I was reading this and started thinking about how we often times get what we deserve and the role our inner attitude plays in the shaping of things.
____________________
Self-deception in spiritual practices is most often attributed to an inappropriate inner attitude on the part of the seeker. This includes those who in Hz Mevlana sense of the words “set foot on the path in frivolity or salaciousness” or, according to Shah, are looking for sensation, novelty emotional or intellectual stimulation, social status, security, an exotic pastime, or the like. What with such inappropriate reasons for looking, they are very likely in the Sufi view to stumble on “pseudo paths”. The experience they have along the way will mirror the motivation that brought them there. The inner attitude of such would be students, as Shah calls them, makes it all too possible for them to fall prey to exploiters (“false teachers”) who promise them automatic progress without painstaking personal effort or long preparatory stage.
- taken from Dr. Michaela Ozelsel’s Forty Days The Diary of a Traditional Solitary Retreat with an accompanying interdisciplinary Scientific Commentary
Related articles
- The Authenticity of Mystical Experiences 1 (mycaravanofdreams.com)
- The Person of the Teacher by Dr. Ozelsel (1) – Forty Days The Diary of a Traditional Solitary Sufi Retreat (mycaravanofdreams.com)
- Serious Work to be Done: New Approaches to Spirituality 1 (mycaravanofdreams.com)
- Spirituality and Sexuality taken from Forty Days: The Diary of a Traditional Solitary Sufi Retreatby Micahela Ozelsel (mycaravanofdreams.com)
- What should one do, Turn a blind eye ? – At what point is Spirituality more than Reading books? (mycaravanofdreams.com)
- To Become a Sufi: Do I Need to Join a Sufi Order? by Dr. Stewart Bitkoff (mycaravanofdreams.com)
- Spirituality and Sexuality (2) taken from Forty Days: The Diary of a Traditional Solitary Sufi Retreatby Micahela Ozelsel (mycaravanofdreams.com)
- Sufi Practices of Remembrance, Contemplation, Meditation, and Self examination (mycaravanofdreams.com)
- Traveling and Social Conduct on the Path by Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh (mycaravanofdreams.com)
