BOOK REVIEW

I was just notified by my publisher of a new book review for Practical Sufism. Here is the link if you are interested: http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/books/books.php?id=20902

FRIENDSHIP REVISITED

"If a person has learnt the manner of friendship he need not learn anything more; he knows everything. He has learnt the greatest religion, for it is in this same way that one will make a way to God." Hazrat Inayat Khan
'Friendship in the path of God, friendship in the path of truth is greater than any friendship in life.' Abu Hashim Midani

I wrote about this theme four years ago. Reading back over it, it seems rather self-serving and ego centric. Oh well, we all move along at our own pace and mine seems to be that of a moderately self-aware snail. So, moving on
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In the past few months I have given five or six radio interviews about my book, Practical Sufism. The interviewers always begin by asking what Sufism is. My answer always is, "It depends on who you ask." I go on to say that Sufism is different things to different people but to me it is about understanding friendship. In this manner I make it clear that anything else I say is my idea and not any kind of doctrinaire expression. I also present the thought that understanding friendship is the foremost ideal to foster in this age of confusion and contention. But what is this friendship of which I speak and which seems to be so very important for the coming age?

First of all, let's establish that what we normally call friendship is really acquaintance. Acquaintances are people you know, in one way or another, whom you may or may not like. If you like them, you might think of them in various ways, often you will think if them as friends but you will also be thinking .what does this person do for me? How does this person enhance my own version of myself? As long as they are doing that for you, and you are doing it for them, you will remain friends. But, let that ideal slip in even the slightest way and then what happens? I had a hypnosis client the other day who firmly stated that she would be friends with a person right up until the moment that they hurt her. Then they were summarily ejected from her life with no more chances possible. That's it, done, never darken my door ever again. Because she has a lot of issues I did not point out that this might be a symptom of something deeper. But I think that it points out a fairly common way of thinking. Friendship is temporary, disappointment is always lurking, waiting to pounce. And then, when the expected disappointment appears, the only recourse is to defend and protect yourself. This is about as far from friendship as it is possible to get but it is our norm.

Friendship starts, must start, with being friends with yourself. That means knowing your flaws but still seeing that you are much more than your flaws, that you are a wonderful person who is living their life. Only then can you look to others and be their friend, unconditionally. The most important part of being a friend is overlooking the flaws of another. Knowing your own flaws you can easily see that the person before you is living their life, doing what they can and slowly understanding, just like everyone.

In Sufism God or Allah is often thought of as The Friend. Isn’t that a wonderful thought? Most of mankind’s religions create an image of a remote, judgmental, more or less arbitrary God that might or might not deign to grant a wish or interfere in affairs. For God to be The Friend however is a whole different way of feeling. A friend is someone who is always there, supportive, happy to be with you, unconcerned with your many faults. The Friend is with you regardless. It is natural to want to please your friend but what can you do to please The Friend, even though The Friend is unconcerned with being pleased? . In this case the pleasure of The Friend is gained by becoming your true self. And what does that mean? Among the many aspects of becoming the true self, perhaps the most important, as noted by Pir O Murshid above, is the development of friendship, for yourself and for others
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So, if your closest friend is God, how could you possibly feel that another person, also part of God, is anything less than your friend as well? See how this works? It isn’t hard at all but it does require some commitment on your part. Commitment you ask? Yes, commitment to The Friend.
Maybe commitment isn’t quite right. How about acknowledgment? Or, how about being friends with yourself? Since you are part of God, acknowledging God as The Friend is really acknowledging being friends with your own self. To acknowledge that God is your friend might seem like a stretch. But it isn’t really. If you already feel that you are part of the Universe and can see that your participation in the Universe is a worthy endeavor then it is not so very hard to see that the Universe or God likes you. How about that? You have already been told that God loves you, kind of like a parent loving an unruly child but God likes you and is happy that you exist? Think about that for a while and then let me know how that feels.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

Everything Matters

Nothing Matters

Everything Matters Exquisitely

Nothing Matters Exquisitely

"The consciousness is the intelligence; the intelligence is the soul; the soul is the spirit; and the spirit is God. Therefore consciousness is the divine element; consciousness is the God-part in us. And it is through consciousness that we become small or great, and through consciousness we either rise or fall, and through consciousness we become narrow or we expand."

Hazrat Inayat Khan

The above four stages of consciousness contain my very first lessons in metaphysics and spirituality. The fellow who explained them to me could be seen as my very first teacher, though that did not last very long. He was a very strange guy who was convinced that demonic possession was the cause of most mental illnesses. That would have been okay except that he worked as a counselor at the local mental health clinic and tended to tell clients this. Never the less he did give me the above, which I have used as a bench mark ever since.

Let's go through it.

Everything Matters: Think of your immediate environment and how you feel about it. How important is it to you. How much do you invest in demanding that the environment, the people you know, the things you do, conform to a certain standard that you have set? This is the stage of Everything Matters and we all go through it. It is a stage of total self involvement in which we believe that our very limited world is all that there is.

Nothing Matters: Many people move from the above into nothing matters. I hear it a lot from people who are getting ready to push through. It is one of the stages that a teenager goes through when he/she begins to question the dictates of parents and other authority figures. It was the guiding light of the early alternative movement. It is a misunderstanding of Maya – the veil of illusion spoken of in the Upanishads. Never the less we all must go through this stage of suspecting everything around us if we are to move on to the further stages.

Everything Matters Exquisitely: This is a place where a lot of spiritual type people tend to stop and feel content, which is fine. It is a place in which the world has expanded, the horizon has been pushed back and many new ideas and feelings are now evident for the spiritual seeker. It is where you are totally immersed in the sunrise and feel the life energy all around you. It is also a place where compassion for others really begins to become important. And it is a place where one might establish a very rigid set of rules about life and the Universe, which are not as limited as those still in the Everything Matters stage but are none the less limiting.

Nothing Matters Exquisitely: Imagine gazing at that sunrise mentioned above, appreciating it, in the moment, but not being at all attached to it. It is a stage beyond all stages because one realizes something very important. All of this is transitory. Only the soul matters in the end.

The above is how I think of these four stages of consciousness. You are free to make up your own definitions of course. I often change how I explain them when I am working with someone. There really is no fixed explanation, they exist as they are and then we attempt to give value with our words. So do as you like. I am simply offering them to you as a gift, as I was given this gift 35 years ago. Sometimes we need these kinds of things to help us gauge where we are in the pursuit of understanding consciousness. As Pir O Murshid says above – it is through consciousness that we become narrow or we expand. Which, when you think of it, was exactly what Pir Vilayat continually taught.

I will be curious to hear your comments.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

PATIENCE

How poor are they that have not patience!
Othello.Act ii.Sc.3.
William Shakespeare

Sometimes I find my patience is not what it probably ought to be. Usually when I see one of the people I guide going back over the same old ground I stand aside and just watch and wait for some kind of realization to appear for them. Occasionally, however, I do feel a flash of impatience and wonder why nothing seems to work. It is embarrassing that I should feel this way as I know better. Everyone moves at their own pace and I have absolutely no way of knowing what that pace will be. Nor do I have any right at all to hurry the pace. In fact that would be exactly the wrong thing to do. All I need do is remember the incredible patience Pir Vilayat had with me. It’s those flashes of unreasonable impatience that this article is about.
Another manifestation of my impatience is driving in this town. After 30 years of the hectic pace of New York City, Scranton, PA seems way too slow. Anyone driving 20 MPH or less on a New York City street would probably be pushed to the side of the road, but here it is the norm. I have been observing my emotions when I am behind one of these people, it is not pretty. You would think after 35 odd years of working on myself through spiritual practices that I would be constantly serene and calm; not so. After all these years of discipline I still find my impatience and anger surging to the surface. Will it never go away?
Since this is such an annoying question for me I thought to do some research in Hazrat Inayat Khan’s works. He has a lot to say about patience but here is something that he said that surprised me, though I suppose it should not have: “It is a great difficulty that the people in this land of America are losing this quality of patience more and more every day, because Providence has blessed them so much. They have conveniences, they have comforts, they are the spoilt children of Providence, and when it comes to having patience, it is very hard for them.”
And he’s right. That was written almost 100 years ago and it applies even more today than it did then. A hunter/gatherer type person absolutely must be patient; the game will only come when it comes. A farmer must be patient, planted crops take their time, sheep can only grow wool so fast, and a chicken lays only one egg a day. But here in America and in Europe and probably in other parts of the world that are enjoying the benefits of industrialization, impatience is the rule.
One of the things that I constantly stress to the people I guide is that there are three ingredients necessary for a spiritual life. The first is discipline, you must decide to do it and then follow through. The second is courage as you will be often faced with the need to reevaluate your opinions. And the third, and probably most important is patience. To expect something to happen just because you have decided you want spiritual experiences is probably not going to be very useful. Never-the-less it is how we often feel. What is happening, of course, is that our culture tells us that we can have it NOW because we can get INSTANT CREDIT! WHY WAIT? Of course that is not how it works in spirituality but the idea is so deeply ingrained in us that we have difficulty feeling otherwise; thus my flashes of impatience. I am one of the spoilt children of providence; so much for spiritual advancement.
Here is what I really think; this is an incredible opportunity. Yes, primitive man was patient; what choice did he have? We, on the other hand, have many choices, some might say too many choices, but that is how it is and it is possibly our greatest challenge. We have this wonderful opportunity to truly challenge ourselves and to use the world around us as our measure against our own internal truths. Screaming through the windshield at some 90 year old woman driving 20 mph, who does not hear you anyway, is an opportunity to have a look at your own experience. How does it feel? What is the source? Can you calm yourself and just wait? Working on patience then becomes a true spiritual practice.
We tend to think that spiritual practices must be unique or exceptional in some way, that they must have some kind of ancient mystical significance but, the truth is, almost any discipline is a spiritual practice if it shakes you out of your complacency and gets you closer to who you really are.
I will continue to work on my patience, noticing and occasionally catching myself in some silly impatient reaction. I hope you do the same.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

DOUBTS

”The course of human life involves so many disappointments, so many failures, so many heartaches, that no one can avoid doubting.”
Hazrat Inayat Khan

I want to talk about something that keeps coming up but is kind of difficult to describe. I will do my best however; because I think it is very important. What I have noticed over the years is that when a person is first initiated into the Sufi Order there is an initial period of excitement which is almost always followed by a crash. Perhaps this is only my experience but I have to wonder if others have not noticed it as well. What seems to happen is that a person will be initiated and be very enthusiastic for a week or a month and then they crash, they step back, they often disappear. This is not always true, not every time, but it is often true. I have long puzzled over this as I have also noticed this tendency to withdraw in myself.
I suppose at the beginning it all seems very romantic and exciting. You have just done something very unusual in our culture. You have decided to follow a path that you have no real understanding about, but there is something that draws you and you want more. It may be the magnetism of the guide, or maybe the exotic nature of the discipline, or some other reason. So you decide to do it, get initiated. That’s when the doubts start to creep in. I guess it is possible that there are some very rare individuals who never have a single doubt, but I have never met any. The question then remains, what to do about it?
Perhaps at the beginning, when the doubts start to creep in, a person has no real choice. The habitual personality will exercise its right to stay with its habits. This is probably why Pir Vilayat was constantly urging his murids to push on through. Never the less, we are stuck with who we think we are and, since we have just done something very out of the ordinary, our personality will naturally rebel.
Personalities, which are really our sub-conscious responses to the world, are pretty fixed in their attitudes. We learn early in life how to protect ourselves from the vagaries of the world. These protections and responses do not have to be sensible, not at all, but they do have to be reasonable to us. This is basic information that everyone who works with the mind knows. So we are somewhat fixed in our ideas of ourselves. Then we decide, for whatever reason, to challenge our inner mind, our sub-conscious, by taking initiation with some spiritual group or teacher. Almost the first thing to happen is our sub-conscious goes, “Wait a minute, this is not part of our world!” Then we have various choices. One choice that I see exercised a lot is to disbelieve what just happened and turn away from the teacher or group, telling yourself that they are stupid or unjust or something. At the other end of this spectrum is to go into some kind of funk for a little while, then to shake yourself and get to work on the psyche using the practices given. And then there are all of the varieties of experience in between these two extremes that are possible.
I guess it is normal enough in this world of disappointment to have doubts about something new that is out of the ordinary. We hear so much about people who are duped into some absurd cult that we worry and the worry brings doubts. I wish that I had an answer, but I don’t. About all that I can say here is that the only true way to find out if you have been duped or not is to follow through and watch the teacher or guide. Do they live a life of service? Or do they use people with no thought of return? It is up to you to judge. I would be very grateful for any comments that anyone might have as this is a great puzzle to me.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

Practical Sufism!

My book is now available from Amazon
Or you can order it direct from Quest Books.
http://www.questbooks.net/title.cfm?bookid=2281

I am very happy with this new version of my book.

May Light and Beauty continue to manifest within us all.

Phillip Gowins

LABELS

"There is a mystical outlook, there is a mystical significance, there is a mystical point of view which is different from that which we call a practical point of view. Things of great significance are beyond what we call our practical point of view."
Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

I rode a city bus the other day and deliberately sat in a seat reserved for seniors. It is still a bit odd to think of myself in this way. Most of the time I do not remember that I am 65 but then I see a sign, Admission $8, seniors $6 and I remember.

I think that most people who follow some kind of spiritual path have an automatic aversion to being labeled. Of course we all have them in all sorts of ways but we pretty much don’t like them or at least I don’t. Some labels you must simply accept, male or female, tall or short, etc. Other labels seem presumptuous as if you can only fit in this one box or possibly a limited number of boxes. Politicians do this all the time of course since they are sure that people have only a limited scope of understanding.

On the other hand, spiritual type people enjoy certain types of labels. We like to be seen as calm. Also we are prone to believe that we look younger then our peers who do not meditate, this probably only matters to those over 40. And I suppose most of us like to think of our primary label, I am a Sufi, I am a Buddhist, I follow Jewish mysticism, or whatever that primary label might be, Wicca maybe or a follower of The Course in Miracles or something similar. There are lots of labels like this that we certainly approve of.

I am seriously beginning to believe that all of these labels really only have one reality and that is separation.

I received an email the other day on my hypnosis site. It was from someone who is interested in hypnosis but he has a very strange take on it. He is convinced that most people who need hypnosis have an evil entity hanging around them and the hypnotist’s job is to exorcise this demon. I had to ponder this for a couple of days so I did not reply to him in a rude fashion. But wow, how limiting is that? While it is true that entities who attach themselves to people occasionally do exist, it is much rarer then some would like to think. And, despite what Hollywood would love us to accept, all they really want to do is to talk. What this kind of attitude does is severely limits the scope of the help a therapist can offer. And it shows very little understanding of the truth of our existence. In fact such an attitude assumes a type of reality that I find depressing. What this person really wants is to be a hero, another label. He wants to be able to say that he has the answer to all of life’s problems.

There are many people out there with similar claims. What they want is to be seen as heroes and to be able to claim heroism. This is understandable. We all want to be acknowledged in some positive manner by those around us. I admit to feeling a thrill of pride when I know I have helped someone. I have come to accept this as part of my make up. I also recognize that this is going to be true of anyone who is in the healing profession. We do it because we are led to be healers but we also have pride in what we do. And there is nothing wrong with this. What is wrong, I believe, is when we take a label and demand that this label be everything that we are and that all those around us must accept our version of the label.

I suppose labels are necessary so people know how to approach you and I guess that is helpful in a certain way. But it is also important that, once the approach has been made, that the communication be allowed to go beyond any pre-assumption that may have been in place initially. In other words let the person before you be all that they are, not just whatever you may think their labels imply.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir