Some Kiss We want with our Whole Lives

The night has always been a special time for me. Everything calms down, there is no one around to call us or bring us back from whatever reverie we find ourselves immersed in. For me it’s a time of meditation and deep thought, a time to just star outside past the light of the city into the svelte darkness that surrounds the city. From my night time sallies into the unknown, these following words from Rumi came to my mind with an uncharacteristic insistence.

“There is some kiss we want
with our whole lives,
the touch of Spirit on the body.

Seawater begs the pearl
to break its shell.

And the lily, how passionately
it needs some wild Darling!

It struck a real chord in me tonight. I remember one of the first lessons on the way I had when I was very young. I as told to always be observant of one’s self especially what were we repeatedly find ourselves strongly wanting. I remember asking why and I was told with a familiar heavy French accent and a pat on my head that “we are so much more than what we see in the mirror and sometimes what we are tries to talk to us through the things we want.”

Everyone wants something.  For some of us it is to feel that we are accepted and love. For other’s it is to feel that somewhere in the mix of all this strife and change, is security; perhaps security that can come in a particular loved one’s warm embrace or from always being diligent and in accessing people and keeping people at an arms’ length.  And yet for others there is this want to fit into some higher purpose or plan. I remember not exactly but somewhere I think in Will Durant’s Story of Philosophy a line that went, how many young men and accepted the ultimate risk of the battle field rather than a mediocre life.

For me, I can remember when I was younger with what zeal I wanted to join the armed forces. It was my dream in life. There I felt I could find true camaraderie. At many periods of my life there was this strong need that grew in strength and intensity. I figured anything was easier to bear and walk through with like minded people. To my young mind, a military career meant respect from peers; it meant I would have people who would have my back unquestionable, it would mean I thought friendship.

As you can imagine that military career never happened and instead my life took many interesting turns. I did realize while sick though that a lot of my insistence wants, passions can never be satisfied by another human being. I don’t mean that in a cynical way at all. I feel when you inwardly and outwardly take the appropriate measures to reach for the truth and nothing less; you automatically reserve a place in your heart, in your being.

Recently I read these words from Llewelyn Vaughan Lee that encapsulates many of my experiences over the years

Every effort is required to walk along a path that is as narrow as the edge of a sword. Two cannot walk together, for it is the journey of the soul back to the Source, an offering of our own unique self back to the Creator. Within the group the seeker is given immense support, but there comes the time when any external support becomes a limitation, and one must continue alone. Even in the midst of family life and surrounded by loving friends, one finds oneself so deeply alone that it is like being in an empty desert with only the sound of the wind howling. Such inner states totally overshadow external circumstances. It is only when we are totally alone that we find Him in our hearts. It is such an intimate relationship that there is no space for anything else.

Lately however I have entered one of the happiest moments of my life. I feel like the women mentioned in Balzac’s Colonel Chabert.

Le colonel ressemblait à cette dame qui, ayant eu la fièvre durant quinze années crut avoir changé de maladie le jour où elle fut guérie

The colonel resembled this lady who having had a fever lasting 15 years thought that her new found healthy was another disease.

lt seems on some level we are united in a way with the things we search for. Maybe only outwardly there is this seeming disparity, between the flower and its admirer, the crashing waves of the ocean and the pearl, the enemy and the friend. Maybe at some point the writer  and read come together, but I feel that where that happens where all opposites come together is far far beyond the depth of the nowhere I am starting at through my window

dave

Khidr and the Caravanserai

One day khidr went to the king’s palace and made his way right up the throne. Such was the strangeness of his appearance that none dared stop him. The king who was Ibrahim ben Adem, asked him what he was looking for. The visitor said:

‘I am looking for a sleeping-place in this caravanserai.’
Ibrahim answreed ‘This is  no caravanseria, this is my palace.’
The stranger said “Whose was it before you?’
My father’s said Ibrahim.
‘And before that?’
My grandfathers
‘and this place where people come and go, staying and moving on,
you call other than a caravanserai”

Shibli, Cryptic Talk and Madness

He [Shibli] used to illustrate the difference between the Sufis and the unregenerate by saying things incomprehensible to the populace at large.  One day because of his cryptic talk he was mocked as a madman in public by detractors. He said:

To your mind, I am mad.
To my mind, you are all sane.
So I pray to increase my madness
and to increase your sanity.

 My madness is from the power of Love
 Your sanity is fromte strength of unawareness

Journey through Meditation

Hello Again Everyone,

The past few blogs as you can see have been kind of autobiographical.  Sharing  them with you has opened my eyes to many things. It is a strange phenomena indeed blogging.  Some friends of mine are always encouraging me to share my experiences with them and when I do I am met with blank stares or questions like tinged with great trepidation, ‘Can you do that [drink champagne], can you joke around like that [ another horrendous guys walks into a bar joke] etc but with many readers all of which i dont know I find some weird acceptance, or maybe its release from carrying some things for so long. We really dont walk alone in this life, and it is always surprising who is walking with you.

I wanted to talk or share with you my experiences in meditation. The first thing I must say is that there are different kinds of meditation. By this I dont mean the different meditations styles or exercises. For example, there is a meditation group that meets at a community center and they offer free classes that really do a great service of getting one aware of the joy that one can find in silence when the IPODs, tv, cell fones are off.

There is another meditation, in a general most obtuse sense, a mystical meditation.  I will use here a specific  definition of meditation  used by Raymund Andrea in his the Mystic Way, which is that meditation is a special form of contemplation where the practicition focuses exclusively on God and God alone. When we go through an initiation or we have an experience that catalyzing our outwardly making a promise to walk the path and try to surrender completely to God, like a dead person wrapped in a white cloth, ifeel meditation take on a different  intensity.

I remember at first it has always been difficult for me to meditate firstly because of the sickle cell pain I get in ym knees and secondly my mind is very weird its everywhere, here and there, working ona  few things at once. Its likes  20 tv all on at once.

We were taught as darvishes to accept whatever state comes to us in meditation. For some reason when I first heard this I chuckled bout audibly and interiorly. After much pain from sitting down cross legged.  I finaly got to a point where I could actually sit down comfortably. Then of course all sorts of memories  and ideas came up, and its useless to fight them. You cant fight fire with more fire.

What I found helped at this point was two things. Watching moms at walmart handle kids throwing tantrums.  I felt this was what the mind was doing throwing a tantrum. One mom at Walmart, just put her stuff down and let the kid make a scene. He screamed and did all the hysterics then after awhile  eh tired himself out  and became quite docile. I am sure he got reprimanded at home, I know that look all too well.  So I jsut let the mind go let all the memories and stuff come up and I watched it.  However at all times i would always bring it back to a fitting emotion. I would think about a few lovely expereinces I had where I felt I had a real connection to somehtign greater than myself.

To give you an example. I was on a bus going on a highway, day dreaming and gazing out the window, when all of a sudden I saw a little bird perhaps a sparrow  land on this thick sort of grass. The wind happened to be blowing at the time  and there in a second that lasted what seemed to be an eternity, bird wind tree observer were all swaying together. It was a touch of wonderment and love, that was other wordly.  This experience took on more meaning when I read this words.

The longing you feel for
this loves comes from inside you.

When you become the Friend, your
longing will be as the man in

the ocean who holds to a piece of
wood. Eventually, wood, man, and

oceans become one swaying being,
shams Tabriz, the secret of God.

Of course a day came where I would start to feel first briefly drowned in sorrow and would be crying sometimes uncontrollably. Other day would come where I was waashed over but waves of joy, and I felt like getting up and dancing, of course to some internal music. Then that went away completely, for the longest time I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. It felt like the Presence left me.

this occured in the 3 months of my going to the Khaniqah before I was initiated. Then the real fun began. Once or twice  I would be sitting with my eyes open but I would have just come too. Like I didnt know where I was for a moment. Then that went away, and my three most painful sickle cell crisis started in meditation. It wasnt because of how i was sitting, or what not. Who knows. A dull ache started once i got outside, once i got off the train at my stop a little limp, and by the time I got to bed that night it was full blown.

In my pain I would try to say my zekr and that helped for 5 minutes, along with insane amount of pain killers. My last crisis in May as you know I went to the ER. The pain was so intense, I didnt see anything I could do. I couldnt endure anymore, I could talk or pray or anything. I felt there was nothing left to do but expire. For the second time in my life  I said m goodbyes interiorly and jsut waited.

Since that time  meditation has become something wonderful, there is peace there. There is another me  there that normally is quiet and observing that speaks. Sometimes I am really gone for a while. Other times I feel on fire like the sun. 

But always no matter what the experience that comes from meditation, I find them not to be the Friend himself.  I have come to in a slight way understand the words of Hallaj when he says: “Suffering is He Himself, whereas happiness comes from Him.” Even sometimes I find myself asking for more burning , and i guess that is craziness in realm of the everyday…

Here is something from the Rumi story Moses and the Shepard:

Ways of worshiping are not to be ranked as better or worse than one another.
Hindus do Hindu things.  The Druvidian Muslims in India do what they do.
It’s all praise and it’s all right.
It’s not me that’s glorified in acts of worship.
It’s the worshipers.
I don’t hear the words they say.
I look inside at the humility.
That broken, open, lowliness is the reality.  Not the language.
Forget phraseology.  I want Burning!
Burning! Be friends with your burning.
Burn up your thinking and your forms of expression.
Moses, those who pay attention to ways of thinking and speaking are one sort.
Lovers who burn are another.
Don’t impose a property tax on a burned out village.
Don’t scold the lover.
The wrong way he talks is better than a hundred right ways of others.
Inside the Kabbah, it doesn’t matter which direction you point your prayer rug.
The ocean diver doesn’t need snow shoes.
The Love Religion has no code or doctrine.  Only God.
So the Ruby has nothing engraved on it.
It doesn’t need markings.”

The Spiral Nature of the Path

Hello Friends

Hope you are all well. Lately as you can tell from my last post I have been having a difficult time  sort of integrating back into normal social habits such as  hanging out and the like. After a good number of months dealing and trying to recover from intense sickness, family deaths, and the consequence of some personal issues, and other things I feel like a stranger just walking about. I personally feel so different I could tell you who I was a year ago. This happens in cycles it seems. There are periods of time where everything is seemingly fine and then something inside shift and the world and all the people in it  become encased in glass like at a museum and Im of course separated on the outside looking in with strange eyes.

The path  so far in my experience is definitely not a straight line. It is more like a spiral. Look at these words from The Bond With the Beloved by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee and Irina Tweedie respectively

Slowly the ego dies. Slowly the lover gets absorbed into the Beloved. Slowly His consciousness permeates what is left of the lover. With each little death a veil is torn away and the closeness that had been hidden within the heart becomes more and more part of our everyday life. There are stages on this journey, moments of death and moments of birth, times of transition and times that seem to be empty of progress. But one of the difficulties of trying to describe this journey is that it is not linear. It is not a path from A to B. Rather it is a circumambulation of the soul, a spiral dance that draws us towards the center of ourself where the lover and the Beloved have always been united.

All movement on the spiral path. . . can be seen as simultaneous happenings which are only subtle variations in the center. . . . The spiral is an incredibly beautiful symbol. The situations repeat themselves again and again. The nearness to the Beloved grows deeper and deeper. The despair when He veils His face grows greater and greater. Until one day all that disappears somewhere.

As diffiult as it is,I must say it is such a salve to know that we never walk alone, though it may appear to be so at times. Thanks to all of  you who read this blog and write comments.even though ur presence is wrapped in silence it still quite puissant.

Dave

 

My One Wish

Hello Friends,

Again I find myself awake when I should have been already asleep. I am a little here and a little there, pondering deeply but not also at the same time. My thoughts, if they can be called such are gravitating towards the idea of living life like a traveler in this world. Take a look at these two quotes from Llewellyn Vaughan Lee

1. Sufis are known as “travelers” or “wayfarers on the mystical path,” following the saying of the Prophet, “Be in this world as if you are a traveler, a passerby, with your clothes and shoes full of dust.” We are like tramps, not in the sense that we wear old clothes, but in the sense that we have no real home in this world because we belong somewhere else. We follow the will of God and not the ways of the world.

2. Spiritual life is a response to a call. Of our own accord we would never turn away from the world and begin the long and painful journey home. But Someone calls to us, calls to us from within the depths of our heart, awakening our own deepest longing.

I have just been thinking how on the one hand, it seems  impossible it is to live in this world as a traveler, but on the other how there is nothing more beautiful when it does happen. I really feel that a mystic is born not created. From early one maybe because the vestiges of an experience of reality are strongly imprinted in our heart we are unable to buy too much into this world. For each person it manifests differently. For me it was an intense sorrow, what felt like depression and feeling of futility. Nothing could make me happy, not books, not going out, not drinking or anything else you can name.

Even now that I am a darvish, the longing and sadness is there, the feeling like there is no real comfort for me anywhere except outside of deep meditation where for brief moments I separated from David. However there are moments of ‘love’ that kill all longing for anything else.
I am reminded of Kahlil’s Gibran’s words

To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

The part about too much tenderness really is where it’s at. Sometimes I wonder how I was able to finish school and do well, how I am able to work when sometimes I am not all there or I am in the grips of emotions that are too intense to be discussed or put into words. Yet this is just part of the story. There is the ridiculing and ostracizing by those around you, the being told to grow up, the constant attacks of what people believe is falsity ironically having never thoroughly really investigated or walked the path.

Sometimes in the course of things you meet one like yourself, a seeker. You may be of different nationalities you may not speak even the same language but there is something that is being said between the both of you in your hearts. Its like you see again your long lost brother. There is no need for words. One just knows, Many times I find myself wishing it could be like that for other people, for the same peoplewho tease and ridicule and judge. By be like that I mean that we  could all move behind formalities, dogma and routine and just enjoy the beauty that is to be alive and be human.Like we couldstop placing so muchemphasis on what we think we see and understand and listen to what is unfolding now.  It’s a silly wish but, its all that’s on my mind at the moment

Dave

Sadiq from Inspiration and Creative thought: http://mysticsaint.blogspot.com
Irving from Darvish Blog http://darvish.wordpress.com/
Dr. Bitkoff  http://stewartbitkoff.com/
Abdur Rahman http://thecorner.wordpress.com

and Dear friends in Latvia and Australia that though are unnamed are a major presence.

Jesus the Sufi Teacher from the Fihe Ma Fihe

When man goes beyond externals, he can see that all religious formulations, though they are apparently so numerous, have the same basis, and that at this level there is no place for rituals and dogma

 

It was recounted one day thatJjesus was wandering in the desert when a sudden storm blew up, so that he took shelter in a nearby cave, the lair of a caracal, until the storm should let up. A revelation came to him, whereby the Lord told him to quit the caracal’s den, because his presence was disturbing the animals cubs.

He exclaimed, “O Lord, even the beasts of the field have a refuge, but the son of Mary has none! Neither heareth nor home has he, no shelter, no rook over his head, norany place or status.

The caracal has a home indeed, but no Beloved to drive it from its home, such as you have. What is there to regret about having a Beloved with such grace as to drive you out, singling you out of all creatures to bestow upon you such a blessing. It is worth – nay, has even greater value than – a thousand times a hundred thousand heavens and earths, worlds and hearafters, Thrones and Stools – all the panoply of the Universe put together.

You are a Christian because you believe in Jesus. You are a Jew because you believe in all the prophets including Moses. You are a Muslim because you believe in Mohammed as a prophet. You are a Sufi because you believe in the universal teachings of God’s love. You are really none of those, but you are all of those because you believe in God. And once you believe in God, there is no religion. Once you divide yourself off with religion, you are separated from your fellow man.”  – Bawa Muhaiyadden

Stop Being So Religious – a poem from Hafiz

Stop Being So Religious

What
Do sad people have in
Common?

It seems
they have all built a shrine
to the past

And often go there
And do a strange wail and
Worship.

What is the beginning of
Happiness?

It is to stop being
So religious

Like

That.

St. John of the Cross – Love Poems From God – Translations by Daniel Ladinsky

I was sad one day and went for a walk;
I sat in a field.
 
A rabbit noticed my condition and
came near.
 
It often does not take more than that to help at times–
 
to just be close to creatures who
are so full of knowing,
so full of love
that they
don’t
–chat,
 
they just gaze with
their
marvelous understanding.
 

One Who Knows One’s Self Knows One’s Lord by Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh

One Who Knows One’s Self Knows One’s Lord

by Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh

There is a Prophetic Tradition, in which the Prophet says, “One who knows one’s self knows one’s Lord.” Various interpretations of this tradition are possible, depending on whether we interpret ‘Lord’ to mean the one who commands, or God.

If we mean the former, then the psychological interpretation of the tradition is as follows:

We know that each person’s behavior is, by and large, motivated by unconscious or subconscious conditioning; in other words, one’s behavior is influenced by one’s pre-existing psychological state. Hence, one can say that whoever knows one’s self, meaning the character traits and behavioral characteristics that have been influenced by the personalities of one’s father and mother, as well as one’s childhood environment and training, knows one’s lord, which is, in fact, one’s psychological personality.

If we understand ‘Lord’ to mean God, however, then the literal interpretation of the Tradition would be that whoever knows one’s self knows one’s God. Yet, as philosophers and gnostics have pointed out, humankind is transitory and knowledge of one’s transitory nature does not amount to knowledge of the eternal. Furthermore, a transitory being can never come to know the eternal.

Sufis, however, strive to throw away the garment of transitoriness by the aid of love and annihilate themselves in God. In this way, through Him they come to know Him. Thus, in interpreting this tradition they say:

1. One who knows oneself in annihilation knows one’s Lord in Subsistence.

2. One who knows oneself in non-existence knows one’s Lord in Existence.

3. One who knows oneself as non-being knows one’s Lord as Absolute Being.

4. One who knows oneself as poor knows one’s Lord as Rich.

5. One who knows oneself as nothing knows one’s Lord as Everything.

However, becoming nothing is a difficult task indeed, for as long as any trace of being remains, you have not lost yourself in your Lord, who is everything.