116 - The Dance of Joy

A million galaxies are a little foam on that shoreless sea.
We came whirling out of nothing scattering stars like dust.
The stars made a circle and in the middle we dance,
Turning and turning, it sunders all attachment.
Every atom turns bewildered,
And it is only God circling Himself

Rumi

Thy music causeth my soul to dance; in the murmur of the wind I hear Thy flute; the waves of the sea keep the rhythm of my dancing steps. Through the whole of nature I hear Thy music played, my Beloved; my soul while dancing speaketh of its joy in song.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

To be happy, to dance, we need to be beautiful and to be beautiful we need to validate ourselves, and it is just in our ability to love those others who make themselves most difficult to love that life tests us in our love of ourselves, because, often unbeknown to ourselves, it is our self-esteem that is at stake.

Souls are moved to dance at the sight of beauty.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Why should the gardener plant the seed if it were not for the love of the flower?    

Rumi

The bottom line is, as Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan pointed out, "we are tested in our love." Yes, this is precisely what is enacted in life.  It is admittedly difficult to keep one's joy - the dance of one's soul - high when dealing with a cantankerous person, or an unkind person or a domineering or manipulative person, or a person who exhibits a pattern of trying to draw one into a conflict.

Our spiritual progress is determined by our ability to harmonize with our social environment; but how can we harmonize with people who would only be well disposed toward us if we give in to their egos, thereby forfeiting our own values and responsibilities? This is assuredly the great art of life: being able to cumulate authority, and kindness, and joy - and insight. People are awkwardly vying to validate their vulnerable self-esteem by affirming their egos - maybe at our cost. Maybe it is the only way they know to fulfill this need. Maybe they justify it in their reasoning as standing up for their opinion.

Understanding is the first step to forgiveness. One can entertain understanding, and forgiveness, and love, even respect, while standing by one's commitment in life. Forgiving someone who hurt a dear one is much harder than forgiving oneself. Moreover some cases are so outrageous that one questions: how is it possible in this case? Yet forgiving is the key to joy and to that authority that is not powered by the despotism of the human ego - having room in one's heart for those who offend and betray one.

The Sufi's constant attitude towards others is that of love. What does love mean? Love means forgiveness.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

As for guilt, if we are honest, it leaves us no escape. Remission? To acquiesce to divine forgiveness, we need to forgive ourselves. Making a pledge to never repeat the offense, and making amends, will help. 

However much you have sinned, you are welcome in our caravan.

Rumi

God has Mercy and forgives your sins.

Qur'an

To give joy to others, we need to find joy in ourselves. Therefore now to dance, we need to dance the dance of joy over the thorns under our feet, while rejoicing that we have been transformed by reconnoitering our shadow and thus being able to confront it. We rely upon our ego to ensure our psychological defenses; it features our crutches. To wean ourselves we need to validate our self-esteem by including in our self-image the celestial levels of our being.

We are inexorably immersed in the very selfsame process whereby life, in its vertiginous ascent that we call evolution, transforms the dung feeding the seed into a beautiful flower - moreover with the bonus of a perfume. Does not the seething clash of warring clouds resolve in the luminous fireworks of lightning? Is it not significant that, as the universe evolves, matter in the form of the human body serves the awakening of higher levels of being? The pain of childbirth opens up a peep into the heavens revealed to us through the eyes of a babe. We learn that the ordeal of those tortured in concentration camps erupts in a break-through of ineffable ecstasy as death rescues them from their executioners. The example of heroic beings may help one. It can help to make the transit into "life after life." A revered friend once told me he had been tortured twice during the second world war, once by the Nazis, then by the Soviets, and in his ordeal, he kept feeling sorry for those who were causing him agony in body and mind because he saw they were brainwashed and consequently he could forgive them. He said all he had to do was to get into the consciousness of Christ being tortured by the soldiers of Herod.

Forgiving makes the difference between incandescing in the fire of the psychological hell of acrimony, or exulting in the splendor and clarity of celestial effulgence.

Have you ever been graced  by a dream revealing the abandon of the heavenly dance of jubilation when, by forgiving the traitors who betrayed them, heroes are crowned with the beatitude of saintliness?
