87 - Mithal - Metaphor: Creative Imagination

Practices Leading To Awakening At The Mithal Level

            The key to awakening to the level of Mithal is, as we have seen in the previous KIT, in shifting one's sense of identity by discovering the deeper reality of one's physical body to be rather gossamer. As seen from inside, your physical body now seems like the crystallization of the volatile, evanescent, quintessential subtle body that you now discover yourself to be. It does seem to have some kind of configuration but without a profile, rather like our countenance, continually shifting, sometimes shimmering.

            If you can reach out from within, (which is best done as you exhale), you will find that, in the perspective of inverted space where everything intersperses everything else, your subtle body dovetails with those of kindred beings. Moreover it seems to oscillate in sympathetic resonance or sometimes jam in dissonance as your signature tune finds its place in the cosmic symphony.

            Your perception of matter has altered. For example instead of light appearing as radiating from a source, you can see as Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan showed that in this perspective light is "all-pervading".

            In contrast as you inhale, you will regain your sense of personal identity, discovering that, while you enrich yourself with the bounty of the universe, you do enjoy freewill in selecting those elements you wish to ingest and those which you find difficulty in incorporating.

            Paradoxically while the model of the vortex came naturally to your mind when you exhaled, now when you inhale as you turn within you will no doubt find that quite the opposite strikes you. Now you appear to be somewhat of the nature of a cell endowed with a permeable boundary - or rather have the impression of being formed of concentric zones, or buffers, each exhibiting the characteristics of protective thresholds. Consciously place sentinels at the door of perception, screening, not only what you ingest from the environment, but also the unwanted features at the periphery of your psyche which are due to a spill-over from the psychological environment which are not in resonance with your real being.

            Do not place a wall between you and the environment, incarcerating yourself in your psyche and dismissing the world as many meditators do. When blinded by the more overt nature of things one misses out on reality in its subtle, covert attire; you cannot see the stars while the sun is visible. Thus protected from the glare, you can reach outside from within highlighting the divine intention bursting forth in the miracle of life, in the marvel of the cosmos, and in the great achievements of civilizations, of human thought, creativity and ingenuity, thus boosting your self image and enhancing your creativity.

            A sentinel allows some things to pass through and rejects others. You can see how by your willfulness to adapt to the environment, while gaining invaluable resources, you tend to ingest indiscriminately at the periphery of your personality elements that distort your specific uniqueness.

            One asks oneself how all that one sees affects one and how one reacts to it; how does one spirit react to the objects or the conditions that one encounters, to the sounds one hears, to the words that people speak to one; and further what effect one has on others, on conditions, on those individuals one comes in contact with.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

            So that, while being implicated with the overall reality, you will be aware of being furnished with boundaries, albeit permeable. This is evidenced by your ability to make a choice ensuring your uniqueness within the global unity.

 Those to whom unity is revealed see the absolute whole in the parts, yet each is in despair because of the particularization from the whole.

Shabistari

            If you now strive to maintain great clarity as you meditate, you will find that your mind is obliged to accept what seems contradictory: that we can be inextricably enmeshed in the totality yet preserve our identity.

            Only in an atmosphere of serenity can you find your attunement. Now as you hold your breath, as you discovery the deeper core of your self, you will be struck by recognizing how genuinely "you" it is. It is as though you discovered yourself for the first time! It seems somehow to be larger, more universal than your ordinary self-image and you will notice that it is ever-recurrent, rather than sclerosed. Moreover it appears to dovetail in its seedbed with a latent network out of which all creatures surface - the template of all kin, the fountainhead of all creativity.

Refuge In A Retreat

            Having now had a sense of your real being, you realize that your environment, your circumstances, the greed, the grossness, the brutality, that you witness in life draws you away from your own germane authenticity. Your clamoring for the sacred will overwhelm your thoughts, you wish to discover your real being and you will strive to obtain this precious jewel in the course of a retreat. But let us be wary of the easy course: escapism.

            Some seek refuge in a retreat because they are over-stressed by society, oppressed by the view of the world, even of their family, perturbed by incessant activity, and are on the quest for tranquillity. Others seek in a retreat the delights that one hope to encounter. These are indeed weak motivations which will not confer spiritual stations or spiritual ranks.

Ibn 'Arabi

            When he cannot put up with conditions around him, he may think that he is a superior person, but in reality conditions are stronger than he.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

            One would be missing out on discovering the clues whereby the divine reality is revealed in everyday life.

            When the contemplative does not see anything else than God in all beings, the void (khala: root of Khalwa, retreat) is impossible.

Ibn 'Arabi

            Therefore if one can maintain one's perspicacity in an awakened state in everyday life, it is a greater achievement.

            The key to withstanding the "pull" of the ordinary appearance of the physical world to facilitate turning within is difficult to acquire because it consists in overcoming one's attachment to favorable physical amenities or from emotional dependence. By downplaying the input from outside, one favors the emergence from within of thoughts that are not determined by existential conditions.

            However one may take a Sabbatical for a short time to get in touch with the deeper recesses of one's soul, since the challenge of our ordinary lives make it exceedingly difficult to achieve this.

            How are meditative souls awakened? How do they maintain themselves in the experience of the inner life? In the first place the adept values his object of attaining the inner life more than anything else, more than wealth, position, rank. Seclusion, silence, thoughtfulness, meditation and gentleness, all these make circumstances in their life appropriate for receiving illumination.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

METHOD

            In the previous issue, we learned, while in the first mode of thinking, to consider objects and phenomena as signs, clues as to the nature of Reality or God. Now as you enter the retreat, or as you turn within in your meditations, try to spot these clues inside.

            The first revelation unveiled to the retreatant is that the signs of the world need to precede the signs that he finds in his soul, for the world is prior to his soul.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

            Now while turned within, recollect how the physical scene appeared when you were in your ordinary consciousness: it varied according to your vantage point. If you have seen for example Notre Dame of Paris from different angles, you know how very different Notre Dame looks purely depending upon the vantage point.

            Now recollect your life situations, relations with people etc. Notice that you can look at the problem one way or another way, yet somehow these views are dynamically related. Therefore as Yoga points out, we are carrying in our psyche a biased picture of the world, of ourselves and of our relationship with the world. Consequently, if you wish to awaken:

            (i) Question your assessments.

            (ii) Now consider how your assessments would look from another angle - for example the point of view of another, irrespective of what they mean to you.

            (iii) Extrapolate between several points of view.

            (iv) Now plunge deeper within the core of your psyche (best done as you hold your breath after inhaling) in which you touch upon the impersonal wellspring of your being recurrently emerging from its virtuality. Thus you will have eliminated the personal projection of your psyche upon objective phenomena. This requires the most utter personal detachment which the Sannyasins call "Vairagya".

            (v) Try to unmask the hoax of our commonplace logic which infers cause to effect sequences in the process of becoming. Try to grasp other causal inferences, for example a) emerging from the depths of your being to your personality, then exercising some impact on circumstances, or b) from the programming of the universe to the "here and now".

            Since your psyche carries inexorably the impressions of the universe as interpreted by you, your psyche will now be somehow refurbished. If you forego what the universe or the circumstances of your life mean to you personally, looking outside from inside, you will recognize in the appearance of things features that now make sense to an emancipated mind. Moreover you will resonate with the reality of the universe or the realness of physical phenomena. Suddenly everything assumes great clarity; it is as though you had awakened from an illusion: you can now see what are the implications, the issues enacted by the apparent situations.

            Looking back upon how things looked when in the Nazut focus, you can clearly see how your psyche had masked reality and you had been living with these missassements taken for granted during your whole past. You have awakened from a hoax! Fancy enjoying freedom from what one erroneously mistook for one's self and one's plight!
