=kit080.txt

KIT 80 - TURNING WITHIN - PART II

PRACTICES BASED ON PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN'S TEACHING

APPLYING MEDITATION TO DEVELOPING INSIGHT INTO PROBLEMS

            One must learn how to apply the teaching of Pir-o-
Murshid Inayat Khan in everyday life, and how to see the beauty
and complexity that one will find in life, by taking the roads
leading to the desired goal.

"Insight in one's problems will lead to unfurling one's
potentials."
(HIK)

            "In the complete unfoldment of human nature is the
fulfillment of life's purpose."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

            1) Choose a thought connected with a current problem
and earmark an event in the past that bears some similarity.
Toggle between them to ascertain which features they have in
common and in which features they differ.

            2) See how the experience of the past throws a light
on your present problem: maybe the same pattern keeps repeating
itself until you no longer slip into that groove. Now see if the
present picture throws light on something about the past you had
never perceived before, and therefore the complete knowledge of
the past will be a knowledge of the whole.

            By turning within, we free ourselves of the constraint
of the 'here and now', and therefore can retrieve the knowledge of
the whole past bequeathed to us by the universe, subliminally
latent within.

            An illustration might be helpful here: peering into a
hologram, carrying the double exposure of two three-dimensional
pictures, you can toggle between both pictures by oscillating the
perspective of your glance; now try rather than toggling to
extrapolate between both pictures. If you succeed, or in the
measure in which you succeed, you are capturing a double exposure
of two interspersed three-dimensional pictures. This would prove
almost impossible, at least confusing. However, if there were some
resemblance between these, it would be easier.

            Having thus trained your mind, step by step increasing
your integrative faculty, you will now suddenly grasp
meaningfulness where you had not seen a relevance in situations.
Thereby, you will develop great wisdom.

            For the mystic, everything is connected: there is no
condition that is detached from another condition. A mechanism is
always running in relation to another mechanism, however different
and disconnected they may seem. To gain insight, the mystic enters
into the depths of the whole mechanism of the universe.

            Another illustration: with two video cameras, film
simultaneously the fish swimming in an aquarium from both sides of
the aquarium. If you were able to view both films simultaneously,
you would grasp a connection between both films although different
from each other. These perspectives would be linked by dint of
complementarity. Here you are not just extrapolating between two
pictures, but between two vantage points (simultaneously or in a
different time frame) and extrapolate between them.

            3) Practice this by viewing your problems from one
perspective; then another. Now view your problems from your
personal perspective, then that of a person connected with or
involved in the problem. Ask yourself how all you see affects you
and what is your reaction to it all. First, how does your spirit
react to the objects or the conditions you encounter, to the
sounds you hear, to the words that people speak to you? Secondly,
see what affect you have on others, conditions and individuals
when you come in contact with them.

            4) See how your point of view may be complementary to
that of the other person. Even reconcile two complementary points
of view in your own mind.

            5) Try to shift your consciousness into that of
another person and imagine how things would look from that
person's vantage point. Now try to earmark which are the points
you have in common and which contradict or do not tally.

            If one is able to expand oneself to the consciousness
of another person, one's consciousness becomes as large as two
persons; and so it can become as large as a thousand persons when
one accustoms oneself to try and see what others think. It is the
understanding of two points of view: the one and its opposite that
give a fuller insight into life.

            The progressive steps we have taken illustrate what we
mean by shifting consciousness from the commonplace diurnal focus
(explicate) to the state of reverie, anticipating the state of
consciousness experienced in meditation when turning within.

            6) Now see how the problem looks when you are in your
ordinary consciousness; then how it looks when you turn within.

 "The external life is but the shadow of the inner reality."
(HIK)

 "The manifested life comes from the unmanifested."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

            But this can be illustrated better still by the
following models.

            You are watching an eclipse (sun/moon). Note that they
are only in alignment from the vantage point of the earth. At
times other than when they appear to be aligned, their spatial
relationship does not appear to most people to have any
significance - only in that relatively rare conjunction.

            This example confirms that ordinarily we only see
things from our personal vantage point in which we are entrapped
and, moreover, what is important to us at the time. For example,
the problem only exists in relationship with our particular
attachment or concern. If you were free from that attachment, the
problem would have no relevance and vanish. Regarding one's
concerns, they are based upon one's scale of values and change as
these evolve.

            7) This could be further illustrated: if you were to
shift your vantage point to any location in space, there is always
one point in which the sun and moon are aligned (called a syzygy
in Astronomy). This ability occurs when turned within in
meditation we are able to imagine what it would feel like to see
things from an inexhaustible assortment of vantage points.
Consequently, one would be weary of judgments taken on face value.
You will realize that a defeat may turn out to be a victory and a
victory a defeat.

            8) A still further stage of shifting consciousness
would be reached if, rather than envisioning that your
consciousness is dispersed in space as represented outside you,
you imagine that everything is connected like a network of radio
waves. Therefore at any point in space you could access the whole
scale of frequencies simultaneously. This could, of course, occur
inside. To illustrate what we mean by the space inside, imagine a
piece of paper so crumpled that every fragment is continuous with
every other.

            This space of three dimensions is reflected in the
space that is in the inner dimension. The inner dimension is
different; it does not belong to the objective world, but what
exists in the inner dimension is also reflected in three-
dimensional space. In reality what the mystics see in space is
something that is within, but when they open their eyes, they see
it before them.

            9) The way to achieve this is to reach that which
seems outside from inside, instead of exploring your psyche as you
turn inside. Then you will find yourself in a totally different
relationship with the world. You are not the subject perceiving or
imagining other than yourself, nor are you observing your psyche
in contradistinction to that in you that is the Spectator, but you
resonate with the outer world by dint of affinity because that
which seems in you is the same as that outside. The world within
you is reflected in the world without; and it is the action and
reaction of the two upon one another that constitutes your life.

            10) To achieve this, shift your self-image into
identifying yourself with the quintessence of your being, shedding
all that is the result of the spill-over with the environment or
the mask you are wearing or the role you are playing that has not
yet been really digested in the core of your being.

            You will find that your true being is immaculate and
somewhat of the nature of a mirror that epitomizes clarity. This
will give you an insight into yourself and others you never had
before.

            "The one who tunes him/herself not only to the
external but to the inner being and to the essence of all things
gets an insight into the essence of the whole being. Therefore,
one can to the same extent find and enjoy even in the seed the
fragrance and beauty that delights him/her in a rose. One, so to
speak, touches the soul of the thought. It is just as by seeing
the plant one may get an idea of the root. In this way things
unknown are known, and things unseen are perceived by the mystics;
and he/she calls it revelation."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

            By doing these practices, you will develop your
intuition. Here is the key: identify with the seed of which your
being is the unfurling. You will not find it in your mind, but in
your heart unless you will accept that mind and heart are the two
sides of the same coin. Therefore, all mental activities need to
be turned inside-out. To do this, you will first have to unmask
your mind trips and, what is more, deal with them. If you succeed,
you will touch upon the divinity of your being in the silence of
thought.

            "Divinity is like the seed that grows in the heart of
the flower. It is the same seed that was the origin of the plant,
and it comes again in the heart of the flower."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

            The clue to realization is to grasp God realizing
Him/Herself in and through our realization of God. It is by
realizing the God within that God is manifested without. But once
God is realized, God is no longer only within: God is within and
without and in all.
    
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