Would you come if someone called you
by the wrong name?

I wept, because for years He did not enter my arms;
then one night I was told a
secret:

Perhaps the name you call God is
not really His, maybe
it is just an
alias.

I thought about it, and came up with a pet name
for my Beloved I never mention to others.

All I can say is-
it works.
Rabia (c.717-801)

One of the defining marks of Sufism, for me as dervish, is the role that is played by need. It’s because of our intense need that we are pulled closer into that embrace with the Beloved.  There is a relationship or rather an eternal covenant or bond between the Creator and created. Until this is realized at the deepest core of our being everything is tainted with sadness. Rumi gives us a beautiful analogy of this:

“A craftsman pulled a reed from the reedbed,
cut holes in it, and called it a human being.

Since then, it’s been wailing a tender agony
of parting, never mentioning the skill
that gave it life as a flute”
—  Rumi

When through the grace of the Creator that yearning or need has been actualized or made apparent in a person, the person will start seeking. The more intense the need, the more intense the yearning for union with the Beloved, the greater will be the magnetic pull for the seeker. But it should be noted that as we are pulled closer to the Beloved we are pulled further away from our attachments, we are pulled further away from thinking about things in terms of happiness and sadness, from our concept of who we are. What we experience in our heart along this journey is beyond anything we could ever imagine or know of course beyond even language.  The phrase tender agony sums up so far this process for me. There is a great tenderness in being broken open.

But How Does one Live

For years I had this yearning and it was a constant source of friction in my personal life. How does one live in the world, when there is such an oscillation between feeling separate and cut off from it and feeling infinitely close to everything. Often in my youth I would ask, “What is the purpose for all this?”

It wasn’t after a long time and many harrowing experiences that I came to an answer of that on my own. Since I cannot communicate that answer to you, I will instead paraphrase the words of Hazrat Inayat Khan who said that our purpose here is to make God a reality. How do we make God a reality, at least on the Sufi path?  We try to from a place of remembrance, to do our daily duties, to work, to serve others, to enjoy the many blessings that life gives us daily.

One day a man asked a sheikh how to reach God. “The ways to God, the sheikh replied are as many as there are created being, but the shortest and easiest is to serve others, not to bother others, and to make others happy.”

-          Abu Said

This is a beautiful statement, but also a deceptive one I feel I must say. To make a heart happy doesn’t mean necessarily to tell a joke when someone is feeling sad. It doesn’t mean that we have to make others feel joy. Many people inclusive of me create barriers to love and joy. How do we really make someone feel something they cut themselves off from? Again we have to in that moment listen to the dictates of the Beloved in our heart.  To do so we have to empty ourselves of ourselves.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”   Jalal ad-Din Rumi quote

Sometimes the moment requires us to be harsh from a place of love. I remember how often my parents used to yell at me, to not play around the stove as I had a propensity for mischief, at the moment I couldn’t see the love and the concern in the scolding. I couldn’t taste the honey in the spoonful of vinegar but it was there nevertheless. Sometimes we have to show love sometimes we have to be silent.

In pain, I breathe easier.
The scared child is running from the house, screaming.
I hear the gentleness.

Under nine layers of illusion, whatever the light on the face of any object, in the ground itself, I see your face.
- Rumi

I always like the analogy of a doctor and medicine. When we are prescribed medicine it is to treat a particular symptom. How the medicine tastes is a quite different story. In many cases I am only concerned about the taste of the medication. Quite often I am not even aware of the symptom that it is working to treat.  By no means do I mean to say or indicate that I anything comparable to a doctor in any sense. But I do know that when I try to live in the moment and really become transparent, that new doors, new perceptions and possibilities open up.

There is a great example in the case of Sufi literature.  I take the case of Rumi’s Mathnaw-i – Manawi of which has been said by Idries Shah “ is a masterwork six books of poetry and imagery o such power in the original that its recitation produces a strangely complex exaltation of the hearer’s consciousness.”

From what I have experience of the Mathnawi it is really beyond poetry. Professor Nicholson has remarked also that those who seek conventional verses in it alone lose the effect o what is in fact a special art form created by Rumi for the express purpose of conveying meanings which he himself concedes have no actual parallel in the ordinary human experience. This statement of Professor Nicholson reminds me of a saying by Sanai Ghaznavi:

Part of the reason would-be initiates are given the works of the great masters is to see if whether they can pick up whispers at first, but may be whole conversations later, to the point where they can participate in them.

When I think about the Mathnawi, I feel that like it is like the doctor’s prescribed medication in the above metaphor. As I was told in by a teacher on the way that if after reading these poems and works I feel touched and inspired I still haven’t really penetrated what is truly happening.  This was a harsh statement for me at the time but it was the precise medication I needed so that my treatment to cure me of confusing emotionality and spiritual experience to begin. It is still ongoing.

THE MOMENT IS A GODSEND

O Cupbearer, pour us an overflowing goblet –
the moment is a godsend
In the gathering o time and space
the moment is a godsend.

The revolving of the universe
gave no one a chance
For us, out of all that is in the world
the moment is a godsend.

Fill the Goblet with wine
since for a lifetime the philosopher
Has been perplexed by these questions of the world –
the moment is a godsend.

For the child of reason, bewilderment only increased
making him speechless
Until the Master of Love declared
the moment is a godsend.

Ah today we will spend
in revelry and drunkenness
Since tomorrow no trace of us will remain
the moment is a godsend.

The rendan in our banquet
feel not sorrow about tomorrow
They know that in the hidden and the revealed
the moment is a godsend

Each moment that you pass
With wine and the beloved
Listen to Nurbakhsh
that moment is a godsend.

Tags: Beloved, Food For Thought, God, Hazrat Inayat Khan, Idries Shah, Inayat Khan, Intimate relationship, islam, Javad Nurbakhsh, MAsnavi, Mathnawi, Pir Inayat Khan, points for consideration on the sufi path, Rabia of Basri, Sanai Ghaznavi, sayed Idries Shah., Spirituality, sufi poetry, Sufis of Antiquity, Sufism, the sufi path, The Sufis by Idries Shah, THINKING OUTLOUD, What is sufism