Personal Narrative: What happened to You?

I had the great opportunity today to talk to an old friend who first met me when I was a bit lost and rough around the edges. The aphorism still holds true about a decade later, that the more things change the more they stay the same. I was a relentless jokester back then, a comedian of sorts and like many comedians and performers I enjoyed making others laugh because I myself couldn’t laugh. I had a lot of pain to deal with which at times seemed quite unfair and inhumane. Without seeking to address the pain, I would not have gone as deeply as I did into my search for truth.

It was difficult to imagine the same guy telling salty inappropriate jokes, spent the majority of his free time in contemplation and reading old old books that no one cared about any more. Though my education into the spiritual nature of things started very early on in life I had reached a point where when I was 24 that I had accumulated massive amounts of information with my esoteric traditions and study, but it was all meaningless.  I wanted to feel for a lack of a better word “loved”.  I don’t mean the hallmark, love conquers all BS, but  maybe I should say that by love, I meant a deep experience of a connection with the absolute which is not found in the purest of esoteric training.

 Actually for long time I had felt this need but had no name for it. But I was lead to a key sentence in a book that came my way. It said (paraphrased) That to be completed one must travel both the path of esotericism and mysticism.

To make a long story short, I was gifted with plunging deep with in Sufism after  7 years analysis. Something happened to that pain, something happened to me. I don’t think i could even recognize that person. I have my moments where I tell my jokes and act a bit out of control but its so different.

One day I woke up laughing. Laughing really hard which of course given my antic in the past didn’t phase anyone in the house. I felt that there is a joke in creation, built into maybe the very fibres that comprise it.

Rumi says: ”When you eventually see through the veils to how things really are, you will keep saying again and again, “This is certainly not like we thought it was!”

I cant say that I have seen things as they really are but the glimpses, have me saying along with the quote: This is certainly not like I thought it was! For all the mental exercise and books read they are almost meaningless from the depths of the experience.

“It is always important to remember the laughter at the heart of things, the joke within creation.” ~Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

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• What should one do, Turn a blind eye ? – At what point is Spirituality more than Reading books? (mycaravanofdreams.com)
• The unknown face of Rumi – Sufism and Spiritual Consumerism in the West 2 (mycaravanofdreams.com)
• Serious Work to be Done: New Approaches to Spirituality 1 (mycaravanofdreams.com)
• The unknown face of Rumi – Sufism and Spiritual Consumerism in the West (mycaravanofdreams.com)
• Sufism and the Way of Blame featured on the Ibn Arabi Society book Notices for 2011 (mycaravanofdreams.com)
• Ibn Arabi on Love. Follow up to The unknown face of Rumi – Sufism and Spiritual Consumerism in the West 3 (mycaravanofdreams.com)
• A Comparison Between Sufism and Psychoanalysis (4) by Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh (mycaravanofdreams.com)
• A Comparison Between Sufism and Psychoanalysis (2) by Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh (mycaravanofdreams.com)
• Other Sufism for Western Seekers By Dr. Stewart Bitkoff (mycaravanofdreams.com)
• Eckhart Tolle: The Wisdom of Sufism (mycaravanofdreams.com)

Tags: Ibn Arabi, islam, Joke, Personal Narrative, Qur'an, Spirituality, Sufism, Western world