For Love of the Real: A Story of Life's Mystical Secret
168
For Love of the Real: A Story of Life's Mystical Secret
168eBook
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781941394274 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The Golden Sufi Center |
| Publication date: | 02/14/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 168 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
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CHAPTER 1
SERVING THE ABSOLUTE
*
The Absolute is real. It is the only thing that is real.
The Absolute exists throughout every plane of creation and beyond creation in the dynamic dimensions of nothingness. And beyond even nothingness, It is the Source of all that is and is not.
Every cell of creation contains a seed, or a substance, of the Absolute. Existence — what we call the visible world — is the light of the Absolute interacting with this substance. The light of the Absolute, traveling through the planes of nothingness and existence, is reflected off this substance in creation, and returns to the Source.
This world of plants and animals, clouds and soil, beauty and horror, is both a veil and a reflection of the Real. Seen from the level of the ego, it is a veil, an illusion. Experienced through a heart aligned with Truth, it is a place of divine revelation.
Just as the Absolute is a seed in every cell of creation, It is a seed within the hearts of humanity. The heart has a number of different chambers and the central chamber belongs only to the Absolute. In Sufism, this is called the "heart of hearts." This chamber in the heart is a doorway to what is Real. Through the heart of hearts, human beings have the birthright of aligning with the Absolute, of consciously connecting with Truth. This is the hallmark of a human being.
But the Absolute is very purposefully veiled from most of humanity. As T.S. Eliot wrote, "Human kind cannot bear very much reality." Those who have glimpsed Reality without being prepared for it can find themselves overwhelmed. When the veils lift and we see, even for an instant, the brilliance and infinite nature of the Divine, we are thrown out of our ego-self. A fragile ego-consciousness or psyche can easily be shattered by the experience, by a Truth that the mind cannot begin to grasp or understand.
Throughout the ages, spiritual masters have prepared seekers to experience the energy, the power, and the infinite nature of the Absolute through spiritual practices and initiations. These create a container in the consciousness of the seeker to enable her to perceive a higher level of reality without being overwhelmed or damaged by it. Different levels of initiation, a lifetime on the path, guide us nearer and nearer to the Real.
But the rules have changed. Because we are entering a new cycle of evolution and because the needs of humanity are so great, certain gates of grace are open that used to be closed. One of these gates has to do with the mystical connection between the human being and the Absolute, and the need of the Absolute to be used by humanity for the sake of the whole.
Most of humanity cannot have direct access to the Absolute because most people cannot go beyond the ego. The ego and its desires experienced through the world of the senses are all that exist for them. But for those who are drawn to know life as it is, those who are drawn to serve the Real, new doorways are opening. These individuals are being called to participate in the tremendous changes taking place in the world — to serve the need of the time and to restore what is Real within life.
But to do so we must remember many things. First and foremost, we must remember that creation has always belonged to the Creator. The world belongs to God.
Collective Forgetting
There have been many cultures in which every act was an act of remembrance. The making of bread, the hunting of animals, the telling of stories, the rituals of birth and of death — everything was an interweaving of remembrance in which the worlds came together. Every act was an invitation to or celebration of the Divine, every act an opportunity to nourish the soul.
But our world has become a strange place. It has become a wasteland separated from heaven, an objectified world where only stuff matters. It has become a place almost solely of our desires, governed by rational thought and driven by economics. Our world no longer directly reflects the Truth; it reflects us. It reflects the distortions of our ego. It reflects the power drive and greed of humanity rather than that spark within the heart.
The wellsprings of life have been drying up because they are no longer connected to the Absolute. This is not a metaphor. The wellsprings of life are the channels for the Absolute to flow into the world, nourishing life and humanity. Clogged, polluted, distorted, they can no longer flow.
This phenomenon is not new; the 13th-century Sufi poet Fakhruddin 'Iraqi observed it even in his own time. Referring to Khidr, a figure of divine revelation, he wrote: "That magic spring where Khidr once drank the water of life is in your own home but you have blocked its flow." But now this blocking of the flow of the Absolute to Its world has increased to such a degree that it is killing life. It is not solely ecological issues that are doing the damage. The ecological problems are a reflection of an underlying spiritual problem.
On the highest plane of manifestation — the plane of the Self — and beyond, on the planes of nothingness, there is no pollution. But accessing these planes generally takes many, many years of spiritual training. And experiences on these planes can be easily overwhelming in their intensity. For these reasons, humanity has traditionally worked through the archetypal world of images and symbols. In Sufism this inner world of the imaginal is seen as a bridge, an "intermediary between the world of Mystery ('alam al-ghayb) and the world of visibility ('alam al-shahadat)."
Through this intermediate realm, working with its symbols, individuals can make the spiritual ascent from the physical world to the interior world of the Self. Through it we can have access to and be nourished by the numinous energy of the Divine, without being overwhelmed by its intensity; we are given the manna that is a gift from God. This energy gives life its true meaning and primal vitality.
But just as we have polluted the outer world with our endless desires, so have we polluted the inner world, blocking and restricting its flow. We live in a civilization whose materialistic values and total reliance on rationality have denied even the existence of the inner reality that underlies all of creation, whose energies form the "river beds of life."
We have no understanding of how this denial, together with our greed and desires, has made a wasteland of the inner dimensions. Monsters of greed and materialism ravage both the outer and inner worlds. Our forgetfulness of the sacred and our misuse of symbols and images have distorted life on the inner planes as well as the outer. So many places of refuge have been lost, temples of the imaginal destroyed, groves that held sacred earth-energies felled by the clear-cutting of our rational mind.
The anger of the archetypal Feminine, which has suffered centuries of abuse through the patriarchal power structures that have dominated nature without any wisdom or restraint, has also restricted the flow from the inner world. And closer to the planes of manifestation are all the corrupted thought-forms of spiritual seekers trying to use spiritual energy to get something for themselves, to serve their ego-self rather than the Divine.
The old ways of bringing the energy down through the planes gradually, by working with the archetypes and their symbols through active imagination and sacred symbolic ritual, don't work in the same way anymore because these archetypal planes have been distorted. Life energy in the past sparkled with purity, as St. John the Divine observed in his Revelation:
And he showed me a pure river of the water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb.
Now by the time it gets to us, the water of life is no longer pure or healthy; it is polluted, like our drinking water.
In order to restore what has been corrupted, new doorways have had to open. Other pathways into the core of life that bypass those places of corruption have had to be created. Now, humanity has to remember how to work at those places where the inner and outer meet, where the energy of the Absolute comes into creation, so we can participate in how the Absolute restores Its world.
Humanity is being given energy, power, and knowing that can help with this work. The Absolute has direct access anywhere in this world through the heart and soul of a human being. As a human being lives, grounded in this world, aware of its sacred nature, a simple and powerful alignment takes place that can allow the energy of the Absolute to come right into life and go where it is needed. Then it can be used to nourish our dying world.
Nothing else can do it. Because the world has gone beyond the point of return, it has gone beyond the crisis point. Trying to "save the world" might help address some of the problems we face, but any solution would remain only on the level of the problem. There would be no real change, no real transformation.
We know how it works on an individual level. One works on a problem, and perhaps the problem seems resolved. But the underlying disorder remains, and the energy put into the solution often just constellates a problem in another form. Thus, the illusion is repeated. But if you are transformed by grace, by the energy from another plane, then you can leave the problem behind.
The world's problems cannot be solved on the level of the world's problems. There is no technological solution to sustain both our current way of life and the life of the planet. Our civilization and the world itself have to be redeemed on a far deeper level. We need to make a real shift, and for this, energy from beyond the physical and even the archetypal planes is necessary.
With the energy of the Absolute, the world can be recreated from its core, from the very center of its being. The world we have distorted with our desires and greed can return to its essential nature.
Life as the Real
To participate in this work, we need to remember a hidden dimension to the mystical path, an aspect that has been forgotten over the last centuries.
There have always been two purposes of the path. The purpose most commonly understood is the path of individual evolution. An individual is attracted to a path because she experiences a calling to go back to the Real, to know her true nature, to live a life beyond the illusions of the ego. The Real has put that calling in the heart of human beings to make this return journey of the soul back to its true Home.
Each mystical path carries a different quality of energy, a different ray of light. Some paths work more through love, others more through beauty or devotion, and others through knowledge, or service. The seeker is attracted to the light that is most accessible or familiar. But in essence they are all a way to return from the world of the ego to our real Source, our divine nature.
But this journey Home is just half of the cycle. There is also the energy of the Absolute flowing back into creation, continually sustaining creation.
It is like the breath. On the one hand, there is the in-breath, the journey inward back to the Source. But there is also the out-breath, which is the breath that comes down from the Absolute and out into life.
Every breath contains this cycle. The energy of creation flows down through the planes of manifestation, through the soul, through the body, and then back through the inner to the Absolute. Every breath is the breath of the Absolute. With each cycle, divine love and divine will come into life and then return.
Throughout history, a few mystical traditions have taught not just about the return journey, but also about how to acknowledge and work with the Absolute as it manifests through creation. These traditions have emphasized being present in this world, not rejecting life. By being present on this most primal level of existence, we become the doorway for the Absolute to also be present.
Sufism sees the world as a revelation of the Divine — the Self-disclosure of God. Its teachings offer the means to know the Real in a world that appears to be an illusion. Ibn 'Arabi put this simply when he said, "Engendered being is only imagination, yet in truth it is the Real. He who has understood this point has grasped the mysteries of the Path."
On the one hand, engendered being is only imagination. What we think of as life, the way it appears, is only something we create in our minds. But on the other hand, it is the Real. The truth of how this world can be known as Real is one of those things that is very simple and incredibly esoteric at the same time. It is like the sound of one hand clapping. The sound of one hand clapping is so much simpler than the sound of two hands clapping, because the sound of one hand clapping doesn't need motion or noise. It just is.
There is a way for a human being to be where the worlds come together, where the manifest world is not a dream, not a "dewdrop within a dewdrop," but an expression of the Real.
In the Sufi tradition this is "where the two seas meet," and it is here that we encounter Khidr. Living at this place where the worlds intersect is the acknowledgment of the Real on all planes. This way of living and serving requires great attention and awareness. As the 8th-century Buddhist master Padmasambhava described it,
Though my View is as spacious as the sky, My actions and respect for cause and effect are as fine as grains of flour.
In many traditions, training in how to consciously work with the energy of the Real as it comes into creation was given after twenty or so years of focus on the return journey — the in-breath of the path. This training was only given when the mind, physical body, and emotions were all controlled. But today, there is not time for twenty years of meditation and practice. The need is too great.
Some of us are here to respond to this need. We are not here to focus on solving our own problems; we are not even here to solve our own spiritual problems. We are here to serve.
Servanthood
The moment we think spiritual life is about us, we identify with the ego, and the ego is an illusion. You cannot know or serve the Absolute through an illusion. The greatest illusion humanity has is our sense of self, ego, separate identity. We are not separate. Reality cannot be separate. The Absolute cannot be separate. There is only One.
This is a simple, fundamental, and easily overlooked principle. The moment you do something solely for yourself you are separate. You identify with yourself. This is why so much of what people call spiritual life or spiritual aspiration veils the individual from the Absolute — because it's about them.
Sufism stresses that the path only begins when we turn away from our self: "Take one step away from yourself and behold, the path." Sufism also stresses that we are here to be of service, we are servants of God. Ibn 'Arabi suggests that servanthood is the only real human existence in relation to the Absolute: "The servant is always the servant. The Lord is always the Lord."
In Sufism, servanthood is understood as an expression of our innate relationship with the Divine, a relationship that is also based upon unity. In a state of servanthood, it is the Beloved within us in service to Its own revelation. It is an unfolding of oneness. It is an opening of oneness.
This nuanced understanding of servanthood is mirrored in the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism, which stresses the role of the Bodhisattva — the individual who foregoes enlightenment to guide others to freedom. The Bodhisattva experience is based on bodhichitta, an awakened heart confident in the oneness of form and emptiness.
And it is also mirrored in the wisdom of Mother Teresa, who saw all those she served as Jesus "in disguise." When asked, "How can you take care of so many?" she replied, "I only take care of the One."
The simple act of giving oneself, this simple statement of "I am here for Your sake," opens the doors of grace and attunes the servant to the oneness of life, the union of higher and lower, heaven and earth, sacred and profane. It is in that giving of oneself that one can access the energy of the Absolute. And this energy is available now in ways it has never been. What matters is our attitude: I am not here for myself. I am not here to get anything. I am here to be in service.
If we are inwardly aligned and the gates of grace are open and permission has been given, then the power of the Absolute — a power that is love, that binds the worlds together — can come directly through the human being, reconnecting life to its source. Then the Absolute can use us to breathe Itself into life; It can interact directly with this world without going through all the planes of manifestation in which the energy so easily gets blocked or diluted.
There is nothing more beautiful and powerful on this plane than a human being aligned with the Absolute, in service to the Absolute, who wants nothing for herself. A human being aligned with Truth is the most extraordinary energy transmitter. She becomes like an open doorway from the Absolute down to creation. Such a human being becomes the link of love between the worlds.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "For Love of the Real"
by .
Copyright © 2018 The Golden Sufi Center.
Excerpted by permission of The Golden Sufi Center.
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Table of Contents
Foreword,
Introduction: Before the Beginning,
1. Serving the Absolute,
2. The Hidden Face of God,
3. The Gift of Nothingness,
4. Oneness,
5. Two Poles of Love,
6. The Magic of Creation,
7. Veils of Light, Veils of Darkness,
8. Return to the Real,
Epilogue: A Story of Life's Mystical Secret,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Acknowledgments,