Man is asleep. Little do we know what this means, the extent of this sleep. Little do we know what it means to be really awake, to be ripened, completed, a whole person. Sometimes, when a drop of grace kindles my heart, my first feeling is to cry, with a burning heart for how asleep I am, how blind I can be, without even knowing it. I feel so sad then, so sorry for how far I go from God, how estranged I can be from my true nature. My deep love for Truth, for the precious gold of Reality, melts my heart into warm running tears when I remember how hard it is to remember. The realization that when I am asleep I don’t even know how far I am from God makes my heart burn with more fire. It is so easy to forget. And it is such a sad affair, for what I forget is my own true nature, the precious wine of my innermost soul. No wonder the Sufi makes it his first and foremost duty to remember God, day and night. God’s name is always on his tongue, constantly within his heart.
It is so easy to forget who I am because identifying with my ego patterns is such a smooth and automatic process. It’s like gravity, always there to pull me down. Even when I am keenly aware of my process, there always comes a time when a subtle game takes over, and without realizing it I am cut off from the origin, estranged from the source of Being.
Identification always comes with blindness. They go together. When I identify with a particular reaction or a pattern of mine I am really saying that I am this reaction or this pattern, without being aware that I am saying so. The blindness can go so far that I feel self-righteous about this particular identification. And this really means that I am asserting the existence of the devil, and negating what is real. I blind myself from seeing this by rationalization or pretension. Essentially it is self-deception. So I find myself running after gratification of my games with complete justification and self-righteousness, of course.
Forgetting God, the one Reality, always means siding with the devil, the delusion we call ego. It’s so painful, it’s so shameful, that sometimes I actually say to the devil, “Yes, I believe you.” I turn my back on God, on Reality, on the source of life, believing that the devil, my ignorant ego, will give me the satisfaction and contentment I desire. Time and time again, with a lot of pain and sorrow, I find that I only end up in more frustration, more suffering, and more alienation.
It is in the nature of ego striving and the desire for gratification that the heart is upset. There can be no peace with craving and grasping. This craving is a certain energy, a certain state that is by its very nature harsh, hard, excited, and violent. It is the seed and source of all negative emotions. It is felt and experienced as violence within the heart. It feels like sand grating against the pure smoothness and softness of the heart. It is no wonder greed, craving, and desire for gratification produce wars and violence, for it is actually the energy of war within our hearts, inside our own bodies.
Still, rare is the individual who will even listen to such a fundamental truth, let alone do anything about it. It’s as if our very nature does not want us to see this truth or to admit to its validity and significance. Of course not, the devil does not want to see its deception, ego does not want to die. NO. It will fight fiercely with all weapons possible, more weapons than we can even conceive of, to avoid the truth, to conceal it, to reject it. The devil will not see itself as the devil. It has to point to something else as the cause of trouble. And it will continue opening its hungry mouth, screaming, “Give me, fill me, satisfy me.” But of course, this is another illusion; it will never be filled, it can never be satisfied. For its hunger is bottomless, its emptiness has no limits. It is always the temptation of satisfaction, but never total satisfaction.
The Buddhists found an apt image for this state of ego. They call it the hungry ghost. It is a being with a huge stomach and a tiny mouth, like the hole of a needle. It can never get enough through the small hole to fill the huge stomach. This is the usual state of ego, whether we are conscious of it or not.
The core of ego is a feeling of deficiency, of poverty, of emptiness, of saying: “I am no good, I am worthless, I am empty. Give me, give me, more, more, more, more.” In this state of deficiency I don’t love myself, I don’t accept myself. I reject myself. I want to run away, distract myself; maybe go to a movie, see a friend, have sex, eat, fill myself with knowledge, or pretend I am O.K. I am always wanting to fill this emptiness, always rejecting it, always afraid of it. In fact, we are all terrified by it. Most of the time people don’t know that this emptiness, this deficiency is what is driving most of their actions. It’s such a desperation, such a race to fill this bottomless pit.
But how sweet it is to say “yes” to this emptiness. How courageous it is to say: “I feel empty, I feel deficient, and I won’t attempt to fill it. I want to see the truth. I want to experience the reality of me. I refuse to manipulate. I want to wake up regardless of how painful it is.” Only the hero will take this attitude, for it is a heroic act to see your deficiency, your neediness, your emptiness, and yet not try to manipulate your life to fill it. We are so compulsive, so driven to manipulate, to avoid feeling this basic deficiency of our personal ego. But believe me, my friend, there’s no other way towards fullness. God will not pour His grace if you don’t accept your deficiency and stop manipulating. Manipulation, striving to fill this emptiness, is only the devil doing its efficient work. It is constantly working to hide its weakness.
My teacher gave me the task to accept my emptiness. It was at such a difficult time. I had just fallen in love with a beautiful friend of mine. I loved my teacher too. It was the first time in my adult years that my heart actually opened to a woman and a man, in a very deep and intense way. I was very much in touch with my feelings, needs, fantasies. It was a time of intensities. I felt so hungry for their love, attention, approval, acceptance, care, whatever. I felt so needy, so wanting. I even convinced myself (such a clever fellow is ego!) that it was love, that it was the passion and fervor of love.
Recognizing that, I said yes to my teacher, for I trusted him. And I said no to the devil. I never felt so near to death. I burnt, throughout all my body. I felt the fire scorching my chest, burning through my belly. Heat, heat. It was like acid eating away my flesh. My head felt as if it was full of acid fumes. I was on fire, purgatorial fire.
To burn in silence
Wanting no alleviation
Desiring no filling
Shunning all games of ego gratification
To stay in fire I have to burn
Devil is made of fire
Angel of light.
The fire became so hot, the burning became so intense that I found myself saying:
When will I see
The clear white light
That will dissipate
My misery and plight!?
To experience my poverty was such a painful and difficult thing. I kept seeing great impatience, my all powerful desire to do something, to get something. It became so clear to me. I saw that everything I said, everything I did, everything I wanted was really a desire to fill the emptiness, to feel loved, wanted, cherished. I kept feeling this great need, this overwhelming wish that the woman I loved would give me a kiss, a hug, or even a loving look. So painfully I saw how much I wanted my teacher’s approval, acceptance and attention. And to experience that feeling without attempting to get it satisfied was like burning with fire. In fact, the experience was of feeling physical burning, being consumed. I burnt for weeks. I lost weight. I felt weak. I felt as if my body was being consumed, sacrificed. I was determined to accept my deficiency, to see it as it was, to experience it fully, without deception and without attempting to manipulate or go to sleep. I trusted in my teacher and in God.
God
You are the ultimate Beloved
I burn
To behold Your countenance.
I remember you My Lord
In the midst of fire
To gain strength
To see my way to you.
The way is full of thorns
Sometimes very foggy
The straight path
Is painfully narrow
Everybody said I looked good. My teacher said I never looked so alive. I was surprised and also somewhat skeptical. But it was true. I felt alive, but I was roasting. Then delightful things started to happen. A smile from a friend felt like being showered with grace. A loving look made me feel full of joy and gratitude. I became so sensitive and open to love and giving. Many times I would feel so joyful, so happy, just being by myself. My heart would open up and I would be beyond myself with ecstatic joy. But it was a joy that felt pure, virgin pure and innocent. Sometimes I would cry, with warm copious tears for the abundance springing out of my heart. I started having feelings and flavors of experience that felt somehow familiar, but I didn’t know from where.
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Sometimes I felt like I was remembering my feelings as a child but with the eye of an adult. Feelings like a sunny afternoon, with a cool gentle breeze. There was something special and precious about that afternoon, but it was not what happened, it was only the feeling, the mood, that somehow felt divine. It was like just being born in a new world, or with a new body.
I saw for myself, with great gratitude and quiet humility, that accepting my emptiness is really the other side of loving myself. Accepting my deficiency is a state of fullness, a state of grace, the flowering of selfless love. That is why in the Kabala it is said that a seraph is a devil burnt out completely and turned into light.
Rain is not falling
It’s spring
Summer is approaching.
Fire is rising, scorching
Carving emptiness
Putting light into love.
Love is the open sky
When emptiness is accepted.
Otherwise it’s the craving of a hungry ghost.
To be an all burnt out seraph
A being of light
A fountain of selfless love!
The devil burns with fire
Is burnt with fire
Into a seraph
Waking Up
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How lovely to be myself, to be content with what is—wanting nothing more, desiring nothing else. It’s like magic, even greater than magic. The moment I say “yes” to my experience, with all my heart, regardless of what it is, the waves start to subside, the clouds begin to dissipate. Calmness, peace, gentleness, an exquisite contentment. There is no more cause for discontent, no more reason for holding or protecting. My body relaxes, tensions let go. My heart is so peaceful, so light, like the surface of a quiet and still lake. My chest feels as if it does not exist, as if the flesh and bones have evaporated. I feel a gentle breeze going through my body, touching the very essence of my heart. There are no more barriers. Oh, it feels so good. So fresh, so new. Joy comes in gentle waves, just as the breeze touches the petals of flowers. It wells up from unseen depths. It involves the entirety of me. How sweet my heart feels; full, overflowing with its own nectar.
I use no analogies, no similes. These are not images. I describe exactly what I experience, or whatever part of the experience I can put into words. The breeze actually and literally blows within the cavity of my chest; the nectar is an actual soothing fluid that wells up, as if out of a spring right at the center of the chest. The experience is not physical, not emotional, not mental. It is all of these together and more. When the heart opens, when the real nectar of divine love flows within the body, all boundaries dissolve, all categories vanish. I am a flowing nectar. I am a budding rose. I am intrinsic joy. There is a body sensation: a delicious tingle that surpasses any orgasm. There is a feeling: a light joy that partakes of the nature of light. There is an image: a fountain of rainbow-colored nectar. Beyond and around these three modes of perception there is the pervading intuitive sense that unites all of them, melting their boundaries and rendering the experience an organic unity. Such a unifying and vivifying experience of life is our rightful inheritance as human beings. And it is only a glimpse, a flavor of the potentiality of human experience.
There is no need to say this is physical, or emotional, or mental, or spiritual. These are categories, concepts that are useful for analysis, but the experience of life is not so. Life is involvement, total presence, immersion in the experience of the now. It is integrative, fresh, light, new. All the time. All the time. This is what it means to be alive. Life is to be turned on, by myself, by my life, by life, by the present, by what is. It is the melting of the door of the heart till I feel there is no barrier between what is inside my ribs and what is outside them, till I don’t need to protect myself any longer. What for? There is nothing to defend, nothing to protect, but my greed, my deficiency, my frozenness, my violence. That’s what we do most of the time; protect and defend ourselves, and try to get more. Greed and more greed, because we feel poor, impoverished.
Man is upside down. We experience reality in an upside-down fashion. We are rich but we feel ourselves poor. We are full, but we feel ourselves empty. We are abundant, but we feel ourselves deficient. Since we don’t know our true nature, our intrinsic fullness, we want to get more: more possessions, more money, more sex, more prestige, more praise, more self-congratulations, more experiences, more excitement, more, more.... And this takes us even further away from the Truth. It estranges us even more. God becomes angry and wrathful and punishes us for going astray, for turning away from Him. But God is not Jehovah; God is not vengeful. It is of the nature of things that when you turn away from the source of life you feel impoverished. And it feels like being punished. In fact, we are being punished, but we are our own punishers. We punish ourselves by our own ignorance, our own heedlessness.
All it takes is to stop the striving, the manipulation of reality. This is not a moral injunction, but a practical statement. Simply stated it is this: when we manipulate reality, wanting it to be different, we are being the devil and forgetting God, our true reality. We need to let go, rest and just be. We need to accept what is, not just mentally, but with the whole of our being. If we feel frustrated and deficient we need to accept those feelings as they are, without thought of reward. []
Yes, it is a paradox. You must, and you have to want to see your original face before you were born more than anything else, more than life itself. At the same time, you must relax, let go, just be in the present, as if there is no future at all, as if there is nothing to attain. In fact, it is a fact, not an “as if”.
Acceptance of my experience of myself means being here now without manipulation. The more that I accept, the more I am in the present, and the more I will let go of attainment. It’s letting go of what I want most, but the more I let go and just be, the more I am nowhere, accepting what is. The more I am in the future, or wanting to achieve, even wanting acceptance, the less I am accepting myself. There is no difference between total acceptance and the state of fullness. We always want this state of fullness, but we go about it in the wrong way, in fact, the opposite way.
Acceptance feels like taking a risk. It’s like jumping off a cliff. I accept more the more I trust in reality, in God. At some point, I must jump, leap, totally forget, totally abandon the search, the future, the past, attainment or failure, reward or punishment. I just leap into nothingness, with the trust of the Fool who has the yellow bright sun of the Father behind him. It is a quantum leap, for there are no securities, no guarantees. When this state of abandon is realized I find that I am alive as if for the first time. It is the first time. It is the first time I am alive, awake —Bodhi, as the Buddhists say. Before, I was living a pseudo-life, a half-death, a pretense of life, which is the condition of most of humanity.
Death of striving, death of seeking, even for the goal, brings the energy of real life to its fullest bloom. And life is its own reward, and only the person who is alive knows it. How can a person who has not experienced life know what it is? But as we see, we have to die first, before we know what life is. The Sufi says that after fana there is baq’a—after extinction there is existence, in Him.
This happens on many levels, and in many depths. So there is no sense in saying that this is difficult, that it is too far away, or even saying that it is close at hand. It happens whenever I accept myself, let go of preconceptions, and just be. The more I accept the more I die, and the more alive I am. Total acceptance, with the entirety of my being, is complete death, fana. And complete death of the manipulative ego is full rebirth, awakening. This is the natural state of being a human being, our rightful inheritance. You know that with the greatest certainty when you experience yourself so. It’s true.
Out Of The Way
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I fall in love with Sweet Honey, a beautiful woman. Her golden energy reminds me of the golden energy of the Sun of Reality at the center of my Heart. I am beyond myself with joy, love, ecstasy. She is luminous, precious, and so is everything and everyone. My heart opens and breathes the breath of God. But only for a short while. Then I start wanting her body, her love, her attention. And not having her feels like the coming of the dark. I am torn by attachment and craving. I forget that she is only an expression of the divine presence, that her body is only the form of the formless. I forget the only Reality, and I start running after the illusion, the satisfaction of my desires, the gratification of my neediness and craving. And in the midst of all this emotional excitement, the preciousness of the present is lost; the reality of her as a human being embodying the truth is gone.
And this is sin. Sin is not an evil deed. Sin is not going against the commandments of a judging and punishing God. It is just ignorance, forgetfulness. It is forgetting God, our true nature, and not listening to the divine call, because we are deceived and tricked by the devil, our ego. But ego is not a reality; the devil does not really exist. The devil is ignorance, is not knowing, is conditioning, is preconceptions. Sin is siding with the devil, because we are deceived by his promises and temptations. And siding with the devil is the same as turning our back on God. The two actions are identical; there is no cause and effect here. God does not punish us; it is the devil who does that, for the devil is really a state of deficiency, disguised as a promise of paradise on earth. '
But still, even the devil, the personal ego, is part of the universal plan. Ego does not know for whom he is working. It’s true, by believing the devil we go astray, we go the wrong way, the opposite way, away from the light. But still, even that is in the law, and one is bound to arrive home, to the abode of Truth. All desires are really reflections of the one desire, this truest aspiration; to fly back to where we belong, just as the falcon will always go back to perch on the arm of the King. The heart of each desire, the very center of craving, is really the desire for union, the longing for the return to our natural state that we sense. Since it is a reflection, it is upside down, inverted. Yet it reminds us, and beckons to the higher desire, to the virtue of the love of Truth. We always feel this lack, this discontent, this suffering. It’s true we interpret it in many ways, attributing it to all sorts of emotional and physical sources, but nothing will quench this thirst except the real water, the water of life.
We go about fumbling in the dark, for we do not know. We have lost the knowledge of the way back to the origin, but we are always looking for our way back, regardless of what we are doing. We don’t even have to know this. We might be seeking riches, we might be seeking pleasure, we might be seeking power and fame, but the devil is not aware that he is in reality the servant of God, that ego is the stepping stone to the Throne of Reality. This is the natural way, it is in the law.
Oh Lord, everything I do is to get closer to You. I might do right, I might do wrong, but I only want You, to be with You, close to Your presence. Everything I want to know is to get me closer to Your mercy. Everyone I love is to remind me of You, a reflection of Your countenance. I only want Your fire, Your light, Your love, Your mercy, Your pity. I hurt myself, I hurt others. I argue and pretend, all for You, all out of my frustration of not being with You. How can a lover feel when the Beloved is far away? There is nothing in the world that I want, only You, the rose of truth. You are my heart’s desire, You are my only goal, my one aim, my only wish. All other desires, all other aims, are only pale reflections of the only one, real, true desire and wish; to be with You, to see Your face, to burn in Your fire, to vanish in Your light, to drown in Your water, to be buried in Your earth; to be close to You, to be accepted as Your lover, as your servant, as Your slave, as Your worshipper, as the dust You walk on.
So real Work is not psychological processings, is not spiritual exercises, is nothing that the “I”, the personal ego knows or can do. The ego has to only stop, quit the game; not act, not want, not grasp, not strive; just stop, vanish from the picture. And this is a very different level of action than what we call Work.
The real Work is surrender, and it happens when I stop what I usually call working; for working is still ego trying to get something, trying to go somewhere; which is an expression of greed and deficiency. And ego’s actions can only fill the emptiness we feel as a consequence of being estranged from the Garden of Reality.
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So you have your choice. Do you want to fill your emptiness with whatever garbage you have been accumulating, or do you want to get out of the way, and allow space for God to fill you with the gold of Truth?
Essence
Essence is our true nature, our true self. It is part of God. It is the personal part of God within me. But the nature of essence is that there is no difference between the part and the whole. This differentiation or separation is the experience of ego. And for ego there is no essence, for the only way that we can know what it is like to be in essence, to be in the presence of God, to be within Reality, is to taste. We cannot know by reading, hearing, or imagining. Reality can only be experienced by Reality. We have to be real, open, and turned on, on an organismic level. Mental abstractions are only mental abstractions, and Reality is beyond that, although it can include them.
At the beginning we have only ego’s experience, the experience of the dream we call reality, the experience of samsara. It is the nature of this experience to be mostly aware of alack, of a wrongness. Something’s not right. Something is missing. It cannot be just like this. There must be something else. The majority of humanity tries to avoid this experience of lack by distracting themselves, by filling themselves with all sorts of worldly occupations, by anesthetizing themselves.
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It was years ago when I started feeling the first stirrings of the inner call. I felt I wanted to be free, to be loose. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know what being free meant. I only felt dissatisfied, a divine discontent for the way I was—although judging from exterior manifestations I was fine, okay. My motivation was essentially suffering, pain, discontent. I felt my energy blocked, dammed, but I didn’t really know what the alternative would feel like. I felt as if I were a huge hurricane trapped in a small and constricted body. I wanted to get out. I wanted to breathe, to fly, to live. I knew I was dead, but I didn’t know what being alive would be. I was in such a great frustration and I didn’t know how to get out, or so I thought at the time.
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The truth of suffering is important, for this discontent with samsara is essential for setting on the path. It is our true self creating an itch inside us to start looking, to start waking up. This discontent is the first intimation that we are asleep, and with this intimation comes the hope of waking up or unfolding. We are given hints, intimations, insights, dreams, memories, and so on, from deep within that we are to wake up and embark on a journey. First, these hints or voices are very shrouded with unclarity, doubts and insecurity. Suffering is a way our deepest self cries out for attention, calling upon us to look for the jailed princess, to liberate her from the dragon that took possession of her. It’s the beginning of the heroic quest.
This suffering, this divine discontent, is a heavenly message, and should be acknowledged as such. We always respond, whether we know it or not. However, in the West, there has arisen with modern civilization and its emphasis on comfort, an attitude that looks at this discontent as a disease that has to be uprooted or silenced. Most psychotherapeutic schools deal with this discontent as a wrongness, as a disease, and strive to eliminate it, instead of seeing it as a creative expression, a symptom. It is a symptom of an alienation from our true origin, beckoning us to listen, to pay attention, to heed the call, to begin the search and embark on the journey of Return.
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Some of those traditions sought to impress upon the seeker the degree and depth of his suffering, focusing his attention on his suffering and the suffering of the world in general, to awaken greater energies for the work, to dramatically motivate him for a long and hard journey.
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Frequently, cure does mean the end of discontent, the end of searching, which is usually called adjustment or adaptation. The individual might become adjusted, might adapt to the environment, but this will be at the expense of the greater life. One might feel discontent no longer, but neither will one experience what it is to be truly alive, to be truly a human being. One’s search will be blunted, the call of essence will be silenced. This is a murder, a real violence done to the most precious part of us.
Many people even embark on the path, have some therapeutic experiences, some emotional satisfaction, and then believe that was it and abandon the quest. Such a person has not tasted the divine nectar, has not glimpsed the divine presence, the real luster of Reality. When the tiger tastes blood it will not settle for anything else. So when a person tastes what it’s like to be one’s essence, there will be no final rest till one is this essence. This does not mean that others are experiencing this rest. In fact, they are only asleep, anesthetized to their condition.
We often mistake emotional experiences for spiritual ones. We have experiences of emotional catharsis that feel good. But then we make the mistake of seeing such experiences as spiritual. The person who has tasted cannot be deceived. Emotional release, intellectual clarity, or physical pleasure are good, useful, and necessary. Yet they cannot substitute for the real experience of the divine. They are very pale, insubstantial experiences compared to the real ones. A true spiritual experience involves the whole being; it originates from a much deeper part of us than any emotional experience. It is real food for our essence, not dream food like emotional satisfaction. It is a different mode of experiencing, like being transported to a different planet, with a different body, and a much expanded and evolved perceptual system.
My true nature, my essence, eclipses with its radiance any pleasure or satisfaction I have from any normal emotional experience, regardless of how dramatic or deep it is. There is no total satisfaction outside of essence. Even the meaning or sense of total or real satisfaction cannot be known except by essence. Ego has no idea of what true satisfaction is; it only knows counterfeit gold, not real gold.
This does not mean that emotional experiences cannot be spiritual. In fact, frequently, spiritual experience is very emotional. But we have to distinguish between real emotions, the true energies of a free body, and the neurotic compulsive patterns we call emotions.
Being in essence feels like my body is filled with a very different kind of energy than usual. The energy feels real. It has the flavor of truth. The truth sense in essence is direct, certain; just like when drinking water I know it is water. The certainty is not intellectual or emotional. I just know it is true because I taste truth. I know real gold from counterfeit gold because I have experienced both. Normal experience is counterfeit gold, and lacks the sense of truth. Something substantial is missing. Real experience is so substantial, so true, so packed with reality; it is like gold hammered and beaten till it becomes lustrous. In fact, the sense or experience of truth does have the quality of gold.
The alchemists did not choose gold to represent essence because gold is rare and expensive. The choice is much more intuitive and experiential, because the quality of truth or real essence has a substantiality and luster that feels like experiencing gold. It’s like solid light, light that is packed so densely that it becomes substantial and weighty. [] It is intuitive density, that feels almost like a substance. But it is a substance that is more substantial, more weighty, more real than material substance.
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Essence has many qualities. In the Koran “Allah” is the name for God that contains both the transcendental and immanent aspects of Him. He is immanent through 99 qualities, or the 99 names of God. The transcendental aspect is the Absolute; the qualityless, nameless Dharmakaya. The qualities of God are the virtues of essence when a man wears them. They are colorful and varied, just like the round flowers on the peacock tail. Spiritual experience is experiencing God in one of his divine qualities. Experiencing God in his nameless, formless state cannot even be called an experience. It is beyond any categorization or conceptualization, for it is the experience of the Truth sublime.
The Koran lists 99 major divine qualities, like generosity, humility, power, beauty, perfection, gratitude, etc. These qualities are different specific forms of energy, that are experienced in the body. And since in essence there is no separation, these qualities pervade the whole environment in such experience, filling the air (literally) and the objects nearby with the specific vibration of the particular virtue. That is why it’s recommended to keep the company of holy men, for vibrations are contagious.
Majesty is an actual, experiential truth, and not an abstraction or a role. It is a specific mode of energy flowing through the body, an experience of being that can only be described as majesty. It is not the majesty of a king, although a king may reflect it in a pale way. I can see the quality of majesty more in nature. I can see it in the imposing presence of snow-covered mountains or in the expanse of the desert.
One time when I had just finished making love with my girlfriend, I felt so quiet, so serene, so contented. I was lying down on my back, and she had her head on my belly. I was just being, and looking around the room. At one point the whole environment was transformed. Everything became majestic. Everything acquired majesty. I felt like a king and she a queen. It was not a fantasy. It was not a mental experience. It was an actual state of being. My body became straight, my chest went forward, my gestures became royal. Even my thoughts had a royal, regal quality to them.
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It is a posture of feeling just myself, no more and no less. No pretending, no claims. My heart feels as if filled with a very pure fluid that is shining gently from every one of its atoms. My whole body feels gentle, delicate, but my posture is not expansive like that of majesty. This posture is very common in the middle East, especially among Sufis. It gives the impression that the Sufi is in the presence of a powerful and majestic force, which is exactly the case.
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In abundance and love my heart is like a spring or fountain. Very warm sweet fluid spreads out all over the chest, penetrating the body, filling it with exquisite satisfaction. I feel that I am one hundred percent satisfied and contented. I don’t want anything else, absolutely, nothing else. The fluid feels like honey. It has the feel and texture of honey. It wells out in great abundance. My friend looks into my eyes and says: “You look sweet.” I feel sweet. I am all sweetness. I discover that my mouth tastes sweet, as if there is honey in it. There is no question of whether I love myself and others. I experience myself as love. I experience everybody and everything around me as love. Even the walls are made out of love. There is only love and nothing else. It is the basic substance of existence.
I smell something in the air. My friend smells it too. She says it is jasmine. We look around to see where the fragrance is coming from. We cannot find the source. I discover that I am the source, it is coming out of my pores. Jasmine fragrance fills the whole house. My heart is a very deep ocean full of honey. I feel I am in a garden. Everything is fresh, green, as if cleansed with pure water. There is a sense of purity, translucence and virgin newness. I listen to music. I experience it as drinking water. I drink the music for hours. I feel as if I have been thirsty for all my life and now I find the water I have been looking for. I drink to my heart’s content. With all of this there is no hallucination, no distortion of the environment, of my sense of myself. Everything feels as if awakened to its own intrinsic nature.
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Inexhaustible
Everpresent
Comforting
Radiant
Golden
Sun.
The Sun illumines the whole cosmos. It is the Real Sun behind the sun, the source of life. Light emanates from the heart and turns all of reality into light and love. This heart is not the heart-chakra, the anahata. It is the Heart that Rumi refers to; it is the Heart center, the Christ center.
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In my experience, essence assumes the qualities of clarity and openness. These qualities are not only mental perceptions, they are very specific states of being that are experienced in the body, the heart, and the mind, and sometimes even beyond them. Clarity becomes a crystal kind of clarity, like a diamond that is just washed with pure oil. It’s a clarity that allows room, more space, and creates openness in the heart and mind. I feel my head empty, but quite alive. There is translucence, a shining and bright quality to awareness. My mind is balanced, serene, in a state of equanimity. Whatever arises—sensations, feelings, thoughts—are seen very clearly, for what they are, just as they are. No judgment, no commentaries. Just bare awareness. Awareness becomes very subtle, becomes even aware of itself. It is an awareness without an observer. It’s like everything is awareness. There is no center for this light. Light is everything, is everywhere.
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My heart is open, empty like an open window. This is true literally and metaphorically. The heart is so empty and so relaxed that everything can pass through, anything can happen and pass away. There is room for everything, and there is no attachment to anything. There is the sense of openness or nothingness.
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So Buddhism really emphasizes the virtue of non-attachment. For a long time I experienced a conflict between the theistic approach which emphasizes abundance and love, and the Buddhist approach which emphasizes emptiness, openness and compassion. I had experiences of both, and both felt very real and true. I accepted both flavors but I still felt a conflict between them. This conflict sometimes gave me a great headache for it comes even in the simplest daily experiences and transactions.
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One day I am in the rose garden. I am lying on my back on a bench. There are rose bushes all around me. I can smell the sweet fragrance filling the air. It is a warm day. My heart is peaceful. My mind is quiet. I am looking up, immersed in the sky. Aha! I see it. Green and blue; that is the marriage between theism and non-theism, between Sufism and Buddhism. My heart opens up. It feels roomy and spacious. A very sweet and precious feeling winds within this spaciousness, like a melody in the summer air. This is the marriage between abundance and emptiness. Around me is all abundance, fullness, fertility, the earth, green plants, bushes, roses, bees. But wait! The sky, the blue and clear sky. A spaciousness that opens and opens, endlessly. They meet; the earth and the heaven, the abundance and the emptiness, the green and the blue. Khidr, the green guide of the Sufis meets Vajradara, the blue Adi Buddha, the source of the Mahamudra teaching. They are two sides of one reality.
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It showed me that love is not only a feeling I feel in my heart, but that a higher form of loving is to have the open heart that allows others to be themselves. It is not imposing on reality.
Here love for Truth, devotion to God, replaces suffering and discontent as a motivation on the path. Instead of asking God’s forgiveness I start singing His praise and glory. I no longer care to assuage my pain. My heart longs for the presence of Truth. All I want is to be my true nature, my essential self, for I love this God within my ribs. I have tasted the honey and no amount of pain or suffering will equal that exquisite rest of heart when I am with the Beloved. Love for truth is my motivation, it’s what spurs me on the path.
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At the beginning, the seeker cannot recognize love of Truth in its naked reality, for he has no sense of what “love” is and no sense of what “truth” is. There comes a time, however, when this messenger of the divine, this love of truth for its own sake, throws away its disguises and veils and appears in its true, shining nature.
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I experience love of truth in two modes.
One is that I see that only truth works, and nothing else. It is a practical matter; wisdom born out of difficult life experience. It is a fact that truth sets me free, and only truth. I am convinced that only truth is ultimately useful. Lying, self-deception, ignorance, fear, running after the gratification of desire, all of these lead to only darkness and suffering. The light of truth is the liberator.
The other mode is more devotional, and is close to my heart. I just love truth. I love seeing truth. I love experiencing truth. I appreciate truth for just being truth. I delight in the truth.
Truth is my very nature, and the very nature and essence of everything. Of course I love truth, for I love who I am, for I love reality, for I love Love. My heart quickens with joyful pleasure when it experiences truth, this gold of reality, this sun of experience. I don’t understand it. I don’t know what happens then, neither do I care to know. I just go beyond myself with joy. My heart spills over with the honey of love when I behold Truth, the prince of Reality.