Consciously obscuring the line between Joy, pain and difficulty (FES)(1)

Hey Friends,

I feel inspired. I have been having a conversation with a friend of mine that has precipitated this blog post. I remember beore I became and while becoming and after becoming a darvish I kept hearing how tough things would be. Reading sufi writings  about grief, separation, and pain really made me wonder. Par Example:

I’ve broken through to longing now,

filled with a grief I have felt before,

but never like this

What to make of all of this? Some days  one can be caught up in a joy so profound that life can be seen naked without the many layers of illusion. Each happening  feels titanic, door open in places where there was nothing before. You loose concept momentarily of yourself, and all your fictitious attributes. Other days there is a vacuous grief so intense you loose conceptions of the workd around you, yourself included its fictitious attributes and your own. All the doors close to you, even in places you were unaware there were doors. Nothing can make u whole again.

Each state we are in, whether joy or grief  has bene compared to in Sufi poetry to the lover having a strand of hair of thebeloved in his hand. As great as it can be its not It!. Whats real is what lies beyond the fluctuation between states. The beauty of the rose is soemthing entirely different from the beautiful petals and the sharp thorns though they each allude to that perfume fragrance we smell in the air.

According to Raymund Andrea in his “The Mystic way” – a great book I highly recommend) the dark knight of the soul is the most important andformidable phase of experience whichevery soul must encounter on the way to divine union.

A study of psychological types, including special cases of genius and those of mystical and occult character, will convince an equitable student that the experience of the dark knight ofthe soul awaits everyman who approaches the indwelling fire of God; and tis, independently of the fact othat he is an occultist, a mystic , a philsopher or an artist. The anme under which he passes or of the path he takes , does not alter the nature of the essential experience.

It just reinforces for me the role of experience, I have more thoughts on this but am in a bit of body pain, nothing serious just need to take it easy.

In a prophetic tradition (hadith), God say to Muhammed:

Whoever seeks Me will find Me

Whoever I love, I will kill, and

Whoeever I kill, his blood money I will pay:

I Myself am his blood money.