=kit103.txt

[ N.B. (sa):  'SOS' stands for, and only for, 'Sufi Order --
Suresenes'.  Except that sometimes I space out and use it to mean,
'Sufi Order -- Seattle'.  Sometimes rightly, ofttimes wrongly. 
Sorry, Cholmondely. ]  

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KIT 103 - Reconciling our Psychological Needs with our Spiritual
Needs [ SOS adds:  ' , or Compromising ' ]

Here lies the crucial issue for those who harbor an imperative
nostalgia for the sacred, yet honor their responsibility in our
human society in the world.

We may acquiesce to our need to involve ourselves - with people,
with situations - to manipulate the fabric of our Planet, to find
fulfillment.  We may achieve mastery by taking responsibility,
upgrade our support system in the physical environment, improve
ourselves physically, healthwise, unfurl our human potentials,
nurture our intellect, cultivate our culture, our music, our art,
to enjoy entertainment, relaxation, jokes, to discover hidden
perhaps unavowed aspects in ourselves by identifying with the
person enacted in the human drama.

However, we may become increasingly concerned that in the course
of this involvement, we easily and unconsciously get inveigled in
constraining situations, not only circumstantial, but in our way
of thinking, which affects our attunement, which evidence the
impact of conditioning upon our free-will. Our sense of
suffocation, of frustration can become desperate. That which once
delighted us avers itself to be a prison. Our need for freedom
becomes all-consuming, compulsive.

"The moment a prisoner feels that he will no longer remain in the
prison, the prison bars must break instantly, of themselves."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

At first shot, we tend to jump perfunctorily to the conclusion
that our prison is our environmental and social circumstances;
that to grow, we need favorable circumstances, just as a plant may
need just the right sunshine and water and quality of earth to
flourish. We suffer if our need for the sacred is waylaid by the
sacrilege of worldly ways. We feel that we are missing out on
something quintessentially important in our life: awakening,
enlightenment. But what do these words mean? Are they cliches of
our mind? Are they projections of our wishful thinking? Let us be
wary of words, of doctrines.

We may well have created these circumstances (as we imagine a
spider confined to its web), before we had this breakthrough of
realization, albeit there may be cases where it appears that the
prevailing circumstances are fortuitous, irrespective of our
choice.

Many a soul in their yearnings for freedom have escaped from what
they thought was prison while failing to recognize that the prison
was in their thinking. 

"There is a place that cannot be reached  by going anywhere."
BUDDHA

[ Footnote (sa) kit103_1 ]


As our outlook changes, our sensitivity is sharpened. The
grossness, the selfishness, the worthlessness of so much that is
avidly pursued in the world, the facetiousness, ruthlessness of
some, the insensitivity to the suffering caused, wounds our soul
to the core. Modern technology has made our lives in the world
more comfortable and practical, while more challenging, albeit at
the cost of much defilement, pollution, unfair competition
wreaking destitution on the unadapted. At what point does need
become greed?

"All that produces longing in the heart deprives it of its
freedom."
(HIK)

"Yet He who arrives at the state of indifference without
experiencing interest in his life is incomplete."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

[ The preceeding appear as two consecutive quotes in Kaivan, and
as a single quote in SOS ]


What at first seemed worthwhile now avers itself to be trivial.
The support system takes over, so that our purpose in gaining
insight, unfurling potential qualities, our attunement to the
divinity of our being, gets lost from our view. This is what
everything was about! The futile, misconstrued game played itself
out. As this gradually dawns upon us, our suffering seems to need
to exasperate itself to a paroxysm of pain before we either do
something positive about it or simply go under, wallowing in self-
pity. We ask ourselves: what am I doing in life?

"There comes a time in one's evolution when a passion is awakened
in the soul that gives the soul a longing for the unattainable."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

 As soon as we realize that we are ourselves party to all of this
- that surreptitiously it has spilled over in us, while we were
inculpating others - we realize that the prison is in our having
failed to spot this. We had been denigrating ourselves unbeknown
to ourselves on a hunch that "something was wrong", unwittingly
intuiting that it eroded our spirit, and we had failed to see this
until the burst of realization struck us.  We had been contriving
to escape from circumstances whereas we failed to acquiesce that
we were trying to flee from aspects of ourselves that we dislike
and had been denying, albeit unconvincingly, and which are our
real prison.

Consequently, we make a decision to not participate in what
arouses our wariness, our aversion, our abhorrence. Can we live
the life of the world without belonging to it? Instead of "seeking
another kingdom", can we bring the sacred right into the profane?
Can we handle ugly situations beautifully?

"Those who think that heavenly knowledge is sufficient are
mystical; but the joy of the heavenly knowledge and the full
understanding of it come from being able to express it in the
world's medium of expression."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN, [ SOS adds:  IN AN EASTERN ROSE GARDEN]

But here one encounters the danger of falling into a still more
pernicious prison: vanity in our sanctimoniousness, which traps us
in our ego, and which is the ultimate misconception. This is
precisely what Pir-o-Murshid points out: what we call 'me' (the
ego),  is only a fraction of what we are. If we earmark and
identify with a fraction of ourselves without including the whole
picture, we distort the picture. Under the glare of awakening,
that phantasmagoria exhausts itself. The way out of that prison is
to extend our identity beyond what  we think is our self.

"The false ego is what that ego has wrongly conceived to be its
own being. It is not that the false ego is our ego, and the true
ego is the ego of God, it is that the true ego which is the ego of
God has been reduced to a false ego in us."
(HIK)

 "It is the situation we are in that makes us believe that we are
this or that; whatever the soul experiences, that it believes
itself to be."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

[ The preceeding appear as two consecutive quotes in Kaivan, and
as a single quote in SOS ]

Suddenly we realize, "I am not what I thought I was, whereas I was
thinking and behaving according to what I thought I was!"  It is
by shifting our consciousness and sense of identity in the
transcendent dimensions that we first grasp unity: beyond matter,
beyond the subtle body, beyond form (imagination), in the realm of
pure light, beyond consciousness, beyond the seeds of existence -
awakening beyond existence - then reversing and  seeing unity in
diversity - in the seeds of existence, and then in existence. 

True exaltation of the spirit resides in the fact that it has come
to earth and has realized there its spiritual existence.

"In him is awakened that spirit by which the whole universe was
created."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN [ SOS:  THE ALCHEMY OF HAPPINESS ]

Encompassing all beings, we see God as a potentiality, striving to
emerge in each fraction of itself.

"The soul may be considered to be a condition of God; a condition
which makes the only Being limited for a time."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

The eternal is to be found in the becoming. It is a virtuality
actuating itself in each fraction of the totality, which is what
we are ourselves, also the "others". 

"When a person awakens to the spirit of unity and sees the oneness
behind all things his point of view becomes different and his
attitude changes thereby. There is nothing and no one who is
divided or separated from him."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

But to believe in the metaphysical concept that 'all is one' is
not good enough. Experience eludes the meshes of the knowledge
that tries to scoop it up. Reciprocally, will knowledge spur us to
experience? to experience what we know?

The breakthrough of realization will make us beautiful; and if we
have been able to lift the veil that buried our own beauty, we see
the beauty in others behind that same veil. When they discover
themselves in the mirror of our soul, the chances are that they
will undergo the same awakening process that we have gone through
ourselves.

At this point in our forward march, we stumble upon the ultimate
realization: is our quest for freedom not the ultimate selfishness
of the personal ego that we confused with the Self? Is not that
erroneous notion of ourselves the ultimate prison? Is our quest
for freedom not itself an expression of the ultimate concern of
the personal self?  

"The ego holds its prison around itself, it takes this prison with
it, and there is only one way of being delivered from it, and that
is through self-knowledge."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

Discovering our real Self, which is what we mean by the Oneness
behind the fragments of the One, opens the door of the prison. The
way out of that prison is love. It is here that we are tested in
our love and compassion, which is a gratuitous act of our free
will - perhaps the ultimate freedom from the want of the self.
This is enabled by avoiding criticism of those who are still
immersed in "the ways of the world", who are struggling, self-
destructively, incongruously, blindly. People need to go though
their trips, be replenished or disappointed, or disconcerted, or
devastated. We must know that we cannot spare another from his/her
follies by dint of having overcome our own. These are the pangs of
birth. Our latent perfection and that latent in others, which we
ascribe to God, is striving to break through our imperfection,
which we ascribe to ourselves, and so indict others.

As soon as we have ceased to fret about our own suffering, we
become sensitive to the sufferings that spark the arrogance of
other people toward us. When we see how they overcompensate their
vulnerability by their possessiveness, we love them and would wish
to help them in their covert distress.  Laughing at our own past
stupidity while bemoaning the suffering it caused acts as an alarm
signal to those still in the quagmire.

"We should be careful to take away from ourselves any thorns that
prick us in the personality of others."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

In India this is coined "indifference"; it is really finding
freedom in ourselves from being disturbed by the attitude of
others. The consequence is the peace that is not born of the
escape from prevailing conditions, but which is the catalyst of
benevolent action arising out of the peace within. We need to
watch that our equanimity is not reliance on a doctrine rather
than having been achieved personally by meeting a struggle
chivalrously.

We find that there is no end to the demands of people: they will
want us to help them achieve their selfish ends, they may wish us
to support their ambition, their power trips, to flatter them,
feed their vanity, bolster their self-esteem, overlook their
foibles, have patience with their follies, understand their
incongruities, corroborate their judgment of others, or to
commiserate with their sorrows for failing to attain the
satisfaction of their desires.  Perceiving our innocence, people
may deceive us, to pull us on their side in their conflict with
another person. We must be careful lest by our good will to
fulfill their demands, we find that we participate in their
covetousness and sometimes concupiscence, or at least reinforce
them. We do not want to become dependent upon their dependence
upon us.

"Things that people take to heart will seem to him of little
importance. Things that people become confused with will become
clear. Disappointments and failures will not take away his hope
and courage. There comes a time when all that he has accepted in
his mind, all that he believed in appears to be quite the contrary
to what it seemed before. Wealth, position, all the things he had
pursued sometimes seem to become the opposite of what they
seemed."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

Every new outlook that frees us from perfunctory assumptions will
change our relationship with others, and thereby alter the
circumstances.

Suddenly the same world that we despised appears beautiful, we see
the struggle for perfection in imperfection, the transparency of
beauty trying to pierce the veil of ugliness; we see the
immaculate present within its very defilement, order within
disorder. "That which transpires through that which appears" is
already present in that which appears; it is not elsewhere, it is
not "other". It is in the highfaluted legendary past of a pre-
established harmony, and it flashes in the future as an intention:
it is "infinity in a finite fact and eternity in a temporal act"
(Preston Milford). It is the everywhere and always in the here and
now. The existential is not an illusion veiling reality, it is the
reality embedded in actuality. The purpose and fulfillment and
reality of the blueprint of your house is in your house. The
cosmic code does not precede the existential universe, it is self-
organizing itself and thereby discovering itself in the "here and
now" - "God hidden within His Creation" (Pir-o-Murshid Inayat
Khan) [ SOS adds, after the closing quotation marks, so presumably
by PVK:  'and awakening within His/Her own Being as us.' ]

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COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY:

"There is a place that cannot be reached  by going anywhere."
BUDDHA

[ Footnote (sa) kit103_1 ]

PVK sure brings in the same quotes "over and over and over"
(Sinatra) again -- in KIT after KIT -- 

Fine -- so read it all inside_out, and you've got a set of
commentaries on those teachings.  You will see how PVK applies
those teachings -- here, a teaching by Buddha -- to a great
variety of contexts.

In Judaism, it is considered most commendable to write
Commentaries on any passage, or even phrase, in the sacred
teachings.  Indeed, rabbinic teachings in orthodox Judaism are
usually structured as commentary on particular passages, even if
they use them only as a launching pad.

So Rashi, who writes entirely as commentary, and also Maimonides,
are considered amongst the pre_eminent religious teachers in
Judaism.
                                                          
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