=kit050.txt

KIT 50 - The Human Drama

Before we realize it, we are involved in the human drama willy-
nilly, irretrievably. Life may prove exhilarating, disenchanting,
awesome, disturbing, depressing, or just hum-drum.

Our co-actors on the scene may prove to be friendly, supportive,
or inimical, compassionate or vindictive, loyal or manipulative,
harmonious or treacherous, insolent or gracious, inspiring or
repugnant or just indifferent and incompatible...or some or all of
these contradictory traits paradoxically lumped together.

At every move our intentions are tested; shall we say by life
itself? We are ourselves mostly precious little aware of what
these motivations are, except that life itself unmasks us; besides
they do emerge to view to the eye of the aware even if we
ourselves fail to espy the proof in the proved. Even when our
covetousness or grudge, or axe to grind, or cantankerousness, or
conceit, or power-trip, or failure to take responsibility had
devastating consequences, perhaps decades later, we may deplore
our poor judgement or our folly or our inane decision, but still
belie our intention, perhaps because it masks something deeper:
our need for self-validation, for self-esteem, for attention, for
security, for achievement, for love. Besides these we may uncover
the precious ones: idealism, dedication, a spirit of service or
self-sacrifice, altruism, compassion, mercy, an unscrupulous
concern for truthfulness, purity, innocence, beauty,
glorification, holiness, a need to partake of the intoxication of
divine ecstasy. These may aver themselves to be the moving drives
behind our handling of situations.

Our involvement with people, with situations, with the problems
that arise apparently uncalled for can pummel our heart into
agonies of excruciating pain, or more rarely spur it to outbursts
of joy, or just pleasure or a sense of well-being at the venture
of life.

The interplay of destiny and incentive, baffles our understanding.
Are we the victims or the doers? As in the game of chess,
sometimes we assume that it is our move, but how far are we
reacting to the move of our partner, looking back into his/her
mind, witnessing in the move the signature of his/her intention?
Or how far are we projecting into the future, that is forecasting
what his/her move could be if we decide to move this way or that
way? Yet even when reacting to our partner's move that is his/her
intention, our move is still motivated unmistakably by our
intentions. 

Moreover, what do we know of the role played by a cosmic
motivation behind our moves? Let us not think of it as other than
our motivation, but just the cosmic dimension of our motivation -
something like the harmony of the stars and galaxies, the
Pythagorean harmonic relationship that governs the intricate
mechanism of which we are a part. The more we become conscious of
this dimension of our own being, the greater our achievements.
Here lies the real meaning of spirituality according to Pir-o-
Murshid Inayat Khan.

Of course the intricacies of our motivations in life's drama are
incomparably more complex and paradoxical then in the game of
chess; and consequently the influence of this cosmic factor is
more readily detectable. Here in real life our motivations really
give away where we are at. Here lies the criterion of our mettle
at this point in time - which hopefully may improve. Here the real
person is revealed in all its nudity and authenticity, eluding any
pretence. But also here as Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan says "the
hand of God" which we often ascribe to fate or destiny is made
noticeable to the intuition of the seer.

Since unmasking our intention proves to be so ultimate a
criterion, as to what we are in our person, it constitutes an
incalculable feed-back system right there at our disposal. And
doubtless our ability of availing ourselves of it depends upon our
readiness to confront ourselves, and call our own bluff. But
earmarking somehow the way the universe fulfills a purposefulness
through or rather as us, which the Sufis call the divine intention
behind our intention; or discovering the conflict between this and
our personal intention - which is really tantamount to a conflict
of allegiance to different values within ourselves becomes
difficult.

It is as difficult as assessing whether it is the trace that a
physicist detects on a screen is the same electron that reappears,
or whether this trace betrays the 'probability' of another one
substituting itself to the first one. Or is it another one? Or is
it just the whole process appearing and disappearing in its parts?
Thus the issue that we may read as our intention or the other's
intention is far greater than the purview that we may have
ascribed to it in our introspection. Therefore beware of miss-
assessing yourself in your self-confrontation in a closed circuit. 


Behind the thrust of our motivations lie deeper roots: our innate
qualities, or foibles, or rather those that have been so far
actuated in us; which are precisely those which we believe we
possess. Unfortunately our self-assessment is often mistakenly
based upon our success or failure in our performance in the
challenge of life, which cannot by any means be the ultimate
criterion.  Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan points out that a victory
may aver itself to be a defeat and defeat a victory.

The push that it takes to move out of a rut, go out on a limb into
an undertaking whose success remains questionable may be sparked
by the values we believe in, but is powered by our belief in our
potentials. Our real value is stored in our potential which is
ultimately infinite, albeit it is the activated fragment of this
potential that has real life effectiveness - that is that measure
of our potentials that is turned on, in contrast with those
infinite bounties that lie in wait unknown to us, because
unexplored. For example we only discover our power when we are
called upon to overcome obstacles, or our compassion when faced
with someone suffering, or our perspicacity when unmasking a
fraud.

Besides it is our motivations that spur these potentials or their
shadows on into existence in the human drama. For example if one's
motivation is service to people, one's potentiality for compassion
will emerge through one's personality traits more markedly; and
one's dedication to service will have the effect of allaying one's
resentment, so that one will prove more magnanimous towards the
person who has offended one. If one's motivation is personal gain
and dominance, one's personality will no doubt manifest more
power, but this kind of ego trip may be looked upon as the shadow
of genuine power. It distinguishes itself from real power by its
ruthlessness. Here the potentialities of one's being have been
constricted, defiled and deviated.

It is as though life offers us the most incredible array of
bountiful values that corroborate the values that we ourselves
cherish and uphold. Just consider what our civilizations have
bequeathed us as a heirloom of works of art and architecture and
music and poetic lure, of ingeniousness, of know-how of
organization, of skill, of discipline, of inventiveness! Consider
the wealth of emotion that has filtered through the human
transducer and been customized by our inventiveness! The acts of
dedication and mercy and heroism! The whole universe is enacted in
the human drama including that little patch that seems to be of
our resort: our problems and life situations, our achievements,
our fates and destinies! Our lives are traversed, in fact
fermented, suffused by the fruits of the inspirations of creative
beings in the past and all around us. The bottom line in our lives
is what our contribution is to all this bounty. We are not only
the products of these civilizations, of the genius of their
outstanding pioneers but also their successors and nominees.

Moreover we need to extend our grasp beyond our terrestrial
civilizations, and include all that lies behind the moving scene
of the human drama on Planet Earth. Do we know what spawns the
stars? What emotions or aspirations convulse the galaxies? What
beings lie beyond our ken? Do we espy traces of the symphony of
the spheres or the cosmic celebration in those emotions that make
our heart beat faster, or shatter and delight our soul, or spark
our spirit? It is these springheads of cosmic moment that lie
behind our motivations and potentials, sometimes dormant,
sometimes hopefully active.

A formidable power lays waste at our doorstep. The Sufis call it
the divine power, actually it is the potentiality of our divine
inheritance. While at the transcendental pole of our being (let us
say in the seed of our personality) the bounty of the qualities
that flower in the existential universe lay potentially dormant,
these qualities contrast with their actualization in the
existential pole of our being (let us call it the plant) in
excelling everything one might imagine by their awesome
perfection. Besides by becoming conscious of our divine heirloom,
we start integrating the opposites while paradoxically by-passing
them: for example being powerful and radiant at the same time -
that is manifesting power without being stern; or being both
loving and at the same time free inside; or wise without being
smart. 

To avail ourselves of these features of the divine perfection
invested in our being, we need to extend our thinking beyond the
middle range. Evolution advances by burning the hurdles on the way
and continually making the leap to the next step which always
takes off from a springboard that integrates all the previous
steps, thus carrying them further. 

The clue lies in espying the motivation of the universe behind our
motivations and the qualities the Sufis call the divine qualities
behind the qualities that we have actuated so far, and assessing
what are the values that are being enacted in that fragment of the
human drama that we are involved with, while realizing that in
fact it is not a fragment, because everything involves everything
else, so that we are irrevocably involved in the cosmic drama, and
this is the measure of our grasp of what it is all about.

To track down this infinite dimension of ourselves, albeit
remotely, Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan outlines two steps: the first
conceptualizing God, because by so doing, one is nurturing one's
creative imagination which is the self-same power that projects
the software of the universe as its hardware. The act of
conceptualizing needs a support system which consists in actually
recognizing the values that one cherishes in nature, than in the
qualities that are being enacted behind the drama of our lives,
then recognizing them in our own nature, finally embodying them -
thus making God a reality.
    
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