The Sovereign Soul

2011-04-15T09:57:00.001-04:00

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

2011-03-16T11:08:00.002-04:00

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
.
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
.
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

2011-01-09T18:40:00.001-05:00

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

2010-11-02T16:04:00.000-04:00

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

2010-10-23T17:14:00.000-04:00

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

2010-10-03T13:29:00.002-04:00

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

2010-09-22T06:55:00.001-04:00

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

2010-08-14T06:22:00.001-04:00

Hello Friends,
Yesterday I was interviewed by Voice of America Radio about the upcoming publication of my book, Practical Sufism. You can listen to the interview here: http://www.voiceamerica.com/voiceamerica/vepisode.aspx?aid=47983

2010-07-06T12:09:00.000-04:00

GENEROSITY

“When we live in harmony with the ways of Divine Presence, allowing loving-kindness, generosity and compassion to flow freely into the world through all that we do and say, then this journey called life becomes a great pleasure.”
Hazrat Inayat Khan

“I have three treasures which I hold and keep.
The first is mercy; the second is economy;
The third is daring not to be ahead of others.
From mercy comes courage; from economy comes generosity;
From humility comes leadership.”
Lao Tse

Humans are not by nature generous. According to Will Durant, the famous historian, humans have three basic imperatives; acquisitiveness, pugnacity and sexuality. The first because a hunter gatherer needed to get things in order to survive; pugnacity because fighting off other predators was the norm; and random sexuality because that was the deep physical impulse. This is how we lived for maybe a million years, no one really knows. But when we began to gather in larger groups certain moral standards were necessary in order to create some kind of harmony within the group. And generosity, among other moral customs, was born. For instance, it turns out that in many so called savage cultures, when a man made a kill it was his duty to call out as loudly as possible that he had done so that others within hearing might share in the food. But, as civilization slowly appeared and the idea of individual property took hold, generosity became a struggle.

Personally, I like civilization. I am quite happy with my lap-top which would not be possible in a nature culture. I like the idea of complex philosophical discourse, which is not possible in a culture that has no abstract words. I like my dentist and would not want to give up health care. So, this thought of generosity being a struggle seems to me to be a challenge for humanity in its current stage.

When I was living in New York City I made it a point of giving money to homeless people. At first I would always look at their shoes and if they had new shoes I would not give them anything. But then I realized that they may have just been given shoes by some homeless shelter. So I stopped worrying about that. Then I saw some homeless guy using a cell phone and that kind of freaked me out but then I realized that they are easy to buy. So I stopped worrying about it altogether and just gave money when I felt like it, regardless. And that is when I began to understand generosity.

Generosity is really very simple. It is sharing. We lost generosity when we declared that one person might have more property then another. It was a necessary phase, no doubt of that, but it does not mean that we should not continue to discover the many possibilities still open to humanity. We tend to believe that the way things are is the way they will always be, subject to minor modification. But why would we think that? Empirical evidence would seem to say that change is the only constant. We spend centuries building a city which can be destroyed in an hour or so by natural causes. Why would we think that anything is permanent?

If it is true that change is the only permanency then discovering the core of one’s being is essential.

Generosity is not just financial; it is system wide, so to speak, through all that we do and say. Initially generosity must begin with oneself. It is no good to begrudgingly offer a handout to someone in order to prove something, that is not generous at all, that is a kind of arrogance. Instead look to yourself. Do you see yourself in a loving generous way? Or, do you see yourself as deeply flawed with no recourse to healing? Think about it and then tell me.

One more thing; Pir O Murshid stated in the quote above that living in harmony with the Divine Presence is the key to allowing our generous loving nature to flow. And he states that the pay off, so to speak, is life becoming a great pleasure. It’s true. And it still starts with the self. Allowing one’s self to recognize that it is a part of God, a part of the Intelligent Universe and one has the right to a loving fruitful life is the first step towards becoming the vehicle with which the Divine Presence can in fact flow outward into the world.

The next article will deal with practical ways to create generosity within.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2010-05-24T14:36:00.003-04:00

THE INVITATION

"You have been invited to the banquet, why are you eating the scraps under the table?"
Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

The above quote from Pir Vilayat is one I frequently repeat to people. It is often a surprise when I quote it to someone and they realize that they have been doing the very thing, avoiding the banquet. I also realize that I am as guilty as anyone. Why do we do this?

There seems to be a cultural imperative in our society that says that we are not really allowed to be honestly spiritual. I suspect that this is partially because the priest class, of whatever religion, including Islam (which is not supposed to have a priest class but does anyway) tends to need to maintain an air of superiority as if they somehow have an intercessory role with God. This leaves the rest of us more or less out in the cold not really allowed to be truly spiritual since we must go through an intercessor. That's part of it. Another part is the aura of disappointment that pervades our whole culture. I have spoken about this before and intend to keep speaking of it. Basically it says that you are not worthy unless you have things, expensive things. Conversely, you can rail against things and feel superior to the materialists while at the same time secretly suspecting that you are not worthy. That may be an even worse position. Another aspect is probably feeling that the banquet is a hustle. It's not really real. We have so very many stories of people being duped by various invitations, Scientology and Krishna Consciousness come to mind immediately but they are certainly not the only ones. The invitations from various groups totally assured of the rightness of their positions is huge. The means of discovering their legitimacy is limited.

A fourth aspect is a general sense that the men and women who sit in caves for 20 or more years, isolated from the world, in a constant state of meditation and prayer, are worthy. We must live in the world and are therefore, by definition, not as worthy. Ultimately you know that you are not allowed at the banquet, even though invited.

Whew, that's a lot. And I can probably come up with more but you get the idea, you can make your own list. By now you should be seeing that all of the above is an illusion. It is various aspects of the world desperately needing to convince you that you need an intercessor or that you are simply not up to it. The simple truth is that the invitation exists and it speaks directly to your heart.

There is a place in each of us that knows we belong. Whatever baggage we happen to be lugging around will want to deny this knowledge but it is there. I do not know about other esoteric groups but when a person is initiated into the Sufi Order International, the very last thing we say to them is, "Welcome to your spiritual family." I have seen people break down and cry at hearing these words; these simple words of welcome. To be told very sincerely that you are welcome can seem amazingly profound to the person, so common in our culture, who has felt isolated their whole life. It seems to be that a person can decide to stay isolated and alone and separate if they like, that is free will. Or they can decide to become part of a loving family if they so choose. And then what happens is that their psychology will change the group as they insist that their version of reality have some form of validity within the group. Still the invitation is there. What it really means is surrendering to that inner knowledge that you personally are a part of the being of God or part of the Intelligent Universe or however you would like to state it. And, as a part of the whole, you have the right to the banquet. What you do not have a right to do is to demand that the menu be exactly what you think it ought to be. That is the rub and causes more problems then just about anything else.

So, join the party, sit down at the table, sip the wine of ecstasy, sample the delicacies of forgiveness and detachment; but be aware that though your task is to relax, observe, learn, and decide for yourself; it is not to demand that others conform to your idea of what should be on the table. That is a no no.

The very first spiritual instruction I ever received was, "There are no rules!" This means to me that not only are the rules others state not valid but also any rules I might make up are also not valid. So? What is valid? The banquet; the communion with other souls, all souls. If there is a rule it would be to treat every single person, including yourself, as a friend. To do otherwise would be to deny the basic nature of God, which is that we are all in this together. Our only solid evidence of anything at all is that we all exist here, now. All the rest is speculation, interpretation and assumption that our spiritual experiences have any validity beyond our own selves.

Crawl out from underneath the table, sit with the other kind souls and dine. Once you do this all the rest of the things that seemed so very important will fade away and the simple joy of being with others who welcome you into their midst will be yours.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2010-05-15T10:49:00.000-04:00

WHO'S A MYSTIC?

"One cannot pretend to be a mystic; one is born a mystic. No doubt a mystic may develop in life, that is another thing, but if one thinks that one can imitate a mystic one is mistaken, one can never do it. Mystics apart, can a person imitate a singer and sing correctly, or imitate a painter and paint well, or a poet and make poetry? Never, either one is or one is not." Hazrat Inayat Khan

The above is an excerpt from Volume XI of the collected works of Hazrat Inayat Khan, from a chapter entitled The Mystic's Nature. Whenever I read something like this I have this impulse to turn around to see if anyone is looking over my shoulder and laughing at me. I don't really have that image but sometimes it feels like it. While it is true that a certain amount of self questioning is important, we tend to think that our sense of ourselves is really quite as it should be. Then we run into something that says, "What makes you think you are so cool?"

One of the pieces of advice that I continually give to meditation students and even sometimes to hypnosis clients is to admit to who you really are. What is meant by that piece of advice is that we are all magnificent in our own beings. For the people who are drawn mysticism it also means that we each have the depth within us to manifest the mystic, it is a matter of unveiling that mystic within and the first step to that is to admit that it exists. Or, as I often find myself saying, it's gotta be somebody, turns out it's you. On the other hand, as Pir O Murshid says above, imitation is probably not possible.

So, how do you know if you are discovering the mystic within or not?

The initial impulse is to look for some kind of sign, a minor miracle for instance, something to tell us that this impulse we have is real. At the same time we have all encountered people who are pretending and we certainly do not want to do that, or do we? Is a little pretense okay?

I once told Pir Vilayat that I was advising my students to pretend to a state so they could get some kind of feeling of what it must be like. He was not happy with me. He was very clear in saying that the experience must be authentic and not the product of pretense. So I asked how do you know. And he said that you just know, it is a matter of inner knowledge. At the time, this was some years ago, I was a bit confused and worried that maybe I was not really understanding the whole thing. I was questioning my own experiences, which I suppose is normal enough. After some years it became apparent that the experiences were real and I could relax, but it did take some time.

Am I a mystic? I don't know. I sometimes know things but as often as not I am wrong. Ultimately it seems that none of this matters. As Pir O Murshid says above, either you are or you aren't. So maybe the real key is to be content with who you are.

I do not know of a single person, up to and including the Pir, who does not have some messy stuff in their lives. Every one of us lives here, on this planet, which is filled with confusion, bad information, missteps, etc., etc. One of the major steps in discipleship is recognizing that your teacher/guide is human; that they make mistakes and have all sorts of issues. And once you get through that shock, you can relax and just do the work of discovering your true being. So, even though your personal life is a mess and the things you wish often do not turn out as you feel they should, never the less; keep going, do not give up. Becoming the authentic self that you already are and allowing the being within to emerge in a calm, serene manner is the true task at hand. We are all in this together and it can be fun if only we do not take ourselves too seriously.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2010-04-18T09:15:00.001-04:00

PRIDE

"The superior man has a dignified ease without pride. The mean man has pride without a dignified ease."
Confucius

"Our validation of ourselves is so precariously suspended upon our self-image, so that we are safeguarding it as best we know by either parading an inflated psychological demeanor or lying low to evade confrontation - humility as inverted tentative pride. Little does one know most times that one is not only deceiving others but oneself."
Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

I have noticed lately that the smaller a person's world view the more likely they are to be indignant about trivial matters. This was brought home to me recently in a fairly benign manner. I was at one of the many four way stop intersections that abound in Scranton. I waited for one car on my right to go and was about to go myself when I realized that the car on my left was also moving into the intersection, so I stopped. For some reason the young woman driving the car thought I had challenged her I suppose and I could see her yelling at me, though I could not hear the words. Obviously, in her world, I had committed an unpardonable sin even though it was a very simple thing. I didn't mind letting her go. Her passenger, as they were passing in front of me, made a rude gesture, which we are all familiar with. My impulse was to return it but that was instantly supplanted by humor and I smiled at him, which I suppose was disconcerting. Well I don't really know what his reaction was to my grin but this tiny incident was the source of my idea for this article. There was really no reason for the young woman to get upset. This kind of misstep happens all the time at these four way intersections and most people accept that occasionally it will occur and someone will have to give way. Usually one person will make a small gesture and the other driver will give a thank you wave and go through the intersection but not this young woman. And that caused me to wonder why?

Obviously I have no idea if my analysis of the young woman's motivation is correct or not. Maybe she was just having a crappy day and lashed out at the most convenient target. Still it was a place to launch this article.

The most important part of any observation like the one above is when you look at yourself and see if you exhibit similar behavior. It may not be at stop signs but do you find yourself getting annoyed or downright indignant over meaningless circumstances? That is what I found myself doing after the incident. How often do I find myself irate over something relatively insignificant? I had to admit that I do, not all that often, I am much better then I was when I was younger, but I do. Once again I am secretly embarrassed and now am displaying it for all to see. I wonder if this is the inverted pride that Pir Vilayat speaks about. Whew, it certainly does get complicated doesn't it?

We, as humans trying to live our lives, are constantly assaulted by all sorts of opportunities to be smaller then we really are. My teacher used to say that we see ourselves as lowly worms when we are really magnificent celestial beings. Be that as it may, we still look for validations of all kinds. And sometimes our validation comes with false indignation. What to do? The very first thing to do is to simply admit that your self image might need a tiny bit of rearranging. I think that a major mistake that people make is in thinking that, because the work looks impossible, to attain some kind of elusive perfection, then it cannot be done. I hear it from people all the time. It's a kind of wail, "I am a mess and will never get better!" Such thinking will remain true as long as you feel that you cannot become the being you have always been intended to be. The good news is that you get to keep some flaws.

Muhasaba, the practice of self examination of the Sufi's, is not intended to embarrass you, though it will. What it is intended to do is to give you perspective. It is as if you stand outside of yourself and watch this silly person attempt to get it right and you notice what it does. That's it. Beating yourself up is optional of course but not really all that effective because then you get into the afore mentioned inverted pride thing. So, just notice, be aware and slowly, slowly you will begin to shift who you think you are to who you really are – a glorious vice-regent of the creative force of the Universe.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2010-03-29T08:58:00.001-04:00

COMMENTS

I have had several people mention to me that they cannot seem to post comments. It is true that Google has made it way too complicated. However, if you post your comment as Anonymous and sign your name I will know who it is and it makes no difference to anyone else.
Blessings, Musawwir

2010-03-27T09:56:00.000-04:00

MY SUFISM

Ask any Sufi you know what Sufism is and you will get an answer. Ask another and you will get a different answer. Go on line and look up the many Sufi sites and each one will tell you what Sufism is and they will all be different in some way, often in significant ways. Ask a scholar of Sufism and you will get an academic answer filled with convolutions, comparisons and allusions that leave you gasping for air. Some will say that it is the mystic aspect of Islam and that you cannot be a true Sufi if you are not a Muslim. Others will say that is not true and that many people over the centuries have embraced Sufism without embracing Islam. And on and on go the discussions and arguments.
It seems to be one of the major traits of humanity to need to define things. And, we will almost always define things or ideas in light of whatever cultural baggage we happen to be toting around. This is a problem when the thing we decide to define defies definition. There’s alliteration for you. In any case, it is certainly a possibility that if Sufism has so many ideas about what it is then it is probably true that the definitions that appear are almost certainly based on the opinions and ideas of the people doing the defining.
Way back in the dawn of time, when I first discovered Pir Vilayat and Sufism, I thought that I knew what it was. To me it was the path I had been looking for, the teacher I needed and the means of unraveling all the strange experiences I had been having for the previous ten years. I really did not care at all about its origins or any of the definitions. I only cared about processing the inner turmoil and creating something understandable of my life. I liked the idea that it was ancient and not some New Age thing that someone invented from their own ideas of what ought to be. And, I really liked the fact that occasionally Pir Vilayat would say that he did not know something but would find out. Then I began to study Sufism seriously and discovered all the controversy, all the opinions, all the insistent definitions. So what is it? The problem seems to be focused on which direction we approach the idea from.
From our ego's point of view Sufism must conform to our cultural understandings. We need it, or any spiritual discipline for that matter, to be recognizable by our sense of self. It can be exotic as long as we are able to accept its exotic nature as something we can process internally. It can be defiant if that is our tendency. Witness the apparent need of some Western followers of Sufism to adopt Arabic dress even though it is pretty inappropriate in a Northern climate. There is also a tendency to display our commitment in other ways and demand that others recognize our enthusiasm. And I could go on. But that is not where this started. It started with the idea that Sufism is and should always remain individual, that's why it is mine.
My Sufism does not care about tradition or the need to define. It seems to me that, if a person wants to do all that then that is okay, but it is not for me. To me it is what works. As some of my readers know, I have a very extensive library of Sufi literature. It is helpful in that it gives me inspiration and I enjoy the mental stretching I must do in order to understand some of the references. But, as Pir Vilayat once instructed me rather sternly, you can't get it from books. You get it in the here and now. Yes, we rely on practices that have been developed over the centuries and God bless all the beings who worked so very hard to create these meditations and practices but, we also live in the present. We live in a complex culture; perhaps the most complex ever and our needs are quite different from a seventh century seeker. And we know more.
In the seventh century a person's outlook would be pretty truncated and the world view would have been quite limited but not now. In the 40 odd years that I have been paying attention we have seen the availability of spiritual literature and access to meditation techniques explode in a manner unprecedented in any other age. So why look to the past?
As near as I can tell from this extensive library of mine, Sufism has always been about being in the Now. Its major proponents wrote books yes, but the great majority of followers were living in the present moment, content to be who they were while continually working on the self in order to understand and become the whole integrated human they were meant to be. At least that is the ideal that comes forth in the literature.
This is what I have finally come to understand. We need to define ourselves but this very defining ends up limiting our potential and undermines the very core of our being by insisting that we must conform to a definition. If we can let go of the need for definition for even a moment then the freedom that is our soul's truth can shine forth and all that we are becomes the reality that we all seek.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2010-03-15T11:07:00.002-04:00

MEMORY

"The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past."
Leonhard Euler

We were in the car the other day, listening to the one of only two classical stations available to us. The DJ announced that the next piece would be Grieg's Piano Concerto and I automatically hummed the first few opening notes. This is probably not unusual for a classical music buff but I had no idea that this information was stored in my memory. I like classical music but I cannot say that I ever bothered to really learn who was who, etc. It really surprised and pleased me when the opening bars came and they were the notes I had hummed. I am still pleased and a bit excited to realize that something that I had known, the power of the inner mind, and that I use all the time in my hypnosis business, was actually true in a way that I had never suspected. The second part is that right now, in this moment, I have no clue what those notes are. So were did it come from?

One of the things that we tell a new hypnosis client is that the inner mind, what Freud called the Id, is the store house of every single experience we have ever had. Every thought, action, event, etc., is stored in there. This information is available to us but only on a very limited basis. It seems that the human mind has a very heavy set of filters that keep us from being overwhelmed by trivial or even important information. We don't remember things because we apparently do not need to. Or that is the way it seems to work. It would follow then that a person with a so-called photographic memory isn't really remembering things we would ordinarily forget, he just has selective recall of information that we also have but are blocked from accessing. In the hypnotic trance however; it is quite possible to access almost anything, probably including being able to hum the whole Grieg Piano Concerto, not just the opening bars. It also means that the innermost aspects of our beings, the truth of who we are is also available for access.

From the Sufi point of view, none of this really matters. It does matter that we heal our psyches but for a totally different reason then the one you may imagine. As the quote above implies, the future already exists. In all esoteric systems everything that ever was, is, or will be exists within the Celestial Dream of Creation. This is a tricky idea to hold in our minds but there is one way of seeing it that can be helpful. I was talking with a student the other day and I found myself saying something new. I said, "The Future Self looks at the present Self and says, 'We have to do something about that.'" In other words, the future Self remembers the present self and recognizes the things that the present self must do in order to become the best future Self that it possibly can be. It is not easy to think of memory as being fluid and existing in all the dimensions, all the time. And those who subscribe to predestination might say that there is really nothing they can do to alter what will be. But that is not true. The future Self exists yes but in the present we are determining the quality of that future Self. We are creating the future even though it already exists. This is the place where we separate the true mystics from the wanna-be's.

I am very fond of saying to people that spirituality is not about puffy white clouds and pink bunny rabbits. Lovely as that image is, it is wishful thinking. We cannot deny that life is a struggle and we are continually challenged to uncover an ever deeper means of observation that understands this struggle in an ever widening manner. It is like a spiral of awareness that continually grows – if we are truly paying attention. Or you can pretend that your particular way of seeing is the only right one and continually demand that the world conform. It should be obvious even to the most hide-bound New Age believer that that does not work. Therefore it might be a better expression of our potential to continually work on one's Self in service to the future Self that is looking back on the current self and remembering what could have been. How's that for a confusing sentence?

The future Self will have the very same filters that we currently have and may only remember small snap shots but deep in its psyche will be the programming that we are currently shaping in our deep desire to become who we really are.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2010-02-13T09:47:00.002-05:00

BRIGHTNESS

The pleasures of life are blinding; it is love alone that clears the rust from the heart, the mirror of the soul.
Hazrat Inayat Khan

I can distinctly remember when I was very small having many invisible friends around me. Actually, I could see them but no one else could. So I was convinced by the authority figures that they were my invisible friends. Upon reflection, I am pretty sure they were Djinni or perhaps nature spirits come to play with the lonely boy. We lived in a tar paper shack, literally, at the end of a dirt road. There were no other children close so I was alone a lot of the time. But I had my friends. Then, when I was sent off to school at five years of age, and the bright interest of the world overtook me, they disappeared from my waking consciousness.

I suspect this kind of thing happens to everyone to a greater or lesser degree. We have these beings around us all the time but the world is so bright and interesting that we cannot see them. We can also come to a place where we see the bright pleasures of the world as ugly and somehow wrong.

Part of the urge to follow some kind of spiritual path seems to be the inner knowledge that there is something wrong. Depending on how willing we are to learn this urge can be a very powerful motivation. We begin to see that the world around us is at least partially artificial and we can get very distressed. In the young this awareness tends to become militant in its outward manifestation. The young accuse everyone around them of not seeing the indignities many humans suffer and they are sure that they are the only ones to correct all of these ills. A more mature person might be a bit reticent to tilt at the first windmill they see and instead begin to look within for a personal solution.

Many, perhaps most spiritual paths urge the retreat from the pleasures of the world. Even within Sufism, which claims to have feet in both camps, heaven and earth, there is this urge to turn away from physical reality as somehow corrupted and become hermit like. We do live in the world but we tend to look upon much of it with a kind of disdain. We love quite selectively despite the ideal to love unconditionally. On the other hand we also have this instruction to continually examine our motivations, thoughts and actions. So perhaps this has the effect of gradually teaching us that the world exists and all the beings within it are struggling to understand why it is so complex and difficult. And, it is our job to not only understand the truth of physical reality but also to aid in enhancing the experience for all, not just those we approve of. It seems that not only are the pleasures of life blinding but maybe the disappointments and resentments are even more so.

I was thinking the other day of an acquaintance of mine who is openly contemptuous of just about everyone. This person has a very acerbic tongue and will tolerate no points of view different from theirs. Yet they still profess to the Sufi ideal. How can this be? It would seem that they are totally blinded by their own disappointment in life. I suppose we all fall victim to this way of being. It is extremely difficult to change our attitudes when we have invested so much energy into creating them. Yet change we must. To polish the mirror of the heart requires removing the rust which we have so earnestly deposited there. All that rust on the mirror is not something imposed from without, we are the ones responsible for its existence. My little boy self, in his innocence, had no difficulty seeing beyond the physical. Obviously, he was heavily influenced by the adults in his life to begin to ignore the beings around him but he still did turn away from his best friends, the unseen beings. Now, to recover that lost vision, I must take responsibility for all of the actions and responses that I created in order to conform to the view of those around me. And, in doing that, maybe I can also aid others in seeing beyond the physical and possibly polishing their own mirrors. It is truly what we are meant to do.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2010-01-25T09:15:00.001-05:00

THE CREEPY PLACE

"At the imagination of the spiritual ideal, many people are very afraid, as someone is afraid on the top of a high mountain when looking back on the immense space. It makes them fear, because they have always seen narrow horizons. The wide horizon has an effect which gives them a shock."
Hazrat Inayat Khan

If you are really paying attention to your own spiritual life surely you have noticed that the tendency is to become complacent and accept what you know is spiritual truth. It seems to be unavoidable. We also tend to shape our spiritual ideals in a way that is acceptable to us so that there is no confusion or difficulty. It doesn't seem to matter the depth of a person's realization, at some point we will decide that we know and cease to explore. And, as near as I can tell, the smarter a person is, the more likely they are to do something like this. I suppose because a smart person is convinced that their horizon is vast while a less smart person may realize that they still have things to learn. This is a totally non-scientific observation mostly based on my own journey.
As noted in the last article, I just recently figured out that it was okay to be smart. Having realized this I also had to admit that I always knew it but was afraid that others did not. Which is kind of reverse egotism I suppose. That said, I also realized a few other things. And one of them was exactly what Pir O Murshid stated above. I was sure that a vast horizon was mine but I was wrong. My horizon was/is severely limited to my idea of how the Universe sees me and how I relate to it. That was a very creepy feeling to realize I had severely limited myself. Now I have to think how to explain.
One of the things that is very important to understand about spiritual work is that it is totally okay not to know. In fact, the state of awe is one of those places that is fundamental to spiritual pursuits. That's easy to say, being there is something else entirely. I just saw a live theatre version of Mark Twain's "The Diaries of Adam and Eve." Clemens makes a very interesting point. In the story, Eve defies God and takes the apple. Clemens points out that Eve, in her total innocence would not really relate to 'Forbidden'. What could that mean to her? She had nothing to compare it to. So she takes the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and mankind is born. Without her innocent discovery of pain we never would have existed, according to Samuel Clemens that is. In the same way, in our sophisticated knowledge we are also innocent of true wisdom. As long as we limit our selves to what we are sure we know then we are separating ourselves from the true source of being and demanding that our peculiar version of reality be acknowledged. In other words, as Pir O Murshid says above, we are afraid. That's what I mean by creepy. Here we are all self satisfied and thinking we know what we are doing and whammo, some kind of revelation of transformation happens and we have to start all over again. Who wants that? Not me – yet I keep doing spiritual practices and doing the inner work. But I have to wonder over and over if I have slumped into complacency. It is very worrisome.
For people who are spiritual guides another aspect of this is recognizing that we often do not take our own advice. All too often I have been in conversation with someone, gave them really good advice that they found useful and then realized that the advice I gave was for me as well.
All of this has a singular meaning to me. You might find some other meaning but to me it says we are all struggling to find that place of interface between Unity and Separation. There is no doubt that we find ourselves in a constant state of separation. The evidence before us is testimony enough. Unity on the other hand is elusive and, as has been stated many times, it is all consuming once found. As Pir O Murshid states above, when I truly think of the spiritual ideal, I get scared. Letting go of separation is scary. On the other hand, when I can push through my fears, Unity seems so very beautiful.
This fear we all seem to experience is really a kind of poignant reminder that our beings and how we relate to the Universe and our immediate environment are always going to feel uncomfortable at some level. Apparently that is how it is supposed to be. This discomfort is our signal that we are doing something right.
So, challenge your complacency, demand the discomfort especially if you are responsible for others. Our journey is barely begun and the unveiling of humanity's potential still awaits us.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2010-01-18T17:20:00.001-05:00

THE NEXT STEP!

"The mind is not only the treasure house of all one learns, but it is creative by nature. The mind improvises upon what it learns, and creates not only in imagination, but finishes its task when the imagination becomes materialized. The heavens and the infernal regions - both - are the creations of the mind and both are experienced in the mind."
Hazrat Inayat Khan

One of the more important aspects of doing hypnosis work is freeing people from self imposed limitations. Often these limitations are deep in the sub-conscious and the person is not even aware of them. However; the fact that the person has sought out a hypnotist or some other kind of healer is a sure sign that the person knows something is off and they are probably ready for the next step. The question then is, what is it?
Obviously we do labor under some limitations. Our bodies must breathe occasionally in order to maintain themselves. If we do heavy work we must take in more calories in order to replenish the energy expended. And so on. All of this is obvious. What is not so obvious is the many limitations we impose on our minds in order to feel comfortable within our environment. They are not obvious because to us they seem normal. If you think about it, it is a pretty long list but I am not going to elucidate them, I am just pointing out that the list of accepted limitations is there; you can probably create just as extensive a list as I can. Instead I am going to ask you to pick the single most common limitation and have a look at it within yourself. What is that? You may well ask. As anyone in the healing profession will tell you it is lack of self worth.
Look back at Pir O Murshid's statement above and think on that while also noticing any sense of unworthiness you may have. It is truly amazing what the creative aspect of our minds can do. They accept a value and then they materialize it. I do hope that you understand that an all powerful dictator is coming from exactly the same place of unworthiness as a casper milquetoast. They are both wallowing in unworthiness but just manifest it differently.
I was made very aware of this tendency within us the other day when talking to a friend about my own creative impulses. I was babbling away when I suddenly stopped and realized something. I realized that, after all these years, I had finally accepted, more or less, that I am smart. What a relief! To just accept that you are capable and that what you say might actually be useful to others. What I had not really realized was just as I stated above – the assumed limitation was quite hidden. So, when I realized I was smart I simultaneously realized that for years I had felt otherwise. And, I realized a substantial part of how we seem to be built stays in hiding from our conscious selves.
So, what is the next step?
There is no single answer but there are many things one can do. Modern culture is partially based on the understanding that all of what is continues to be revealed. We understand that discoveries are possible even probable so why not also understand that what is within us can also be discovered, unveiled, exposed to us. The instant you decide that a hidden limitation is only a very thin layer covering something magnificent, that is the instant that awakening truly begins.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2010-01-08T10:08:00.001-05:00

STUDENT AND TEACHER
How the relationship changes both

"Friendship is a word which we all use in our everyday language, and yet it could take one's whole life only to realize its meaning. However learned a person may be, however pious, spiritual, or experienced, if he has not learned the nature and character of friendship he has not learned anything. This is the first and the last thing we have to learn." Hazrat Inayat Khan

There is something that I always tell people who ask me to be their spiritual guide. Well, there are several things, I have a list, but one of the things is that, just like any relationship, this relationship will change both of us. I also make it really clear that asking questions, any questions, is not only allowed, it is encouraged. As a result of this, some of my students take it upon themselves to keep me in line, so to speak. I do not object to this either. I used to as I was following the traditional model of the guide/seeker relationship, but I soon found that did not work for me.
Most spiritual teacher/student relationships tend to be traditional; or so I have observed. I have done no polling about this and am only going by my personal observations.
When a person is given the responsibility of being a spiritual teacher it is natural for them to emulate the model that they have before them of their own teacher's behavior. In my case the model was Pir Vilayat. He had a certain style probably necessitated by the huge number of people that he had initiated over the years. Also his basic training would have been in the Indian model of Guru – Chela relationships. The Guru is the teacher and is above all judgment. The Chela is the devotee and his/her job is to be totally devotional. Since Chisti order comes from India, it is not surprising that this is the model, more or less, that we use. To his credit, Pir Vilayat did often state that he did not want to be seen as or treated like a Guru, but it happened none the less. He did instruct his representatives to maintain a kind of distance between themselves and the students and to make sure that we kept a more or less aloof attitude. This was not said specifically but the message was clear. That was okay for him, he had this automatic regality about him that told you without a word being said that you were in the presence of a King. For others it tended to be something put on that may or may not have really fit. The problem, as I see it, with this model is that it is difficult for the teacher to admit to the student that the teacher also is affected by their interaction.
I have noticed in my own evolution as a guide that I am becoming less and less worried about appearances. And that is what the Guru/Chela model really is, an appearance of some kind, a sort of comfort zone where everyone knows their role. This works I suppose as long as everyone agrees but hard feelings arise when someone disagrees.
All too often, in this budding culture of Western spirituality, have I seen damage done because of the attempt to impose an Eastern model on our sensibilities. Why do I say budding? Because we are still trying to figure out just how we are going to do it. For the past century or so those of us with a need for a deeper spiritual experience have been struggling to integrate Eastern knowledge with Western secular attitudes. At times we go way overboard. In India it is fine for a person to don a saffron robe, in Des Moines it is silly looking. There is an impulse, I suppose, to display evidence of one's affiliation by the uniform but it really isn't necessary. Using some kind of uniform is not necessarily a bad thing but it does separate you out from your fellows in a kind of arrogant manner, as if you are somehow better because of your uniform. You may not feel that but others will so why do it? I think it may be that we are slowly coming to the realization that it is the inner work that is important and not how you are perceived by others.
Perhaps it is evident by this point that the evolution of Western spirituality is still going on. Where it will end, if it does have an ending, is still an unknown. What I firmly believe however is that it will become more and more a cooperative partnership between teacher and student. Yes it is true that the teacher often has technical knowledge that the student does not have. Yes he/she will also have access to intuition that the student has yet to develop but the words of Pir Vilayat about one's guide continue to reverberate within me and I have to believe he meant exactly what he said.
In regards to finding one's guide he always used this phrase, "To see yourself in another yourself who is better able to manifest that which you already are." How much more clear would we have to be to see that all the guide is doing is helping you to access what is already within you. And, in the doing, the guide will also find spaces within him or herself which are also opening, manifesting, unveiling. It is a cooperation.
I suspect that this line of thinking bears more inspection. So I would be glad of any input that may come from my readers.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2009-12-29T21:54:00.002-05:00

COOLNESS

"People may become friends, they may become acquaintances, relations, they may become connected through industry, political friendship, partnership in business or any collaboration, and yet they may be separated. Nearness in space does not bring the nearness of real friendship. There is only one way of coming near to one another and that is by way of the heart." Hazrat Inayat Khan

I have just had the most remarkable experience. As some of you may know, I guide Sufi retreats. For the most part I use the alchemical model developed by my teacher, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan. When I work with someone not in this country I usually avail myself of a web cam and mic. We, the retreatant and I, establish a set time that I will connect with them daily and we talk over the computer. That is how I usually do it; but not this last time.
I just led a retreat for one of my students that was a true collaboration. This person wanted a healing retreat which is a very specific model and not at all alchemical. I am not conversant with it but it so happens that my wife is. Secondly this person really wanted to get away from their house and do it somewhere else. So I arranged with someone I trust to give her a space, feed her, and monitor her progress through the retreat. This is not something I have ever done before. Next, the person monitoring is also in training to be a retreat guide so, in a way I was also mentoring them through the process. Lastly, the person who is their mentor in the retreat guide training was also in the loop and wanted reports. So we had a five way retreat process; the actual person doing the retreat; my wife who wrote the retreat; myself as the fulcrum so to speak; the person hosting my retreatant and monitoring the progress and the hosts mentor. Got all that? It was a remarkable experience. I admit to being a little concerned how it would all work out but I need not have worried.
The key to it all was the host. This person became my voice, my hands, and my intuitive responses. They gave me the most complete reports I believe I have ever seen on this process. The most remarkable aspect was that, when the retreatant had a question about something or a worry, the host, as it was reported to me, seemed to give the exact same answers that I would, often almost word for word as I would say them.
We all felt something deep flowing from heart to heart.
And that is the point of this article. When you trust someone and they actually come through - there is a heart connection that is much more valuable then any kind of intellectual or societal friendship. It is often said that we are all connected but who really believes it. Seriously, in your heart of hearts do you really think you are connected to all other beings and things? It sounds good but who wants to actually do it. But, there can occasionally come a true meeting of hearts. We have the capacity to work together, to collaborate in a deeply meaningful way. We occasionally can have the privilege of working with people deeply sincere in their desire to serve and who have the wherewithal to actually follow through in a genuine effort to merge with us and become more.
I decided to trust this person. I gave them one of my most precious friends to care for and they did not disappoint. What more can be asked of a friend?

My heart is full and my blessings continue to unfold.

May the coming year find you as a friend.

Love and Blessings, Musawwir

2009-12-09T11:47:00.000-05:00

PERSONAL FAULTS

"The further one goes, the more difficulties there are; one finds greater faults in oneself as one advances along the spiritual path. It is not because the number of faults has increased; but the sense has become so keen that one regards differently faults which formerly one would not have noticed."
Hazrat Inayat Khan

I am very fond of saying to people who inquire about wood working that an amateur looks for short cuts while a professional adds steps. It is exactly what Pir O Murshid is saying above. As we become more and more adept at our chosen path, we will of necessity begin to notice many flaws in our character that we had not noticed before. It does not mean that we are accumulating them, they were always there but we blocked ourselves from seeing them. It is the same with any craft. As I grew more and more skilled at woodworking I noticed things that I would have skipped over impatiently in the past. I was and am still impatient but I curb that emotion and take the time to correct anything that may impede a project from being the best I can produce. I hate to sand for instance, I really do not like it at all so I force myself to take the time and do it right. It becomes a true spiritual exercise since I am demanding that my impatient emotion relax and let me create the beauty that the creative part of my mind desires.

It is very common for someone who has taken a spiritual initiation and is seriously working with a guide to go to that guide in deep distress over the above. They suddenly find that they are really a jerk. So many things that they do are either pointless or petty or inconsistent or truly nasty. What I tell them and what I hope most other guides say is that they are really doing the work now and that it just gets worse! Sorry, I bet you thought I would say that it gets easier. Nope. If you are truly paying attention and you really want to become the being that you have always been meant to be then a deep awareness of the truth of the human condition is one of the requirements. There is hope though. It may not get easier but you do get used to it. Finding yet another flaw is kind of like finding an old friend that you never really liked all that much but you tolerated. Now you have the opportunity to realize that this old friend is really someone who is very much a part of you but is growing smaller by the day. That is if you let it. If you are determined to hold on to this old friend, well then they will definitely stay around and help you remain a jerk.

What to do? Laugh it off. Everyone has faults. It is so very easy to see the faults of others but much more difficult to see our own. So, when yours do appear you might, instead of being appalled, be thankful. It is the best option. And the reason is that the more conversant you are with your own faults, which are really just the human condition manifesting through you, the more empathetic you will be toward others. And, the best part is, now you can actually be of service.

One of the things that I have noticed as I continue to work on being a Sufi is that the Universe provides more and more examples of my jerkdom. It is fascinating, also annoying but that's part of the deal. It would be very easy to go back to sleep and be the sad loser I was for the first 35 years of my life. Well maybe not so easy. When we are doing spiritual work, if it is honest we do actually form a habit of paying attention and shifting our emotions about to better respond to the environment around us. For instance I float in and out of crankiness. There are times when I cannot help myself and I am totally cranky and not that pleasant to be around. Other times, more now, I am neutral. Occasionally I am nice to hang with. You will notice that I am totally aware of all of these states. That's what doing the work is all about. Pretending to be spiritual, whatever that means, is not doing the work.

One of the most important practices in all esoteric schools is self forgiveness. You acted badly; you apologize and then forgive yourself. Beating yourself up is wasted energy. That habit of self-flagellation that is still around to some extent is pretty useless to my mind. So for the next little while why don't you have a go at it? Think of something you find uncomfortable in your being and forgive it. If it needs an action, even if it seems humiliating, do it. But mostly forgive.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2009-12-02T08:49:00.001-05:00

TRADITION

“The great Self of the Universe is to be found within the human heart, and the task of the Sufi is to perceive that his own soul is identical with the Universal Soul. When the illusion of separateness, which is the cause of all trouble and pain, disappears, the soul, awaking from the dream of life, will know itself one with God.”
Hazrat Inayat Khan

I had this idea to write about tradition in a kind of condescending manner. I wrote a whole article in this vein, but I cannot publish it. The small ego wants to shout its disillusion but the greater ego says no, that is not the way. So, let us look at tradition as an aspect of what humans need. What do humans really need? They need love.

Everywhere one looks there is a calling to accept some form of traditional thought, behavior or faith. This seems to be how humans operate. We need to know that there is something that we can rely on to tell us what is true. It is so very difficult to know what is true without some kind of guidance.

Both of my parents were orphans and I had no extended family, which is where I believe tradition really originates, so I have little experience with a feeling of tradition. Additionally American culture is still confused about just what tradition we should follow since we are a mish mash of all traditions. So, growing up, I really had no sense of any kind of tradition sustaining me. I have come to see that this is not true for most people.

As I am coming to understand it, tradition is a kind of anchor that we have, that we may not know we have, that we rely upon to tell us who we are. Even if we say we reject the tradition that very rejection is an identity. How often for instance have you heard someone say, perhaps you have said it, I am a lapsed Catholic or I am a non practicing Jew or a non-observant Muslim. Apparently we truly need some form of identity, positive or negative, to give us shape and form. And, even if we reject it, we seem to need to know that there is some form of Divine Love there that gives us depth. We may say that the institution supporting whatever particular tradition we were brought up in is corrupt but the ideal itself is pure.

I freely admit that to me this is a strange idea that I have only recently begun to explore. As far as I am concerned tradition is Geo. Washington never telling a lie, which I later found to be a complete fabrication. Religions and their traditions simply do not resonate within me at all. What does resonate is what I have come to call the Intelligent Universe; a place where we exist and discover and create. For love I have my current wonderful family and my many beautiful friends .

I am beginning to believe that much of what we reach for in our spiritual quest relies very heavily on this idea of identity that formed us. It may even be that we demand that our quest take a particular shape so that we continue to feel that internal comfort and love that we felt in our very early years. Assuming of course that one's early years did have some form of comfort and love.

So tell me, what resonates within you. Do you even know it is there? I am very curious to understand this aspect of humanity and would appreciate any feedback that anyone may care to offer.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2009-11-11T09:35:00.000-05:00

PHENOMENA

"By higher spiritualism we do not mean that which is occupied with occult, curious or magical phenomena. Such spiritualism keeps man away from progress. Higher spiritualism is that in which the soul is enkindled and illuminated."
Hazrat Inayat Khan

There are five chapters in my original manuscript which did not make it into The Sovereign Soul. The chapter on phenomena is one of them. Today I was rereading it and I could see why the editor did not want to use it. In the first place it is kind of confusing and in the second it flies in the face of conventional wisdom that we must have phenomena for validation of our spiritual understanding.

Human beings want evidence. We want to know that the effort we are expending is having an effect and we want to be able to point to something that proves it, to ourselves and to anyone else that we might want to impress. We want to know and we want others to know that we know. It is a natural desire. When a person has embarked on a spiritual path one of the very first things they look for is evidence. The interesting thing here is that the human mind is quite capable of producing it for us.

As a hypnotist, I am very aware of my capacity to create an illusion for a client in order to help them solve a problem. It does not really matter if the illusion has any basis in reality as long as the inner mind accepts it and creates the scenario that enables the client to alter some aspect of their life that is affecting them in a negative way. So I know that the mind can do amazing things to prove to us that we are doing something effective. In spirituality however, this kind of thing gets in the way.

There is a category of phenomena that is useful, as long as you do not give the means of manifestation too much credence. It is when subtle information comes to you from your deep inner being. By the time it percolates to the surface your mind will give it some form of reality that it can use to process the information. Discovering what the illusion represents can be a challenge but it is something that certainly can be done. Then, when the actuality is discovered, the illusion will become a kind of icon that you can refer to while, at the same time, knowing it is a representation and not the reality.

The deepest and most powerful of experiences have no icons, they simply are there as experiences and you know them to be such. All of the visualization exercises that we do leading up to these experiences are very helpful in training the brain to organize how it feels about things. We want the brain to be comfortable with extraordinary experiences, which is probably why we love to have phenomena. It helps us to work up the courage for the really vast understandings, which we have no way of grasping if we are totally committed to how the Earth sees things. So we get phenomena to help us transcend physical reality and experience the truth of creation but then we have to let the phenomena go in order to have this experience.

Obviously this is all very subtle. It may or may not happen in just the way I have described. However; it will be something similar. So, enjoy the phenomena as it appears but do keep in mind that one day you will discover a depth of understanding that stands on its own, no phenomena necessary.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2009-11-05T11:40:00.001-05:00

The Golden Rule

"What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn"
Rabbi Hillal the Elder, 110BCE-10CE

"To be really sorry for one's errors is like opening the door of heaven."
Hazrat Inayat Khan

I just watched a video of Karen Armstrong, one of my favorite authors, on ted.com. If you are not familiar with ted.com I urge you to go to it right now and watch and listen to something. It is a truly remarkable web site with all sorts of fascinating and informative lectures by brilliant people. What Ms. Armstrong was saying in essence was that whereas religions should be leading the way in creating an atmosphere of tolerance and respect, what they really seem to be doing is getting in the way. They seem to be more concerned with being “right” then with implementing the basic compassion which is at the root of all religious expression. So, what she proposed was that we just do it. Without waiting for someone to say it is okay; that we institute the Golden Rule ourselves.

There is a practice within Sufism called Muhasaba. What it means is examination of conscience and what it asks is that we constantly check out how we are thinking and what we are doing. Much of what we do is based on habit -- habit of thought, habit of behavior, habit of attitude and so on. Along with these habits comes what we in the hypnosis business call the Rational Mind. It is a part of waking consciousness and has only one job really. It gives us reasons for our behavior and for our habits. They don't have to be good reasons or even based on any kind of reality. As long as we believe them then they work for us.

A classic example of a bad reason for behavior is 'white people are superior.' A whole culture believed this and caused untold harm as a result. I am not sure that it was avoidable at the time but it certainly is avoidable now, yet there are those who continue to believe it.

Muhasaba asks that we observe our own behavior, not someone else's, with total detachment, without judgment. But, as you do the practice, just watching, you will find yourself dismayed at some of the things you say and do, apparently with no thought at all. They are just your habit. What the practice does, however, is teach you the truth of the Golden Rule. There is nothing magical about it, implementation is difficult and requires constant attention. What does happen is that you will begin to notice when you say and do things to others that you would hate having done to you. Viola!

I thought to give an example from my own extensive list of bad behaviors but there is no need. Any honest person can easily see their own without my examples. And, I guess I have given enough examples in other places. I think the important thing to pay attention to is the idea of being right. As long as you are convinced of your rightness in any issue, moral or otherwise, you have a problem. Being right is really good for assembling things, engines and bicycles and things like that. For all other issues being right just gets in the way of being truly human.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2009-11-04T20:43:00.002-05:00

COMMENTS 2

It is a sad thing but I guess it wasn't enough. So now I will vet all comments posted to my blog. Sorry but I guess a little effort was not enough. Eventually such people get tired and move on to other areas. Sad really.

2009-11-04T09:12:00.003-05:00

COMMENTS

Dear Friends,
I feel I must apologize but I also feel I have no choice. As you may have noted we have on this blog what a friend of mine refers to as a troll. A troll is usually a very unhappy person. For whatever reason they feel that they have a right to pester from a place of safety so there is no danger to them. As all of my readers know, I am very open and will accept any comment or criticism given. But I do not feel that you, my readers, should be subjected to notifications from a troll. Therefore I am shutting off the Anonymous Comments setting. Any one of my friends who wants to comment without signing up can do so by sending an email to me personally. I will post the comment for you.
Again I apologize for this action. If it were just me this person was harassing I would not mind but since everyone gets the comment I felt it was not fair to you.
Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2009-10-31T10:31:00.000-04:00

REVISIONS

"True change is very natural. it is not like buying something new but is an organic experience that, once implemented, seems totally normal." Me

"I have the right to grow and become who I am and I have the obligation to use the potentials I was given." My Friend Karin

An editor once told me that I could not use my own quotes to begin a chapter in one of my books. Somehow that is a bad thing. But I don't see why. I am quotable after all.

I have just finished going through my book, looking for places I want changed. There were not many but the ones I want changed are important to me. Oh, if you did not know, Quest Books is going to republish The Sovereign Soul next year. They will re-title it as "Practical Sufism: A Field Guide to Spiritual Life". I like that title because it is much closer to my original intent. I never wanted the book to be a paean to Sufism. It was always intended to be much broader and be accessible to anyone on any spiritual path. So, I went through the book looking for the few references that I wanted to change. There weren't many as the original editor did a great job. There were just a few things that I missed from the first publication that are now fixed.

I was talking with someone this morning who expressed a bit of dismay to me. They noted that they often feel as if something is just about to happen or some form of inner change is taking place and then, poof, the energy dissipates and it seems as if nothing happened; which is when I said the quote at the beginning of this blog.

It is something that I have just begun to really understand. We in the West tend to think of spiritual change as some kind of thing we can acquire through effort. In a way that is true but we also tend to think of it in much the same way as we would if we were to purchase a new roof for our house. The men come, the old shingles are tossed in a dumpster and the new shingles installed. Then we can look at our new roof with happiness, even though we are annoyed that the workmen crushed a favorite rose bush. But then, after awhile we stop admiring our new roof and the rose bush grows back, slightly different then before but still the same plant. That is the process as I see it. However; spiritual change is not quite like that.

I wonder if it is strange that someone like me is still finding new aspects of spirituality to observe and marvel at. I hope it isn't strange because I am continually discovering newness. What a wonderful life this is that we can continually explore and create and discover. I was very aware when writing my first book that once published, it became a kind of fixed icon with no chance for continual growth. It was stuck. Much like scripture is stuck with no chance of revision or change or growth. But humans are not stuck, not at all.

The chance to go through my first book and make some of the changes was an interesting experience. I can see many places where the way I think and feel now is slightly different from the way I felt when I first wrote the book. There is nothing totally dissimilar but there are some subtle differences that perhaps only I would notice. It is still a good book.

Our changes are organic. As long as we continue to pay attention things will happen. We may not notice them as discreet experiences but they happen just the same. Maybe the important thing is to realize that what we are doing is totally natural and it is our insistence on evidence that is a barrier to this natural process. Just let it happen.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2009-10-16T09:27:00.000-04:00

REGRETS 2

"When you can think of yesterday without regret and tomorrow without fear, you are near contentment."
Author Unknown

"I have often regretted my speech, never my silence."
Xenocrates
Greek Platonic philosopher (396 BC - 314 BC)

I want to thank everyone for their responses, public and private. It is always good to examine our assumptions in the face of an unusual concept and the concept I posed is apparently unusual enough to evince some interesting commentary.
Several people wrote privately to me and one publicly and asked about the Christian concept of the perfect, all knowing God. It is true that God, in whatever shape or form you prefer, is in fact omnipotent and omniscient. God is also learning and curious and waiting to see how things turn out. It is the basic paradox of existence. It is also true that a paradox can be upsetting to the psyche. But see if you can get hold of this one. I believe it is extremely important.

Another thing that was asked was how we can examine our actions each day to determine the good, the bad and the ugly. I was asked if there is a practice or meditation that one can use to do this examination. Yes there is a practice; in Sufism it is called Muhasaba, examination of conscience. What you do is pay attention to your thoughts. So that when resentment or regret or disappointment appear you notice it. That is all that is necessary. The idea is to give actual attention to your thinking and emotions. When we think we generally do not give thought to paying attention to the thinking, we just do it. And much of our thinking is unnecessary. So, paying attention will give you the information you need to discover your own inner processes and begin to alter them.

I want to give a caveat here about the above instruction. It is not magic, it requires real effort. If you take it seriously you will notice moments of extreme discomfort as you struggle not to give blame but just to notice that you want to give blame, and so on. This is an interim phase that must be gone through as you train yourself to pay attention.

I mentioned resentment above. Resentment is a cousin of regret. It's not the same but it is related and can often be intermixed with regret. Pir Vilayat often said that the great barrier to realization was resentment. But he also said that there was at least one circumstance that he resented deeply that he could not shake. He simply could not forgive the person he resented. And he obviously had a pretty deep realization. So perhaps it is again a matter of being aware.

And that is probably the whole secret to all of these questions, awareness. The more you are aware of your emotions and modes of thinking, the closer you will come to a basic calm attitude about your life. And that, my friends, is exactly what the Pir was talking about when he mentioned becoming a co-creator. If you are calm, then all around you have the possibility to also be calm or calmer. If you are agitated and unsure and constantly waiting for the next problem to arise, well then that is what you create around you. Which means, according to this general theory that we are all part of God, that God is agitated and uncomfortable?

I find more and more that I much prefer to say The Intelligent Universe rather then God. God, as a word, has so much baggage attached that it ends up being useless. However, as members of the Intelligent Universe, we certainly do have the right to co-create. We are intelligent beings, participating in a Universe of unlimited ideas; therefore we might as well do something useful.

So, work on your awareness, notice what you feel, how you think, how you respond to those around you. Do not, I repeat, do not beat yourself up when you find something inappropriate. Just notice. In this way you will slowly change the patterns of behavior that seem so ironclad but are really just chimera of the mind.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2009-10-09T18:43:00.001-04:00

REGRETS

"The perfect man uses his mind as a mirror.
It grasps nothing. It regrets nothing.
It receives but does not keep."
Chuang Tzu

"Oh my Beloved, fill the cup that clears
Today of past regrets and future fears.
Tomorrow? Why, tomorrow I may be
Myself with yesterday's seventy-thousand years!"
Omar Khayyam

I should explain that last line. In Sufism, depending on the source, there are either 22,000 or 70,000 veils before the face of God. Omar Khayyam is probably saying that he is waiting for the clarity that will remove all these veils and reveal his true self to his current self. That would be a very common theme in Sufi poetry.

Now, getting to the point of the blog:

We all do stupid stuff occasionally. You cannot be human and not eventually do something that you would rather you had not. Often they will be things that, in the moment seem, if not totally okay, at least somewhat responsive to whatever is taking place. Thinking back on my own regrets I can see that I probably could not have acted in any other way at that time. In retrospect these events seem foolish or harmful or downright idiotic but, at the time, they seemed normal. So, in a way, regrets are reevaluations of events that are now gone and cannot be changed.

My very first Sufi teacher, besides Pir Vilayat that is, was a woman named Iman Ibranyi Kiss. I also had a Sufi guide named Azimat, who gave me my spiritual practices, but I lived in the same community with Iman so she became my de-facto instructor into the mysteries of Sufism. She was fond of saying that she had the right to rewrite her personal history. I puzzled over this because I knew she had had a rough time in the early years and I wondered how she could rewrite it. What I did not realize then was that she meant she was rewriting her attitude toward the events that had taken place. Iman was killed in a car accident at a very young age. I still miss her.

Iman's idea that we can rewrite our history intrigued me for many years. I have a number of incidents in my life that I deeply regret and I could not see how I could experience them as other then awful. I still have trouble with it but occasionally I can see her point.

Imagine for a time that your life, not as you perceive it but as it actually is, is one long dream of God. From this point of view your experiences, however you judge them are also the experiences of God. Among the billions of experiences occurring every day, yours still have value because God, in the Sufi point of view, is kind of like a massive computer, absorbing data and processing the results into a coherent idea of its own existence. This is at least one point of view of the mystics, there are obviously others. But it is helpful. If you can hook into this point of view, even briefly, it gives you a completely different take on some of your more stupid or silly actions. You get to see that they are also the silly or stupid actions of God. And isn't that interesting?

From this we can extrapolate a certain idea about the true nature of reality and our place within it. If we are of the being of God, each of us is an active participant in the drama of the Universe, so every action of ours is also a part of that drama. So, all the stupid stuff we do is also a part of that drama. What do you think is God's point of view in all of this? A part of God, kicks his dog, or beats his wife or causes an accident. What can God be thinking to do such a thing? What does God learn?
It is a great puzzle. It becomes a difficult problem when we begin to realize that we are contributing to the over all knowledge of God, even when we do something silly. Is this our goal then to continually disappoint ourselves? With each regret, disappointment is right there helping. So, do you think that God is disappointed?

The Sufi point of view is that God is simply interested. God watches and experiences and learns and constantly evaluates in some manner that we do not understand. So perhaps it is possible for us also to see in this way and not be quite so hard on ourselves.

So, examine your regrets and see if you can see them as simply a part of your being. You learned, hopefully, and you now know not to do that again; which means that God also learned. You might say that God has been learning the same lessons over and over again and it may look like that but there has been a very slow evolution.
Next blog we will look at this a bit deeper. In the meantime your comments will help me write the next blog.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2009-10-03T09:34:00.002-04:00

LIMITATIONS

"Limitations and boundaries are inevitable in human life; forms and conventions are natural and necessary; but they none the less separate humanity. It is the wise who can meet one another beyond these boundaries." Hazrat Inayat Khan

Can you imagine being totally free? Completely unfettered by any of the various concerns, responsibilities or restrictions that plague you daily? Is it annoying to know these boundaries exist or are you comfortable with your life as it is?

Our limitations are obvious. We have bodies which must eat and breathe and bathe occasionally. We have relationships that are wonderful or annoying or both. And we have the whole experience of living in an increasingly complex world of amazing possibility and incredibly difficult choices. All of this is happening and all the while we are also feeling the inner impulse to understand ourselves and our environment in an ever deepening way. It may be that we are so involved in solving the puzzle of limitation that we ignore the call from within but it is still there.

I was talking to a friend the other day and mentioned the theme of my next blog. She said that to her limitations is a vase holding her potentials. I liked that very much. It embraces the knowledge that limitations exist while also realizing that they do not limit one in the ultimate sense. She also said that if we didn't see our limitations we'd have nothing to compete against, to grow. And perhaps that is what I want to point out.

I suppose it is inevitable that when a person has a spiritual guide one of the impulses is to tell them all your troubles. And it is certainly valuable in the sense that it gives the guide indications of what the person needs to work on. Sometimes the troubles are pretty difficult and there is not much that the guide can do other then express their sympathy and support. Most of the time however the troubles or limitations are the sorts of challenges that give the opportunity for deeper self discovery and expansion of awareness; often though it does not feel like that.

What we tend to do is give much of our attention to the many obstacles in the way. We know that if only this or that or the other were not in our lives we could be so much more aware or spiritual or successful or happy. What is interesting is we also know that this is silly. Never the less we use these perceived limitations as definitive excuses not to push through and discover our true self. Personally I believe this a self protection mechanism. We protect ourselves from becoming because we might find that the limitations we are so fond of are no longer important and, if that is the case, we will not know what to do or who we are. Then what is the answer? Are we doomed to forever feel as if what we want is unobtainable because we are afraid to release our ideas of our limitations? And just exactly what is a wise person as mentioned above?

I do not know as there is a precise answer to any of those questions but I do know that what is needed is courage. Each person must find their own way. Even a revered spiritual guide can only suggest. The guide can never tell you exactly what you must do. In the first place that is very inappropriate and in the second the guide can never really know all of your inner processes. What the guide really does is honor your being. And, when you think about it, having your being honored takes you beyond all limitation and into the realm of the wise.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2009-09-15T20:22:00.001-04:00

WOW!

This has been a really interesting week. Eight or nine days ago, I'm not sure exactly, I received a message from someone who wanted to know if I would help some younger people in Istanbul establish a Sufi group. I will not go into details about the ensuing conversation but I did want to talk about the means by which this person found me. It turns out that my book, The Sovereign Soul, had been translated into Turkish. I had no idea this had happened. I was both really excited and worried that my book had been pirated. I could not understand why a pirate would go to all the trouble of doing a translation however. Pirating CD's and DVD's I can understand but translating a book is a lot of work. As it turned out, my publisher had sent the Turkish publisher a word file of my book and a contract was in the works. I was left out of the loop but I guess it gets that way sometimes. But there is more. The really cool part is that the book is selling really well in Turkey. Apparently there is a very real hunger in Turkey for Sufism sans Islam. This causes me to wonder how many other countries, filled with religious assumptions, have a sub-culture of dissatisfied seekers, wishing for something beyond the normal, traditional religious associations with mysticism.
If someone really seriously desires religious association then that is fine. But when they also insist that anyone who approaches them for esoteric instruction also embrace their particular version of spiritual reality then they are making mysticism small.
Those of us who offer instruction in mysticism must be extra cautious not to impose our needs on the consciousness of those that we teach. Our task is to aid those we instruct in discovering their own dormant qualities. It is not our task to demand that someone anyone become our clone.
There is a real potential within the esoteric community to embrace those who feel disenfranchised by their own culture. They are crying for teaching, for something real, but they do not want to be told what they must believe. And isn't that how evolution really happens? When someone says, I want but not that, then they are reaching beyond what they know into the unknown and asking for something that they sense but cannot quite grasp. Maybe it is time for those of us who teach to catch up with those who are seeking instruction.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

ps: next year there will also be a Hindi edition of The Sovereign Soul translated by Readworthy Publications

2009-09-04T08:43:00.000-04:00

IT'S NOT FAIR!

"The idea of justice is based upon good and bad. Where there is justice, there is injustice. That means: there are two. Truth is only one. The idea of justice and injustice is from man's conception. When a person rises above justice and injustice, which is subject to change in his every evolution - when he gets above this - he will reach the knowledge of truth. Our conception of fairness and unfairness belongs to our particular evolution. The less intelligent a man is, the more he sees fairness and unfairness, and the more he thinks about it. A stupid person is always ready to judge. In heaven there is only truth and truth is one; where there is no comparison, there is no fairness and no unfairness. Something is greater than fairness and unfairness, and that is truth. It cannot be explained. Truth cannot be acquired. Truth is that which is discovered." Hazrat Inayat Khan

I was having a conversation with a fellow the other day and we happened to touch upon fairness. This man has a deep sense of righteous indignation about any perceived unfairness toward any person or persons and gets very upset when he sees such things happening. I like that attitude and think that it is very important that there are people who feel this way and are willing to do something about the unfairness that they see, which he is. The problem as I saw it was not that he did not have a valid and useful point of view. No, that is okay. The problem was that it became very obvious to me that the above statement by Pir O Murshid was and would remain totally alien to him.

It does not happen often but occasionally I do disagree with Pir O Murshid. In this case I do not believe that a person is more prone to seeing fairness and unfairness because of lack of intelligence. In this I believe he was mistaken. It is not about intelligence at all, it is about awareness. The person that I mentioned above is very intelligent. But, like most Americans, he has little exposure to the broader form of consciousness that we call spirituality. In fact it is becoming more and more apparent that, as the world becomes ever more complex, the tendency to view conditions as unfair is also becoming more and more apparent.

Perhaps we want to believe our own ideals, or maybe we want to think that the world actually has a kind of balanced attitude toward all life. The reality is quite different, as any sociology student should know; people will always tend to view others as either victims (read prey) or as superiors who control you. Of course we also feel kinship with those who are close to us, friends and relatives, but even then we can feel these inner forces at work. And we convince ourselves, over and over, that it isn't fair.

It isn't fair that so many people do not have health care. It isn't fair that old men create wars that young men then must fight. It isn't fair that people must struggle with abusive partners. And on and on. We have a long list. But what if there were another way to look at it?

While it is true what Pir O Murshid says above that Truth must be discovered, it cannot be acquired, still there are ways to look at what we think of as fairness and unfairness and perhaps see them as two parts of the same thing. It is a matter of standing back and seeing the play on Earth exactly as Shakespeare described. The wise have always known that all is not as it appears but it is up to each of us to find our way into this very subtle means of thought and understanding.

I will await your comments and then write a follow up blog perhaps going a bit deeper into this issue.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2009-08-16T10:26:00.000-04:00

SECURITY

“It is a most natural desire of the human soul to seek for happiness and comfort. Man desires principles to guide his life, and he wishes for a moral standard to regulate the life of the community. He wishes for a balance of activity and repose; he desires union with the one whom he loves; he wishes for security of all that belongs to him, a settled reciprocity, a fixed give-and-take, and all things which bring about happiness and peace at home and in the nation.” Hazrat Inayat Khan

“Authority prevents the understanding of oneself, does it not? Under the shelter of an authority, a guide, you may have temporarily a sense of security, a sense of well-being, but that is not the understanding of the total process of oneself. Authority in its very nature prevents the full awareness of oneself and therefore ultimately destroys freedom; in freedom alone can there be creativeness. There can be creativeness only through self-knowledge. “ Jiddu Krishnamurti

"The word security is derived from the Ancient Greek "Se-Cura" and literally translates to "without fear". 'Security' is therefore the state of being secure, or the actions employed to achieve that state, i.e. to be secure is to be without fear of harm." Wikpedia

Imagine for a moment that it is possible to truly be secure. What do you suppose that would be like? When you imagine total security in body, mind and spirit do you find your mind drifting to all the ‘what ifs’? It seems to be a natural impulse to seek security while also being aware of the many things that can go wrong in one’s life. A significant portion of our modern culture is based on this impulse. There is a whole industry devoted to milking this impulse for corporate gain. I do not necessarily see anything wrong with this and I am not advocating anarchy: however I do wonder about some things.

As I have stated in the past, the spiritual life absolutely requires three things if there is to be any expectation of change; Patience, Discipline and Courage. It occurs to me that the last one can be very hindered by our need for security.

One of the things you learn when you take a lot of hypnosis training as I have is that one of the most basic needs of a human, perhaps the most basic is the need to feel safe. Our inner mind or sub-conscious has a lot of jobs but its main job is to protect us from danger, real or imagined. It does not matter whether or not the danger is real because the inner mind is very literal and accepts whatever you tell it. One of the dangers that the inner mind can perceive is change. I do not think that it will come as a surprise to any of my readers to note that change is always uncomfortable. We tend to want our changes to be easy, smooth, no real effort involved. In fact we would pretty much prefer that any such changes just kind of happen without our conscious knowledge. We want to be spiritually aware and to manifest all of the dormant qualities within us but we also want it to be fun with no associated anxiety. But, anyone who has made any kind of effort to expand their state of awareness will know that the above ain't gonna happen. Since this is the case we need to understand the process.

It has long been evident to me that most spiritual training ignores these most basic needs of a person to understand just what is happening to them. There is often this attitude from the teacher that somehow you should just accept and do what you are told. Even when they say that you need accept only what is comfortable, still the attitude is there. I suppose this is a holdover from the traditional way of doing things that held true for so many centuries. But, there is a huge difference in this age. In this age we no longer live in little villages where everyone knows everyone else and is totally supportive. We live in isolation from one another. And even if we are in some kind of village there is still an undercurrent of distrust. Why is this? Because we no longer feel safe. Our world has changed so very rapidly over the past 400 to 500 years that we are still catching up. This is especially true since WWII. Our psyches still are adapted to life in a small village. Almost every single person alive now, with very few exceptions is descended from peasant stock and the one true thing about peasants is that they live in constant fear of the Hun coming over the hill to rape and ravage so they have a very deep dependence on their neighbors. But now, in our modern culture where we are told constantly that trust is misplaced, we are even more fearful. Whew, so what to do?

I think the very first thing that a person should do is decide whether or not you are worth the trouble. Will your safety be increased by self-knowledge? Will you feel more secure by going within on a journey of self-discovery? You see the problem? This is something that you cannot know until you actually do it. So begin with the first one, are you worth it? I am not going to say the obvious because you are the one who must decide. If you look to someone else to reassure you that will only last for a short time as Krishnamurti says above. If you need someone, some authority figure, to maintain your self worth, then it will never ever been secured.

When I am working with a hypnosis client, what I will often do is help them create a safe place, a place in their mind that they can retreat to if the hypnotherapy becomes difficult, which it can at times. So here is a clue for you. You have the capacity to create a safe place in your inner mind that you can retreat to if things get too scary. And, from this safe place, you can venture forth into the unknown and truly discover the wonders of your hidden attributes. There is no need to do it all at once either. Little increments are best.

It is important that we feel safe. It is also important that we exhibit courage in our quest. So, as Pir O Murshid continually says, seek balance.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2009-07-21T14:46:00.002-04:00

THE FRAGILITY OF BELIEF
Part 2

"Every experience on the physical, astral, or mental plane is just a dream before the soul."
"Man's pride and satisfaction in what he knows limits the scope of his vision."
Hazrat Inayat Khan

My best friend is often saying that all of life is a long dream. From beginning to end the dream flows and the quality of our dream is determined by how we decide to see ourselves, others and the whole of creation. As I have been thinking about this theme of belief dreaming becomes more and more important. It was pointed out to me, by someone reading the last blog that people go through various stages and often a sincere belief in something will be their next best experience within this dream. There is a hidden factor here though.

In the last blog I mentioned that I was reading "Reading Lolita in Tehran", by Azar Nafisi. One of the points that she makes several times is that the women of Iran are living someone else's dream. When Khomeini arrived in 79 he had his own dream of how he believed things had been at one time and how they should be in this new Islamic state. Then he imposed his dream on everyone else. In this way a sincere belief became a theocrats means of demanding that the world conform to his particular dream. To be perfectly honest, I am not sure if, in the long term scheme of things, this is good or bad. In the short term it is good for those who need to know they are more right then anyone else and bad for those who want to simply live their lives with basic freedoms. In the long term I can see people discovering two very separate dreams. One would be the dream imposed upon them, especially the women, and the other would be the dream they have of themselves that knows the first dream is an illusion that they must give obeisance to but which has no fundamental meaning in and of itself.

Oh, the hidden factor? It is simply this, whose dream are you dreaming? Your own; or that of someone else.

Isn't that an interesting question? I imagine that many, even most people would say that they are not dreaming, they would say that this is reality. Well, we can debate that some other time but the essence of the question remains. Are you giving belief away? Or, is it truly yours.

What seems to be true is that we, as humans, go through various stages.

I have this person who looks to me, more or less as a guide. She is very pesty. She consistently contradicts me and makes me explain far beyond any reasonable persons need for explanation. Yet I love her. I love her because she will not just accept, it has to feel totally right to her. When we first met she was very sure of her rightness and knew just where she stood. That is no longer the case; now it has become a wonderful stage of questioning belief and discovering dormant possibilities. And it is exciting to watch. For me it is a very difficult challenge because in order to answer her questions I must also question what I know to be true. In this manner Truth becomes this vast arena of ever changing realities. What I continually wonder in this constant reinterpretation of belief is where will it end?

As Inayat Khan says above, our pride keeps us from expanding the scope of vision. So maybe the kinds of people who continually question and demand are the ones who aid us in expanding our scope. I am reminded however of how often I have seen someone, some spiritual teacher, demanding that some student or congregant just accept what they are told with no discussion or argument. Granted, occasionally a student will be obstreperous and question just to show they are clever but that is not always the case. Even then I wonder if there is not purpose in the questioning, annoying as it may be.

From my point of view then, belief is always a variable, never fixed. As anyone who reads my blogs knows, my main point is always that there is nothing fixed, everything is variable, and there are no rules. We can say, from a certain point of view that God or whoever the prime motivator happens to be, watches us as an interested observer. It could be said that this being, assuming there is such a thing, is paying attention to the actions of an aspect of itself that has been given the right to do as it likes, just so God can see what happens. If this is true, then anything that we may believe that depends on some outside source of inspiration or relies on someone else to inform us, must be suspect. Obviously their information is no better than ours. So we each have a responsibility to say what we know to be true for ourselves, not for someone else.

I await your comments.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2009-06-26T16:28:00.002-04:00

THE FRAGILITY OF BELIEF

"True spirituality is not a fixed faith or belief; it is the ennobling of the soul by rising above the barriers of material life."
Hazrat Inayat Khan

"In the realm of religion most believers are still locked into traditionally accepted beliefs... Since these beliefs differ, they are often a cause of political conflicts with the trail of avoidable human suffering... The future perspectives of spirituality are based upon experience rather than belief systems..."
Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

I bought a copy of Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi and began to read it. This does not always happen. Often I will buy a book because I like the title or the theme appeals to me. But then, in some strange form of imposed osmosis, I will believe that I understand the book without reading it. Sometimes I will break through this odd form of self denial and read, often discovering that my preconceived notion of the content is a great barrier to actually absorbing the ideas therein presented. It is this barrier that I must overcome in order to participate in the world of the author. Sometimes I will fail in this effort, deciding that I am smarter then the author and understand more then he/she does about whatever the issue or theme happens to be. There are a number of books in my library that I feel this way about and occasionally I look at the spines, imprinted with title and author and reprise my superiority. Then, if I am in a good mood, I laugh at my own presumption.

In the case of Reading Lolita in Tehran, unlike my usual m/o I began reading it right away. Why? Because, unlike many of the books I buy, it is about something that I truly know nothing about, the world of women inside a severe theocracy. Plus, the author has an author's note in the beginning of the book that I adore.
She says:
"Aspects of characters and events in this story have been changed mainly to protect individuals, not just from the eye of the censor but also from those who read such narratives to discover who's who and who did what to whom, thriving on and filling their own emptiness through other's secrets."

Isn't that wonderful though? And it brings me to the point of this particular blog. How much of your belief is based on the need to know you are better than others?
That may seem like a specious question but I am quite serious. I have been thinking much about how nice it feels to know that you know something that others do not know. How nice it feels to be in on some secret that only a very few can truly understand. And then to go further, how nice it feels to be able to tell someone that your belief is waiting for them, if only they will stop and listen for a moment to the wonderful message you have for them.

In the case of Ms. Nafisi, she was dealing in a system that not only is totally sure of its righteousness but also was quite willing to flog anyone who does not agree. Unfortunately for the floggers, eventually people will begin to see that there are serious holes, hypocrisies and inconsistencies in the system. So, we come to the next point I want to make, how invested are you in the belief system that tells you that you are wonderful and others are lacking? Do you depend on this belief system for your identity or to consistently inform you in some way?

I suppose we all do this to some extent; probably because we need some form of anchor to help us feel safe. Fundamentally that is what we are always doing, creating a safe place for ourselves with our interpretation of what we are experiencing or what we are told. When we get high or feel the increased flow of endorphins through our brains, brought on by the meditative or ecstatic state we have found, we will tend to attribute the feeling to whatever is taking place around us. It may be a religious ceremony, it may be a meditation class, it may be something quite individual but our tendency will always be to give credit to whatever or whomever the ecstatic state arose from. And we will then create a system to support our interpretation because that is what humans do. The much more difficult course would be to not create a system or a foundational belief.

It is almost impossible to avoid interpretation. We rely on language and cultural information to orient us and those will always be restrictive. Again the constant question, what to do? Well, back in the day, when I was a hippie, we questioned everything. Our battle cry was, "Question Authority!" Of course that only lasted until one was required to make a living, then authority became useful. I am not advocating such extremes but I am advocating having a look at what you think you believe and why you believe it. Only you can know what that is and how you arrived at the conclusions you have decided are real. As Pir Vilayat states above belief systems, even new ones, are passé; experience is the real teacher. Therefore, have your experiences but avoid creating a system to support them.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2009-06-17T17:07:00.003-04:00

SPIRITUAL FREEDOM
&
DIVINE ENTROPY

"So for a system to change, one has to dislocate it and assemble it again in a new way."
Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

I know of this woman, a Presbyterian minister, who made a very pointed statement about the normal course of events for a spiritual group. I do not remember her exact words so I will have to paraphrase. She said when the founder of the group appears there is a lot of enthusiasm and deep dedication to the message he/she brings. Then his/her successor will tend to expand on the original message, going even deeper. When the third generation comes a distinct change takes place. There is what might be called a regression or a movement toward creating an orthodoxy. So the original message of freedom becomes one of rigid doctrine. Apparently this sort of thing is fairly inevitable. I suppose that what happens then is a shift toward devotion to the orthodoxy. This means that the sort of person who is, what we might call, a spiritual pioneer is no longer welcome.

I was reminded of this when one of my friends was watching me do the movements to a prayer. She told me that my movements, which I had learned 30 years ago, were no longer correct. She also told me that the prayer I was saying, also learned 30 years ago, had been changed and I needed to change how I said it. And, she also told me that two of the teachers I revered and had followed for the same number of years were not academic enough; which kind of shocked me since both have PhD's. But in listening to this I recognized what I had heard above. When someone starts telling you that how you are doing something is wrong, that is the beginnings of orthodoxy. It is also the beginnings of entropy for the group that is making this shift. Or so I believe.

In looking over the various definitions of entropy it would seem that they all mean essentially the same thing. When a system, the cosmos, or something mechanical or a political or social system gets to a place where no more growth is possible it tends to collapse in on itself. Here are the definitions if you are interested: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/entropy

So, what to do? I remember feeling; I think it was last year or maybe the year before, that my home was being taken away from me. I did not understand what was happening and kept fighting against it. I would make comments on the leader's forum which caused all sorts of difficulty. Finally someone accused me of being a constant negative influence and called me a bunch of names, so I quit the forum. After all, from their point of view they were right. I came to realize that what was happening was a kind of heat death and I could not stop it. For that matter, why would I want to?

Everyone is allowed the right to choose freedom or orthodoxy. For many orthodoxy is really the only choice because it gives security and that is the preeminent need of the sub-conscious. To choose freedom means choosing insecurity and a bit of terror in your life as one is never sure of the outcome.
Pir Vilayat used to constantly emphasize that one must free oneself from conditioning in order to become who one really was. Yet what seems to be happening is a determination that tradition is the important thing and that what must take place is an acceptance of what is being taught. Or so it seems to me. I have never been comfortable with someone telling me that it must be this way or that way but that is what is being said. So, I guess I am homeless.

The longer I realize that I am homeless, the more I come to appreciate the truth of what Pir Vilayat once said to me, "now you will discover who you really are!" He said this to me after having given me an unusual initiation. What I have come to understand is that there is absolutely no safety in a group ideal. A person must discover their own ideal. As long as a person is relying on a group ideal to inform them they will always be less then they could be. Being with a group is fine but allowing the group to tell you what to believe is giving up your power. Yet, I also understand that it is a very powerful impulse because there is deep security in accepting the group interpretation of reality.
Spiritual Freedom is apparently a state of being that is not really suited to everyone even though Pir Vilayat called it the ultimate longing of the soul. There is such safety in the group that the group is extremely compelling. And people also want equilibrium. They want to know that there is total balance and that boat rocking is definitely not allowed. Unfortunately a system in a state of equilibrium cannot allow change and with no change death is inevitable. Spiritual Freedom on the other hand is scary.

When I first realized that I was becoming homeless it was very very scary. I felt a deep sense of abandonment. Now I realize it is a gift, perhaps the most precious of gifts. It is still scary at times since the system and the group that I had come to rely on is no longer valid to me. But perhaps that is how things need to evolve. It is a very human compulsion to give one's loyalty to an individual or to an ideal and when the ideal begins to seem too structured or fails us in some way we feel isolated and alone. That's the monkey brain I suppose. But we are much larger then the monkey brain. We are also celestial beings. And, as celestial beings, we are quite capable of the ultimate statement, spiritual freedom is the goal. As Ibn al Arabi has said, as paraphrased by Pir Vilayat, "When God created mankind God had to allow for free will, because to do otherwise would not have allowed for any kind of discovery." This quote is from my memory so please excuse any imprecision.

I just realized that I have not defined Divine Entropy. It's simple really. All things eventually dissolve, even ideals, into the Unity of Existence. So it should not be a surprise to anyone to discover that a large part of existence is in a constant state of flux. As one thing dies another grows. As it happens I believe that the age of spiritually superior beings is drawing to a close and an age of democratic equality is arising. It will not be easy because nothing dies without some kind of struggle and those who have come to rely on the existence of their spiritual superiority will need to let go. Some will, gladly, others will fight on til the end. All in all the world of spirituality is in for an interesting time.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2009-05-14T09:31:00.000-04:00

TRANQUILITY

What is it? Why is it so elusive?

I went looking for an appropriate quote from someone for the theme of this blog but……. There are lots of quotes saying how nice tranquility is and how a person needs to find it in order to feel safe and secure and loved. Apparently though a person is supposed to just know what it feels like and to understand that he/she can do it when desired. That line in the US Constitution, "to assure domestic tranquility," was intended to make it lawful for the federal government to step in if two states went to war with each other, a distinct possibility in the beginning. In fact I think it was this line that was Lincoln's justification for pursuing the Civil War. But that little factoid does not help us in discovering just what tranquility is. All we know at this point is that it is an absence of war.

There is a totally separate meaning to tranquility which appears in spiritual literature and is referred to quite a bit. The word supposedly describes a state of complete peace within oneself, or so I understand it. It is akin to serenity but not to bliss. If I am correct, tranquility might be how you feel after you have an ecstatic experience of Unity. If you are reading along here maybe you can see the little problem with all of this. It all sounds so very nice but how do you do it? Serenity, bliss, ecstasy, tranquility; what do they really mean? How do I know if I am doing them? The answer almost always is, you know it when you feel it.

I have a confession to make; I have never taken any of the buzz words very seriously. I am always skeptical of someone who appears to be spiritual, or shows what we have come to expect is a spiritual mien. I have always been pretty sure that authenticity is self evident and there is no need to adopt a blissed out look on your face except to prove to other people how cool you are. On the other hand I have known people for whom there is no need to prove anything to anyone, they truly are angelic or very gentle and sweet. They just naturally walk around with this look of otherworldliness on their face and everyone knows they are unique. But, for most of us, it is an assumed role.

I once told Pir Vilayat that I was advising my students to just pretend to a state if they did not really feel it. He got very upset at me and told me that it must be authentic otherwise it becomes a habit to assume something that is not real. I was properly chastened and revised my teaching accordingly. That also taught me something about who Pir Vilayat really was and I began to wonder about the people who cozied up to him. Some were authentic I was pretty sure but most? Then I began to wonder just how much I was faking it. As I applied muhasaba, self examination, to my being it turned out that I was faking it quite a bit of the time. Not as much as some but a lot. And that was a shock.

What I have come to realize in the intervening years is that the true states of being that we discuss and that are talked about in the literature are natural. When we are in them in a very pure way we are just in them with no awareness of any kind of uniqueness. When it is over we are not sure just what the state was but we want to find a way to describe it; thus the words evolved. Perhaps the problems come when we find we need to alert others to our wonderfulness. I suspect this is also a very natural thing to do and it does not have to be overt either. We can be very subtle about it.

I started out trying to define tranquility. That didn't work out but maybe I defined something. I invite your comments about just what I did define if anything.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2009-04-28T08:37:00.003-04:00

LOYALTY

"The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one’s love upon other human individuals." George Orwell

I asked a friend of mine what they would like me to write about in my next blog and they instantly responded LOYALTY. I then asked them what aspect of loyalty they were thinking of and they said, "the one demanding sacrifice of oneself."

Now, I am not totally sure what they meant by that last statement but it is still an interesting theme and one which we can certainly give some attention to.

There is a web site you can go to which has a list of famous quotes. I typed in loyalty and, among all the statements about loyalty to country and abuse of loyalty, etc. I found the quote above. This quote struck me as particularly sensible. Here is another way of saying essentially the same thing:

"Man proves to be genuine by his sincerity; to be noble by his charity of heart; to be wise by his tolerance; to be great by his endurance throughout the continually jarring influences of life." Hazrat Inayat Khan

So, this blog has been sitting in my computer for over a week now while I try to figure out what to say. Maybe I just did.

Yesterday I got an email from a young lady, the daughter of an old friend, asking me to initiate her into Sufism and to be her guide. It is always a deep honor when this happens and this morning, as I was driving my daughter to work, I was going over in my mind the words you say when you initiate someone, as it is not something that I do all that often. At the beginning of the little initiation ceremony you ask three questions. One, Is it your wish to be initiated into the Sufi Order International? Two, will you give your allegiance to the message of unity brought by Hazrat Inayat Khan. Three, will you view this initiation as a most sacred trust given to you by God? As you can see, of the three questions, two involve loyalty. Granted the third question is more about how you see yourself but loyalty is there. Notice that we do not ask that the one initiated give allegiance to anything other then an ideal. There is no demand that one be loyal to a flag for instance or a guru figure or anything like that; just an ideal, Unity. But then an interesting thing happens. Humans have a hard time giving loyalty to such an ephemeral ideal as Unity. We are much more comfortable with a more solid object. Country is about the broadest ideal that most people can feel comfortable with and even then loyalty to country will often be given more substances by coming to mean a particular political party's assumptions about what that should be. In spiritual groups it almost always means loyalty to the leader.

Another thing that occurs to me, that is not a requirement of the second question I mentioned, is sacrifice. Somehow loyalty has come to have this secondary notion attached to it that one may, probably will, be asked to sacrifice something. I think this is what my friend was asking when they mentioned the internal demand that one somehow sacrifice oneself. I think that just about every person that I guide has, at one time or another, asked me what they will have to give up to follow the spiritual path. The classic Zen answer to that question is, "Give up giving up!" which of course also ends up being a kind of sacrifice on their part. Humans can certainly be persistent.

What seems to happen is that we need to over simplify the ideal and to give it a kind of structure that may or may not have anything at all to do with the ideal itself. We surround it with rules and demands and buzz words to the point that it is no longer the ideal that matters; it is all the attachments we have hung off of it.

For just a moment then ask yourself what your true ideal is. Loyalty to the ideal is a given. Then ask yourself how many attachments go with it. Make a list if you have to. Consider all of the various ramifications of your ideal. Let's see what happens.

In rereading I see that I did not touch on Orwell's last statement and it is certainly something that needs mention. One of the aspects of loyalty to individuals that is always there is our tendency to make them more then they really are. For instance; the spiritual student will always idealize the teacher/guide and will give them a wholly unrealistic kind of super human reality. Then, when the student discovers the all too human sides of the teacher, extreme disappointment results. And this happens in all aspects of life. So, if you recognize from the beginning that the object of your adoration is human and is subject to the human condition then there is no need for disappointment. Wry amusement may be more appropriate.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2009-04-12T22:22:00.002-04:00

INTERNAL ELEGANCE

PART 3

"Our usual sense of personal identity has the effect of encapsulating ourselves in a limitation - with the consequence that we fail to fulfill the purpose of our lives which is to realize and unfurl the divine perfection invested in our being."

Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

As some of you may know, people I guide live all over the world. Once, at the behest of someone who was curious, I counted up and discovered that there are at least 15 different countries represented in my circle of friends. Many of them talk with me via instant messaging, usually on Yahoo. One of my friends, on the other side of the world, was chatting with me the other day and told me that she had been speculating about her usefulness in existence. The question was would it matter if she had never been? My first reaction, of course, was to say that certainly she would be missed but I didn't say it. What I did say was, "Do you believe you have a soul?" There was a long pause, the little cursor on the dialogue box kept blinking. Then, the answer appeared, "Yes I have a soul." I then asked if she could see that the soul expresses itself as it wants or needs to. That was a bit more complicated and we talked about that a bit. Then I pointed out that if she did not exist we would have had to invent her.

The argument goes something like this. All aspects of creation have representations within ordinary reality. They may be very evident or just blossoming but they will be there, at least to the limit of our capacity to notice them. I suppose that means that there are aspects of creation that have yet to be represented. Perhaps they are waiting for combinations that do not yet exist in ordinary reality. That is as may be but, for the purposes of this discussion, we might say that all representations, once they are focused into a single life form, are unique. Even in the most mundane of expressions there is uniqueness, small differences. Snow flakes are a good example. Since all representations are totally unique, in that they have a point of view and life's experiences that give them uniqueness, or at least some form of individuality, each is necessary to enable the Universe or God or whatever you care to call the Prime motivator to know itself. A mystic might argue that even a show flake has a certain amount of self awareness, in as much as the Universe is aware of the snowflake. The trick part of all of this is that there is a constant flow of learning through the body of the Universe. In the case of sentient consciousness, the interaction of all the myriad souls has a flow or perhaps an unfolding. Since the flow that created the person who inspired this blog existed, then it would follow that the particular qualities that make up her personality also had to exist. So, in that respect, her existence was inevitable.

I think my friend's question is also an inevitable one for those of us who want to know ourselves. Personally, I think that the need to know oneself is a fairly rare compulsion but it is a compulsion; there is no doubt of that. It is an inevitable question but it is also one in which a person can get stuck. I can easily imagine someone feeling quite proud of themselves for noticing this question and then thinking that they had discovered something profound. In a way it is profound but in another way it is simply another step along the path to self understanding. I suppose I might be a bit prejudiced since so many of the people I talk to, maybe all of them, are struggling to understand who they are and what they should be doing. I am in that group myself.

Maybe I should reiterate that all of these little articles I write for this blog are my speculations. They are not definitive answers to anything. However, if my speculations manage to rear questions in your mind and occasionally provide alternative modes thinking, then that is all to the good. I am convinced that what I call Internal Elegance is quite simply constantly questioning. Not in any pugnacious way but in continually asking oneself, what am I doing? There is a freedom to such questioning. It is a freedom of independence, even from one's own assumptions. The elegance arises when you push through your assumptions and allow yourself to notice your own elegance.

Every one, every single person now living, has a latent magnificence. We are all spawned from the desire of the Universe to know itself so how could it be otherwise. We have as many different ideas about ourselves as there are people but we all have one very important thing in common – we exist. And, because we exist, we have the opportunity to become all that we truly are. Isn't that wonderful?

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2009-04-07T09:16:00.002-04:00

INTERNAL ELEGANCE

PART 2

"Strive to discover the mystery before life is taken from you. If while living you fail to find yourself, to know yourself, how will you be able to understand the secret of your existence when you die?" Farid ud Din Attar

What would you suppose is the mystery of life that Farid ud Din Attar refers to? Take a moment and consider. I'll wait.

Now, notice that your mind wants to find a reason, a channel, some form of rational examination upon which to focus. The mind needs to understand, to grasp ideas, to have logic and facts that make sense. As it happens, in this particular case, reason is the last thing you need.

I was just thinking that when I am writing these blogs I tend to go to a place that is outside of my normal rational self. It is a place that allows the truth of being to push through the rational mind in order to discover one's breadth. Or that is how I think of it when I am back in the rational mind. What is also certain is that, even though I may be able to access certain attitudes and ideas that seem quite subtle and elegant in their own right, I don't actually live that way. I spend my life walking around banging into things and wondering why it hurts, just like everyone else. Which means, of course; that I am searching too. I am wondering what the mystery is and whether or not I understand even a small part of it the same as you.

If you have truly been paying attention to your inner needs you may have noticed that the level of assurance of place and position is inversely proportional to your state of awareness. In other words, the more aware you are of the Celestial realm, the less sure you are of your place within it. On the other hand, I have seen many people in the spiritual business who seem to feel the need to assure one and all, most especially themselves I suspect, of their very deep knowledge and fundamental surety of their place within the scheme of things. I would like to think this is a stage of growth for them but all too often it seems that people are stuck, or so it seems to me. I suppose that this is very reassuring to those people who gather round them in that it gives a kind of anchor to the drifting psyche and allows a certain composure or ease of emotion. But real spiritual evolution is just the opposite.

I think I have told this story before but I will retell it for the sake of this discussion. It was some years ago that I was once again driving Pir Vilayat to Kennedy airport. We were chatting about this and that when he suddenly turns sideways in the passenger seat to face me and declare, "I am 75 years old and am just now beginning to understand what a Sufi is." Needless to say this statement thoroughly surprised me as he had been teaching Sufism for the preceding 35 years. But it stuck with me as a kind of benchmark. If Pir Vilayat can feel this way, constantly refining and discovering and challenging the self, well then I certainly can do no less. To me that is a true internal elegance. The constant questioning of one's self assessment is a sure route to a deep understanding of, not only the self, but also the greater cosmos. And it is probably the answer to the puzzle posed by Attar above.

I am convinced that one of the stages in development of self knowledge for a lot of people is the N word. No. Self knowledge is just that, knowledge of the self, which means that you get to have boundaries. Granted, it is a stage and there are stages beyond but it is an important phase to go through. At first saying no can seem quite harsh and unforgiving of those around you but, after awhile, you get used to it. It is all part of learning who you are and, most importantly, as I stated last blog, that you matter. I am not advocating being obstreperous just for the sake of it. What I am saying, however; is that it is very important to have a look at just what you do accept and see if it aids you or hinders you. It is one of the ideals that the counter culture of the sixties and seventies was struggling with. We didn't really understand what we were doing but we knew that there was something wrong with what we were being told and we were determined to reject it, whatever it was. As it happens we made some serious errors but we did get the ball rolling as it were. Now it is up to anyone who recognizes that there is more, to learn to go deep within and discover that place of magnificence that is the true self and bring it forth. Not with pretense but with truth.

Remember; Patience, Courage and Discipline. With these three ideas in mind, you will do very well.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2009-04-02T09:21:00.000-04:00

INTERNAL ELEGANCE

"Love is the nature of life, beauty is the outcome of life, harmony is the means by which life accomplishes its purpose, and the lack of it results in destruction. When we reflect upon this whole creation we cannot but see that its purpose is to express an ideal of love, harmony and beauty. Love could not have manifested itself if there were nothing to love, eyes could not have seen if there were nothing to see. What could love have done if there were no beauty? Love would have been silent." Hazrat Inayat Khan

Do you find yourself, from time to time, wishing to express something but knowing that the words will fall on deaf ears? Not deaf exactly, but ears that are not yet ready to hear what you wish to express. If this happens to you then you also are probably struggling with whether or not it makes you somewhat superior to those whom you realize will not hear. It is often an effort to avoid feeling this. And, more often than not, I suspect that you may convince yourself that you have avoided feeling superior while a part of you manages to hold onto it. The mind can be very sneaky about these things.

When you begin to understand the above it is a big step in discovering your own internal elegance. What do I mean by internal elegance? It is quite simply the discovery that you matter. In this discovery, if it is true, there is no need to inform anyone else or to brag or to give the impression that you have attained a higher state of consciousness. It just is and that makes it comfortable.

There is this famous statement that Sufi's often quote when it seems as if complacency is beginning to settle in, "comfort is the enemy of the dervish." For many years I believed this to be a kind of ultimate truth. Now I know it is only a stage. Yes, we must go through an often difficult period of self examination and discipline which can take many years. But, eventually you can come to a place where you realize that your self examination process has become fairly automatic, requiring only the occasional tweak of deep honesty. A great deal of the struggle has to do with pushing through the idea that your self worth is limited. As I have stated many times before, our culture insists on the whole idea of original sin and demands that we feel small. We may even realize that we have been programmed badly but still the programming is there and we must deal with it. And then we get into several bad habits. Having realized that the programming is there we can tend to think that we now understand and can dispense with it. Nope; that's not how it works. I can once again use Tai Chi as an analogy.

It is common knowledge among the really good Tai Chi teachers that many people come to the initial classes and, once they have learned the basic moves, think they now know Tai Chi. The leave, never to return and tell everyone they know that they practice Tai Chi. A lot of people treat spiritual knowledge in just the same way. If however; a person continues to study with a good teacher, such as Majida and I have been blessed with, they will discover that they have just begun. After ten years of study I can honestly say that I am maybe, kind of, possibly beginning to discover the depths of Tai Chi. I can tell you that now, after ten years, I do, very occasionally, for a second or so, feel totally comfortable while doing the Tai Chi form. In those moments the Universe exists and I exist within it. It is exactly the same with reprogramming the psyche.

I hope you understand that this is all developmental, it takes time and the only real way to this discovery is with patience, courage and discipline; the big three. But, occasionally, along the way, it is quite possible to experience this Internal Elegance which is another way of saying that you have touched your soul.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2009-03-17T09:03:00.003-04:00

YOU CAN DO IT!

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

Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2009-03-04T08:23:00.001-05:00

THE SCAPEGOAT

Some years ago I was complaining to a friend about the inordinate amount of unfairness that I saw in an organization I belong to. She recommended that I read a book by a Jungian analyst called "Up From Scapegoating," the author is Arthur D. Colman. It was an eye opener about how organizations really work. In the book he uses a story from Ursula LeGuin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” It is the story of a perfect society, one in which everyone is completely content. But there is a catch. Here is a description from a web site I found:

"This society is founded on the misery and degradation of one child, imprisoned in a dirty, dark cellar room furnished with a bucket and two mops, kept from human contact and sunlight. (A number of critics have seen Christ-like symbolism in the description of the child). What is worse, everyone in this “joyous city” knows about the child; they are complicit in its inhumane treatment."

Here is the url if you want to read the rest of the synopsis: http://jeffersonflanders.wordpress.com/2006/07/26/summer-reading-ursula-k-le-guin/

The point Mr. Colman was making in using this story was that every association, organization, company or non-profit, apparently requires one or more scapegoats in order to pretend that it's existence is valid. As I read his book I began to see the parallels between what he was speaking about and the behavior I had observed in my own organization. And I felt sad. But then I read something that he wrote that gave me a lot of encouragement. He said that the one most important aspect of scapegoating that people often miss is that the one who is assigned the role need not accept it. In fact this person, who does not accept the role, will often turn out to be the teacher of the group that had once thought of him/her as inferior. I do not expect that but I can certainly understand saying NO.

Spiritual groups seem to be ripe for scapegoatism. I have a theory about why that is. Such groups tend to attract fairly intelligent people who do not do well in normal society. Since they have little chance to be given kudos in contemporary culture, they will look for it within this very limited group. I know this because, at one time, that was my motivation. When I realized I was doing that it was a great shock. And I found myself withdrawing more and more from the center of things. I got angry at people; I told them what I really thought of them and their actions. I ended up being branded an iconoclast, which made me feel good. And now, I know how to say NO. No, I will not support you in your insistence on a doctrine that turns away from Universality and needs the solace of…………..well that is another blog. Whew, that was close, I almost fell prey to anger again.

So, I say to you, all you scapegoats and all of you who scapegoat people, this is not the way. If we cannot find another way then the Universe will grow tired of us and replace us. And we will have earned our fate. If we cannot listen to the voice of creativity; if we demand that all conform; if we limit our experience to what is safe then we have not fulfilled the vision that was set out for us. Otherwise we are no better than that fictional culture that kept the little girl in the dungeon, mindless, ridden with sores, in a constant state of pain.

As I wrote in another blog, there is an arrogance of knowledge that we are subject to. I have seen it and, to my shame, I have participated,. But there is hope. There is an exercise that we can do to stop the arrogance and begin to see what is really important. We can listen. No matter how mundane, no matter how sad, no matter how depressive the content of the statements of the person before us, listen. Within all of that pain is a message, all this person really wants is a friend. Esoteric knowledge is nice, friendship is ever so much better.

I searched a program I have of the works of Hazrat Inayat Khan and was amazed at the number of times he mentions friendship as the most important thing. It isn't spiritual accomplishment or any of those nifty things, just friendship. The following is just one example.

"There is outer expression and inner expression, and we do not always know which is which. We may think many people are far removed from the God-ideal while they are much nearer to God than ourselves. It is difficult for anyone to judge who is near to God and who is not. It is difficult to know even in our own lives what pleases our friend and what does not please him. The more conscientious we are in wanting to please our friend, the more we find how difficult it is to know what will please him and what will not. Not everyone knows it, but then the light of friendship has not been kindled in everyone. Sometimes it remains a word in the dictionary. One who has learned friendship has learned religion. The one who has learned friendship has attained spiritual knowledge. The one who has learned friendship need learn very little else; morals in Persian are called friendship."

And another:

"It is in this way that self-denial is learned; not always by fasting and retreating into the wilderness. A man conscientious in his duty and in his obligations to his friends is more pious than someone sitting in solitude. The one in solitude does not serve God, he only helps himself by enjoying the pleasure of solitude; but the one who proves trustworthy to every soul he meets, and considers his relationships and connections, small or great, as something sacred, certainly observes the spiritual law of that religion which is the religion of all religions."

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2009-03-02T08:38:00.002-05:00

SAY THAT AGAIN!

Life is what happens while you are making other plans.
When I first heard that little cliché I thought, yeah sure, I know that. Still I went on making plans. Silly me.
Now I find that the older I get the less I know and life keeps going on with or without my approval.
All of which leads me to wonder.
Is it me?
Or is it a recording of me?

When the film The Matrix came out, I noticed that a lot of people were all agog at the concept the film introduced. I have been reading Science Fiction since I was 12 so the idea was not startling to me. In fact it was rather ho-hum and, to me, not very well done. It was rather cartoonish, not at all the kind of science fiction that I enjoy. Still, the movies did introduce an alternative way of thinking into people, worrisome though it may be to think we are really controlled by some kind of super computer. For perhaps a nano-second or so, people had a look at their concept of themselves and wondered – am I real? The thought did not last long, in part because it is not at all safe for the psyche to think in this way. I seriously doubt that this thought was more then a momentary blip in the consciousness of most people who saw the movies. It would be there and then they would settle back into their normal state of being, studiously ignoring the small voice within saying, "What if it's real?" It's not real, but it is an interesting metaphor describing what is real.
If we are paying any kind of attention, we have a problem, a quandary. On one hand we have our personal life to live and, to our individual consciousness, it is of supreme importance. On the other hand we are aware, to a greater or lesser degree, that life does go on, whether we pay attention or not; whether we even exist or not. This paradox is probably the source of most of our deeper anxieties and is also the probable source of many of our conflicts with one another.

One of the great consolations of any religion is being told that you are privy to a wonderful secret that only the few are allowed to discover. This is even truer in esoteric groups. We are told that we are special; even though a part of the doctrine will be that we are not. It is another paradox. I suspect that a subconscious reason for this kind of thing is what I mentioned above; the sneaking suspicion that we do not matter at all and therefore must find a reason to matter; just as in the movie The Matrix. This is silly.

We each of us matters because each one of us individually has our own peculiar relationship with the Universe as well as our own particular collection of experiences and attitudes. We are each unique and the Universe needs each and every one of us to understand itself. Never the less, because of the apparent size of things, we continue to wonder if we really matter. So what can we do to counteract this suspicion of ours? The intellect won't do it because an honest person always suspects what the intellect tells him. The emotions won't do it because the fear of being wrong is always there. What will work?

I have been trying to think how it is that I have no problem with the idea that I matter. All I can think of is that it was a gradual realization. Some of it comes from deep meditation but perhaps more comes from observation of how I have changed over the past 30 years. So, once again we come to the conclusion that what really works, in almost every endeavor to understand ourselves and our environment, is simply paying attention. Constantly asking yourself what you are doing, not why, just what, why comes out of what. The problem with why is the possibility of self deception and that blocks realization. Just ask yourself what you are doing at any given moment and something happens inside that I cannot quite explain but it's a good thing.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2009-02-20T11:51:00.000-05:00

WHAT IT IS!

Some years ago I was at Kennedy airport with my teacher Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan. We had to take a long walk between terminals and I took the opportunity to ask him a question that had been on my mind for some time. I tend to puzzle over very broad patterns in how humanity evolves and, at the time, I had been thinking a lot about the coming age and the effect on the relationship between men and women. I was aware that patriarchy had been the main force for several thousand years but I could feel a slight slippage in its power. From my reading of history it was obvious that matriarchy had at one time been the norm and had been replaced by patriarchy starting around 3000 - 4000 years ago. It seemed to me that, as modernity really took hold, the next phase would be one of balance between the sexes. So I asked Pir Vilayat if this would be so. He got this very disgusted look on his face and said, "No, matriarchy will be the next stage." He did not seem at all happy about that idea so I did not follow up with any further questions. But I never forgot his answer, an answer that came out of an extreme honesty, even though the answer was not one that he liked. I can only speculate why he might not like what he saw in this regard so I will reserve my ideas and only build on my own thinking for the purposes of this little essay.

As I have noted elsewhere in my writings, we tend to see the world and humanity's place in it with a very myopic vision. We tend to believe that what is taking place currently is the way that things always have been and always will be. Very few people that I know ever read any history, or even understand that psychological evolution is the norm rather then the exception. We want things to be stable, even if they are uncomfortable or difficult because change is terrifying. I have worked with many people over the years and one thing that I have found is a basic resistance to discovering the true magnificence of being. People would much rather continue to believe they are small and ineffective against the forces arrayed against them. It is ever so much easier to resist change. This is always the first illusion to overcome, that you cannot do. Once that barrier is breached then it becomes a struggle between terror and elation, fear and excitement at all the possibilities that suddenly appear. And Pir Vilayat's declaration is certainly in that style. I have no doubt that, had he lived, he would have gradually become a champion of the coming age.

Some definitions are in order now. Simply put, patriarchy is a vertical ordering of society. Someone is in charge in each social group and there is a scramble below them to decide who is next in line and so on. Verticality of decision is the norm in this model. Pretty much every society on the planet is ordered in this fashion, with the possible exception of some very remote primitive tribes who still hold to matriarchy. Matriarchy on the other hand is horizontal. There is little verticality in decision making, with the exception of listening to wisdom when it is needed. Consensual expression is much more normal and people tend to support one another rather then look for ways to best them. In patriarchy there are winners and losers. In matriarchy there is no contest, only discovering how to agree and support all members. Obviously there are lots of variables in the two ways of being but these are the essentials.

Pir Vilayat was very fond of saying that we are the midwives of the coming age. What he meant by this, I believe, is that our actions will either hinder or assist what is going to take place. Our actions, to some degree, determine not only the rapidity with which the shift is instituted but also the actuality of how it will be experienced. It is very obvious to me that people are afraid, that they sense the coming changes and are afraid. It is the subliminal reason for the high degree of fundamentalism currently in vogue. This I believe. But there are more subtle signs as well. Within spiritual groups, which should know better, there is a definite resistance. Almost all of the traditional groups are falling back on a patriarchal model, with someone in charge, several other someone's jockeying for power roles and the assumption within these groups that the only way a person can be successful within the group is to advance up the ladder of responsibility; which is obviously still the vertical way of doing things. Doing one's best to simply be friends with every one who appears before you is an ideal that is not practiced very much. But, this is very much what is needed.

I think I need to be very clear here. I am not advocating ignoring specific talent. I know for instance that I have a talent for guidance that others do not have. I do not have a talent for many other things and I admire those who do. We do not need some kind of perfect communism. What we do need is simply to see that friendship is normal. Admiring a friend for their talent does not mean that one is also envious and looking for ways to make them small so we can feel big; or worse, ignoring talent that does not fit within the need for power and domination over others. This whole essay is really about noticing what is taking place, without blame, without rancor, without needing to be right, without prejudice. Notice without judgment. If you do that I believe that you will find possibilities within yourself that have been dormant for a long time, maybe f or eons.

If Pir Vilayat was correct, and I believe he was, then we have a very real responsibility to revise the way we think about ourselves and our relationships in a very basic way. Give yourself a moment to examine how you really feel about those around you. Are you content to leave people be who they are or are you constantly looking for how you are better, etc.? We are culturally bound to the latter but the former is where the action is. It only remains to be seen how well we can implement what will take place in the coming age, with or without our cooperation.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2009-02-12T08:51:00.001-05:00

YOU HAVE TO OIL YOUR GIFTS!

The other day a young friend of mine used this phrase. She is Nicaraguan so I thought it was something from her country because it is not a common American saying. But it turns out that it just popped into her head and she said it. So I said I would make it the title of my next blog.

Her spontaneous little cliché reminds me of something that I realized quite awhile ago. I believe it was triggered by something Pir Vilayat said. You may have the greatest of talents but if you do not study the technical side of your talent it will remain potential and never be realized. For instance; you may hear the loveliest of symphonies in your head but if you do not learn to play piano or violin or something, they will never be heard by others. Taking it further; you might even do something quite excellent but if you neglect continual practice your skill or talent will fade.

"Every soul has a definite task, and the fulfillment of each individual purpose can alone lead man aright; illumination comes to him through the medium of his own talent." Hazrat Inayat Khan

I was talking to my best friend the other morning. We were wondering just what the next step for humanity is and how we can best implement our small part. We have conversations like this a lot. One of the conditions that we did note in this particular conversation was how prone people who follow a spiritual path are to assume that they have the answer. It is like a kind of arrogance of knowledge. The idea seems to be that once a person has done a bit of study of one of the various mystical disciplines and has perhaps had some deep meditative experiences, then that person has the right to declare their superior understanding of how the Universe actually works. And then, having made this declaration, work seems to stop. It is an odd but true aspect of personality. A further point is that the system that this person has adopted to display superior knowledge is fixed and needs no renewal. This is patently not true. You may have a talent for esoteric understanding but you still need to oil it from time to time; or else it gets rusty and creaky and annoying to others when you try to use it. And that is just as true of any discipline as it is of the individual.

The most important point I want to make is that there is nothing at all special about being on a spiritual path; it is just what you do. Someone has to do it, it turns out it's you. Every single person on this planet has purpose. We may not recognize it as such, especially if it appears to be extreme or an aberration or worse, harmful of others. Part of the struggle of life is recognizing that it is okay to be who you are but it is not necessary to insist that others recognize it. As it happens, people often do insist and this creates conflict and conflict causes suffering.

You may note here that the sort of person who would insist that others do as they do will also insist that these other victims do their oiling for them. In other words they will demand that all around them support their particular, inevitably limited, vision of what is. Even worse, they may demand that it is God who has dictated their vision. It would seem then that the lesson to be learned from my young friends spontaneous cliché is that we each must look to our own psychic and spiritual needs and allow others to do as they must for themselves. We may not agree, or even understand but, as long as there is no harm being done, then it is best to allow people their quirks.

One of the things that I most appreciated about Pir Vilayat, my teacher, was that he would often iterate the ideal that we were free to accept or reject what he was saying. His teaching was designed to give a person freedom, not to harness them to a particular point of view. And that is my message to you – be free – but do not neglect your gifts.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2009-02-04T13:01:00.002-05:00

CONSISTENCY OF AWARENESS

It has been a very interesting year. We have been settling into our new city and into our new home. But I have been feeling the need to get back to the blog. So I will start off with something I heard this past Sunday.

Majida and I go into New York City about once a month. We go for a couple of reasons. One of the reasons is to take a Tai Chi class on Sunday mornings. The class is given by this little 85 year old lady who was a student of Chen Man Cheng in the early 70's. We cannot get to our old teacher, Ed Young, because he only teaches on Monday night and that is impossible. So we go to his old friend, Maggie Newman. Her style is a bit different from his but just as effective. We do enjoy her classes. She was the one that I heard the title of this blog from.

She speaks very softly so her class of about 20 people was gathered close around her. She was talking about a specific aspect of the Tai Chi form when something reminded her of a story she heard from her chiropractor. Just a little story but poignant none the less. He was telling her about an old woman he knows, in her 90's. She was having memory problems but, when asked if it bothered her she said no, as long as she had consistency of awareness she was fine. What a marvelous thing to say.

On the same day I happened to open a book of Hazrat Inayat Khan's and found the following quote.

"The mystics say that there are three steps to the goal: right life, true life and truth. A person who loves to live a right life and who tries to do it, even if he is not a contemplative or meditative or religious person, must certainly arrive at that high stage, at that goal which is the ideal goal; for within man there is truth, and the seeking of man is truth. Therefore right living helps him to realize truth."

Over the past year it has become more and more apparent to me that the things we do to prove to ourselves that we are this or that are the most important things we do. One of the things that people in the spiritual business do is remind ourselves that we are spiritual because of our outward signs of spirituality. "I meditate every morning" or "I love to take retreats," or "I read spiritual books," or any of a myriad of reminders that tell us that spirituality is a part of our lives. I suppose all of these things are important but, as Pir O Murshid notes above, not really all that necessary. If you are drawn to meditation then you meditate. If you are not drawn then don't do it. But, as the lady noted, the most important thing is not any of these outward signs. Consistency of awareness is the most important spiritual practice there is. Buddhists call it Mindfulness, Sufi's call it Muhasaba (Pir Vilayat defined this as examination of conscience), I call it paying attention.

If you are paying attention, consistently asking yourself what you are doing at each moment then you will get very close to living in the moment. It is a difficult practice because it demands absolute internal honesty on your part but just because it is difficult does not mean it should be avoided; on the contrary, knowledge of self is the result. And the best part is no one need know you are doing it.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2008-06-01T07:47:00.002-04:00

DISAPPOINTMENT

I do not believe that I have ever written about my feelings on religion, other than to occasionally make mention of how I avoid it. The following story though, hit me hard. When I first joined the Sufi Order I was kind of aware of its association with Islam but, as there was no accent on religion, I ignored it. Now, things have changed. Religion is becoming an insistent presence in the Sufi Order and that disappoints me greatly. Especially its association with Islam. There is an assertion within the community that religions need to find a way to stop beating on one another, they need to come together in some manner and teach humanity how to live in peace. It is as if religion is some kind of independent entity that over sees humanity's experiences and expectations. That is silly. Religion always always responds to the culture that spawns it or pretends to depend on it. Almost never does religion actually lead to anything. There are people who are reasonable and sane and willing to listen and then there are the people who do the things related in the following story.

Mother who defied the killers is gunned down

Five weeks ago Leila Hussein told The Observer the chilling story of how her husband had killed their 17-year-old daughter over her friendship with a British soldier in Basra. Now Leila, who had been in hiding, has been murdered - gunned down in cold blood. Afif Sarhan in Basra and Caroline Davies report on the final act of a brutal tragedy

The rest of the story can be read here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/01/iraq

2008-05-04T10:24:00.001-04:00

BEETHOVEN

Last night Majida and I went to a concert by the North East Pennsylvania Philharmonic. Since we are used to the extremely high level of performance in New York City concerts, I admit to being a bit wary. I should not have been concerned. The orchestra was crisp and exciting and fun to listen to. It is small, only about half the size of the NY Philharmonic but then the stage would not have accommodated the NY Philharmonic anyway.

What was truly exciting though was the music. For the first time ever I heard Beethoven's Fifth live. Everyone knows the opening four notes and many have heard recordings but how many of us have heard it performed live? It is such an exciting piece of music, full of surprises and drama. Majida remarked that there is a reason that Beethoven has lasted and this was part of the reason.

As I listened to the music I could not help but reflect that there are large parts of humanity that restricts itself severely to musical styles and by extension to thinking that is very limited. I suppose we do this because it is safe. So the next question then is how much of what us more intellectual types think and do is for safety's sake?

It is all too common for the intellectual to look down upon all others who are not clever enough or educated enough to understand the complexities that we revel in. What I have noticed however is that these complexities tend to become frozen. Normal enough I suppose, we really do need safe, even when the safety is gleaned from a momentary flash of brave exploration.

What the mystics advise is to approach each instant in time anew. It is probably unavoidable that we bring our assumptions and opinions and experiences to each new moment, however, we can also step back a bit and enter into each new instant with an attitude of newness. It is a discipline that must be learned but it can be done. Granted that is a place of danger since you are deliberately abandoning what you know to work, to be safe. I admit to being able to do this very rarely but I do attempt it from time to time. I am very often guilty of judging a person or a situation based on my prejudices. Never the less, I do work on stepping around them and looking afresh. It does not always work but very occasionally it does.

So, I sat in the concert hall, great seats by the way, and simply enjoyed the music. I let myself sink into the moment and enjoyed. I found myself with a big smile, bouncing to the rhythm and joy of one of the great symphonies.

I can remember a person, myself in the past, who would have been very stern and concerned mostly with his image to others. He would have been very afraid that someone would find out that he did not really understand classical music and he would have been determined to present a knowledgeable front, but terrified of his lack of actual knowledge. How silly is that? Thank God that we are allowed to transcend such silliness, should we so choose.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2008-04-14T10:09:00.002-04:00

MEMORIAL

Julia NUR JAMIL duhrsen

August 18, 1958 – March 23, 2008

As most of my readers know, I have a very few people who look to me for spiritual guidance. I am not sure of the actual number but it is small, around 40 or 50 probably. Of those maybe 10 people are in fairly regular communication. On Easter Sunday last, one of them died.

Nur Jamil (Light of Beauty) was my friend. That is what it always comes down to eventually, friendship. The reason for her death is not as important as the impact her living being had on the people around her. Her life was one of constant struggle, a never ending series of very serious challenges which she not only met head on but allowed to shape her over all attitude toward life in general. Nur Jamil was one of those very rare people with no enemies. Everyone who met her went away feeling as if they had been given something precious, though often they had no idea what it was.

This past Sunday Majida and I officiated at a memorial service for Nur Jamil in Yonkers, NY. The service was held in one of those funeral home rooms that we have all been in at some point. And it was packed. There were people standing in the halls. It is rare that a Universal Worship attracts that kind of attention but of course it was not the service at all but the reason for the service. We conducted the normal service up to the point of the sermon. Then without expressing any opinion ourselves, we asked those who wished to express their feelings or thoughts about Julia. Person after person arose to stand in front of the audience and express their deep gratitude for the opportunity to know a truly innocent, totally giving individual. It was a bit strange for me to listen to since I knew her as my student and friend. She came to me for advice but apparently it was the other way round for everyone else. Listening to the deep emotion being expressed was a cathartic experience for her family and her closest friends. It was obvious that such a person, in their innocence, affects people in the most profound way, just because they are being who they are.

When everyone else was finished speaking I was moved to say just a few words. What I found myself saying was that we are all connected. We are all individuals but there is also a unity that we exist within. Occasionally a soul appears to remind us of this deep connection. Julia Nur Jamil was one such soul. I will miss her.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2008-03-11T12:53:00.002-04:00

AN INTERNATIONAL EDITION!

I just looked at my page on my publishers web site and saw the following announcement:
A SOUTH ASIA EDITION of The Sovereign Soul: Sufism: A Path for Today was published by Readworthy Publications Ltd., of New Delhi, India, in February 2008, under the title Sufism: A Path for Today: The Sovereign Soul. Readworthy is a new imprint of D.K. Printworld Ltd., also of New Delhi. The Readworthy edition is available both as a paperback and in hardcover form.

The first I knew of this was when two books arrived in the mail. One hardback. Wow. I am international. Isn't that cool?

If you are interested, you can see the book and some reviews at http://newpara.com/The_Sovereign_Soul.htm

2008-03-08T08:15:00.002-05:00

OUR NEW HOUSE!

This is our new home in Scranton PA. Lot's of people have asked us, why Scranton? The truth is that it was total serendipity. I was surfing the real estate parts of the web and saw this house. We went to see it and decided this was the house for us. Now, it turns out that it is perfect in many ways. Last night my daughter was commenting about how nice everyone is here and what a contrast it is to NYC. She was raised in NYC and has little experience with small town America. Now she is noticing just how closed New Yorkers are. Of course it is understandable to be wary when you live amidst 17 million other people but she had never really noticed it because she was in it.

When you live in New York City, you take rudeness for granted. Well not rudeness exactly, it is more like being constantly on guard. Since you never know just where the next assault is going to come from you are constantly tense. So it is a bit of a shock to find that people here do not have that reaction. There is tension of course, that is hard to avoid in this modern age, but it is at a much lower rate.

And the house is lovely. There is a lot of work to be done on it but the electricity and plumbing are new (thank god) so I can do almost all the work myself.

So, we are here. It is good. And life is still to be discovered.

I will write another philosophical blog when the dust settles a bit.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2008-01-11T08:08:00.000-05:00

ILLUSION and INTENT

The following is an answer I wrote to someone I guide in response to a question she asked about what to do when nothing seems to be happening. It is a question that has come up quite a bit lately so I thought I would post my response to her hoping that it might also answer someone else with the same sort of question. In deference to the individual I am not posting the original question but I do not think it is really needed.

"I think there comes a time in one's spiritual life when the illusion of one's intent begins to pale. It is as if one must go deeper but we don't know quite how to do it. Consequently we might tend to feel that our spiritual life is becoming quite meaningless. This is a place where pushing thru becomes the important thing. I think it is when the trappings no longer seem quite so important and something else must arise within us. All of the things we do are part of our support system, they are the things that we latch onto in order to make some sense of the inner turmoil of true spirituality. For awhile they make us comfortable and, for some, they are the most important thing. But eventually a person might come to understand that all of these rituals only are the bare surface of an extremely deep experience. Really, they are cultural, just as most things are. I imagine that you have reached this place. Now the real question is why go on?"
Much Love, Musawwir

2007-12-22T17:49:00.000-05:00

GRATITUDE

"A person, however learned and qualified in his life's work, in whom gratitude is absent, is devoid of that beauty of character which makes personality fragrant."

Hazrat Inayat Khan

I realized something the other day. It came quite suddenly. I was at a yield sign, entering a parkway, waiting for a space in the traffic to merge. Someone slowed down and flashed their lights at me to let me know they would allow me in. I merged and raised my hand in a sign of gratitude. Just at that moment, I realized that, when I do the same for someone, allow them to merge into traffic ahead of me, I more or less expect some sign of gratitude from them. A wave will usually do or a nod of acknowledgment. When you drive the interstate at night and a truck passes you and you flash your lights to let the driver know that the rear of his trailer has cleared the front of your vehicle and it is safe to re-enter the right hand lane, the driver will usually flash his running lights as an acknowledgment of your politeness. I expect it and almost always get it but not every time. When the truck driver does not flash his running lights I feel cheated. It is silly I suppose but the memory of disappointment is there.

Another part of the realization I had was recognizing my expectation of disappointment. It was strange to realize that the two emotions exist simultaneously. On the one hand I expect to see someone's gratitude and on the other I expect to be ignored. And there is another thing that occurs to me.

I have this habit, which I suppose a lot of people who lived thru the 60's have. When I go someplace where I know the parking is going to be tight I ask what I call my parking genii to find me a parking space. When I arrive where I am going and find the parking space, which is almost always there, I thank my parking genii. I think of it as expressing gratitude to the Universe for the experience of living, even in this small way.

I used to think God, now I think Universe but I suspect they are the same thing. To have this wonderful opportunity of experiencing physical reality on such a beautiful planet; to be able to challenge our assumptions and values; to create a life's dream in a strange land - all of these things challenge us in a way that is truly creative and nourishing to the soul.

These little moments of gratitude which are expressed between strangers on the road, as I mentioned above, or an indication of the possibility of gratitude that we need to express toward whatever we think of as the creator of this wonderful opportunity. It may be random chaos or it may be intricately planned but whatever did create it, there is no doubt that it is wonderful and genuinely worth the effort.

What is to be avoided is gratitude guilt. Ya know? Someone, usually your mom but it could easily be another authority figure in your life, telling you that you should be grateful. This spoils gratitude. It is easy to see that if a child is continually told that they should be anything they are going to resent it. It isn't a natural emotion if it is forced on you. One of the most special moments in my life was when my grand daughter, then just over two, crawled up into my lap and said, "I love you grandpa." I thought I would melt. No one told her to do this, it was quite spontaneous. How do you think she would do if she were told to tell me? I cherish this moment and how she has grown to be totally honest about her emotions, angry as well as elated.

I believe that most cultures have some kind of ceremony of gratitude. Our Western culture, mostly Christian, certainly has these. I can remember sitting in Lutheran church, listening to the minister talk about being grateful and looking around at all the stern unhappy faces. I was a kid but I would wonder why nobody looked all that grateful. It confuses a little kid to be told that he should be feeling gratitude for being forgiven for sins that he didn't even know he was responsible for. How lame is that, but that is the message that was given, is still being given I suppose. Gratitude should not be demanded.

The question then is what is genuine in our emotions? If we express gratitude in some way do we expect an acknowledgment? And if we do then why do we expect something that should be freely given? It is a challenge isn't it.

This all goes back to my last blog about questions. Ultimately what is necessary is that we continually examine our emotions, our thoughts and our subliminal beliefs. Everything comes under the mental microscope, nothing is exempt. And then, eventually, gratitude will come.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2007-11-12T08:14:00.001-05:00

QUESTIONS

"Great knowledge is broad and unhurried, while small understanding is cramped and busy"

Zhuangzi as quoted in The Great Transformation by Karen Armstrong

I love Karen Armstrong's books. I always learn something new about history, religious or otherwise and I always enjoy the wonderful insights she brings forth when she writes about her subject. My fondest wish is to have a nice long conversation with her some day.

The quote above is one of those sayings that you can use to examine the self. Is my knowledge broad and unhurried or do I remain small? My teacher, Pir Vilayat used to say something similar. He would say that we see ourselves as puny and unable to affect anything vast while our beings are magnificent and glorious. We live in a small illusion when all the while our true reality is immeasurable.

As I read The Great Transformation I am seeing that one of the most important ideas or philosophies to come from the Axial Age is self examination or what the Buddha called Mindfulness. One continually questions oneself. To sit and contemplate, to examine, to pursue each thought to its ending, to ceaselessly pay attention to your own reality is perhaps the most important of spiritual practices. This I have believed for many years but I really did not know that it all started over 2500 years ago. Humanity has actually learned a thing or two.

It is our habit, in this age of disappointment, to look to the ancient world as a time of peace and unity and wonderful simplicity. We want to believe that there was a time when humanity actually was peaceful. According to history it was not so. In fact, when you read The Great Transformation, besides the wonderful spiritual philosophies that were being developed, the one very obvious fact was that every one was in a constant state of warfare. The sage would look upon this warfare in any of several ways but usually in one way, that the wars raging around them and in which they were sometimes unavoidably involved, were merely small cramped busy understandings. What is different today is not that the cramped understandings have gotten any looser but that there are more and more people who are reaching for that true broad knowledge. Just the explosion of spiritual books in the past 100 years should tell you that. The only real question then is, what are you personally doing to enhance the breadth of your understanding?

In my last blog I wrote about endings and how all things eventually pass away into dust. "What then do we accomplish in the world if eventually it is all swept away into the wind as ashes?" A couple of people commented that it was what we did in between birth and death that really counts and of course that is true. However, there is more. There is a state of being that is hinted at in the deeper spiritual texts but which cannot really be explained. For centuries humanity has been talking around it, trying to say that which cannot be said, continually reaching for the unknowable.

"This craving for the attainment of what is unattainable, gives the soul a longing to reach life's utmost heights. It is the nature of the soul to try and discover what is behind the veil; it is the soul's constant longing to climb heights which are beyond his power; it is the desire of the soul to see something that it has never seen; it is the constant longing of the soul to know something it has never known. But the most wonderful thing about it is that the soul already knows there is something behind this veil, the veil of perplexity; that there is something to be sought for in the highest spheres of life; that there is some beauty to be seen; that there is Someone to be known who is knowable. This desire, this longing, is not acquired; this desire is a dim knowledge of the soul which it has in itself." Hazrat Inayat Khan

You will notice that Pir O Murshid states that the knowledge is already there, that it is intrinsic to our beings, it is just up to us to discover how to unveil this unattainable knowledge. How then to do it when this wisdom is so obviously unknowable? Well you can't get there from here.

On the same page as the first quote I used is a conversation between Confucius and his student Yan Hui:

"I'm gaining ground!" Yan Hui had announced on day.

"What do you mean?" asked Confucius.

"I've forgotten Humanity and Duty completely." Yah Hui replied

"Not bad!" admitted Confucius. "But that's still not it."

A few days later, Yah Hui exclaimed: "I've forgotten ritual and music completely."

"That's still not it." said Confucius.

But finally Yah Hui surprised his master. "I'm gaining ground!" he beamed. "I sit quietly and forget."

Confucius shifted uneasily. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"I let the body fall away and the intellect fade." Said Yah Hui. "I throw out form, abandon understanding – and then move freely, blending away into the great transformation. That's what I mean by sit quietly and forget."

Confucius went pale; his disciple had surpassed him.

"if you blend away like that, you're free of likes and dislikes," he said. "If you're all transformation, you're free of permanence. So in the end, the true sage here is you! So you won't mind if I follow you from now on, will you?"

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2007-11-01T10:55:00.000-04:00

ENDINGS

"Verily, the soul has no birth, no death, no beginning, no end. Sin cannot touch it, nor can virtue exalt it; it has always been and always will be, and all else is its cover like a globe over the light."

Hazrat Inayat Khan

This past weekend the whole family drove down to Virginia. My wife, my step daughter, her two children and I all went together. I had been going to go by myself but we decided it would be a good thing to go as a family so the kids could see a bit of Wash DC. This was a secondary reason. The primary reason for going was to meet my brother and his wife and to scatter our mother's ashes in a park she loved.

My regular readers will remember that my mother died last May and I wrote about it on June 6. A few weeks after that a package arrived in the mail from the funeral home, it was a box containing her ashes. For the next few months this box sat on my desk. Occasionally I would look at it and wonder about my emotions. What did I feel? I wasn't sure. It was a little strange to have the remains of my mom sitting in a small box on my desk. I did not feel her presence. When I tuned into her it felt like her soul was gone, that it was no longer anywhere around the Earth. I was and am quite content to allow her to experience the totality of the soul's journey. Unlike many, I have no desire to inhibit her soul's path by incessantly calling her back. But there the box sat insisting on reminding me of a presence of some kind.

After all of these months it is still not clear to me just how I feel. We are constantly reminded by our culture that we feel loss or grief or psychic pain but I do not seem to feel any of these things. The act of scattering ashes seemed surreal to me. They came in a plastic bag which was inside of a plastic box apparently fabricated just for this purpose, to hold human remains. I suppose the box could have some other use but I threw it away directly after.

By now, six days later, I imagine there is no sign of the ashes at all. I imagine it has rained at least once down there so they would have been thoroughly absorbed into the landscape. Perhaps this is a good thing.

We give much credence to the personification of death. Our cultures are full of all sorts of myths about the significance of death. We say that death is a kind of punishment or that it is earned for doing some awful deed. We reserve the death penalty for what we say are the most serious crimes. We look upon death with dread. And yet it is the most natural of acts. We are capable of creating all sorts of different ways of seeing the universe and of existing within our world, whether because of economic circumstance or with our own efforts. But death comes to us all, every one of us. What happens after is pretty much open to speculation for most of us. The one thing we might agree on, though not all will agree, is that there is not enough life.

I have been reading about Socrates. I never really did before and I am coming to realize that I should have. He had a very simple point of view with an extremely complex way of getting people to understand his point of view. His simple point of view was, "I do not know." No matter what the subject, no matter what the attitude he would deconstruct it to the point where you would have to admit that you did not really know and that your surety about a thing was based on illusion. In one of the famous dialogues recorded by his student Plato, he walks two army generals through this. The subject was courage. At the end of this dialogue he has shown these two men, no strangers to battlefields, that they could not really define courage. Yet he would also admit that courage is a real thing. This is an attitude that any esoteric student will eventually find, not knowing. Perhaps the real key then is to continually challenge yourself and your knowledge to the point that you discover that not only is 'not knowing' quite real it is also the only true means of self discovery.

We tend to layer ourselves with knowledge. We know who we are, where we fit in the world, what our role is, etc. All of these things are valid of course and give us direction that we need in order to participate in our family and in our culture. They are however illusions, convenient illusions.

What then do we accomplish in the world if eventually it is all swept away into the wind as ashes?

I will be curious to read your answers.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2007-09-30T10:05:00.000-04:00

GUIDANCE

One day two small boys decided to play a trick on Mullah Nasruddin. With a tiny bird cupped in their hands they would ask him whether it was alive or dead. If he said it was alive they would crush it to show him he was wrong. If he said it was dead they would let it fly away and still fool him.

When they found the wise old man they said, Mullah Nasruddin, that which we are holding, is it alive or dead?

Mullah Nasruddin thought for a moment and replied, Ah, my young friends, that is in your hands!

Mullah Nasruddin, why do you always answer a question with another question?

Do I?

Occasionally, I noodle around on the internet just for the fun of it. Today I looked up Mullah Nasruddin and found the story above. Reading it I thought of one of my friends, one of the people I guide, who is constantly accusing me of never actually answering a question. She says that I always reply to a question of hers with another question. She has been saying this to me for years and I kind of laugh it off, but of course she is right.

The whole purpose of spiritual guidance is to aid the guidee in their self discovery. This usually involves getting them to question their assumptions. It would be very easy to just give my own version of reality and expect the student to accept. A lot of spiritual teachers are like this. And frankly most people love to simply be told.

I have observed otherwise very intelligent people regurgitating doctrine as if they truly understood what it meant. They spout the very thing they just heard from this teacher or that teacher stating it as if it were their own. This is spiritual laziness.

The real seeker is never satisfied with someone's proclamation. They have to know for themselves through their own experience and discovery. I much prefer to guide someone who demands that I explain myself and show them how to do it for themselves rather than someone who sits at my feet, rapt in adoration. *SHUDDER* I suppose that sort of attention would appeal to some but I find it pretty annoying. Not that it happens to me often – or at all for that matter.

Our Western, mostly secular, culture has some very strange ideas about spiritual guidance. There is a definite tendency to accept what we are told, regardless of whether or not it actually makes sense or has anything at all to do with our personal experience. Yes, there is the myth of independence within US culture but that is exactly what it is, a myth. If it were not so, McDonalds would not exist. It is probably a holdover from feudal times when the great mass of peasants had no education at all and believed what they were told by those with power over them. A case could probably be made that this is a world wide phenomena and that the very recent rise of world literacy is only the very beginning stage of actual independence of thought. But Eastern cultures also have a tradition of true spiritual independence, unlike Christianity and its mirror Islam, which insist on obedience to doctrine. Oh oh, I just said something critical there didn't I? Perhaps I will deal with that in another blog. In any case, we expect to obey even though we also have a deeper tendency to spiritual and intellectual freedom.

This tendency to obedience is prevalent throughout all the esoteric/spiritual groups that I am aware of, including the Sufi Order. I cannot tell you how often I have heard the phrase, "Pir Vilayat said………. whatever" and now it is "Pir Zia said………. whatever," used as a conclusive argument. I guess I needn't state how annoying I find this tendency.

One of the bits of training that a spiritual student is inevitably subject to is status or levels of awareness. While it is true that a person who meditates regularly will find aspects of creation that are hidden from most, this is not universally true. And it is certainly not true that such a person is any better at living than someone who has not discovered these aspects. Or as Pir Vilayat consistently said about finding one's guide, "You see yourself in another yourself who is better able to manifest that which you already are." In other words it is no different from putting yourself under the tutelage of an experienced mechanic if you want to learn to work on automobile engines. He knows more than you just because he has studied and has been doing it for years. It does not mean he is any better intrinsically, just more knowledgeable. What is really happening is you yourself are training your self. Guidance is really about helping you avoid some of the pitfalls that you may slip into.

As the Mullah said, it is in your hands.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2007-09-03T09:43:00.000-04:00

PAST LIVES

This is a continuation of my last blog about hypnosis. While I was at the conference, I decided that it would be a good idea to get some hypnosis myself. After all, I am asking people to trust me as a therapist but I had never had any kind of therapy myself. I really did need to know what it was like to go to a stranger and ask for help with something I found difficult. So, I started looking around at the conference for someone to work with who lived in NYC. I met one young woman who has an office in the City and got her card but I wasn't really happy with telling my story to someone so young. No offense to the young but I could not see how she could understand what I was talking about. No, I wanted someone my age. Then something magical happened.
I was sitting in the hotel lobby waiting for my wife to finish up at her workshop so we could start the drive home. A guy about my age sat down beside me and started to talk. It turned out that he was a construction type guy, just like me, so we fell into shop talk. At some point he said that he was not a hypnotist and was just here because his wife wanted him to come along. Bells went off in my head. "Where do you live?" I asked. "Brooklyn." So I told him that I had been looking for someone my age to work with and he just happened to have one of his wife's cards with him. Magical.
I did go to see her, twice, and found things inside of me that I had not suspected. But that is not what I wanted to talk about. All of this explanation is leading up to a discussion about past lives. As a part of my sessions with the hypnotist in Brooklyn I regressed through a couple of past lives, ostensible past lives, and did learn some things. What I learned made sense in the light of my current personality and some of my firmer traits. No, I am not going to tell you. What I will tell you is my ideas about past lives and wait to see what you think.
I will start with a basic precept or possibly an assumption - that ultimately we are all one soul. This assumption states that whatever we call a creative force, Universal Intelligence or your choice of Deity, initiated this universe out of nothingness, or out of its own fabric of existence. This would seem to say that we all come from a singular event. After that, things fragmented. Despite this fragmentation and apparent individuation of energies, the mystics and prophets and those who claim to understand these things keep telling us that we are all interconnected. I suspect there is truth in this assertion so I will use it as a foundation for this little essay. The second assumption or precept is that the soul is a reality. It is very easy to talk about souls but I wonder how many people have had a direct experience of their soul; very few I imagine. You take it in faith because others say it is so. Even though the evidence is elusive at best people want the idea of past lives to be real and will talk about who they believe they were with great enthusiasm and conviction. But is it real?
Here is what I have come to think (I am certainly willing to modify my position).
The one soul exists and has fragmented itself into a zillion parts in order to experience itself and to learn. As a singular being there was no possibility of learning so fragmentation was essential. Never-the-less, Unity also exists. In other words two distinct states of being are in play - Unity and Multiplicity. This is not new information to most who read my blog I am sure. Now let's look at how it works.
Here you are. Your soul has occupied a body on a planet. This body has mobility as well as reasoning power and all of the other attributes of being human. It also has fantasy or a need to grasp abstracts. And, it lives within an intense energy field created by all of the billions of other bodies and personalities that are not only extant in this moment but which have lived previously and perhaps are living in some elusive future. Yet we feel isolated and alone within all of this energy. It is one of the great paradoxes. When an individual decides to allow their soul to begin to reach outward instead of being shielded by the armor of culture and habit, things begin to happen. One of these things is an awareness of the vast pool of experience contained within this Universal Unconscious as Jung called it. So, you go into a deep meditation, or maybe work with a hypnotist and you touch one of these lives. Why take it personally? You are part of a flow of psychic energy that has been growing for millennia. I am coming to believe that we have the capacity to touch almost any soul or personality or attitude. What we seem to touch are those personalities or experiences that are most applicable to our individual journey. But it ain't necessarily just yours. So, instead of saying, "My past lives," try saying, "Life."
Does the soul have a contiguous existence bouncing from life to life? I have no idea. But something is going on which I suspect is much more complex then we might imagine.
I am very interested in commentary.
Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2007-08-20T07:07:00.000-04:00

HYPNOSIS

I have just returned from a conference. It was fantastic, as it always is. What, what, you ask? It was the annual convention of the National Guild of Hypnotists.

I do not think that I have ever mentioned here that both Majida and I are certified hypnotists. Some years ago we took a very complete course in hypnosis, passed the tests and were certified by the Guild. We also get CEU's every year to maintain our certification.

I am not going to try to explain hypnosis here. I will say that it is an extremely effective healing modality and that I have witnessed real healings, both physical and psychological. Hypnosis is also very technical and requires some serious study. And no, I have never made anyone cluck like a chicken, what a silly idea, and a waste of my time. The whole purpose in learning hypnosis was to be more effective as healers and that has proved to be the case.

What I wanted to talk about is a new technique being developed by a well known hypnotist, Gerald Kein. We have taken several workshops with him over the years and have found him to be a great teacher. He is developing something called Ultra Height which we are learning. In hypnosis the idea usually is to go very deep into the sub-conscious and finally, if it is possible for the client, into the unconscious, in order to effect change. There are different stages a client goes through reaching these states, all of which can be tested for. What Gerald Kein has been doing is using the very deepest state as a launching pad to go in the other direction. What he does is instruct the body to stay in this extremely relaxed state while he encourages the mind to rise up into the heights of consciousness. He helps the client leave the body and even the mind, with all its assumptions and cares, behind and enter into a place of pure light. Those of you with some experience will recognize this state as Samadhi or Satori. But instead of spending eight or ten days on a retreat attaining this state, the hypnotist can take you there in about half an hour. Since you are guided there rather than doing it on your own, the hypnotist can make suggestions to help you find your issues and correct them. What is truly interesting about this state is that you do it yourself. When a hypnotist takes a person deep into the unconscious he has to do all the guiding and talking, making suggestions to the unconscious mind that help it effect the wanted changes. In this Ultra Height state, the super conscious decides. Apparently it not only knows the problem it also knows the solution. This is quite different from the normal hypnosis session and is going to prove to be a total revolution in technique. Or so it seems right now. But there is a catch.

According to Mr. Kein there is a requirement. He says that it only works for people who are brave enough to let go entirely and allow their higher mind to take over. This is exactly what Pir Vilayat used to say. That you must have the courage to be who you really are and that the only way to do it was to push through your fears. I suspect that Pir Vilayat would be really excited about this technique. I admit that I am still learning this technique and have yet to really get into it but I have found that when I follow Mr. Kein's instructions exactly, they always work well.

I think that the reason I wanted to talk about this new technique, besides my personal excitement about it, is that it is important for spiritual type people to be aware of all of the wonderful techniques that are being discovered in this age but which do not necessarily have a label acceptable to the spiritual community. Honestly, I almost never tell Sufi's that I am a certified hypnotist. I will tell anyone else but not Sufi's, except for my own mureeds. I believe it is because people who have invested a lot of energy into learning meditation tend to refuse to believe that there are other ways unless they are very subtle such as energy healing. And of course they also tend to view hypnosis, or other fairly conventional healing modalities, as not cool enough. At least that is my experience. I am totally willing to be proved wrong.

I would encourage anyone who feels they have an unsolvable issue to find a certified hypnotist and see if that cannot help.

Certification in North America is from the National Guild of Hypnotists – www.ngh.net

They have a list of all certified hypnotists in North America. I don't know about Europe.

Gerald Kein's link - www.omnihypnosis.com

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2007-07-13T12:47:00.000-04:00

INSPIRATION

"In order to acquire spiritual knowledge, in order to receive inspiration, in order to prepare one's heart for the inner revelation, one must try to make one's mentality pliable, like water rather than like a rock."

Hazrat Inayat Khan

"If you happen to receive Divine Inspiration don't be proud of it for it comes to you by permission of God. When you have access to a certain spiritual stage never say that it is sufficient because there are countless other stages still to cover. As Muhiddin al-Arabi says, "Any end is only a stage towards Unity""

Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi

I thought I would try an experiment. I am posting the two sayings above about inspiration and asking my readers to comment on what they mean to them. Or you might give your own thoughts on Inspiration. I often do this in classes I lead. I will pose a question and then sit back and see what happens. One of the things that I always point out when doing this is there is no need to feel that you must be profound or extraordinarily meaningful. Just say what comes into your heart. It is a fear that most of us have; we fear that we are not clever enough to say something that will be important. We all have our story and we all have our particular point of view. So, what's your inspiration?

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2007-07-02T09:05:00.000-04:00

MAGNIFICENCE

"The greatest thing that can happen to a human being is to become conscious of the magnificence of the meaningfulness of life." Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Isn't that a wonderful statement? I could add, to become conscious of one's own magnificence! Imagine what it is like to suddenly discover that not only does life have true meaning but so do you!

One of the things that I find myself saying over and over to people is that the first step in becoming who you really are is recognizing that you just may be magnificent, glorious, wonderful and exquisite. The response I usually get when I say things like this is denial. "You can't possibly be talking about me – can you?" Well yes, I am talking about you. Isn't it interesting that the finest aspect of God's creation, the final result of manifestation, the being that, according to all scriptures, was given dominion over all of creation, normally sees itself as unworthy of its own magnificence? Wow!

Let's take it slow. There is no need to shift from unworthy to magnificent in one easy step. You can work up to magnificent.

I guess we all have some feeling of unworthiness at some point. I am convinced that it is the heritage of Judeo/Christian guilt that we constantly struggle with. I can clearly remember learning of the doctrine of original sin when I was very young, four or five, and wondering how it could be. After all I was just a little kid, I hadn't done anything terribly bad, except maybe defy my mother and steal a cookie or two and here I was being told that I was born a sinner. Wow! Another wow. What a trip to lay on a little kid. Not only was I a sinner I was also headed for hell if I did not toe the line. And, as you grow, you begin to discover that you are never ever going to measure up to the standard that is set for you. This is the typical cultural message which is seen in various forms all over the world but most especially in the West.

I have often wondered just how it was that the Europeans decided on this particular interpretation of the Bible. There must have been some kind of cultural imperative that said that unworthiness is the standard and rising out of unworthiness is only possible through sacrifice of the self to a higher authority – priests. That whole grim interpretation which ignores the message of Love brought by Jesus and assumes that the world is essentially evil has warped our reality. Now it is up to us to bring it back to where it ought to be.

I was reading an old book of Pir Vilayat's, "The Call of the Dervish." In it he says a very interesting thing. He says that, "We can only really know God by loving – and that is a very painful path, because it doesn't seem to be reciprocated: we go from abandonment to abandonment – and even through betrayal." He goes on to say, "You can only manifest the divine Being by involving yourself in the trauma of divine love."

Imagine - the trauma of divine love! I suppose the first step here would be to learn to love yourself unconditionally – despite your inclination to sin uncontrollably. Can you do that? It is definitely traumatic to think of yourself as consistently lovable despite your many flaws. Now, take that idea and turn it on its head. Imagine God examining His body, noticing the incredible number of flaws yet still loving unconditionally. That is the trauma that Pir Vilayat speaks of.

Your inclination may be to look outward to express this ideal of divine love, to look to your significant other – if you have one – or your children or friends or family or even a pop star. It is a whole lot easier to look to someone else, to idealize them and declare your love then it is to love all that you are personally. That's okay I suppose but I think that turning within is really the key here.

If you can do this for even a moment, then it is quite possible to extend this emotion of internal acceptance to the discovery of the absolute magnificence of life itself. This is where the potential of deep meditation becomes so very essential. As Pir Vilayat would say, one is catapulted into a state of glorification. Notice the word catapulted. It is not by an effort of the intellect or even of the will, it happens just because it happens. It's your turn, it's your time and all the effort that you put into your meditations bears fruit in the most unexpected way.

So often I am confronted with someone saying to me that what they are observing of the world makes no sense, how can all of these horrible things be happening in a Universe of unconditional love? It is so much easier to feel sorrow, pity, maybe some anger and finally self pity or despair because there is nothing to be done and we are trapped in an insanity not of our making. Yup, all true, that is a way to look at it. But remember that ideal – the trauma of divine love. If you can tap into that, even for a moment, everything that you know to be true suddenly is useless and the experience of reality becomes completely altered. Magnificent meaningfulness then becomes real.

I invite your comments.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2007-06-24T10:11:00.000-04:00

ACCEPTANCE

I read the following quote in a book I am reading and wanted to share it with you. It is from a chapter in the book titled "How Sufi's account for their being called Sufi's"

Yusuf ibn al-Husayn tells us that he asked Dhu'l-Nun: "With whom shall I associate?" He answered: "With him who possesses nothing, and does not disapprove of any state thou happenest to be in; who does no change when thou changest, even though that change be great: for the more violently thou changest, the greater is thy need of him."

(The Doctrine of the Sufis – Abu Bakr al-Kalabadhi – trans. Arther Johan Arberry
Kitab Bhavan, New Delhi, India 2000 from page7)

One of the things that we strive for when treading the spiritual path is unconditional acceptance of the state of the person before us. But, Oh man is that hard. What the author of this piece, which was written around 960 CE, is pointing out is who a person should seek as a guide and with whom such a seeker should associate. One can assume that, in finding such a person, the people around him/her will be in various stages of understanding unconditional acceptance. They will therefore provide support for the one who is struggling to understand; which is the whole point. I am tempted to think that we have an intrinsic emotion that urges us to seek out such people. The knowledge may be intrinsic but if you think about it, it is obvious that there is also fear and a tendency to reject such people as unworldly, or strange, or damaging to our culture, etc. It is the reason that prophets almost always come to a bad end. The problem is that such people do not see the universe in the same way that the rest of us see it. This is a good thing since hanging with such people will expand our point of view. It is also challenging since hanging with such people will question our point of view. Not that such people will confront you deliberately but you cannot help but notice that your personal point of view is askew from theirs. At this stage a couple of things will happen. One, obviously, is admiration or even deep devotion to the one who is the exemplar of that which you desire to understand and perhaps become a bit of yourself. Another is resentment which can come out in all sorts of ways. Another is fear which I already mentioned.

There is a really interesting aspect to this fear that has intrigued me ever since I figured it out; it is the fear of change. I first noticed this phenomenon in myself not long after I joined the Sufi Order. I realized that there was a part of my personality that was seriously resisting the normal progression of spirituality in my being because it was terrified of having to change the personality. I was afraid because I had no references for how my personality should be if I were to suddenly become somehow more spiritual or something. How do you act when everything, all of your ideas about how the world works, suddenly changes? I think that one of the current difficulties in what we call the New Age movement, which subscribes to much of what Eastern spirituality has to teach, is that - when we are confused over just how to act - we tend to pretend. In a simple world, one without mass communication, no phones, etc., there is ample room for the inner work and for repose and, one assumes, for communing with nature. Our world is not simple, it is far from simple. Yet I notice that there is a kind of imperative that insists that simplicity should rule. In fact, I suspect that in that a simpler universe that we assume existed, things were just as complex though they may have been quite a bit slower. Humans seem to have a talent for making things complex, no matter what the condition is.

It is possible to imagine what it might be like to be that person who is possession-less and is endlessly tolerant of every person that appears before him. What is their inner life like? Can you emulate their calm accepting demeanor? Can you imagine yourself with such attributes? If you have such attributes how will it change you? Being in the presence of people who can do all of this can be a great blessing or at least it can give you hints as to how you might become who you really are.

"That purpose is accomplished when a person has risen above all these things. It is that person then, who will tolerate all, who will understand all, who will assimilate all things, who will not feel disturbed by things which are not in accordance with his own nature or the way which is not his way. He will not look at them with contempt, but he will see that in the depth of every being there is a divine spark which is trying to raise its flame toward the purpose." Hazrat Inayat Khan

One of the people I guide once said something to me that really struck me as quite profound. She told me that she had been puzzling over this guide business. She had been trying to figure just what it meant to have a guide and she told me she had finally figured it out. She said that the guide holds the being of the student in trust until the student can manifest it themselves: which is a pretty good retelling of that 1100 year old statement above.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2007-06-09T16:08:00.000-04:00

THE BANQUET

"Dreams and inspirations are open proofs of the higher world."

Hazrat Inayat Khan

I had a memory the other day that I would like to share.

A few years ago, on a nice summer's day, Majida and I decided to take a drive. We headed for the other side of the Hudson, to Nyack, NY, to look in the little shops over there. As we were crossing the Tappan Zee Bridge I noticed a bright red Ferrari in front of us. I have always been an admirer of sports cars and nothing says sports car like a Ferrari. So I was kind of paying attention to it as we drew closer and I paid more attention as I began to realize that there was something odd about the car. Ferrari lines are very distinctive and I suspect that every one who drives, while they might not instantly recognize the mark will still realize they are seeing a rare automobile. You know how when you are looking at something familiar you expect it to look a certain way and when it does not your mind will still insist that it does until the rational mind steps in and identifies the differences? Well that is what my mind was doing. I knew something was off but couldn't really see what it was. Then it resolved.

The top was down on the Ferrari, it being a beautiful summer's day and the driver looked to be a slightly over weight young man. What was wrong was that the right side mirror was turned fully in on its springs and the young man was, every so often, glancing over at the mirror to watch himself driving a Ferrari. What an image. I instantly made up a story for the young man. He had been asked to deliver this car to someone and was taking advantage of the opportunity to admire himself driving a car that he never would be able to afford. This is the story that I instantly made up in my mind. I have no idea if it is true. For all I know the right side mirror was defective in some way and he was glancing at it every so often to reassure himself that it had not fallen off. Or perhaps, like me, he had the habit of constantly sweeping his mirrors with his eyes and kept looking over out of habit. But I like the idea that he was admiring himself.

One of the things that I find myself constantly saying to people I guide is that it is important that they admit to who they are. We have this idea in our culture – the Judeo-Christian Ideal of humility that says that we are never to think of ourselves as special. I can clearly remember my mother saying that she/he is above him/herself, meaning that they were being prideful. We all have gotten this message in some fashion. Some of us have decided that we will ignore the imperative and go ahead and be special. There are any number of seminars and self help workshops that a person can attend that encourage a person to be special. There are people who make a very good living encouraging others to acknowledge their specialness. Still, I suspect that most folks who attend these seminars and become very enthusiastic for a moment or two, even for a weekend eventually find themselves struggling with the same sense of unworthiness that they had before they went to the seminar. However, their very willingness to go to the seminar or buy the books says something very important.

I am going to go ahead and assume that anyone reading my blog regularly will have some kind of idea about a creative force in the Universe, something which I have come to call Divine Intent. Given that position we could extrapolate that we are each a unique aspect of Divine Intent. So why would you feel unworthy?

Our young man in the Ferrari was definitely seeing himself as special, even if only for a moment. The human spirit has this deep desire to know itself as glorious yet we have imposed rules on ourselves that say we are not to do so. So we get confused. And then we have all the information that we absorbed early in our lives from our family and our culture. What to do, what to do?

My teacher Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan had a saying that I am very fond of quoting, "You have been invited to the banquet, why are you eating the scraps under the table?" It is a truly amazing aspect of this Divine Intent that there is a very large portion of creation that simply refuses to believe that it has the right to acknowledge itself as other than unworthy. One could even make an argument that the most violent sections of our world, the fanatics, are really expressing their grave doubts in the most destructive manner possible, like three year old children acting out their disappointment at not being given the candy they think they should have. It is a strange paradox of emotional destructiveness taken to the nth degree. I hurt; therefore, I will hurt you. And all the while the banquet sits there waiting and the beings that are partaking of it are patiently waiting for you to realize that you too belong at the feasting table.

So you can gaze into the mirror of the Ferrari or purchase the latest pair of designer jeans or any of the myriad things that our world provides to help you over come your feelings of unworthiness – or you can accept that you are the magnificent being that you are and set about learning how to manifest that which you already are.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2007-06-06T08:02:00.000-04:00

WHAT'S IT ALL MEAN?

I was going to write more about tradition in my next blog but something has come up that sets that subject aside for a bit.

On Saturday May 19^th, at around 11 AM, my mother died. I guess for someone my age, 62, this is not that unusual an event and I was not that surprised but still it is strange. At the beginning of that week I had talked to her on the phone, she lived around 5 ½ hours from me and she asked my advice about going to the hospital. She was having trouble breathing and was almost immobile, having even more trouble moving about. I agreed that she needed to go to the hospital and called her friend to make sure that was going to happen. Two days later I drove up to see her. I also wanted to talk to her Dr. about what was really taking place and to speak to a social worker about the possibility of moving her to a facility closer to me. I had these visions of taking her great grand children to visit her in a nursing home, thereby cheering her up. There is nothing like a bouncy four year old girl to cheer someone up. I thought many things during the three days I was up there, in Watertown, NY. Another thought that kept creeping into my mind was what I would do if she died on the way while I was driving her to the hypothetical nursing home close to me. It was not a thought that I wanted to have but it kept slipping in.

She was very uncomfortable. She had been struggling with myasthenia gravis for many years and the disease was advancing in her body. In case you do not know, myasthenia gravis is a disease that creates anti-bodies that interfere with the signals that nerves give to muscles. Because of this disease she was now unable to swallow, her throat muscles were not getting the signal to contract. The hospital inserted a tube directly into her stomach, called a Peg of all things, in order to get nutrition into her.

I stayed in her little apartment and went several times a day to visit her. Whenever I visited I would find her sitting in a chair beside her hospital bed. So far as I know the staff left her there as moving was also very uncomfortable for her. She looked so much like she was sitting there waiting.

We did not have much to talk about. It was odd really. Here I am a spiritual teacher of sorts and I cannot talk to my mother about death. I really have no idea what her thoughts were during these last days. I suspect she was aware that the sand was running out but she did not make any reference to death and I did not feel it was my place to bring it up if she did not want to. So I bought her a large print bible. She really liked that and hugged it to her chest. I do not think that she actually opened it but she did hold it as a kind of talisman.

Almost the last thing she said to me was, "I want to go home," meaning her apartment but I sensed a sub-text as well. She was tired and wanted it all to end.

On Friday of that week, I drove back home. On Saturday her friend called me to tell me she had died. Apparently the hospital staff was taking her to X-Ray to check on the location of the Peg. She was chatting with the technicians when she just stopped.

I cannot say that I have been close to my mother. There was never much overt affection in our small family and over the years I kept my distance for many reasons. Still I did call her occasionally and visited her when I could. Every few months I would drive up to see her, listen to her discussion of her various neighbors many faults, and drive back home. I knew she was increasingly uncomfortable in her body and kind of knew that the moment of separation from physicality was approaching. But the reality is very strange.

I would like to write something deep and philosophical at this point but nothing really comes to mind. So much has been written about death that I doubt there is anything that I can add It is the natural order of things and something in us knows that it is okay. It is obvious I suppose. For me it is okay.

The day after she died my wife and I drove back up to Watertown to sort through her things and make the various arrangements necessary. Most of her furniture we gave away, keeping just a few small things. I think I was in some kind of numb state so Majida more or less took over and made sure things were done. I did what I was told to do. People would say, go here, do this, go there, do that and I would do as I was bid. And everything got done.

And now? Now I feel normal I guess. As I said, it is strange knowing that she no longer inhabits a body here on Earth. I did get a sense of her right after she left. I had this fleeting vision of her in her 40 year old body feeling quite happy. I liked that.

Love and Blessings, Musawwir

2007-05-23T22:37:00.000-04:00

TRADITION

I have been reading Karen Armstrong's new religious history, "The Great Transformation." I love her books and have read them all. This newest book fills a gap in the history books as it is an explanation of what is called The Axial Age. The Axial Age is a peculiar stage in human history, from approximately 800 BCE to 200 BCE, when the major regions of the civilized world; Greece, China, India and the Mesopotamian Basin all shifted how they approached religion. It was an age when numerous prophets suddenly appeared in all four regions and began to talk of the inner world. It is a great book. But it is not what I wanted to talk of other then as a starting point.

As I read the book I cannot help but reflect on what I see happening around me. One of the things that I hear frequently is the need for a return to tradition. That puzzles me. I wonder what tradition they mean. How far back should we go? Humans are funny, funny peculiar that is – not funny ha ha, about tradition. A tradition needs to be only a week or so old and we will assume it has permanence. A tradition that is a hundred years old seems hoary with meaning and one a thousand years old, no matter how much it may have been modified in the intervening years, well that is awesome. It never ceases to amaze me that, just because someone a thousand years ago wrote something, it must be full of inner meaning that we today cannot possibly totally understand but we know it is significant. What if it was just stupid? There are a couple of these ancient tomes that I have read that are just that – stupid. Yet they are revered texts. Oh well.

As I read the book and learn how our solid traditions evolved I wonder why we think they have value. As Ms. Armstrong explains so well, but which any thinking person should already realize, traditions are cultural responses to changing conditions and values. They are the way that a culture defines itself in that moment. In and of themselves they mean nothing other than as a cultural response.

One of the things that I really liked about my teacher, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, and his teachings was that, though he would use historical references and an extensive knowledge of the ancient Sufi's, he always insisted that what he was about was the creation of a new paradigm. He continually stated that we are the mid-wives of the Holistic Age (his word for what we usually call the New Age). I would think that means that we are obligated to stretch ourselves out and discover what has not been yet done.

Now I hear that we should return to tradition.

As a Sufi I feel that it is my job to not only know what has been done in the past but also to respond to the future energy pulling us forward. Anything else is turning ones back on the future, embracing the past and creating a comfortable cocoon which protects us but has no value to evolution. But it is scary; after all the future is essentially unknown. Oh, you might get some precognition I suppose. Lots of people do but the wholeness of it is unknown since, in the real world sense, it has not happened.

I think that a lot of people do sense something unfolding and are trying in various ways to make it clear. That happens in all sorts of ways; from nostalgic yearnings for Lemuria to crop circle divination to whatever seems neatest to the individual. It is difficult to just let the future unfold. Since it has not happened yet, though the potential is there, we do have options. We can pretend we know what it is. We can retreat to a traditional model that ignores this new energy and reassures itself that all is well. We can notice the small indications that are appearing in the remote depths of our consciousness and be glad. We can be scared. Oh there are all sorts of things that we can do.

I suppose that a part of this advice to return to tradition might be to get people to actually read some of the old material. Another thing that never ceases to amaze me is people believing that the individual they believe is responsible for their current state sprang full blown from the brow of Zeus or something similar without having done any study of his own. For instance, there is a cult of personality for Hazrat Inayat Khan. Some otherwise very intelligent people seem to believe that what he spoke about was all his. It never seems to occur to them that most of what he taught was a restating of normal Sufi thought made palatable for the Western ear. He took out most of the cultural references from the Middle East and India and substituted European and American cultural references. Anyone who has done any reading of the ancient's will realize this. That he was brilliant is a given but let's not go too far. So maybe it would be good to get people to read some of the ancient material and figure this out for themselves.

I am now very curious to hear what others might feel about what I have written above. I am still in a state of speculation about this and am just beginning to form my ideas. Any contributions? More to come!

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2007-05-05T11:36:00.000-04:00

LIFE'S TEXTURE

(Part 2)

I was walking through Manhattan the other evening on my way to meet Majida for a light supper before going to the theater. It was early evening, there was still quite a bit of daylight and it was a pleasant walk. Since it was mid week there were a lot of people on the street heading home from their jobs. They all had the look that commuters over the world have, determination, annoyance, focus and the stare that says they are already thinking about dinner. It was a perfect Spring day so the look was softened somewhat, though not a lot. I was walking along, avoiding the rushing hordes, feeling the cool fresh air when a memory came stealing into my consciousness. At first it was a feeling with no event attached – a sense of satisfaction or possibly elation – a feeling of being young again. I walked between the soaring buildings, barely noticing the street life, before I remembered the source.

I was raised in Minnesota, on a lake a few miles outside of Minneapolis. I just looked at a Google Earth image of Medicine Lake and it is just a bit more built up than when I lived there. In fact I doubt I would recognize anything. In any case, as everyone knows, Minnesota is known for its winters. Winter is great for a kid. You play outside all day, come home to the pain of thawing fingers and toes and go out the next day for the same thing. Spring is a different thing. The air is full of promise, the deep snow is melting, the ice on the lake starts breaking up and the mud comes – lots and lots of mud. Any rural denizens of northern states or Canada know all about spring thaw mud. But finally the day comes when the mud is more or less over and a magical thing happens, you get to take your bicycle out for the very first time in months. This was the memory that flowed through me as I walked through Mid-town Manhattan. It was the smell of freedom.

For a 12 year old boy freedom is simple. The first bicycle ride after a long Minnesota winter does nicely. As a person matures freedom becomes more elusive. We accumulate responsibilities and attitudes and assumptions and firm ideas about who we are and freedom seems remote or, at best, a philosophical condition not very related to real life. But for a 12 year old boy, or girl, none of that is real, freedom is very basic. It is the wind in your hair and the sheer joy of flying down the road on your bicycle.

This memory of freedom, so simple and pure, flowed through me with all the gentleness of a feather lightly drifting down to alight in the palm of my hand. I was charmed. And I realized that this too was part of my life's texture.

As the quote from Hazrat Inayat Khan in the last blog says: "The journey one takes in the inner life is as long as the distance between the beginning of life and death, it being the longest journey one ever takes throughout life; and one must have everything prepared, so that after reaching a certain distance one may not have to turn back."

Some preparations are quite natural – this perfect sense of joy and freedom that a child experiences is certainly one. Remembering these states is another. Most of the preparations really are just this simple – balancing your breath, noticing beauty, focusing your mind, ignoring the tape loops of worry and resentment. As adults we tend to create extreme complications for ourselves due to the above mentioned accumulated responsibilities but really it is very simple. If you constantly practice remembering these pure emotions that you very naturally experienced as a child then you are doing the necessary preparation. I am constantly reminded of Christ's dictum to be as a little child. I have come to believe that he was very serious. My teacher, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, was probably one of the most intelligent people I have ever met yet he was quite capable of extreme childlike delight. You hear the very same thing of the Dalai Lama and other beings at that level of spiritual responsibility. I suspect this attitude comes from acceptance of life's texture as well as discipline and meditative skill.

As I write this I am listening to the Woodstock album and Richie Havens is singing about Freedom. We want it, we know it exists in some form, we remember from our childhood as I did and, as we go deep into the Inner Life, we can sometimes remember the freedom of our eternal souls.

So, look around, see what is eternal in your existence and enjoy the rest.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2007-05-01T21:01:00.000-04:00

LIFE'S TEXTURE

(Part 1)

"The inner life is a journey, and before starting to take it there is a certain preparation necessary. If one is not prepared, there is always the risk of having to return before one has arrived at one's destination. When a person goes on a journey, and when he has to accomplish something, he must know what is necessary on the path and what he must take with him, in order that his journey may become easy and that he may accomplish what he has started to accomplish. The journey one takes in the inner life is as long as the distance between the beginning of life and death, it being the longest journey one ever takes throughout life; and one must have everything prepared, so that after reaching a certain distance one may not have to turn back." Hazrat Inayat Khan

One of the things that a spiritual guide hears frequently is how awful the people they guide think they are. When a person begins to do spiritual work or even when a person begins to get serious about introspection, their mistakes will come up. We all have sinned in one way or another. By sin I mean we have all done something that harms another. We may not want to admit it but our subconscious knows we have some things in our past that we are not proud of or happy about. On the other end is the victim, the person who knows they have been abused by people more powerful than they are for their whole life. So we have sinners and victims and often a combination of the two. And then something happens and the Inner Life beckons.

What happens when the Inner Life beckons isn't nearly as important as the impact that it has on your assumptions about yourself. What the above quote says is that a certain preparation is necessary; I kind of laugh at that part. How can you know? It's like preparing to drive when you have never seen an automobile. What you can do, however; is see the life before the 'what' appeared for what it is. This is your texture.

All of the experiences that go into making our life what it is become our texture. All of it is us. When we discover our Inner Life, assumptions tend to arise that things will suddenly be peaceful, wonderful, sin free. Upon reflection, we will realize that nothing really changes; in fact, now that you have discovered an extra dimension to living, things suddenly seem even more complex. As I mention in my book, it is not unusual for a person who has recently embarked on a spiritual discipline to suddenly realize that they are the world's worst jerk. This person will begin to see all of the flaws in their being and nothing at all seems nice or right or even remotely possible for them because of their many many imperfections. On the other side wonderful things are also happening. There may be realizations about the nature of the Universe, or understandings about the beauty of everyday life. All sorts of things suddenly become clear. One of the things that certainly should become clear is the amount of work to come. Strangely enough this is almost never the case.

It has been my observation that people get a tiny taste of alternative reality and suddenly feel that they understand all of it. I suppose this is normal enough human nature. It seems that we really need to know that we know. That's okay; the kicker is that we also have these flaws that keep creeping into our consciousness. At least they should if we are paying any attention at all. What to do?

I used to try to fix people. I used to try to show them how to stop being flawed. I finally came to my senses and realized that was not very intelligent of me. Flaws are only flaws when you think they are. If you do something when you are 20 that you would not do when you are 40, it does not mean that the 20 year old was wrong. In the 20 year olds world what he did was perfectly normal. You do the best you can with the information you have at the time. And experience slowly teaches you that maybe there are alternatives. Continually going back to the 20 year old with pain and regret is, however; a losing proposition. It's just your texture, it isn't you.

It is a basic of humanity that we learn through our mistakes not our successes. So perhaps our greatest mistakes are those that lead us to examine our truth and thereby discover the Inner Life. Isn't it interesting that it is apparent failure that does this and not wondrous success?

Next blog we can talk about the journey and the accomplishments one may have along the way.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

HAPPY MAY DAY EVERYONE!

2007-04-15T20:20:00.000-04:00

FRIENDSHIP

I was never very good at friendship: or at least I thought I was poor at it. I was thinking about it the other day and realized that it is hard to admit but I had to train myself to be friendly. It is a strange thing to realize. I still feel uncomfortable in party type situations – I never know just what to say - never know just what to do. I seem to always be afraid of saying or doing something stupid and have always admired the sort of person who is comfortable in group/party situations – admired and hated of course.

It is a mystery – a life long mystery. If you are trying to understand just what it is that you need to learn or to do while at the same time feeling paralyzed, you are certainly in a pickle. I never was good at snappy comebacks or being clever in a crowd. I suppose it came from feeling unworthy. But it does not matter so much where it came from as it does what to do with the information.

When you feel uncomfortable but do not know you are uncomfortable, that is a terrible stress on the psyche. When you feel uncomfortable and know you are uncomfortable, that is slightly better.

So, what does the above have to do with friendship? The older I get and the longer I am involved with Sufism the more I realize how precious friendship is.

"When, in friendship, a thought arises, 'I will love you as you love me', or, 'I will do to you as you do to me', this takes away all the virtue of the friendship, because it is a commercial attitude, prevalent everywhere in the commercial world: everything is done for a return, and measure is given for measure. Friendship should be the contrary pole to the practical side of life; for when a person is tired by the selfish surroundings of the world he feels inclined to take refuge in the love and kindness of a sympathetic friend. But if there is a question of selfishness in friendship, where can a soul go who is tired and annoyed with the selfish surroundings of the world?"

"Friendship as the average person understands it is perhaps little more than acquaintance; but in reality it is more sacred than any other connection in the world. To a sincere person, entering into friendship is like entering the gates of heaven; and a visit to his friend is a pilgrimage to a true loving friend."

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Realizing all of the above gave me a clue as to why I was always so uncomfortable in group situations. Most group situations are just like the above, entertain me and I will entertain you – as long as it is within this secret set of rules that only the specific group understands. But it always makes me uncomfortable because I can sense the insincerity. Then I realized that it wasn't insincerity per se, it is more of a situation in which I really did not belong. The conditions were fine for the people involved but not for me. That was a difficult thing to realize.

It seems to be axiomatic that the deeper you go into the inner being the less company you have. If your inclination is deep to begin with, which you cannot help, then you will constantly find yourself at odds with the culture around you. Some of us learn to adapt, many do not. On the other hand, when you are graced with a true friendship, as described above, all of the experiences of the past seem remote and unimportant. I am so graced.

I am married, as many of you know, and that is a particular form of friendship. But that is not the friendship that I speak of. No, there is another, of just the type that Pir O Murshid speaks of. It was a surprise when it appeared and continues to be a blessing. Suddenly I understood what all of the literature referring to friendship was really about.

So it is real – friendship is real.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

2007-04-07T08:32:00.000-04:00

Morality

According to Pir O Murshid Inayat Khan there are five things necessary in the attainment of a spiritual life. You can see the whole list here http://wahiduddin.net/mv2/I/I_II_8.htm

I would like to concentrate on one part – morality.

"The fifth necessity in the spiritual path is the loving of the everyday life. There are no strict morals which a spiritual guide enforces upon a person, for that work has been given to the outward religions. It is to the exoteric side of spiritual work that the outer morals belong, but the essence of morals is practiced by those treading the spiritual path. Their first moral principle is constantly to avoid hurting the feeling of another. The second principle is to avoid allowing themselves to be affected by the constantly jarring influences which every soul has to meet in life. The third principle is to keep their balance under all different situations and conditions which upset this tranquil state of mind. The fourth principle is to love unceasingly all those who deserve love, and to give to the undeserving their forgiveness; and this is continually practiced by them. The fifth principle is detachment amidst the crowd; but by detachment I do not mean separation. By detachment is only meant rising above those bondages which bind man and keep him back from his journey towards the goal. " Hazrat Inayat Khan

I just happened to think that mystics are fond of making lists. When you read Pir O Murshid's works for instance you find all kinds of lists – the five most important things – the three things you need – and so on. I guess that was the way he tended to speak. Most of what you read in his works is really transcriptions of lectures he gave. So, I suppose, in the moment, lists were helpful as a way of making a point.

Okay, ask yourself what myth you follow. We all have a myth that we believe is reality. It isn't but we convince ourselves that it is. Then, as spiritual maturity begins to arrive, we are confronted with the myth that we accepted in order to get to this place but which no longer can support us. It can be pretty distressing when our myth fails us. That is what I suspect may be happening.

The above quote from Pir O Murshid can be seen in a couple of ways. I have noticed that often people will read such things, take them to heart and assume that they not only understand but they also have deeply absorbed and follow all of the suggestions outlined. At the other end of things are the people who read these suggestions and feel totally intimidated. Both have a myth about themselves and the world around them.

Probably the reality of what Pir O Murshid is saying lies in the constant examination of one's point of view. It will occasionally happen that a person will discover that they are actually comfortable in the chaos of everyday life. They will find that nothing rattles them and the demands of the selfish people all around them are simple annoyances to be tolerated with good cheer. It can happen that you suddenly notice you have found this place of calm detachment quite innocently. To assume this state is a bit like saying you are a fantastic lover without ever having been with anyone. If it isn't natural, it isn't.

On the other hand it is important to notice where you fall short of the outlined ideal. Not to beat yourself up over your failings but just to notice. Noticing is the first step in discovering the aspects of your being that truly do understand friendship and detachment. It is all there inside of you and only needs a bit of work to unveil itself.

Love and Blessings, Musawwir

2007-03-14T07:49:00.000-04:00

IDEALS

"Shatter your ideals upon the rock of truth."

Hazrat Inayat Khan

That sounds good doesn't it? It seems like something that you can do. It won't be too painful. There may be a little pain but you can handle that. Well to me it is terrifying because I know it is true.

A person I correspond with recently wrote the following to me: "I think when we walk in the shadow of some labeled philosophy of life; we don't walk in the light no matter how brilliant or well thought out the philosophy." I had to read this over a couple of times to understand what was meant. As long as we are subscribing to some sort of system of belief and we demand that this system supply us with all our needs, we will be in its shadow. This person may very well be correct. There is a real comfort for us in having something that explains what we feel or what we want to feel. It is so very nice to point to some literature or perhaps to a way of life that we are sure we approve of. But, no matter the sublimity of the system, it will still never be enough.

Any religion or philosophy has this drawback; there are always going to be people within the group that need to explain to you just what it all means. They will tell you that you can trust them to understand. In fact they will tell you that it is a requirement that you trust them. This is just as true in my Sufi Order as it is in anything else. In fact I often find myself doing just that. I will find myself telling someone what IT means and expecting them to just accept my word. I do try to remember to slap myself when I do that but I am not always successful. Fortunately I have friends who do not hesitate to tell me that I am being pushy, or silly, or wrong – at least as far as they are concerned. Isn't that wonderful?

To be willing to have your ideal shattered means being vulnerable to the information flow that comes to you. Most of us have extremely thick defenses where our ideals are concerned. Any thought or emotion or scary perception that comes to us will immediately rebound off our thick armor. We have no intention of allowing anyone to alter our opinions even in the slightest manner.

Anyone who has done any study at all of mysticism will know that this attitude is the first one that has to go, never the less we do not really believe that our ideals need adjustment. In fact we will go to a lot of mental and emotional trouble to make sure that whatever teacher we have chosen to listen to aligns their philosophy with ours. It is not so unusual I suppose for us to need to do this because we always want to understand what the teacher is saying in the light of our own understanding. To stretch beyond our limits is always scary. We may profess the desire to stretch but what we really mean is just a tiny amount not a lot, certainly not to the point of shattering.

For me there is a physical sensation that accompanies even a minor alteration in my thinking or emotions. It is that sinking feeling that one gets when faced with a predator and fight or flight are the only options. Total terror. It is the feeling I used to get when faced with the play ground bully. I want to run but there is no where to run to. Sometimes I can ward off the feeling by ignoring the reality I am faced with – letting it bounce off my armor so to speak. Other times my basic sense of integrity simply will not let me avoid the shift that is being presented.

What is always true is the subliminal knowledge that there is more to come. No matter how deep we go into the discovery of our true selves, there is always more. Perhaps then the answer is to simply accept that what we know is okay as long as we are content to know it is only a part of what is real. Many of the scriptures say that God or the Universe never gives us more than we can handle. There are arguments about that of course, abuse, war, political domination, things like that. But generally it is true that you get what you expect and, if you allow it, a little more. It is extremely rare that you will be expected to grasp all of Universal Reality all at once. For most of us it is a gradual process – if we allow it.

There is this prayer that was composed by Hazrat Inayat Khan and which many people over the world recite daily. I am one of those that do this. Every time I recite it I wonder if I truly mean it. Maybe that is the true test.

Love & Blessings, Musawwir

Saum
Praise be to Thee, Most Supreme God,
Omnipotent, Omnipresent, All-pervading,
the Only Being.
Take us in thy Parental Arms,
Raise us from the denseness of the earth.
Thy Beauty do we worship,
To Thee do we give willing surrender.
Most Merciful and Compassionate God,
The Idealized Lord of the whole humanity,
Thee only do we worship,
and towards Thee alone we aspire.
Open our hearts towards Thy Beauty,
Illuminate our souls with Divine Light.
O Thou, the Perfection of Love, Harmony, and Beauty!
All-powerful Creator, Sustainer, Judge
and Forgiver of our shortcomings, Lord God of the East and of the West,
of the worlds above and below,
And of the seen and unseen beings.
Pour upon us Thy Love and Thy Light,
Give sustenance to our bodies, hearts and souls,
Use us for the purpose that Thy Wisdom chooseth,
And guide us on the path of Thine Own Goodness.
Draw us closer to Thee every moment of our life,
Until in us be reflected Thy Grace,
Thy Glory, Thy Wisdom, Thy Joy, and Thy Peace.
Amen.

2007-02-14T10:50:00.000-05:00

SECRETS

"While everybody asks, 'Why?" of his neighbor, the mystic asks this question of himself."

"The wretched always look for some excuse to be miserable."

"If by accident you step into the mud, it is not there-fore necessary to keep on walking in the muddy path."

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Many of the people who follow a spiritual path feel that it means becoming an adept of some sort. They tend to look for magic of various kinds. Precognition is popular as is telepathy and reading the aura of others. Manifestation is also high on the list. Making candle flames dance, dissolving clouds or even dissolving the self into the elusive Void are exciting objectives. What the true mystics say however is that the real spiritual person has only one objective – becoming truly human.

It is complicated becoming a human being.

All of the things that I mentioned, plus many more, are the sorts of things that the mind just naturally looks for as we train ourselves to contemplate and, ultimately, to meditate. We like evidence. We also like to think, even if secretly, that we have some kind of powers that others do not. I have noticed this tendency in others and certainly in myself. What I have also noticed is that, no matter how "adept" I become, my psychological baggage comes right along with me.

A friend of mine pointed out to me recently that she is often distressed by how people see themselves. She tends to be very aware of the positive aspects of another person's personality but she notices that a lot of people do not allow themselves to see their own positives parts. What she said was that they only allow in negative opinions. I have noticed the same thing myself. I make it a habit to tell people what I see when I notice something nice or excellent about them. What then happens is really interesting. Quite often the person so complimented will take the compliment, twist it and make it something negative or non-complimentary but therefore palatable. For instance, you can tell a person they look really nice and the response will often be, "You should have seen me this morning!" I am sure you can think of many similar examples that you and your friends do. But why?

My teacher, Pir Vilayat, would sometimes remark to us about what he saw. He would say something to the effect of, "I am sitting here in front of you looking out at all of your grim faces, when what I see of your beings is glorious. Why are you so grim?" Occasionally it would work and we would decide to enjoy our beings. More often than not, his statement would be ignored and we would go on being grim. It's the way of our culture .

Think of what you see at an ordinary super market check out counter. Do you see copies of The Atlantic Monthly or Harper's? Nope you see National Inquirer and similar publications all trumpeting the mistakes, failures and peccadillo's of various celebrities. We love to see failure in others because we also feel quite flawed. After all this is what we are taught. No one is perfect, everyone has sinned. In some religions even babies are known to be abject. This idea is so deep in our culture that we do not even really notice.

I have two grand children living with me; a nine year old boy and a four year old girl. The girl just went through her tantrum stage. Thank god it is pretty much over with now. When she was in the middle of one what would often work would be to ask her if what she was doing was making her happy. Did she enjoy it? All that screaming and wailing over some minor difficulty, real or imagined, was exciting it seemed. Any parent knows that when a kid gets into that stage often they do not know how to stop so you find some way to distract them. What occasionally worked with her was this question, "Do you like being like this?" She would keep screaming but shake her head no. And eventually, often within seconds, the screaming would stop and a hug would be asked for.

So, I ask you, do you like feeling negative about yourself?

Love & Blessings, Musawwir