Truth Is Beautiful

image with thanks via Ozcan Erturk on facebook

No Shortcut to Excellence & Beauty

You Can't Pour Water Into A Closed Vessel

Death Is Only A Portal

Sometimes, in moments of great pain and darkness, death appears seductive as the absolute escape.  But like all other distractions from the Here and Now, death’s promise is hollow; the relief or pleasure it provides, short-lived. 

The body is a garment that houses an invisible dweller.  Death is the portal that releases the dweller from its earthly abode, but does not, cannot, extinguish it.  The dweller carries with it, across the threshold of death, its invisible pain.

If pain is knocking at your door right now, let it in.  Let it speak to you, weep to you, rant and rave and lament.  Be brave.  Listen.  Look.  Allow it to come into form.  But remain the witness. Once it is form-ed, it is no longer invisible and no longer with the invisible dweller. 

Give your pain form so that you may set the invisible prisoner free of it.

Photo credit: <http://www.wallpapervortex.com/anime-death_note-wallpapers.html#.VkrRNnYrLIU>

You Are A Hidden Treasure

photo: www.freerangestock.com

Disagreements and Conditional Motive

Disagreements and Conditional Motive

Generally the more aggressively we pursue an argument, the more resistant we find the other to be.  When the other is not receptive then our insistence on our point of view is experienced as a badgering by them. 

Someone who is receptive to our point of view is like a vessel with an opening into which our words and ideas can be poured.  In contrast, someone who is not open is like a closed a vessel and our attempts to get through to them are akin, metaphorically, to breaking them open so we can get through.  That is why we repeat ourselves, and become louder and more aggressive in our body language when we are in the middle of a heated disagreement.

The other person, generally, reacts with equal or more aggression or else withdraws into a closed-off, “cold” silence.  In either case, we are not getting through to them.  And we can feel it. Usually when we sense this, instead of backing off, we become more insistent and they in reaction, become more resistant.

If we are mindful, we can sense how receptive or closed off a person is.  And if they are not receptive to our words and ideas, then it is generally best not to impose them because this pursuit will benefit no one. 

In fact, what would be better is to check our own selves – how receptive are we to their point of view and experience?  Are we curious about what they are saying or have we made up our minds already?  Are we listening to them or to our own internal dialogue?  Are we judging them, waiting to respond just so we can prove them wrong?

Our own conditional motive – to be proved right, to fix the other – generally leads to conflict.  Even if we possess the truth and the remedy, it is no good to someone who is not willing to accept it.

photo: shahbano aliani

Worldly success can be a dangerous thing.

Worldly success (called expansion in sufic terms) can be a dangerous thing. 
Though we all love success, praise and affirmation, many of us have seen how damaging it can be.  A successful individual usually becomes arrogant, overestimating their own capabilities, and is surrounded by people who want to get something from him or her to benefit themselves.  In order to get what they want, these people lavish praise and gifts on the person and rarely question him or her.  Why?  Because they are not interested in the merit of the person’s words or actions, they are interested in the benefit they can secure for their own selves. 

Surely we have all met successful persons whom everyone agrees with, praises and never questions **even when what they say or do makes no sense or is clearly wrong.**  

Sometimes we have also witnessed these very same individuals “succeed” all the way down to their own destruction because they were surrounded by sycophants and refused to pay heed to the rare voice that disagreed with or questioned them.

It is easier to see the damaging effects of success in others, but much harder to see it in our own lives. We get intoxicated and lulled by success and affirmation.   That is why failure and criticism are so useful because they wake us up, make us uncomfortable and cause pain.  They can make us look inwards and question our own selves.

A person interested in their emotional and spiritual growth can surrender and benefit from failure (contraction) by opening up to the message and lesson in it; by working on their own selves.


photo credit: http://novellcounseling.org/

Love Is Self-Explanatory

Everywhere You Turn Is The Face Of God

Everywhere You Turn Is The Face Of God

"So wherever you might turn, there is the face of Allah"
Al-Qur'an 2:115

In every moment, Allah is communicating with you, He is presenting you text for you to understand so that you can move forward.

It's as if Allah sends you an instruction set up as a puzzle. The puzzle appears as a recurring situation or an ongoing situation or a new situation, which causes distress.

As long as you are entangled and mired in the situation, you don't see the puzzle.  You need to distance yourself, detach yourself a little before you can see it.

As soon as you pull back a little  and decide to reflect, to witness the situation - not so much as something that's happening TO you, but more as something that is speaking/ reflecting back to you - you begin to see pieces of the puzzle.

You put two pieces together and a bit of the picture becomes clear. You find another piece that fits...and another.... and another ... until the picture is complete.

The instruction appears clearly and you realize it deeply within yourself.

Your seeing makes that specific issue disappear because it has taught you what you needed to learn.

The key is to find that space to pull back into where you are the seer, not the seen. To remind yourself that whatever is happening is text from Him, everywhere you turn is His face.

And to ask, what is He showing me now? What does He want me to do? What does He want me to learn?

and AllahuAlim

Choose Consciousenss

Music!

Compelled by an unearthly passion, a powerful longing, at their very best, musicians and singers are instruments played by the hands and breath of the Divine.

Forgiveness Is About Setting Your Own Self Free

Forgiveness does not mean that you condone what was done to you.  It does not mean that what was done was justified or correct.  It does not mean you were guilty or deserved what happened.  It does not imply that the act or the person you have forgiven is/was virtuous.    

Forgiveness means that you no longer hold any resentment in your own heart against people or life.  It means you are tired of the burden and the pain that resentment causes in your own self and in your life. It means that you choose not to be vindictive to deliberately harm others in reaction to their having deliberately harmed you. 

It means you choose to let go of what has already gone, what is over.

Forgiveness means that you may have seen the benefit or lesson or growth you received despite the pain and the suffering that was inflicted on you.  And transmuted your resentment to gratitude.

It means that even if you choose not to work with or associate with the people who hurt or damaged you deliberately – because they demonstrated that they cannot be trusted – you may still choose to serve them unconditionally if required.

Forgiveness is about freedom.  Freedom from resentment.  Freedom to act consciously in the unconditional service of others, no matter who they are and what they did, and therefore, in your own highest interest.

Forgiveness is about setting your own self free.

photo credit: Naz Gul Qasim

Forgo the Outcome and you will receive the Best outcome

Choose to Feed the Light, Not the Dark

The Root of Divine Justice

You suffer when you harm another -- not because God is vindictive -- but because there is no separation between you and other than you.  So when you harm another, you harm yourself.

Revenge

Revenge does not alleviate our suffering, it increases it. 

If we have been wronged and we do not have the means to hold the person accountable, and we are patient and have faith in Allah, two things are likely to happen:

1 - In the fullness of time, the person who wronged us will suffer from the same injustice. If they were unfair to us, someone will be unfair to them.

2 - In the fullness of time we will recognize how the injustice was in fact a blessing and we will be filled with gratitude for what happened.

and AllahuAlim

Unveil The Sun of Your Being

10 (MORE) THINGS YOU UNDERSTAND ONLY IF YOU’RE IN A SUFI TARIQA

1.    When people think you can’t be Muslim because you are a sufi.

2.    When people think you can’t be a sufi because you are Muslim.

3.    When people have read 2 poems by one sufi saint and they think they know more than your teacher.

4.    When after 6 months of intense practice and restraint you lose your temper once for 5 seconds & your spouse thinks you’ve lost your mind.

 5.    When people indirectly warn you that at all sufi shaykhs (pirs) are imposters. 

6.    When people get competitive after discovering you have a spiritual teacher.

 

 

7.    When people are disappointed to meet your normal looking shaykh because they were expecting the Grand Poobah.

 

8.    When the only thing people know about sufism is that one book they read and it’s not really a sufi book.

9.    When people start meeting you because you are in a sufi tariqa.

 

 

10.                      When people stop meeting you because you are in a sufi tariqa.

 

 

 

 

 

with apologies and respect to my beloved shaykh, fellow travelers, those who've asked me about the 40 rules of love (and those who like the book) and the people whose photos i've used.

 

 

 

photos from google images.