For those of you who don’t know my wife and I are in the process of moving from our apt in the Bronx to Queens. Moving is a very tiring process and I will be happy when its over. During this time I haven’t been blogging as much as I would have wanted to, but before I know it I am sure there will be deluge of blog posts.
With this move I am closing a very lengthy and important chapter in my life a few days before my 30th bday. Its been a long long journey to get here, and as one reader suggested since all my books are in storage, I will just for the next little bit just share whats on my mind in a more personal fashion and leave the references and ‘serious talk’ for another day.
Question from Working With Oneness page
Something caught my attention today, it was from the Working With Oneness Facebook page. It was the following question:
If the world is really dying, what is our duty in this process?
The first thing that came to my head when I read that was an anecdote I heard somewhere which said, if we got attached to the seed how could we ever enjoy the cool shade and the sweet fruit born from its demise. The seed dies to itself to become something else.
Looking back on my life and the people who I have loved who have passed on, I see dying as the vehicle for transformation. I love Rumi‘s question “When was I less by dying.” This world will come and go as will I, my dog happy, so for me our primary responsibility is to let it go.
100 years , 200 years from now the person who would be the last to have seen me alive we have met the same fate, and on the scale of the world in 100 -200 year there will be indubitably a new civilization that will be built upon the achievements of this civilization. It will meet the same fate however many centuries later.
I feel that holding on to past attachments and association drags this process out, makes it more painful than it has to be. I think if we are able to let it go, we then would have to look at both its abuses and good deeds as objectively as possible. I love that line of Mark Anthony in Julius Caesar: “I come to bury Caesar, not the praise him. The evil that men do lives on after them while the good if oft interred with their bones”
If we can see clearly what has been done and understand (not just intellectually) why these things happened, then our duty becomes to live the consequence consciously, and purposefully. I quote the words of the sufi Bulent Rauf who said this about living consciously through suffering:
Finally there comes a time when you are so in love, so absorbed in the presence of God, that you welcome all that you are given, for you know that it comes from One Source of All. With this different understanding, suffering becomes conscious. This conscious suffering isn’t eh same as pain; nor does it mean enjoying pain, or believing that suffering must be good for you because it hurts.
Conscious suffering comes about in the knowledge of what is necessary for the reciprocal maintenance of the planet. This earth was created for mankind, and we are responsible for it. The world needs certain kind of food in the same way we do. It needs the rain and the sun, and the seasons so that it may bring forth fruit, and it need other types of energy that mankind does not yet understand.
Whenever someone comes into true knowledge, a certain type of energy is released, made available for this great process of reciprocal maintenance. Normally this energy is released in sufficient quantities only during moments of great crisis, and particularly at the moment of death. But now we have reached the point in the life of the planet when we must learn to die to ourselves each moment, to be reborn each moment, to live and die consciously, so that the earth may continue to evolve.
The emphasis here for me is to live consciously, not just suferring consciously. I feel as a civilization we have no choice at this point but to accept things as they are and welcome that reality into our lives. Aware of what we have done and bear it consciously I feel would be the catalyst that could precipitate all the new archetypes, ideologies and concerns that will be the hallmark of the civilization to come. It would provide an energy that can make accessible knowledge, capabilities we do not possess at the moment to deal with the many crises we face.
The wounds are where the light comes in. Dying to ourselves isn’t some exclusive action for mystics only, all of us die to ourselves each day, only in an unconscious way. Dying is how we transform, it is a part of our human life. By analogy the same can be said for civilizations. Dying civilizations seed new ones that rise ouut of its ashes. Thats jsut my two cents or 900+ words
On a side note I love the following quote so I just thought to throw it in the mix
Everyone is so afraid of death, but the real sufis just laugh: nothing tyrannizes their hearts. What strikes the oyster shell does not damage the pearl.
Rumi
Related articles
- Rumi and Sufism Part 1 (mycaravanofdreams.com)
- New Issue of Sufi Magazine with an article from Yours Truly (mycaravanofdreams.com)
- Higher Knowledge & Spiritual Experience: What to Buy? by Dr. Stewart Bitkoff (mycaravanofdreams.com)
- Sitting with Fatima (4) – Forty Days: The Diary of a Traditional Solitary Sufi Retreat (mycaravanofdreams.com)
- A thought on previous post SHEIKH ABU-ISHAQ’S FRIENDS (mycaravanofdreams.com)
- Rumi and Sufism Part 2 & An excerpt from Daylight by Kabir Helminski (mycaravanofdreams.com)
- Watch two men Washing Clothes (mycaravanofdreams.com)
- Rumi And The Way of the Spiritual Lover by Shaykh Kabir Helminski (mycaravanofdreams.com)
