A Life lesson and story from Baha-ud Din Naqshband

Friends,

At one point in life, I read an enormous amount of books. I was hungry for knowledge and to find answer. What I learned changed my life completely but it wasnt until I reached a point where I wanted to not just know the truth but feel it resonate within me.   Though I still read a lot its under a totally different compulsion and reason. But enjoy these words from Baha ud Din Naqshband.

Shah Baha ud Din Naqshband

If I give out an empty book, meaning, ‘You cannot yet profit from my book’, you will perhaps think, ‘He is insulting me.’

But if I give out a full and understandable book, all readers will take its superficialities for their stimulation exclaiming ‘how magnificent, how profound.’ People will follow these outward things after I am gone, making them a source of stimulation and debate. They will read didactics into them, or poetry, exercises or stories.

If I give out no books, or a small one, scholars will scoff and ruin the minds of potential and vulnerable students with alternative literature, even more than they do at present.

Baffled students become destructive, imagining solutions and then trying to impose them upon others.

If I give out a large book, some people will imagine that it is pretentious. All these suppositions are there, you notice, because the suit the people to have them, not because they are even likely to be true.    

If I give out a cryptic book, people will imagine that it contains strange secrets. Or they may become unnecessarily artful through trying to understand it.

And the more that you say these things, the more people petulantly or with disdain say: ‘You do not understand us. We have no such behavior. The lack of understanding is with you.’

But if I say all these things, and you will look at all of them, even for a time, giving each statement equal attention, I shall be content.

A Touching Poem that lightened the mood at work

 

WITH THAT MOON LANGUAGE

 
Admit something:
Everyone you see, you say to them, “Love me.”
Of course you do not do this out loud,
otherwise someone would call the cops.

Still, though, think about this,
this great pull in us to connect.
Why not become the one who lives
with a full moon in each eye
that is always saying, with that sweet moon vision,
what every other eye in this world is dying to see?

Hafiz

Final Thoughts – Consciously obscuring the line between Joy, Pain and Difficulty – The Right Attitude Towards Suffering w/Poems by Rumi (FES)(4)

Friends,

My final thought can well be encapsulated in this brief excerpt from The Last Barrier by Reshad Field:

When you truly say ‘I will’ unconditionally to a life of service to God, there is always pain and confusion at first. In the early stages you experience ‘your’ pain, or ‘my’ pain. But as we come to understand the nature of the path we have chosen we no longeer see the pain as ours alone, but we begin to experience the suffering of the world ignorant of the Truth. This is the pain of separation, the cry of  man wanting to know his essential unity with God. Yet this painw as never intended. God never wanted us to suffer, but if we are to come totally into knowledge, all illusion must be stripped away, leaving only clarity. It is our own ignorance and pride that cause the pain. The more we think we can do anything ,the less we realize our complete dependence on God, and the worse the pain becomes.

Finally…..

Longing is the core of mystery
Longing itself brings the cure.
The only rule is, Suffer the pain.

Your desire must be disciplined,
And what you want to happen
In time, sacrificed.

Rumi

Consciously obscuring the line between Joy, pain and difficulty – The Right Attitude Towards Suffering w/Poem by Rumi (FES)(3)

Friends,

I am continuing the same theme from earlier. Its rather interesting to look back at ones life and to look at the up and downs,the failures and the victories, and maybe for a moment, see what was really manifesting there being the empty symbols of language.

I’ve broken through to longing
Now, filled with a grief I have
Felt before, but never like this.
The center leads to love.
Soul opens the creation core.
Hold on to your particular pain.
That too can take you to God.

It is my feeling that our suffering is caused by our in ability to see things as they are. We do things with the best intent and they turn out horribly wrong. We can do things with malicious intent and good can end up as the result. Welike to comfort ourself saying that this is good for us and bad for us, but many a time we are a mystery to ourselves. Who are we really? aside from the name, social identity, beyond all of that.

This situation reminds me of a kaleidoscope,which etymologically speaking means literally beautiful to look at. Each image of the  kaleidoscope is an aspect of the beautiful sight, that is external to the kaleidoscope. The true beautiful sight is the sum total of all these little images but then something infinitely more. Look at the following words about the works of Dr Roberet Ornstein, world famous psychologist, neuroscientist and student of Idries Shah.

Dr. Ornstein’s focus also extends upon the nature of the mind and consciousness, which he has explored in such books as The Roots of the Self, The Psychology of Consciousness, The Evolution of Consciousness, Multimind and Mindreal. In these works, he has shown the human mind to be quite different from the way most of us imagine it. For one thing, far from being a unified whole, it is composed of many disparate “selves” each having their own agenda and are “wheeled in” from the sidelines – some of them quite frequently, others only rarely – to deal with very specific types of situations.

Whenver one is quite and introspective one can yousee these different selves in action. We have built up such eleborate psychological schemata to deal with the world based on our limited understanding of the world around us,ourselves and of course their subsequent  interaction.  Where do suffering and Longing enter into this equation?