History is one way of making a gestalt: historical references, figures from the past release the foreground event from being stuck in only what it says it is.  –James Hillman

My dear friend Carol Sill has just published a very wonderful book, a collection of the letters written between her and Murshid Shamcher (Bryn) Beorse, one of Pir-o-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan’s chief students, named by him as “the esoteric inner head of the Sufi Order” during and after his life, for the diplomatic work and amazing teaching he gave during his lifetime, a very special containment for the nascent Sufi Message of that time.  At Inayat Khan’s direction, Shamcher was referred to on many occasions by his son, Pir Vilayat, as “the esoteric inner head of the Sufi Order,” a vital role at the time, and one he was perfectly suited for, for he loved everyone with a complete lack of judgment.  He was many things to many people in his long life:  Shamcher has been described by another of his students, Carol Sokoloff, as “the ideal of what a contemporary western mystic can be — an activist, an artist, a spiritual guide — working in all realms, the scientific, the literary, the political and the spiritual.”  We knew him as all these things, but he refused to take the titles or roles people wanted to give him, and he was a law unto himself in the Sufi Order, working tirelessly to be the glue that held us together during troubled times.  He was at the same time a diplomat and an outlaw, but most of all, to some of us, he was a friend beyond compare.

Shamcher lived a spotless life, yet as he himself said, he “loved women,” and while he had many friends of both genders, these letters are not for the faint of heart, for he understood and revered women in a way few men can, and he was entirely capable of pouring out his devotion in words if not acts, reaching inside the emotion of divine love in a way that could be daunting to the timid, yet always transformative.  Carol was one of the few who was able to answer him in kind, and this collection of letters is particularly searing, because Shamcher came into Carol’s life at the time of the tragic drowning death of her seven-year-old son, and supported her while she lived through that very special agony.  As a result of their relationship, Carol became a teacher and Siraj in the Universal Worship of the Sufi Movement in Canada, and worked hard for the Message for many years.  Shamcher particularly wanted these letters to be published, yet I know that she has hesitated, as many of us who knew him well have, because not everyone might understand the depth of his devotion and the strength of his love for his friends and students and his special way of expressing these.  Now that she has finally published them, they can be ordered through links on the site http://www.letters.shamcher.com/.  Additionally, for those who haven’t visited the archives for his writings and teachings, visit http://www.shamcher.org/and http://shamcher.wordpress.com/

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Among Shamcher’s last words were “there are NO teachers!  YOU are the teacher!” and he seldom took students or gave initiations.  He was a devoted correspondent, however, typing his letters on the backs of torn-off holiday cards quite often, on a manual typewriter, with little attention to mechanical details.  He protected the confidentiality of those who wrote TO him, but he left all his own written correspondence to Carol, and she has worked for years to put his letters into readable form.  I was one of Shamcher’s students, and I have my own stack of his letters, so I personally know what kind of work that must have been, yet what a tremendous gift to those of us who received those letters and those of us who can now read them.

For those who are members of or interested in the Sufi Order International, reading the stories of our early teachers and the early days of this organization is important, for it is in understanding our past that we can create the future.

Buy the book!!!

from Gustave Doré's illustrations to Dante's Divine Comedy

Nirvana is as a star in our hearts which we develop; and as we develop it, it becomes brilliant.

Its brilliance consumes all the wrong of life until nothing is left but that purity which is the divine light.  – Inayat Khan

Here in the Piedmont of North Carolina, I am beginning to wonder if winter is ever going to begin.  Just a few days until Christmas, and the temperatures are still sometimes in the seventies every day.  This afternoon a heavy, chill rain began, and I sat on the porch in my rocking chair to practice.  No need for music today!  The rain pounding on the roof, clattering in the gutters and dripping endlessly into the dirt under the bushes says all that needs to be said.

I suppose some would call it magical thinking, but I see that the Spirit of Guidance finds all kinds of ways to answer my questions and concerns.  Last weekend, we were in a bookshop in Chapel Hill, a used bookshop, and I found one of Ram Dass’s books, STILL HERE.  I remember when he was the rock star of the New Age movement, back in the 60s and 70s, and I consider him to be one of my best friends, even though we’ve only met a few times, and then wordlessly.  He always seemed to play the role of, as he himself said, “the one who goes before.”  In recent years, he is evidently going before us into the aging process, and he kicked that off with a severe stroke that hastened things quite a bit.  It is heartening to see him still doing his work, making use of the Internet now that he can no longer travel (www.ramdass.org).  The crowds are definitely smaller these days, even online, and I feel rather sad about that, but he has done good work, and perhaps, as he says in his book, an increasing withdrawal and loneliness is part of the process of returning the soul to God.  As to the book, it is very wonderful, just what I needed, for since my health issues began a few years ago, I have been rather lost, still determined to do things as I once did, constantly asking “What’s next?  What should I do?” and beating myself up for my increasing need for solitude and quiet, instead of relaxing into them as a natural part of the growth process.  In this last year, when I have surrendered to my need for retreat, I have continued to ask myself “When will this be over?  When will I return?” and now I’m thinking. . .  ”What if I don’t?”  ”Do I have to?”  Perhaps.  Perhaps not.  But I think what life is calling for me and other elders to do, is to live into a new mode of being, one that is actually intrinsic to the balance this old world so badly needs, with the so-often ego-based rush-rush of the younger generations, the constant need to do, to acquire, to accomplish, to kill, to have, to. . . well, to not get caught in the solitude of reality.  I suppose it is all about fear, really.  We are all deers afraid to get caught in the headlights of what is, afraid to relinquish control, afraid of annihilation.  That last, I find (annihilation), is increasingly the only thing that makes sense to me.  One comes to feel (if one is fortunate, I think) that death is the goal and the healing, that death not of the body–although obviously that will come–but of one’s concepts, one’s ambitions, one’s ideas about reality, ultimately one’s sense of oneself as a separate entity. . .  Really, that’s what all this mystical stuff is about, but the ego–the temporal self–screams in fear at the very idea.  It has taken me many years and much desperation to subdue the screaming of my own nafs, the Arabic word for the ego, the self we all think we are, the dimensions of which we try to keep hidden, even as it runs the show with an iron hand, until. . .we decide to stop it (mine is still subject to frequent yelps, by the way).  I find that this process has taken more than a decision, and God knows it took me long enough to even get to the decision, but once made, one can begin the best journey of all in life.  My road looks like a lonely one at first glance, but I find that increasingly I am joined by all the holy women and men I called to my journey, and the scenery is increasingly beautiful.  Ah, but that nafs!  Oh well, I suppose we need the nafs as long as we need it.

As some ancient Sufi said, the journey to God is a finite one.  The journey in God is never ends.

The best Christmas present I got. . .

May all people be free

I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world.

I may not ever complete the last one,

but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, that primordial tower,

I have been circling for thousands of years,

and  I still don’t know:  am I a falcon,

a storm, or a great song?

Rilke

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     Washed up on your shore, exhausted from endless swimming, through heavy waves and light, through storm and sunshine, I drag myself from the waves and sit at their edge, panting…  My breast heaves and I am cold to the bone, but eventually I grow quiet enough to make my camp there on your shore.

     Day by day I walk the sandy beaches, circling, circling…

     Sometimes you surprise me by inviting me in, and I climb ancient stone steps around your dwelling:  circling, circling…

    Occasionally you make it easy for me, inviting me into your office, where there is a conference going on that I understand yet do not understand, but it is about a quickening for some purpose I dare not call great…

     Then there are moments when I stand on the ramparts of your tower and look out over our lands:  I become your witness.

     Despite these times, I continue to walk your shores, waiting…

     Until that time.

     Today, when we were together, you laughingly pretended not to notice when I crept away from our meeting and found the endless wooden ladder that goes up into the attic.  I climbed for a long time, but the view was worth it, and when I entered the sound just right, I knew something of the will that arises out of that great emptiness…  But it wasn’t the will that interested me…

     Or You.

Well, he certainly made a dent in the universe….  Seems like the end of an era.

Somehow, I have missed reading the works of Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, a well-known teacher of Sufism and mystical topics, also billed as a Jungian theorist.  Recently, I have come across several excerpts of his writing, and they make me curious.   As I have already remarked, I have read very little of his writing, but what I do read seems to be fraught with predictions of doom and gloom, annihilation, darkness, and fear.  They seem intent on challenging the seeker, predicting dreadful ending for us all, and making it clear that he is an authority on such things.  It is true that coming to realization has the effect of bestowing a level of confidence one didn’t have before, and if the receiver of these gifts is sincere and committed to the treasure s/he seeks, it can be a natural thing, inspiring to the one who encounters it.  But I simply don’t understand the motivation to terrify the reader into jumping off a cliff of Vaughan-Lee’s creation.  It seems to me that what he says, while true, is not said in the context of what really IS, but is offered in stark contrast to what is usually unknown until one reaches the point of willingness and readiness to take the leap into the void he so loves to speak of.  Mystically speaking, it is generally understood–and it seems to me that this is true–that in God there is no such thing as time, time being a marker that we need to indicate change.  Thus, does the reader of such words understand that being–and being IN GOD–is a system of becoming and nonbecoming all at once?  What is the point of jumping up and down and saying, in effect, “Yah, yah, I’m braver than you are, you don’t know what I do…..”  like a bully on a playground, challenging and pointing the finger?  It is a mystery to me, but I do know for sure that L. Vaughan-Lee seems to preach his sermons with an intention that I am not at all sure is healthy…to him or anyone else.

I took this quote and these pictures off a Facebook page, and thank Sura Diane Sheldon for them.  Accompanying the quote were a number of WONDERFUL pictures:

As someone who tries to facilitate knowledge when I can, I would be inclined to show my student the above picture, as compared to scaring them to death with talk of voids and darkness before they can be properly understood and contexted.  Here’s another:

My point:  can we not go gently into that good night, escorted by the poets and the artists and the others who have come home to True Love, rather than doomsaying and challenging?  I suppose it’s all a matter off taste, but don’t look for that here.

I believe in the night.  It’s nothing to be afraid of.

You, darkness, of whom I am born–

I love you more than the flame

that limits the world

to the circle it illumines

and excludes all the rest.

But the dark embraces everything:

shapes and shadows, creatures and me,

people, nations–just as they are.

It lets me imagine a great presence stirring beside me.

I believe in the night.  –Rilke, Book of Hours

At the end of a crazy-moon night
the love of God rose.
I said, “It’s me, Lalla.”

The Beloved woke. We became That,
and the lake is crystal-clear.  –Lalla

They say there are as many different kinds of Sufis as there are Sufis, and I’m sure that’s true, given the nature of Sufism, which is such that it isn’t really a religion at all, but focuses its work on the inner meaning of all religion.  Yet there do seem to be a few central contemplative practices that are common to most if not all Sufis (and Buddhists and Hindus and well, the contemplatives of all the esoteric schools!).  The one I want to try to do justice to here today is the practice of wazifa, which most Westerners know as the term mantra, the repetition of a sacred name or phrase in order to develop the inner life and unfold particular sacred qualities inherent to the soul.  The wazifa works on many levels, not the least of which is its particular psychology, a psychology that strikes me more deeply as I research the Beautiful Names in Arabic, a language so beautiful that it is said to be the language that will be spoken in Heaven when and if we get there.  It does indeed have an extremely high vibratory quality to it, as does Sanskrit; and although I had originally been taught the Sanskrit mantras, when I became initiated as a Sufi and began to work with the Arabic wazaif (plural), I was hooked for eternity.  I’m not enough of a scholar to know which other languages have this vibratory quality, although I’ve seen hints of it in many languages, including Hebrew;  but these two seem to be the ones that work best for me.

The Sufi Order in which I am an initiate, and the various Inayati orders that are descendents of the ancient Chishtia school of Sufism, is both an interreligious organization and an esoteric school.  It is non-hierarchical in theory, but in actuality those who know more on various topics try to help those who know less, often changing places as necessary.  Many of us have a guide who works directly with the initiate on behalf of the teacher who is our link in the Silsila, the chain of illuminated beings who link with us and draw us back into pre-eternity, at the same time propelling us into post-eternity, whatever that is–through the promise we make to ourselves when we decide to come home to who we actually are.  But what does that mean in terms of the work we are doing in the world?  That looks like a very nitty-gritty process at the outset, but the more I hang out with this process, the more I see that it is all about the unfoldment of that promise, and what looks like a smelly, messy, cacophonous and chaotic world soul is also an exquisite symphony, a divine flower unfolding in the sun.  And it is the Beautiful Names that allow me to dwell in this understanding, to the extent that I Remember.  For a basic list of them, go here, to Wahiduddin’s wonderful site:  http://wahiduddin.net/words/99_pages/wazifa_practice.htm  There, you can find a list, and the basic meanings, as well as a great deal more information about Sufism, if you are interested.  Yet what I find is that these basic meanings are but springboards.  Pir Vilayat used to give these practices and teach his students how to make use of the sounds they invoke in the various spiritual centers that rise up the spine and connect the body with the higher realms of the psyche:  the solar plexus, the heart center, the crown center, etc.  He also used to suggest archetypes that embodied various of the Names:  Maryam, peace be upon her, for the divine purity (Subhan Allah), for instance, or the archangel Ophiel for Noor, the uncreated Light.  But those examples are kind of “out there,” and the wazaif can address very practical issues, too, such as the need for more power (Ya Malik,  Allahu Akbar) or the evocation of Beauty, Ya Jamil.  Of course, it must be said that to experience a quality such as beauty or power in its highest form is just that:  one must go beyond preconceptions into the true meaning of the quality, and thus the wazifa works in the psyche–soul–to reveal what is latent, and further, allows one to apply that quality to real life situations.  Magic!  If repeated with sincerity and diligence and openness.  Openness to the mystery, as Heidegger said. . .

I have been focusing on my inner work very intensely in recent months, and the more I “research” these Beautiful Names, the more I realize what a profound psychology they are for the unfolding personality and the progressing soul.  One might, through the advice and help of one’s guide, choose to work with not just one, but two wazaif, providing a point and counterpoint for the focus of what wants to unfold.  An example might be Ya (the “ya” simply means “O”) Muh’yi and Ya Mu’id, briefly defined as the divine Quickener and the divine Restorer.  The words are the springboards:  to evoke Muh’yi,  the Quickener, that aspect of God that brings things into being, makes things happen, is to go to the Source of the Water of Life.  To evoke Mu’id, the Restorer, is to return to one’s original condition, that of the divine Child, prior to the desecration the soul undergoes living on the earth plane.  Ya Rahman and Ya Rahim, the Compassionate One and the Merciful One, evoke both the divine kindness as well as the suffering God undergoes in taking on limitation in His creatures in order that the universe might unfold as it wants to.  These are but a few of what seem to be the true psychology of the soul.

Ultimately, the practice of wazifa ought to lead beyond the intent to find the quality in the personality to finding out how that quality as a condition of God manifests through the personality.  In other words, it is God–the central Self–that seeks to utilize the soul of humankind as a manifestation of divinity.  I wrote, awhile back, on another central practice of the Sufis, the dhikr.   The difference between the repetition of wazifa is that wazifa is how God is, while dhikr is the very being of God, beyond qualities.  Inayat Khan pointed out in his writings that the soul can be seen as the breath of God exhaled and inhaled, and I suppose the divine qualities–the Beautiful Names–are that exhalation, in the condition of Being.

We are not just a discreet entity but we carry the whole, the totality of the universe in us potentially.  –Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

To truly experience the divine qualities, one seems to need to undergo a sort of death, or so it seems at the time. . . yet like the Fool in the Tarot, we fix our eyes on the beyond and leap into the chasm and find. . . Life.