WISDOM OF THE SUFI

‘God created man not by a word, which comes from Divine Wisdom, which itself comes from Divine Power, but by hand-shaping, which comes from Divine Love. Into the clay shaped by His hands, God breathed His spirit (sic) and the new-created being, Adam (in Hebrew: earth-made), came into life. Through the breath of God something was planted deep within the clay: man’s soul and the seeds of his future awakening. Upon this hidden entry within, an imprint was impressed, a memory of that experience at the beginning of time, an experience of the closest intimacy between man and God, a memory of sheer fulfilment.’ 

(Sara Sviri, The Taste of Hidden Things, The Golden Sufi Center Publishing, 1997. p.199)

Go you, sweep out the dwelling-room of your heart, prepare it to be the abode and home of the Beloved: when you go out He will come in. Within you, when you are free from self, He will show His Beauty. (Mahmûd Shabistarî, quoted by Bhatnagar, p. 118.)

The Sufi Meditation of the Heart

‘Emptying the mind, we create an inner space where we can become aware of the presence of the Beloved. He is always here but the mind, the emotions, and the outer world veil us from Him. He is the silent emptiness, and in order to experience Him we need to become silent. In meditation we give ourself back to Him, returning from the world of forms to the limitless ocean of love within the heart.

He reveals Himself to those who love Him, and it is always an act of grace. The work of the lover is to be waiting, always listening for His call. "Catching the divine hint" is an important Sufi practice in which we learn to be continually attentive to our Beloved in order to serve Him. But only too easily does the clamour of the world deafen us and the noise of our own mind distract us. In order to hear the guidance that comes from within, we need to attune ourself to the frequency of the heart and be sensitive to the still, small voice of the Self. We need to learn to focus our attention on the inner world and cultivate stillness. Shiblî tells a story of going to see the Sufi master, Nûrî, and seeing him sitting in meditation so motionless that not even one hair moved. He asked Nûrî, "From whom did you learn such deep meditation?" Nûrî replied, "I learned it from a cat waiting by a mouse hole. The cat was much stiller than I."

Meditation both takes us into the onenesss of love and prepares us for this experience. T.S. Eliot wisely remarked, "human kind cannot bear very much reality," and the tremendous experience of the eternal emptiness that lies beyond the mind and the ego can be terrifying. We are conditioned by the basic belief that we exist as an individual, separate entity. The ego is the center of our conscious awareness. In meditation we begin to glimpse a deeper truth, that the ego is an illusion and the outer world as insubstantial as a dream. In Shakespeare's words, "We are such stuff as dreams are made on.”

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

(This article was published in the book: The Experience of Meditation ed. by Jonathan Shear, 2006)

GOD …. THE SACRED HEART OF BEING

A Woman Clothed with the Sun
- Julienne McLean

I was grateful to Julienne MacLean, the Jungian analyst and teacher of Carmelite spirituality, for introducing me today to the writings of Sara Sviri and, in particular, to a book she has written called Taste of Hidden Things: Images on the Sufi Path.  Sara is herself a Sufi and I was deeply touched by some of the things she wrote about the Sufi teaching concerning the ‘Oneness of Being’.

            I was immediately struck by the way this connects with our Christian understanding of God as a Union of Beings whom we refer to as ‘Father, Son and Holy Spirit’. But I found myself being drawn further and finding in that term, ‘Oneness of Being’, a way into an understanding of God as the Sacred Heart of Being. Whatever God ‘is’, and it is impossible to define God –  all we can do is to ‘stand-under’ rather than ‘understand’ the mystery – but we can and many are drawn to gaze upon, or contemplate, this mystery. That ‘oneness of Being’ is what gave ‘birth’ to the sun and moon and stars; from that oneness flows the whole of creation, which is why we are told that it is the image and likeness of God. Why Jesus could say that ‘whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me’ (Matthew 25:40, 45) and why  St Francis of Assisi realised that all things were inter-related and referred to earth and fire and water, the wolf and ass – even death itself – as our brother and sister. For if God is spoken of as our ‘Father’ then Francis realised Earth to be our ‘Mother’.  We are one with all things and all things have a common origin in the sacred mystery – the Heart – of Being.

            And so we belong together, find our identity and sense of being in relationship with each other and are enriched by sharing in the sacred work of creativity. For creativity, especially when connected with humanity, must be sacred. Whenever, them, we stand before aspects of creation – a vast land or sea-scape, range of mountains or tiny butterfly and really give it our attention ­we can be profoundly moved. Why insubstantial love, love which seeks to enfold us and invites us to reach out to another, is the greatest gift we have. Why profound music or great paintings, poetry and sculpture have a sacred quality to them. And why prayer is so important. For whilst we may have the occasional awareness of being taken out of ourselves into the Other the discipline of prayer – what is called contemplative prayer – works on our own inner being and will make it increasingly sensitive to the Sacredness of Being. Contemplation of the Other will draw us more deeply into the Heart of the Other, into the Sacred Heart of Being. This is what people like Teresa of Avila realised and addressed as the ‘Interior Castle’, what John of the Cross gave himself to because of the way he realised himself being drawn to journey into the mystery of love, and what the author of the great medieval work of English mysticism taught lay behind a ‘Cloud of Unknowing’. Countless women and men have found that themselves joining with others from different religious traditions where the one commonality is the notion of the Oneness of Being that delights in drawing us into union.

            And it is why the notion of fragmenting that union, of damaging it or destroying it, causes so many to despair and why compassion is to be found deep in that Sacred Heart of Being. Seeing brokenness the contemplative, or person of prayer, will seek to hold that fragmentation and place it before the Heart of Being, offering love as a means of healing the dis-ease of brokenness. The contemplative is also a channel of that healing by the simple fact of seeking to let their own heart stay still and focussed so that, deep within them, they are at-one with the Sacred Heart of Being. With God. 

John-Francis 04.07.18

YOU HAVE HEARD IT SAID, ‘AN EYE FOR AN EYE AND A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH…’

Like most people I have found the atrocities which occurred in Paris this week utterly shocking.  As I listened with growing horror and a sense of disbelief to the unfolding stories of brutality and murder carried out in the name of Allah for the defence of the name of Mohammad I first found myself revolted and stunned.  Then I noticed a welling up of anger and a desire that those who perpetrated the crimes should be made to realise the pain and suffering they had caused.  And, as I continued to become aware of my feelings I also had to accept that I wanted to blame Islam for giving sustenance to the belief that such violence is permissible to defend a religion.  Gradually I realised a feeling that Islam must be a cruel and repressive religion and that we need to ban it from our shores.  And I heard other voices saying the same. 

Yet I sensed that such ’voices’ were leading me into treacherous places and that, whilst I needed to acknowledge they existed, to give attention to them put me in danger of opening myself to the very demons – malevolent forces – which animated the killers.  I can’t pretend that they don’t exist: that I am not susceptible to prejudice, anger, rage, violence and a desire for revenge.  After all, I am ‘only human’.  I may have a brain that’s been civilised over millennia but part of it is primal – ‘reptilian’ – and is the repository of those primitive desires commonly referred to as ‘fear’, fight’ and ’flight’.  I can pretend otherwise but that would leave me at their mercy.  ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ is a dictum almost as old as humanity because it appeals to our primitive nature.

The I noticed the way that blame for this is not just levied at Islam but all religion which many see as an inhuman force.  Get rid of religion and the world would live in peace, as John Lennon sang.  But I doubt that’s the case for hatred lies deep in the human heart and is not the preserve of religion.  I sense that those who carried out such barbarous acts would still have had hatred in their hearts even if they weren’t driven by religious feelings.  In fact I would argue that religion exists in order to address this very matter.  Knowing that I am capable of good and evil, how do I embrace the one and avoid the other?  That’s the role of religion.  So Jesus recognised that age-old desire for vengeance and said: ‘But I say to you … love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.’  (Mt.5:38;44)  And if we are, individually, susceptible to life-denying forces then that is equally true of societies and cultures and the role of religion concerns the way humanity is called to acknowledge its deepest urges – both for good and evil.  It’s easy to ignore the fact that for every sinner there is a saint whose light, born of faith, enlightens us.  I noticed these words of the Islamic Sufi saint, Rumi:

For those in love,
                        Moslem, Christian, and Jew do not exist....
            Why listen to those who see it another way? -
                        if they're not in love--their eyes do not exist.

And for every Islamic Rumi there’s a St. John of the Cross or a St. Teresa of Avila; a Desmond Tutu or a Dorothy Day.  But the light the saint’s offer can be ignored and I know that the tragedy of the violence that lies within me is the way it can blind me to anything else.  But I also know that the glory of the spirit is the way it can lead me out of blindness into light and raise me above my-self. 

One of the tasks of religion is to bring into the open the forces that drive the human spirit and to offer ways in which they can be used for the greater good.  When S. Francis met the muslim Sultan of Egypt, al-Malik-al-Kamil, it is said that he experienced a ‘conversion into a new horizon’ that enabled him to arrive at a vision of universal peace and reconciliation (Dr. Paul Rout OFM).  But I am bombarded with too many voices and I realise the power that all the media has to convey – consciously or unconsciously – its message, and the power of messages rooted in fear to connect with our primal instincts.  I know that it is easy to project onto the other   But I know that I need to listen to those voices which call me to love the other.  As S. Francis wrote: ‘Let us pay attention to what the Lord says: Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you, for our Lord Jesus Christ, whose footprints we must follow called his betrayer ‘friend’ and gave himself willingly to those who crucified him.’ (Francis of Assisi “The Earlier Rule” Chapter XXII 1-4)

I am called to cultivate those practices which lead to life – for example in Christian terms, the way of the Beatitudes – and to own and acknowledge that my heart is not always set upon them.  Religion calls that repentance.   If I don’t own all that for myself and find a way of dealing with it, then I am truly blind.  William Blake put it well when he wrote:

I was angry with my friend; 

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe: 

I told it not, my wrath did grow. 

And I waterd it in fears,

Night & morning with my tears: 

And I sunned it with smiles,

And with soft deceitful wiles. 

And it grew both day and night. 

Till it bore an apple bright. 

And my foe beheld it shine,

And he knew that it was mine. 

And into my garden stole, 

When the night had veild the pole; 

In the morning glad I see; 

My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

(A Poison Tree)