to push against these restrictions because their deep experiences often belie their conformity to the restrictions imposed by their culture, be it spiritual or secular.  That’s when things get messy.  

“How did I rise above narrowness? The edges of my own walls began to hurt my elbows.”  HIK

     We are, each of us, restricted in many ways.  And when our elbows begin to  hurt we look around and wonder where the pain is coming from.  If we are totally honest with ourselves, we will not blame those around us for this discomfort.   As it happens however, we do blame others.  It can take numerous forms, from blaming our parents for traumas, real or imagined, to blaming a particular aspect of society for our problems.  That can be anything from governmental restrictions, to religious oppression which we feel is harming us or holding us back.  In almost all cases there will be some element of self worth analysis.  We do tend to demand that the world support our opinion of ourselves so when we begin to look within we get confused.  This is probably because our self image is so wrapped up in external confirmations.  
     The other night I asked my meditation class what was the one thing they each saw as their prime restriction.  I thought at least some would say self worth but each person, in their own way, said fear.  Fear of all sorts of things but mostly fear that what is to be accomplished will not manifest.  In other words, fear of failure.  Fear of failure is an aspect of self worth issues of course.  What is important is that each person was aware enough to realize that this fear was a restriction for them and could be paid attention to.  
     What to do, what to do?

     One thing that has become very obvious to me over the years is that spiritual training might not help much.  Learning to meditate and to reach ever higher planes of consciousness may have a wonderful effect on your over all being but the baggage does not seem to be all that affected.  In fact I believe that it is not all that uncommon for a person who has attained to some kind of spiritual enlightenment to assume that all of their problems are automatically taken care of.  It is like the very common story of some great Guru or Sadhu, who has many followers because of his spiritual purity and who finally decides to come down from his mountain and visit a town.  His followers are delighted that he is finally returning from his decades long sojourn to the inner worlds and follow him all excited to view the great man bringing blessings to their town.  But when the first person to confront him is a filthy beggar, the Guru snarls at him, kicks him and demands that he be removed from his pure sight.  There are various versions of this story but the point is clear.  Spiritual work does not guarantee an even, balanced personality.   Ya gotta get down in there and work on it in a very basic way.  Perhaps the most effective way is to never ever assume that who you think you are is complete.  I have noticed that the people who are most effective in this work are those who never stop working on themselves, the people who are always willing to be the student, to learn from others and to be forgiving of their own and others foibles.  
     It’s a messy world, with all sorts of problems to face.  Maybe that’s what makes it fun, if you let it.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir
     



     

Book Excerpt

CHAPTER 5

SURRENDER


All surrender to beauty willingly and to power unwillingly.  -   Hazrat Inayat Khan

If thou desire the presence, union with God Most High, from him be not absent; when thou visitest thy Beloved, abandon the world and let it go.  -  Hafiz


The word “surrender” in English has very precise connotations, none of them warm and cuddly.  It evokes images of domination by a superior force, of being compelled to do something we’d rather not do.  That’s in English.  Other languages, I understand, don’t have the same problem.  A Japanese friend tells me her language has two words for surrender which are very different in connotation, one meaning what the English word means and the other denoting “the acceptance of love’s enfoldment.”   Probably other Asian languages make the same distinction.  But the connotations in English are the only ones I know, and they’ve always sent slight shivers up my spine.
Maybe the concept of surrender is an easy one for you.    If so, I applaud you for your spiritual maturity.  As for me, for a long time, whenever I heard people in Sufi circles talk about surrender— surrender to the beloved, for example—my immediate reaction was: “There’s no way I’m going to do this thing that I don’t even understand!”  Admittedly, the phrase “surrender to the beloved” has a poetic ring to it, but to me it always seemed to imply that you were handing power over to whomever this beloved character was.
And, in fact, that’s exactly what it does imply.  But there are certain words and phrases that mean one thing in ordinary parlance and yet resound with a whole other layer of meaning when they’re used in a mystical sense. “Surrender to the beloved” is one of these.   Certainly, surrender to the beloved has the meaning we customarily assign it—I mean the one that sends shivers up my spine.  But in the language of Sufism that phrase resonates with a mystical meaning that transports us to regions far beyond the mind.

In earlier chapters, I alluded to a “place of no thought,” one that Pir Vilayat calls the “awakening beyond life.”  My personal experience of this place is limited, and I’m reluctant to describe something I’m not completely familiar with.  But here goes, and in what follows I rely heavily on what the Sufi metaphysicians have said through the ages; in other words, I won’t rely on my own understanding, but will try to provide you with the distilled wisdom of others.
We‘ve tried to compensate for the harsh undertones of the word “surrender” in English by creating the phrase “willing surrender,” which usually refers to a love relationship (though even here, as my wife points out,  we usually mean the surrender of a woman’s will to the supposedly more powerful, more  magnetic, will of the  man).   However, in this chapter I’m talking about surrender in the context of spirituality or religion, and in this context we generally mean willing surrender.  Even here, though, it seems to imply the surrendering of our own puny human will to the all-powerful will of the Creator.
For the Sufi, the word “surrender” has a totally different meaning.  Sufism maintains that the human being experiences two completely different but mutually dependent states of being.  There is several ways to look at it but the most common within Sufism is to examine this duality from the point of view of Wahdat Al Wujud—the Unity of Existence.
Wahdat Al Wujud is a specific condition, or more accurately lack of condition, wherein all created things are equidistant from the source and have no existence in and of themselves, they have only the potential for self-expression. Selfness or individuation is irrelevant in this state. To experience Wahdat Al Wujud, you must go beyond the state of reason, the state of regarding reality as discreet bits of information, and merge with the void of timeless nothingness wherein all things have their source and nothing has separate value.
Follow all that?  Good!  This is the experience of ultimate unity that the mystics, just as I have, continually fail to adequately describe.  Pir Vilayat says of this state that it comes before you realize it and is gone before you know it has come.  Other Sufis describe the state as a place of no thing, or The Blackness.  Everyone seems to agree that Wahdat Al Wujud is definitely not out there, but in here, in our being, and that we attain it by diving within, not by searching without.  It’s a difficult state to describe because we are constantly forced to fall back on the vocabulary of the everyday world to describe it, and Wahdat Al Wujud is beyond any words that are available to us in our everyday language describing discreet impressions.  
Sufis get around the difficulty of describing Wahdat Al Wujud by resorting to metaphor.  The most common metaphor they use is that of the ocean and waves.  In our ordinary conscious state, they explain, we normally perceive the waves; we are entirely ignorant of the ocean that is the source and support of the waves.  These waves, even while we perceive them as discreet objects, are not really separable from the ocean. But in our preoccupation with the shape, the size, the color, the emotional content, and so on of the waves, we completely miss seeing the ocean.
If, by dint of spiritual practices and meditation, we are able to perceive the ocean and merge with it, however slightly, then the waves will recede from our sphere of attention and the ocean will become all.   On the face of it, this may seem like a desirable state, and it is—except that when we are one with the ocean we can’t interact with the waves; we can’t get on with the ordinary business of living.  To interact with the waves effectively, we have to give them most of our attention.  This isn’t hard when we’re not aware of the ocean’s existence; then, only the waves are real.  But once we notice that the ocean exists, things are never the same again.

Limitations

“Place a sentinel at the doors of perception.” Pir Vilayat

The above is an instruction that Pir Vilayat always gave at the beginning of a group retreat and was the advice he gave for the beginning of an individual retreat. For many years I did not understand what he meant. Where was this sentinel guy who was supposed to show up and combat all the stray sights and sounds that I was to be protected from? Wherever he was, he wasn’t at my perception doors because I could hear every little sound, was super aware of the people around me and was continually opening my eyes to check things out. I knew that he meant something that I did not understand so it was frustrating. The problem was, you see, that Pir Vilayat was very visual. He had no trouble at all in conjuring up various sorts of mental imagery and using that imagery for himself and as a reference for his students. For those of us without that ability however, some of the things he said made no sense at all. The sentinel business was the least of it. He also had this meditation that he would lead which he called Landscapes of the Soul. Some people would sit rapt in ecstasy when he went through one of these meditations. Me? I couldn’t follow it at all. In fact I once asked him for help since I felt so embarrassed that I couldn’t follow him. He did try to help but I quickly realized that he didn’t understand my problem. I simply do not get clear mental imagery. At best it is murky. I understand that about a third of humanity is this way. Pir Vilayat was at the other end of things and was very able to summon up just about any image he liked. So he simply did not understand my problem and gave me advice based on his experience. This taught me a really valuable lesson.
We all have limitations. Even a highly respected teacher will, occasionally, not know what to do. In my own case, I happen to be blessed with students who tell me if what I tell them does not work for them. I do worry about the ones who say nothing though. Nothing to be done about that I guess other then to tell people that they can tell me if it doesn’t work.
Limitations are interesting for lots of reasons. One of the reasons is that we often do not recognize our limitations, thinking instead that others are not understanding us and it is their fault. In fact we can get quite irritated at the apparent stupidity of others for not getting IT. I believe that the more truncated our world view, the more likely we are to feel this way, and we will be all the more likely to think that it is the responsibility of others to grasp our intent - no matter how poorly it is explained. In fact I have seen people get all upset at someone else for something that the other person did not even know was happening; that they had no clue at all about. Have you ever heard someone, or even yourself say, “He should have known…..!” Meanwhile, the one who should have known has no information at all about what he, “should have known!”
I have been a carpenter most of my life, an up and down business as anyone in the construction field will tell you. During one particularly dry period, I took a job as a Job Corps instructor. It was a frustrating experience for all sorts of reasons but one of the more frustrating aspects was teaching these kids to use a hammer. For a carpenter a hammer is just part of your hand. You don’t think about it, you just use it. Not for the students. They would watch me and then bend nails, watch me again, bend more nails. It took me two full years to figure out how to teach someone to use a hammer. So, my limitation in understanding wasted two years of student learning. That was another lesson for me.
How often do we think that we understand something, maybe it is political, not realizing that our truncated point of view is keeping us from seeing all of the condition. And then we get angry because others, also subject to limitation, do not understand in the way we do. What is needed it would seem is for conversation, listening to others and trying to understand, wrong though they may be, but instead we get frustrated and angry, or worse; contemptuous of the other point of view.
One way that I think of all of this is to imagine that God, or however you think of Universal Intelligence, has need of all points of view, all types of experiences. I know this can seem a really harsh way to see things but experience would seem to say it is true. If the statement, Nothing Exists But God, which is in so many religions and philosophies, is in fact true; then that would mean that the terrorist is just as valid as the saint. How we think of each is also valid. In fact everything that happens has validity. It is all a conversation that the Universe is having with itself. This is where the mystic’s point of view becomes so very important and acceptance of all things becomes our schoolwork.
I invite your comments.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

ps: I forget to mention that I finally did figure out what the Sentinel was. It is ignoring the outside stimuli. It is a skill that you gain after some practice. If you send me a private e-mail, I will explain it further.

Fear of Death

“Where does the fear of death come from?
Ignorance of the self gives fear of death. The more one learns of the self, the less fear there is of death, for then man sees only a door to pass through from one phase of life to another - and the other phase is much better. The more spiritually one lives, the less fear there is of death. The more one lives in the soul, the less hold one has upon the body. The body has fear according to the consciousness it has in itself. Man is not only dependent upon his mind for thought, but every atom of the body is to some extent conscious, and so protects itself” Hazrat Inayat Khan

A lot, perhaps most, of these articles come from conversations that I have with people and this one is no different. I seem to get my best teachings from the people around me who think I am teaching them. I have been convinced for some time that I am the one who is blessed with so many wonderful, thoughtful teachers.
In this particular case one of my friends, who purchased an advance copy of my book, happened to mention that she was reading a section where I say that the reason I began serious spiritual work was because I wanted to die consciously. She then said that death was her major fear. As we talked about it, it became clear that her fear came from the images conjured up in her childhood by the talk she heard in her church about the dangers of Hell. She said that it was probably childish and silly to feel that way but there it was. It isn’t silly. We all have childhood images of various kinds that form how we feel and act as adults. Some of them are so deep that we have no idea they are there. In my friend’s case, she was very aware of the cause of her fear but felt helpless to do anything about it. Maybe that is so, but I think that once identified a person is well on the way to healing whatever trauma was inflicted upon them. And it is a trauma, make no mistake.
It would not surprise me at all to find that the vast majority of people who rise to the top of a religious organization are bureaucrats and have never had the sort of mystical experiences that actually formed their organization, church, whatever. Part of the reason that they rise to the top is their desire to tell other people what to do. And these people have imaginations. Can you imagine the delight that they experience in realizing that their dictates form the doctrine that others are expected to believe and to teach? I can clearly remember being taught in Sunday School as a six year old, the horrors of Hell. Who would tell a six year old that they are bound for eternal damnation if they are not good? It kind of reminds me of cigarette companies being delighted at every 12 year old who tries a smoke
But what to do about this particular trauma?
I do not know that this will work for everyone but I can tell you what I did. Some years ago, when I was still quite young, in my early 30’s, I realized that I was very worried about death. So, I started thinking about all the various ways that I could die. It became a kind of habit. I would be sitting alone in my living room and I would visualize a death. It might be from hanging, or fire, or drowning, or some kind of sickness, even being tortured to death. It became a very gruesome exercise but I was determined to imagine as many ways that my body could be forced to stop operating as possible. At this point I was not so concerned with what happened after but with the event itself. This is when I slowly began to realize that there really was a continuation. I am not sure how I came to this conclusion, more early childhood training perhaps, but it was definitely there, a kind of sure knowledge. With this knowledge came something else. I discovered that I did not want to die in my sleep, I wanted to be awake for the whole thing, from the moment my body stopped, right on through that transition through the tunnel that everyone talks about, to finding out what happens after you emerge from the tunnel and what goes on after that. That is when I began to study mysticism seriously because I realized that simple doctrine and acceptance of some religious bureaucrats pronouncements was not going to work for me. I later found out that this is a normal Sufi exercise (and here I thought I invented it) which goes along with spending nights in graveyards and communing with spirit beings.
Death is a natural normal phenomena that we all must experience. Perhaps the exercise above is to harsh for you but you might find some way of coming to terms with what will happen. And another thing – this whole idea that God, the God of mercy and compassion – would condemn any soul to eternal damnation and torture – well that is just patently silly. Leave it to bitter old men to come up with something to control people.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

Thoughts on Unity

“The worlds are held together by the heat of the sun; each of us are atoms held in position by that eternal Sun we call God. Within us is the same central power we call the light, or the love of God; by it we hold together the human beings within our sphere, or, lacking it, we let them fall.” Hazrat Inayat Khan

Do you ever look at the people around you and just appreciate them? Not saying anything to them, just appreciating? I think it is a special state of consciousness to be aware of and appreciate those around you. As if you are basking in the light of these people.

If you have then you understand the above quote. It is that last phrase that is the kicker.

You will notice that Pir O Murshid says that this light is within us, that the love of God is right there inside of us. Which can seem wonderful and exciting or simply frustrating as we try to figure out just what that means. First of all let us define God. Everyone has their own idea about what that is, in fact in Sufism each person is encouraged to create their own God ideal. This may be a very personal being or it may be an amorphous intelligence, remote and indifferent. What ever your ideal it still remains that you are a part of the Universe and cannot separate yourself from it. That is what he means. Since you are part of it, the Universe or God, you also have the right to use this connective energy, Love, to embrace those around you. I think the first step is acknowledging that you are indeed a part of the Universe or God. That may seem very hard as we are trained to think of ourselves as separate, competitive beings, who must constantly fight others for our place in the world. All too true. Every time you apply for a job and there are other applicants, you are in competition. If you live in a city you compete for parking spaces. There are lots of things like that. Is it possible for you to think of this as living in the world while also being an intrinsic part of it? How to explain? It is as if there are two very distinct things going on. One is the normal competition of every day life and the other is the combined expression of Universal Intelligence that we all are part of.

On a more personal note, when you are with your family or friends, do you compete for food at the table or do you offer tidbits to one another? Do you compete for other things or constantly defer to one another? There are lots and lots of possible dynamics here I realize, not all of them pretty but one must start somewhere.

I am not advocating suddenly embracing someone who has abused you or whom you find difficult. What you can do, however, is see if you can discover how they fit into the Universe, because they obviously are in here with you. This is a very secret place that Pir O Murshid is talking about, a deep awareness of our intrinsic interconnections. So, as I said, it is as if there are two very distinct ways of seeing that are not exclusive of one another, they are just different. One is the realistic observations you make about your immediate environment, taking into account your personality and the personalities of those around you; and the other is the fundamental reality that we are all in this together, along with the planet, the stars, the galaxies and all the beings of all the dimensions of manifestation.

Let me know what these thoughts bring up within you.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

Beyond Distrust

I have been thinking lately about policemen. All cultures have people who are drawn to this sort of work, for good or ill. The more honest and free a culture the more likely these people will be restrained. Conversely the more dictatorial a culture, the more likely they will be unrestrained and overtly brutal.
What I think about is that I cannot remember a single encounter with a policeman that was pleasant. Most of these encounters over the years have been traffic stops. It is hard to live in the city and not be stopped occasionally, if only for a broken tail light. The thing is, it is never, “I’m sorry sir, I need to tell you that your tail light is out.” No it is always an excuse to check you over. And you can almost feel the air of suppressed contempt or distrust.
I have been thinking a lot about this recently and wondering if there is anything that could be done to change this philosophy. I am a normal person, I do the right thing and so on. It is annoying to be seen as a potential criminal with every minor encounter.
There is a young man in my apartment building whom I have known since he was 10. He has recently joined the NYPD and already I see the change taking place in him. He rarely speaks now, just looks at you and kind of grunts. He seems to view everything with suspicion and is slowly losing touch with normal people. It is sad to watch.
I am beginning to think of this sort of attitude as an extreme example of the fundamental emotion that is so prevalent in the world’s culture, distrust. Distrust is right up there with disappointment as a basic emotion we deal with constantly. I suppose it would stand to reason that those who have the illusion of power, while knowing they must follow certain rules, would also fall victim to distrust. Perhaps more than most. After all they are constantly running into all sorts of extremes and are also constantly describing these extremes to one another. The problem is though that most people, by far the majority, do not fall into the extreme category.
If our world wide culture is typically responsive emotionally to distrust, whatever can we do to change this? Smile at policemen? Maybe. Or maybe the problem is how we insulate ourselves within our tiny little world of friends who share our basic attitudes and how we are so very reluctant to step outside. See if you can step out of that world and encounter someone, at their level, that you would not normally encounter. Policemen have a very limited world view but then I suspect so do we all. It seems that I am constantly reminding myself, and others, to look beyond what we think should be real. We all tend to think that others share our basic viewpoints and have trouble understanding why someone would not, even when it is obvious that they do not. Many conversations begin with, “Why can’t they see………..?” Do you suppose the reverse is true as well? That these people who cannot see are saying the same of you?
What is hopeful is that we notice these apparent aberrations and think about them. Condemning behavior we find difficult may not be as powerful as simply noticing and perhaps thinking how we can respond in a manner that will ease that constant sense of disappointment and distrust. Most of the time I think of the correct response too late, long after the fact. Very occasionally the most perfect response is right there, in the moment. Eventually, with constant attention, I hope to catch up with my more perfect responses and do the right thing in the moment more of the time.
It may be that this noticing of distrust, disappointment, resentment, despair and all the other emotions that we seem to wallow in is our opportunity to go beyond – if only we can see the possible or – as my teacher would say – have the point of view of the soaring eagle. This does not mean looking down upon all of the little people and feeling superior. It means seeing, as much as possible, how all things, beings, emotions, etc., interconnect and then doing our best to embrace all while continuing to maintain our basic dignity.

Many Blessings, Musawwir

More Patience

I just had a long talk with one of my friends about something that she just discovered about herself.  In telling me she also said that she hoped I would write about it and maybe help someone else to see what can happen.  
My friend had an awful childhood, about as bad as I have ever heard from someone.  I know there are worse ones but not one that anyone has discussed with me.  Needless to say this childhood, which I will not describe, did not equip this person for life in the world in a genteel manner.   It would be my expectation that such a childhood would lead a person automatically to hook up with an abusive type man and, until yesterday, that is what I thought her first marriage was like.  The marriage she is in now is with a true passive/aggressive type person and is something that she is slowly extracting herself from but her first marriage was out of the normal pattern, she actually married a nice guy.  He was supportive, he constantly encouraged her, he made excuses for her and gave her as much as she needed.  In return she was the abusive one.  She realizes now that she simply had no way of understanding what was happening.  Her cultural and familial training had taught her to be defensive, aggressive, distrustful and terrified so, she treated this man really badly.  In other words she had no clue how to be loved because that emotion had never been in her world before.  So she divorced this man, that being the only response possible for her, since being loved was so alien, and married a passive/aggressive man who would treat her as she expected to be treated.  
Does this sound familiar to anyone?  
What then happened, apparently as a result of some clues she had extracted from other talks, was that, on a recent evening, she went into a state that in Sufism is called Shahid, The Witness.  Shahid is a state wherein all things observed are simply looked at.  There is no judgment, no assessment or opinion, you just look.  It is a fairly high state of observation since a person has to leave all of their opinions about what is behind and just observe.  So she was looking at her life, all of it, and seeing that this man, her first husband was in fact her first teacher.  He was the person who showed her that there were other ways of being that she had yet to understand or accept.  At the time she simply could not respond as we might expect her to in our fantasies.  All she could do was remember.  Finally, after 15 years, the lessons became real and she has begun the very painful but wonderful process of recognizing who she really is.  
There is much more to this story of course.  All the drama and angst and bitter assessment of her own reactions but slowly she is seeing what we all might see, that our reactions to conditions are all part of our learning and ultimately are part of the healing that must take place for us all.  
We all have poor reactions to things that are not part of our normal matrix just because we have no way of knowing what is appropriate.  And an argument could be made that any reaction is appropriate because that is what we are doing.   For instance, what did the first husband learn about himself and about life as a result of this total rejection?  
So, for just a moment, allow yourself to look on a part of your life that you are sure is already settled and see if perhaps there is something that you were being asked to learn but which you simply could not see at the time.  It can be embarrassing of course but so what!  Embarrassment is part of the spiritual path.  And while you are doing that, consider all of the people around you who are also struggling to heal their psychic damage.  Do you suppose it is possible to allow them their current states?   Do you suppose that they too will discover something, some years down the road, that they could not see in the moment?  It does not mean that you have to put up with their nonsense but it can mean that, while you are extracting yourself from some relationship, that you also see what is possible, for them, for you and for humanity.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

Growing Into Your Purpose

Thursday I gave my very first book related talk.  It was not that different from other talks I have given except that now I have a product to point to and that apparently makes me more legitimate.  It is probably natural enough that people want some sort of evidence of a person’s effectiveness and the acceptance of one’s manuscript by a publisher is certainly a type of evidence.  I have known this for some time, knowing this was part of my motivation to keep going with the manuscript – a minor part but I was aware of it.  

One of the very first things that my publisher said to me was that it was all well and good to write something which was unique, interesting and spiritually valuable but, if you don’t get out there and sell it, you cannot expect people to feel your energy in the ethers and come flocking to your door – you have to get out and sell.  This told me that – no matter what a persons deep inner truth – still they must engage the world on its terms.  Which isn’t to say that one cannot push against those terms but they must be paid attention to on some level.  

I think there is this tendency in people to assume that, when they discover something deep or make some alteration in their life that is difficult or profound for them, others will instantly recognize it and honor it.  Nope.  In fact it seems to be just the reverse.  I have seen many people over the years take on some sort of discipline or energy and then expect others to just fall in line and accept or run to them for advice.  As if the world should totally alter itself just for them.  It doesn’t work that way.  It would be nice if it did but it doesn’t.  

The tendency in spiritual type people is to assume that everyone sees their bright shining visage, recognizes them for the brilliant light they are and falls at their feet begging to be given The Word.   I admit to thinking this early on, though I soon realized no one was paying attention.  What we need to realize is that we need two things, skill and some kind of documentation.  Just because you have had a deep experience of light does not mean that you are equipped to teach it or transmit it.  If you know, or think you know, that you are meant to be a teacher then it is important that you figure out just how it is that you are going to incorporate the needs of the world with your insight.  If you insist that the world conform to you, you will be disappointed.  

Instead you might accept that your experience or experiences is just the beginning of a long journey which is leading you to an unknown destination.  In my case I always knew that eventually I would have to do something to give me the legitimacy to do what  I believe I am meant to do.  It took awhile, thirty years, but it finally came together.   So, as one of my young friends says, remember the “P” word – Patience.
Many Blessings, Musawwir

Fear

“Is fear inherent in the soul, as you said the angels feared the contact with the body?
Fear is a shadow cast upon the light of the soul. And of what is that shadow? That shadow is of something that the soul does not know, something that is strange to it. For instance, take a person near the water who has never learned to swim; he is not acquainted with water, he is not at ease, there is his fear. Another person gets rid of that feeling of strangeness, he knows his own power over the water, he has no more fear. Therefore, fear comes from ignorance. As everyone fears to go in a dark room when he does not know what is there, so the soul in entering the body of clay naturally is frightened.”  Hazrat Inayat Khan

Sometimes people do things that I simply do not understand.  I try to understand but it is not always possible.  And then I get it, they are afraid.  Which is totally understandable.  From the paragraph above we could extrapolate that we begin our journey on the Earth in fear, the fear of the unknown.  I have a very clear memory of that moment when my soul decided to take the plunge and enter into manifestation.  Don’t know how I have it but it is there.  I remember the emotion mostly, one of terror and excitement – wanting the experience yet afraid of the unknown.  That emotion seems to always be there just at the moment of a spiritual breakthrough of some sort.  It is there every time.  Isn’t it strange that we come in with the very emotion that we must constantly face?  
Pir Vilayat often talked about this moment of terror that one must go through before any breakthrough.  He also was fond of saying, “A breakdown can often aver itself into a breakthrough.”  The second part of that was always an explanation about how one must push through the fears that accompany the breakdown in order to discover what it is hiding.  Another thing he was talking about at the end of his life was that if a person does not push through then they go backwards.   I think I feel like a yo-yo.
What seems to happen for most of us is that we will get right up to the point of almost wanting to push through, we will feel that breakdown, that despair or deep disappointment or however it manifests.  We might act it out in some way, causing difficulties for all the innocent bystanders.   And then we back off because we are afraid of the fear, the memory we have of that deep terror/excitement state that precedes the breakthrough.  Then, if Pir Vilayat is to be believed, we go backwards for a time and have to do the work - that got us to the breakthrough place in the first place - all over again.  Yo-yo’s indeed.  
As near as I can tell, this is the way that it is.  If it is any consolation to you, everybody seems to have the same problems.  Maybe knowing it is this way will ease the stress somewhat.  At least you will have a clue what is happening even if you can’t stop the cycle.  
Many Blessings, Musawwir

Surprises

I had the most wonderful experience the other night at Tai Chi class.  I don't know how much people know about tai chi, I am assuming not much for most folks, so I will explain.   Tai Chi is a form of Chinese martial art that is practiced very very slowly.  Perhaps you have seen it on TV.  What I practice is called the short form and has 37 different positions, each one flowing into the next.  At the beginning there is a position called raising hands.  Basically you stand square, equally balanced on both feet, hands at sides and work toward totally relaxing your body.  The idea is to balance your joints so well that you need no muscle tension at all to stay erect.  I had heard my teacher talk about this before but it had not really made sense to me.  One of those things that we do not really hear until we are ready to hear.   Anyway, at each class the teacher will pick out one very small part of the form to work on and this past Monday he picked the beginning.  And he was talking about this balancing act that one should work toward.  I listened and worked on what he was saying.  I guess I pulled it off because there came a point where my hands started to naturally rise without any effort on my part at all.  I could feel the energy lifting my arms, the Chi flowing from the ground to my finger tips and raising my hands and arms directly in front of me with no muscle effort from me at all, at least I could not feel any.  To tell you the truth it felt almost like a LSD experience from my youth, it was that intense.  After class I told the teacher what had happened to me.  He was excited to hear it and asked me if it felt freaky, which it certainly did.  So now I have felt something rare and profound and quite different from deep meditation.  A new experience.  I have been glowing ever since.  What is so cool is knowing that there is still more to be revealed through life experience and the effort a person expends if they want to keep learning.  I think that was the most comforting and exciting thing, to know there is more, not just intellectually but in reality.
I think it is true that even when we have a life altering experience we tend to think that it is an isolated thing and that we will probably have to base our life’s work on this single experience.  Near death experiences are probably the most extreme example but there are many others.  Having an intense romance when you are 20 is another, as we are sure no one ever had a love like we are having and we are convinced it will go on and on forever and ever, amen.  Religious or spiritual experiences fit into this category.  And apparently also experiences one has while practicing a martial art form.  I have had many such experiences throughout my life and each one seems to be the apex of what is possible and, each one is a surprise.  
What is true I think is that as long as a person continues to push beyond what they believe to be their limits, even if only imagining that something is going to happen, something will happen.  My experience in Tai Chi class was a total surprise to me.  It was scary and fun at the same time.  I guess if I had not already had many spiritual experiences it would have been really scary and might seem much more important than it really is.  Never the less it did remind me that more is always possible.

Many Blessings, Musawwir

Unconditional Love

Do  you know what it feels like to be loved?  Not because you are returning love or because of some kind of exchange, as in “Love me and I will love you!”  but just to be loved for no other reason then that you exist.  I recently had a conversation with a young lady who has just discovered this.  We agreed that it is daunting.  There is no expectation, no understanding, no agreement, just love.  She keeps looking for the catch and there is none.  For most of us, our relationships tend to revolve around agreements, e.g. ; I will live with you if you will live with me and reflect who I am in the manner that I expect.  That is how most relationships are.  However, when someone says they love you with no expectation of return, that is, or can be, intimidating.  It kind of puts you in the position of wondering what is going on.  Are they hustling me?  Is there something I don’t understand here?  And you might look over your shoulder and wonder if maybe this person got the wrong guy/girl.  What is funny is that a lot of people will deliberately do something to push the person who is doing the loving away because it just is too much to deal with.  And they will do this pushing away quite unconsciously.  So what can we do to accept Love in our lives?
The first and foremost step is to recognize that, despite our many flaws - all of whom show up at these moments - we are essentially lovable.  This may be the biggest hurdle to get over, that we are loved even though we are quite convinced that we do not deserve it.  It has nothing to do with what you deserve and has everything to do with Divine recognition.  Something about you stirs an essential response in the person who is loving you and they find it in themselves to acknowledge it.  In the case of a spiritual teacher or someone in that category this sort of thing is more or less expected though it can be none the less daunting.  When it comes from an individual who is shining the searchlight of their recognition directly upon you personally – well that can be quite uncomfortable.  
In the case of my young friend it was almost terrifying.  She kept telling me that no one in her life had ever allowed her to be who she is, and that may be key.  
People who express love to others almost always do so with some kind of demand.  It can be subtle but it will almost always be there.  Think about your own expressions.  Do you say, “I love you,” with an expectation of hearing it back in return?  Do you say it from an overwhelming emotion of deep recognition of the soul of the person before you or is it more in the line of some kind of need for acknowledgment.  This can be true even of a mother telling a child they love them, though that does tend to be closer to unconditional.  I suspect that, for most of us, any expression of unconditional love has to be preceded by a deep understanding of our own flaws and a willingness to be totally vulnerable with no expectation of any kind of response or return.  Which should give us a profound clue as to the true nature of the Divine Being or the Thinking Universe or however we accept the Over soul.  
Love & Blessings, Musawwir

Accomplishment

Yesterday I received the galley proof of my book, the final step before publication. Wow! I saw the mailman arrive at our apartment building and went downstairs to hover while he distributed mail to all the boxes. Finally he came to the magazines and packages and gracefully pulled mine out. Two copies of the book! This is my first look at the reorganization of chapters and seeing the whole thing, not just pieces and parts that I was expected to review and approve. Last night I read half of it. I would have read the whole thing but Majida demanded that I go to bed.

When you near the end of a project like this there is a kind of unreal quality to the event. You struggle and struggle to push through, not quite believing that it is in fact happening but still working to keep going. All through this process there has been a part of me that expects it all to collapse at some point. I am not sure how this would happen but something horrible will occur and the whole thing will collapse. I recognize that this is normal thinking for someone from my social strata, the lower middle class, and I labor to ignore the thinking but still it is there. On the other hand, occasionally I feel the coming success to be quite normal and deserved. Maybe not so much deserved as inevitable. There are times when I feel quite ordinary about all of this. That, I think, is the emotion to strive for.

Here is a quote from Hazrat Inayat Khan that has guided me for many years in overcoming my resistance to accomplishment:
“You may think, 'But if I keep on with the pursuit of my material desires, perhaps I may never reach the spiritual goal and will never get beyond my desires.' The answer to this is that if you let the desire go unfulfilled and you lack the patience needed to accomplish the desire, your progress will be arrested. This failure will keep you back from spiritual progress. When once you have accomplished one desire, you will have that something which is needed for the accomplishment of something greater. Every desire you accomplish is one step further towards that final goal which every soul ultimately has to reach.”

So what he is saying is that any accomplishment is important, any one at all. Everything is ultimately a spiritual pursuit. So my journey with the book has been one of constant self examination combined with moments of pure creativity. In between were moments of doubt, large malicious moments which seemed deadly and horrible. Then they are over. What you can learn is to see these moments as part of the transformation that you personally are working through so that the whole personality of the planet, of which you are a part, can transform. Isn’t that cool? You work on yourself and work on the whole at the very same time. The trick seems to be patience. What you are doing for yourself doesn’t appear to have much effect on the whole but, with a bit of patience and a bit of optimism, it may be possible to see your accomplishments as a part of the personality of the planet and further the personality of the Universe transforming itself.

Right now, the whole thing is confused and upset because of all the stresses involved in becoming a whole planet rather then disassociated societies that barely acknowledge one another. Anyone who is paying attention can see this. It may seem that we each must become very politically active and march and demand change and what not but maybe that isn’t it at all. Well it might be for some of us but for most it is a bit different. Our attention to our own deepening also deepens the whole planetary personality. It takes awhile and it isn’t always that rewarding but that is how it really works.

Give some thought to your own sense of accomplishment and responsibility and tell me about it.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

Acceptance

Many moons ago, in the early 1970’s, I suppose I could get the exact date if I cared to do the research, I watched the very first Saturday Night Live telecast.  It was a total shock - a howl - we had never seen anything like this on TV before.  Laugh-in paved the way and SNL created the expressway.  There is really no comparison between those early shows and the lame SNL production of today.  Anyway, that is not what I want to talk about.  The one bit I remember the best started out as, what everyone thought was, a regular Gillette commercial for a new razor.   The Gillette Triple Header.  At the time there was no such thing and the commercial was introducing it.  I was a hippie and had a beard so I was only paying moderate attention as the commercial extolled the magic of three separate shaving heads.  Then at the very end, John Belushi, as the announcer, says, “The Gillette Triple Header, because You will believe Anything.”   I fell over I laughed so hard.  Who knew that thirty years later we would have just such a product, which people buy, convincing themselves that it is better.  Schick even has a quad head.  Geeze.  
Myself, I have gotten along with a double edge safety razor since I was 18 and it is fine.  Granted I have a really good German made one but that is only because I could not find an American made safety razor of comparable value, in fact when the Gillette one I had used for the past 20 years wore out, I couldn’t find one at all.  Maybe at a flea market.  I expect the German one I have to be used by my grandson and maybe his grandson, it is that well made.  What do we have of comparable value?
It is the same in spirituality.  We tend to accept what we are told is true, maybe because we really want to.  We want to believe that the people we trust are trust worthy and have our best interests at heart, just like the Gillette company wants you to have the best shave and constantly strives to improve it’s product.  Uh-huh.  What I am coming to believe more and more is that it is individual.  
There is this young woman with whom I speak occasionally who lives in Chicago.  From my point of view she is really young to be delving into spiritual things but that is kind of beside the point.  She is constantly questioning me, demanding that I explain, criticizing my style, asserting other points of view.   It is very refreshing.  I wish more people did that.  What it means is that I cannot simply assert any ole thing and expect her to swoon in delight at my pronouncement.  Nope, I have to have my stuff together and be willing to go deep into a subject.  
I seem to find people like this, the ones who are not going to simply accept.  And that is what I wish for everyone.  We all want an identity, we want something to tell us what we are, baseball fan, mom, steel worker, Christian, Muslim, whatever.  All of these identities give reassurance but they have rules.  Even being a mom has cultural rules, standards that the culture expects a mom to follow.  And most do.  What the true mystic does however is participate in the culture he is in while knowing that it is just cultural and not fixed.  As near as I can tell, God has no partiality for any culture, though those cultures do tend to think, in fact often demand, that God does.  
The key I think is to honor the culture one finds oneself in while also recognizing that it is cultural and not the whole of anything.  God, or the Universe, or whatever you might want to call it is not cultural except in as much as the many cultures are part of the whole.  
Give it some thought and see what comes.
Love and Blessings, Musawwir

Listening

Majida and I have a small class in our home every Friday night. We do a little meditation, then we read something from the works of Hazrat Inayat Khan and discuss it a bit to see how people feel about what is said. Lastly we do some chanting. The discussions always seem to bring out interesting thoughts and feelings. I enjoy watching people process their inner world. I think it is important to learn to talk about the inner world. One effect is that you get to describe it to a sympathetic and supportive audience. We have one rule for these discussion sessions. The rule is no cross talk. No one is allowed to comment on what another person says except for Majida or myself. And we are very careful about what we say. The reason is obvious of course. These deep thoughts are so very secret in us that we bring them out reluctantly and we want our students to feel comfortable in revealing them, especially to themselves. It is quite wonderful to watch someone say something that surprises them. The looks of revelation on their faces are worth all the effort we go to. If we were to allow general comments then things would rapidly devolve into attack and defense, the normal mode of communication among humans. We established the rule just because of this.
People seem to want two things in normal everyday communication. One is to be right and the other is to fix the opinions of others. We know they would be ever so much better if only they would modify their thinking to be more in line with how we see their lives. Just think about how you listen to others and your impulses when they state something about themselves. I will bet anything that you instantly come up with several solutions for them. And this impulse extends beyond problems.
I have a very close relative whom I have yet to tell that I am about to be a published author. The reason I have not told him is that I know he will immediately want to tell me all the things I should do and how poor my contract is and on and on. He knows absolutely nothing about writing or publishing but there is not doubt in my mind about how the conversation will go. We all have someone, or several someone’s, in our family like this. If you are that someone then perhaps a bit of personality modification is in order. I have often thought that it is cowardice on my part to not tell him of my sudden success. On the other hand, why should I care.
There are many people, most people, to whom I do not reveal much of anything about my life. What would be the point? It is almost always best to keep your own council, as has been advised by many mystical sources, including Jesus I believe. On the other hand, the opportunity to examine your thoughts in a safe environment is priceless.
The normal mode of instruction in spiritual circles is for the teacher to talk, the students listen and accept. No discussion is allowed. For many years I thought this was the way I should be doing things and conducted my classes accordingly. Then some years ago, Majida and I - feeling a bit naughty – began to allow a bit of discussion, then a bit more. Gradually we have created this safe environment. The key I believe is listening. Usually, instead of commenting or criticizing, we try to ask just the right question that will hopefully help the person talking to see more of what they are trying to express. It is a tricky place but it can be done if you listen with the heart and not the critical mind.
Here is a little snippet from Pir O Murshid.
“The general attitude of man is that of listening to all that comes from outside; and not only are the ears open to the external world, but even the heart is attached to the ears. The heart which is listening to the voices coming from the external world should turn its back on all that comes from there, and wait patiently until it becomes capable of hearing the voice from within.”

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

Storms in Our Tea Cups

It has been suggested, by my wife and step-daughter, that I should address the issue of storms in tea cups that I mentioned in the previous blog.  My wife looked me right in the eye and asked what storms I have in my tea cup.  I of course replied that, since I am perfect, there were none at all.  This statement earned it’s deserved grunt of incredulity.  She ignored my braggadocio and pointed out that, even though we might see these storms as illusion, to the person experiencing them they can be quite significant.  And my step daughter wanted to know what to do about these little storms since they seem so insidious.  All good points.  So, what can we do?
Let’s first have a look at what Pir Vilayat meant by referring to storms in tea cups.  He usually made this reference when he was talking about gossip or how we over dramatize our personal problems.  I suppose he wanted his students to have a look at how we experience our conditions and how we react to the various things that we think are happening to us.  When a spiritual teacher is saying things like this to his or her students, a couple of things happen.  Some of the students will  listen attentively but essentially ignore what is not within their experience.  They realize that they can use the words of the teacher as bench marks to help them recognize their own processes.  They also know that what he says only matters in the abstract and personal experience is the real teacher.  Others will nod knowingly and attempt to be the ideal that the teacher is describing with varying degrees of success.   Both of these responses are just fine.  But guess what happens when these two groups compare notes?   Bubbling tea cups!  
You see the first group is skeptical, even of the teacher, and refuses to accept anything that is not a part of its personal experience.  They will question and challenge and demand and, in the end, teach the teacher, which is exactly as it should be.  The second group is on the path of devotion and does not understand the first group anymore than they are understood.  I have often thought that their very devotion supports the teacher in a way.  Both think they are right and, it is true, both are right.  Which brings us to the storms themselves.  
Everyone has problems to one degree or another.  Some problems are immense.  Having your home bombed and all of your family killed while sustaining serious injuries yourself and then becoming a war refugee.  This is a big problem which many people in the world currently face.  But that is not what is being referred to.  These storms in a tea cup are referring to our interactions.  Say someone violates you in some way, either real or imagined, how do you react?   Do you demand revenge?  Do you simmer in silence until an explosion is inevitable?  Do you meekly accept, resenting all the while?  These are the issues that we need to really deal with.  The human condition will give us plenty of events that we have no control over such as war or earthquake or harsh storms.  In those cases we do what we need to do to survive and to help others survive.  The things we do have some control over are our reactions.
In my own case I am capable of all three of the examples plus a few others.  What I do is try to continually monitor my own responses.  Often this is just noticing while I am reacting poorly but that’s okay.  This is the first step, noticing.  
What seems to happen as one pursues the spiritual life is a kind of constant reassessment.  Once a person begins to get the hang of meditation or deep prayer, they will also begin to notice their flaws and their reactions.  This, though uncomfortable, is a good thing.  What we do not see we cannot correct.   On the other hand, in my personal experience, I have noticed that the flaws tend to remain.  I still am quite capable of being unreasonably angry, or petty, or jealous, or resentful.  So, perhaps the real key is acceptance.  To accept the human condition, in fact to revel in it -  with all of its warts – may be the real answer to what to do about our tea cup storms.  This is the texture of our lives.   I shudder to think of a sterile universe where everything is perfect and no one ever contends or questions.  
Does this make sense to you?   What do you do?

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

Cause & Effect

I am constantly advising my students that they have to look outside of cause and effect for how to think of circumstances that test them. What I am trying to do is to get them to see beyond the “storms in a tea cup” as Pir Vilayat would put it and grasp the vaster laws of the Universe. Never the less I got curious because of some of the comments to my last post and decided to put ‘cause and effect’ into the search engine in this program I have that has all of Hazrat Inayat Khan’s work. And I found the following:
“There are two principal chains of cause and effect. The first plan is the cause and effect of the series of personalities. This is the law of the Vedanta school and it is illustrated by Christ’s words: ‘It is another who sows, and another who reaps.’ Secondly there is the cause and effect for the soul, illustrated by Christ’s words: ‘Thou wilt reap as thou hast sown.’ This leads the soul through heaven and hell to God.
The first is horizontal kârmâ, the second vertical karmâ. But then there is a third form of karmâ, a third chain of cause and effect. It is the Consciousness which stands as a gulf between the first two; it shows them distinctly as two different forms of karmâ, and still it unites them. They are in union. One could call this inner karmâ. It is imperceivable, incomprehensible: it belongs to God.
As to this third aspect, everyone is linked up with everyone else, and everyone can say he is a reincarnation of everyone from the past, as the universal Mind, from where the personality came, is One.
The secret of the soul is that it does not exist. Only God exists. God is God, God is the soul, and God is the chain of personalities.”

So perhaps this explains a bit more clearly what I have meant. If it is possible for us to experience, even for the briefest moment, this reality that the soul does not really exist, that it is an aspect of the Only Being and exists as a Divine expression of a unique combination of attributes, interwoven with all other unique expressions, then we are able to discover a depth of reason that is far beyond the “storm in a tea cup.” I know that this idea is simply an idea for most, that it is an intellectual exercise and not an experiential reality. Never the less, it may help if a person tries to see others as well as themselves in this light. And, it gives us something to shoot for, it gives us an ideal to pursue, a potential to discover in our beings. We cannot know what it feels like to experience the state of unity that the mystics speak of until the moment comes when we ourselves have the experience. We can, however; allow the learned experience of these mystics to guide us and to possibly comfort us when we feel that we are all alone.
Death comes to us all. For some it comes sooner then we feel it should but, if we can step outside of individuation for even a moment, we can perhaps see that it all runs together eventually. This experience of living is an immense opportunity for the being of God to discover permutations to its existence that simply were not possible while it was in the eternal sleep of Unity. And, as Ibn al Arabi has pointed out, as soon as God decided to create mankind, God was obligated to allow mankind freedom of expression, otherwise no actual development would be possible.

I have this science fiction trilogy written by Michael Gear, one of my more favorite authors. In it are a cast of characters derived from the native peoples of the American South West who have given God a personality which they call Spider. Throughout the books they are constantly asking the question, when you die what story will you take back to Spider? So I ask you, what story are you creating to take back to God?

Love and Blessings, Musawwir