Fatah's blog: "Endings"

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 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 literacy world wide 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, the organization to which I have belonged for 30 years. 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, Fatah

“Is fear inherent in the soul, as you said the angels feared the contact with the body? Fear is a shadow cast upon the light of the soul. And of what is that shadow? That shadow is of something that the soul does not know, something that is strange to it. For instance, take a person near the water who has never learned to swim; he is not acquainted with water, he is not at ease, there is his fear. Another person gets rid of that feeling of strangeness, he knows his own power over the water, he has no more fear. Therefore, fear comes from ignorance. As everyone fears to go in a dark room when he does not know what is there, so the soul in entering the body of clay naturally is frightened.” Hazrat Inayat Khan Sometimes people do things that I simply do not understand. I try to understand but it is not always possible. And then I get it, they are afraid. Which is totally understandable. From the paragraph above we could extrapolate that we begin our journey on the Earth in fear, the fear of the unknown. I have a very clear memory of that moment when my soul decided to take the plunge and enter into manifestation. Don’t know how I have it but it is there. I remember the emotion mostly, one of terror and excitement – wanting the experience yet afraid of the unknown. That emotion seems to always be there just at the moment of a spiritual breakthrough of some sort. It is there every time. Isn’t it strange that we come in with the very emotion that we must constantly face? Pir Vilayat often talked about this moment of terror that one must go through before any breakthrough. He also was fond of saying, “A breakdown can often aver itself into a breakthrough.” The second part of that was always an explanation about how one must push through the fears that accompany the breakdown in order to discover what it is hiding. Another thing he was talking about at the end of his life was that if a person does not push through then they go backwards. I think I feel like a yo-yo. What seems to happen for most of us is that we will get right up to the point of almost wanting to push through, we will feel that breakdown, that despair or deep disappointment or however it manifests. We might act it out in some way, causing difficulties for all the innocent bystanders. And then we back off because we are afraid of the fear, the memory we have of that deep terror/excitement state that precedes the breakthrough. Then, if Pir Vilayat is to be believed, we go backwards for a time and have to do the work - that got us to the breakthrough place in the first place - all over again. Yo-yo’s indeed. As near as I can tell, this is the way that it is. If it is any consolation to you, everybody seems to have the same problems. Maybe knowing it is this way will ease the stress somewhat. At least you will have a clue what is happening even if you can’t stop the cycle. Many Blessings, Fatah

One of my friends here suggested that I post more of my articles. So here is another: FEAR OF DEATH “Where does the fear of death come from? Ignorance of the self gives fear of death. The more one learns of the self, the less fear there is of death, for then man sees only a door to pass through from one phase of life to another - and the other phase is much better. The more spiritually one lives, the less fear there is of death. The more one lives in the soul, the less hold one has upon the body. The body has fear according to the consciousness it has in itself. Man is not only dependent upon his mind for thought, but every atom of the body is to some extent conscious, and so protects itself” Hazrat Inayat Khan A lot, perhaps most of these articles come from conversations that I have with people and this one is no different. I seem to get my best teachings from the people around me who think I am teaching them. I have been convinced for some time that I am the one who is blessed with so many wonderful, thoughtful teachers. In this particular case one of my friends, who purchased an advance copy of my book, happened to mention that she was reading a section where I say that the reason I began serious spiritual work was because I wanted to die consciously. She then said that death was her major fear. As we talked about it, it became clear that her fear came from the images conjured up in her childhood by the talk she heard in her church about the dangers of Hell. She said that it was probably childish and silly to feel that way but there it was. It isn’t silly. We all have childhood images of various kinds that form how we feel and act as adults. Some of them are so deep that we have no idea they are there. In my friend’s case, she was very aware of the cause of her fear but feels helpless to do anything about it. Maybe, but I think that once identified a person is well on the way to healing whatever trauma was inflicted upon them. And it is a trauma, make no mistake. It would not surprise me at all to find that the vast majority of people who rise to the top of a religious organization are bureaucrats and have never had the sort of mystical experiences that actually formed their organization, church, whatever. Part of the reason that they rise to the top is their desire to tell other people what to do. And these people have imaginations. Can you imagine the delight that they experience in realizing that their dictates form the doctrine that others are expected to believe and to teach? I can clearly remember being taught in Sunday School as a six year old, the horrors of Hell. Who would tell a six year old that they are bound for eternal damnation if they are not good? It kind of reminds me of cigarette companies being delighted at every 12 year old who tries a smoke But what to do about this particular trauma? I do not know that this will work for everyone but I can tell you what I did. Some years ago, when I was still quite young, in my early 30’s, I realized that I was very worried about death. So, I started thinking about all the various ways that I could die. It became a kind of habit. I would be sitting alone in my living room and I would visualize a death. It might be from hanging, or fire, or drowning, or some kind of sickness, even being tortured to death. It became a very gruesome exercise but I was determined to imagine as many ways that my body could be forced to stop operating as possible. At this point I was not so concerned with what happened after but with the event itself. This is when I slowly began to realize that there really was a continuation. I am not sure how I came to this conclusion, more early childhood training perhaps, but it was definitely there, a kind of sure knowledge. With this knowledge came something else. I discovered that I did not want to die in my sleep, I wanted to be awake for the whole thing, from the moment my body stopped, right on through that transition through the tunnel that everyone talks about, to finding out what happens after you emerge from the tunnel and what goes on after that. That is when I began to study mysticism seriously because I realized that simple doctrine and acceptance of some religious bureaucrats pronouncements was not going to work for me. I later found out that this is a normal Sufi exercise (and here I thought I invented it) which goes along with spending nights in graveyards and communing with spirit beings. Death is a natural normal phenomena that we all must experience. Perhaps the exercise above is to harsh for you but you might find some way of coming to terms with what will happen. And another thing – this whole idea that God, the God of mercy and compassion – would condemn any soul to eternal damnation and torture – well that is just patently silly. Leave it to bitter old men to come up with something to control people. Love & Blessings, Fatah

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who expressed what is probably a very common idea. She said, "Have you ever thought how language limits thinking? You cannot think what you cannot express. I have thoughts that language cannot touch. Maybe it is my limited mental abilities or that I am not a very deep thinker." Do others who read this blog also feel this at times? In any case, I know this person to be very smart and that she is indeed a deep thinker so I had to come up with a way to show her and maybe others that there is a mode of thinking which has nothing to do with mental abilities. I asked her how she would describe a rose. She answered as most people would by saying that she would describe its parts, its attributes, perhaps its aroma, etc. And I said, "Sure, but can you describe the rose itself?" The answer is that you cannot describe the rose itself. A description of its components will give a person who has seen a rose an idea of what you are talking about and that is usually adequate but what I am seeking is a description of roseness. We know that roses and other flowers exist. We are aware of their beauty and the quality of their being. Can we talk about their essence? Another example is roundness. Can you describe roundness, which we see constantly, without speaking of an object that is round such as a table or a wheel or even a circle? All of these are examples of roundness but how would you describe roundness itself? There are so many things that we just accept as realities without being able to think of them as other than descriptions of their components, yet they exist as qualities in the Universe. So, what does this say about our thought processes? Imagine for a moment that these essential attributes are imbedded so deeply in your psyche that it is difficult if not impossible to bring them forth as thoughts. Never the less you can in fact think roundness or roseness or any of a number of basic attributes that we are aware of. Most often you will think of components that use these attributes but you can also think of the quality itself. Thinking roundness is not the issue, describing it is. If I say roundness everyone knows what I mean. There is no need to describe roundness as it is a basic quality of the Universe. Perhaps instead the human mind needs complexity and gets a bit worried when something is so simple that no additional description is necessary. Spirituality is like this. The fundamental idea of all mystical systems is to become human which is a very simple state of being. The complexity comes when we ascribe method and system to this idea. We always approach becoming human from our cultural point of view which assumes that a human being must have the qualities that the culture believes are essential to the perfected human. Not so but our cultural imperatives will demand it. As I understand it the perfect human being is a person who lives totally in the present, intelligent of course, capable of many things, but always in the present, meeting each situation or condition on the merits of the present moment. How often do we meet conditions or situations based on history or what our culture tells us should happen. So we tend to create systems that look as if they are secret or superior or somehow better than the average person is capable of understanding. Let us instead meet each event and each person on the merits of the moment. Love and Blessings, Fatah

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 our 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, Fatah

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. Readers of my regular blog 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 was 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