September 2004 Archives

You were my earth,  
whom I touched to feel the solid ground.  
My sky, clean and blue,  
when ever I feared the rain.

No siren call, of windswept seas,  
could coax me from your shore:  
my heaven, my earth,  
whose ground I feel no more.

Continuing on with my reading of Alan Watts, I came across these paragraphs, which express so well much of what I’ve been meaning to say:

In the strictest sense, we cannot actually think about life and reality at all, because this would have to include thinking about thinking, thinking about thinking about thinking, and so ad infinitum. One can only attempt a rational, descriptive philosophy of the universe on the assumption that one is totally separate from it. But if you and your thoughts are part of this universe, you cannot stand outside them to describe them. This is why all philosophical and theological systems must ultimately fall apart. To “know” reality you cannot stand outside it and define it; you must enter int it, be it, and feel it.

Speculative philosophy, as we know it in the West, is almost entirely a symptom of the divided mind, of man trying to stand outside himself and his experience in order to verbalize and define it. It is a vicious circle, like everything else which the divided mind attempts.

On the other hand, the realization that the mind is actually undivided must have a corresponding and equally far-reaching influence on thought and action. As the philosopher tries to stand outside himself and his thought, so, as we have seen, the ordinary man tries to stand outside himself and his emotions and sensations, his feelings and desires. The result is a fantastic confusion and misdirection of conduct which discovery of the mind’s unity must bring to an end.

So long as the mind is split, life is perpetual conflict, tension, frustration, and disillusion. Suffering is piled on suffering, fear on fear, and boredom on boredom. The more the fly struggles to get out of the honey, the faster he is stuck. Under the pressure of so much strain and futility, it is no wonder at all that men seek release in violence and sensationalism, and in the reckless exploitation of their bodies, their appetites, their material world, and their fellow men. What this must add to the necessary and unavoidable pains of existence is incalculable.

But the undivided mind is free from this tension of trying always to stand outside oneself and to be anywhere than here and now. Each moment is lived completely, and there is thus a sense of fulfillment and completeness. The divided mind comes to the dinner table and pecks at one dish after another, rushing on without digesting anything to find out better than the last. It finds nothing good, because there is nothing which it really tastes.

When, on the other hand, you realize that you live in, indeed are this moment now, and no other, that apart from this there is no past and no future, you must relax and taste to the full, whether it be pleasure or pain. At once it becomes obvious why this universe exists, why conscious beings have been produced, why sensitive organs, why space, time, and change. The whole problem of justifying nature, of trying to make life mean something in terms of its future, disappears utterly. Obviously, it all exists for this moment. It is a dance, and when you are dancing you are not intent on getting somewhere. You go round and round, but not under the illusion that you are pursuing something, or fleeing from the jaws of hell….

The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance. Like music, also, it is fulfilled in each moment of the course. You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if the meaning of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales….

When each moment becomes an expectation life is deprived of fulfillment, and death is dreaded for it seems that here expectation must come to an end. While there is life there is hope – and if one lives on hope, death is indeed the end. But to the undivided mind, death is another moment, complete like every moment, and cannot yield its secret unless lived to the full –

And I laid me down with a will.

Death is the epitome of the truth that in each moment we are thrust into the unknown. Here all clinging to security is compelled to cease, and wherever the past is dropped away and safety abandoned, life is renewed. Death is the unknown in which all of us lived before birth.

Nothing is more creative than death, since it is the whole secret of life. It means that the past must be abandoned, that the unknown cannot be avoided, that “I” cannot continue, and that nothing can be ultimately fixed. When a man knows this, he lives for the first time in his life. By holding his breath, he loses it. By letting it go he finds it.

Farídu’d-Dín `Attár, a 12th century Sufi poet, wrote a mystical poem called the Conference of the Birds (my favorite translation is in prose, by S. C. Nott).

In this poem, several thousand birds decide to set out on a journey to their Immortal King, along an inward path fraught with difficulty. Guiding them is the Hoopoe, who tells of the stages of the journey in verse, and relates various allegories to help the birds comprehend the requirements of the journey.

By the end, all of the birds perish but thirty, who barely make it to the doorstep of the King. But that part of the tale I leave to the reader…

How this story connects to my recent thoughts comes in the fifth of the seven valleys of the journey: the Valley of Unity. Since this is a mystical station I am trying very hard to understand right now, I decided to go back and read what the Hoopoe said about it, and found these lines:

In this valley everything is broken in pieces and then unified. All who raise their heads here raise them from the same collar. Although you seem to see many beings, in reality there is only one – all make one which is complete in its unity. Again, that which you see as a unity is not different from that which appears in numbers. And as the Being of whom I speak is beyond unity and numbering, cease to think of eternity as before and after; and since these two eternities have vanished, cease to speak of them. When all that is visible is reduced to nothing, what is there left to contemplate? …

The day will come when the Sun will draw aside the veil which covers it. So long as you are separate, good and evil will arise in you, but when you lose yourself in the sun of the divine essence they will be transcended by love. While you loiter on the road you will be held back by faults and weaknesses…

When the spiritual traveller enters this valley he will disappear and be lost to sight because the Unique Being will manifest himself; he will be silent because this Being will speak.

The part will become the whole, or rather, there will be neither part nor whole. In the School of the Secret you will see thousands of men with intellectual knowledge, their lips parted in silence. What is intellectual knowledge here? It stops on the threshold of the door like a blind child. He who discovers something of this secret turns his face from the kingdom of the two worlds. The Being I speak of does not exist separately; everyone is this Being, existence and non-existence is this Being.

Since perceiving the unity of duality in my thinking, there is another duality which requires a moment of attention: that between joy and duty – between what we want to do, and what we must or should do.

I have written extensively about joy as a fundamental motivation of the soul. I think it is the spirit, the wind, that bears our wings aloft. Duty, on the other hand, concerns the wings themselves.

The wind of spirit is formless, changing, and immensely powerful. it can only be harnessed if our wings are placed correctly in the flow, and angled for the ascent. Some add to the wind by flapping hard; some soar on the steady breeze. In short: If joy relates to the call of the spirit and the soul’s inspiration, perhaps duty is the requirements of form and the needs of this world. Success lies in the balance of the two.

If we are a lover in pursuit of his Beloved, holding to duty alone would be like striving for the Beloved because we should love Him. Joy is simply being near Him. It has nothing to do with us, or shoulds, or anything else. However, we cannot walk along the path without feet; we cannot orient ourselves without a compass; we cannot move without respecting the exigencies of motion.

As with duality of vision – where our eyes see one world and our inner sight another – so duty and joy can be harmonized. It is not what we do alone that justifies our action, or whether it causes us pleasure, but the unity of the two: the unity of becoming. Without heeding both sides, material and spiritual, our growth is hindered. Too much in one direction causes our wings to stall.

So as we feel the peerless wind running through our feathers, we must exert energy to beat our wings and loft higher. In the mind’s eye we know our destination, but it requires mortal eyes to scout the path. Both kinds of vision demand respect. Even as a poet writes in words and meter, his inspiration cannot substitute for a pen. Both parts assist in the task. Yet there is really only one nature. As with any unity, the parts combine to form a harmonious spirit if allowed to interplay.

The aim, then, is growth, becoming, deepening in the quality of being. It is to be, to the richest extent: happiness in the present, and morality guiding the future. It is similar to how a craftsman approaches his task: He draws up a plan, and sets to building. He holds to the plan as best he can, but he does not gauge his work simply by asking if the plan is being fulfilled. He looks at the structure coming to be, and seeks a kind of “right feeling”, a kind of joy, in what he sees. He can tell from that feeling if the building or the plan needs changing. He looks for a harmony between his joy and the requirements of the plan.

This is a challenge, of course, because it is all too easy to focus on one and not the other (as I know from experience, and from watching others). Once we make a plan, it’s easy to forgo constant assessment of the process; or else it’s easy to look at our feelings, and ignore the needs of the plan. Yet both are parts of the unity of growing.

I relate this to my daily life whenever I look to plan my future. I want to follow the moral path with willing feet. I want to serve people from a desire to serve them, since acting without such desire is only too evident. To find this way of balancing duty and joy, I must seek what is best for all. And perhaps, if I ascend high enough in my vision of things, and come to see people as my true Beloved, what is best for the world will be the same as what is best for me.

It is said that I dream too much.  
Perhaps I am a thing of dream  
always on the point of vanishing...

Yet while the world carries on  
I will dream for it a better life,  
that perchance these dreams may fuel  
the industry of souls and seers.

The real desert  
is a space between the mountains.  
A hollow in the green and watered Earth.

It stretches out  
and fills with its own emptiness;  
the silence is crowded  
by a thousand unheard things.

Its song of wind blows and blows  
drifting the sands about.  
I watch the long, lonely dance.  
It is never and always the same.

Reaching for heaven,  
I draw back fingers burnt by the sun;  
and ponder the endless skies  
my hands can never touch...

Made from the dust of stars  
I am planet bound --  
longing to fly, but having no wings.

Then let this poem be my flight:  
I will gather up dreams  
beneath wings of prayer  
and traverse, in my mind's eye, every distance  
until I leave this Earth behind  
and, without moving,  
stride among the heavens.

Although religion tells us that none is worthy of admiration, save God, in another way human beings are the life of the world. I offer a brief metaphor to explain this, based on an earlier poem, to give an example of the beauty in our beauty:

Consider a torch, how humble it is. It is a mere stick of wood, existing only to be burnt. We even cover it over with black pitch! In respect to beauty, it is nothing.

However, the world is over-shadowed with darkness. A lost people is wandering in a Palace of infinite treasures, which they fail to perceive. “Hearts have they, with which they understand not, and eyes have they with which they see not!” This palace is filled with masterworks of such beauty, it would shake the soul to its foundation! But that beauty lies hidden. There is no light to see it by.

In such a place, a torch is much more than a stick of wood. Ignited by heat, and kindled to flame, its light can reveal those beauties to the eye. Still, it is not the torch that matters, but the light – and dearly so. Without it, the masterworks of Creation would lie unseen and unappreciated. Indeed, that glory is everywhere, all around us at every moment. We simply lack illumination.

We may be humble, pitiful, and poor, but we reveal God’s attributes in this world, much like a mirror reflecting light into the darkness. I praise people for what I see in them. I know that what touches my eyes is God’s beauty; but mortal eyes require an earthly form to see it in. So I honor those places, and keep them close to my heart, because they show me glimpses of the Divine.

In like manner, a flower does little more than capture the light of the sun: holding some of it back, reflecting the rest. From this, we see color, and from that, tremendous beauty. Should a flower wilt because it doesn’t shine on its own? Because the light we see comes from the Sun and not itself?

As children of the infinite, we exist as the sum of all human possibilities, reflecting in them the attributes of heaven. For it is remarkable that being so cruel, we can show tenderness; that being so tender, we remain cruel; that being nothing in a scheme of galaxies and angels, yet we manifest the Divine. #title Human nature #date 12/05/2004

There are several things that people do simply because they are people. It is not by intention, but done unconsciously, for no other reason than human nature. I have been pondering this while I attend as a security guard at Bahá’í conferences. There are several traits I’ve noticed, but one in particular serves well for an example:

Imagine a group of people standing outside of a room where prayers are being said. This is a common situation, where silence is needed, and very difficult to maintain. It tests the patience of anyone whose job it is to keep that silence.

When people meet friends after a long time, they will get excited and forget their surroundings, no matter how much they understand that need for quiet. Forgetting where they are, they will talk. A little talking leads to more talking. If other nearby are also talking, the volume of the group gradually rises, until things get quite loud.

So it is that even when a conscientious group of people are observing silence outside a prayer meeting, if some of them should happen to meet friends, the whole of them will soon become rather noisy. The group itself is unaware of this happening, so lost are they in meeting their friends. Even if constantly asked for silence, they are almost certain to become loud again.

It is easy to see why this frustrates those in charge of keeping silence. The group seems intractable, willfully disobeying the constant requests to stop talking. It can start a cycle of escalating reprimand, with growing resentment from the group, until the people actually take pleasure in frustrating the coordinator’s need for silence.

In a Bahá’í gathering, there is fortunately the appeal to Bahá’u’lláh, Who removes the focus from the irate facilitator, and the group is then willing to quiet down despite any upset. But surely there must be better ways of managing these situations, without tempers needing to flare up at all.

Thinking on this for a long time, I came to realize that there is no problem here to be solved. It is simply a case of human nature: trying to fight against it is what causes the trouble. So what can one do?

As a security person in charge of keeping people silent, I’ve found that people basically have two drives: their nature and their will. Their nature is the default response to any situation – such as talking when friends walk by – and their will is the option to choose differently. Nature and will are typically at odds. Otherwise, we would always respond solely according to our whim. The battle between nature and will is something that requires much energy and patience.2

The first step in dealing with people is to know that we all face this struggle. No one is free from it. It happens every time we’re faced with a choice: will we follow our inclination, or do what we know is right?

Since everyone is engaged in this contest, they should be respected for it. Always know that people are waging this inner war, and that they spend tremendous energy on it. How does this help with managing people? Rather than fighting their nature, you can enlist the support of their will, and they will fight on your behalf.

In the case of needing silence, I find that in most cases a person does not need to be told to be quiet – they already know this – but simply made aware that they are making noise. Once they become aware of what their nature is doing, they seek to overcome it. If instead one tries to fight their nature, it only disrespects the individual, and provokes other responses from their nature, such as fighting back.

Thus an adult can often be corrected in their behavior simply by looking at them long enough. If they see you seeing them, they will look at themselves and identify the problem. If your eyes show that you respect and encourage their ability to resolve the matter, they will be only too happy to do so.

In all cases, avoid conflict between your will and their nature. This runs the danger of sub-ordinating their will, and then there is no help from them at all. They may become truculent, pugilant, even downright nasty. At that point, some kind of force is usually needed, or the intervention of a third party whose words might can summon the person’s will to the fore again.

Unfortunately, this whole mechanism is very subtle and hard to see. If a facilitator gets angry at an attendee, he is likely to provoke their worst side, and then feel entirely justified in his anger. He never sees that there is a better way of working with the person who now feels like an enemy.

Respecting the battle people fight within means recognizing that at heart, they want to do the right thing. They want what you want – if your request is fair. If one can only tap into this willingness, and empower it, the person is often willing to do whatever is asked as if it were their own desire.

I have tried this approach with thousands of people, of all ages, friends and strangers, the kind and the irritable. It works best with children – strange as that may seem – who are naturally eager to please if you believe in their willingness to do so.

The greatest mistake is to assume that people want to disobey. It may be true that it is natural for people to disobey, but wrong to assume they wish to. Their will is often quite opposite to their nature. At heart, I think people want to be kind, sharing, and helpful, even if their nature seeks otherwise.

If no one believes in the goodness of a person’s will, they can eventually give up on the battle within, and relax entirely into the habits of their nature. Educating people is not only about teaching them what is right, but believing in their willingness to make that choice – no matter how many times their nature betrays them. After all, if our nature were already perfect, we would not need education.

In essence, this means treating people as if you expect them to want to help you. If your request is fair, my experience is that this is almost always the case. Even if people’s nature prompts them to rebel, summon again the assistance of their will by believing in it. It is amazing what people will do if you show a little faith in them.

The last part to managing people is not to make things hard on their nature. Don’t set them up for failure. For example, choosing a conference venue where it is easy for people to congregate outside a prayer room; because talking is exactly what they’re going to do, no matter how many times you ask them not to. By helping people to help themselves, it can be quite easy to handle very large groups of people, and even have them enjoy you doing so.

Having described the veil, and the merits of the veil, I was struck by a thought of how to beyond it. It is not a passing of the body, however, but only of the spirit. Our eyes remain on this side, with our vision on the other. It’s like looking at things from a higher perspective while still seeing the details.

Religion says the veil may be crossed in a single instant. Although it can take a lifetime, the journey is less than a hair’s breadth:

Behold it is closer to you than your life-vein! Swift as the twinkling of an eye ye can, if ye but wish it, reach and partake of this imperishable favor…

Thou art but one step away from the glorious heights above and from the celestial tree of love…

[The wayfarer] may cross these… stages… in a single breath, if God will and desire it.

What can take us there? I think that just as the body is moved by the motive force of will, the soul is lifted by the motive force of love. It is not love of an ordinary sort, but the very love we are here to learn: love for the whole. This is a love which manifests itself in different ways according to the parts, but is directed at the being of the whole, and the movement of that being. It sees the whole reflected in every part, until it sees no parts at all, even though the eyes always will.

In thinking about the outward signs of such a love, I came across a statement by Bahá’u’lláh about equality. He said that although treating others equally is a station beloved of God, regarding others as higher than one’s self “is above this station”4. Which got me to thinking: this is exactly how a lover treats his beloved. He regards her as higher than himself, such that he would willingly give up his life. This reminded me of a statement from `Abdu’l-Bahá, about how the believers should be when they meet each other:

Should one soul from amongst the believers meet another, it must be as though a thirsty one with parched lips has reached to the fountain of the water of life, or a lover has met his true beloved.

This points toward a view of things very much like an impassioned lover’s. Which creates paradox, in light of the following statement from Rúmí, which is quoted in the Seven Valleys:

Love is a veil betwixt the lover and the loved one; More than this I am not permitted to tell.

If love is a means through the veil, love is also a veil? This could mean that love of certain parts – preference – can hinder us from loving the whole: like a lover who falls so much in love with one person that he can barely remember the existence of others.

In loving the All, every face is different yet the same, and there is only one aspect to creation, just as all lanterns shine with the same light, “… until none shall contemplate anything whatsoever but that he shall see God therein.” This does not contradict my earlier beliefs on Quality, since the eyes themselves do not pass the veil. It is not the places of the light’s manifestation that I refer to, but the source of their illumination.

The All is like a pure light, which is fragmented and perceived by the eye. Seeing the All is seeing the light of the sun in everything, and not viewing things as fundamentally apart – until one communes with the All itself, no matter how variable its manifestations, or the needs of those manifestations. This is looking at the flower, but seeing it as a mirror of the sun. “… and some have drunk of the wine of oneness and these see nothing but the sun itself.” To reach this vision requires love, because otherwise the heart is not willing to step beyond.

Kindling this love is the difficult part. If we saw true Reality, I think we fall in love with it in an instant. So we are ultimately faced with the task of loving the All before we can see it. Isn’t this the very province of faith? Perhaps in developing faith, and being willing to trust in the most positive view of life possible, such a love can bloom.

If the world around us is a living metaphor for the world of the spirit, then in the relationships we have here, perhaps there is something to be discerned of our soul’s connection to the All.

Christ referred to God as the Father, and the believers as His children. I find this image very rich, because it describes a bond of love, and a scenario in which the Parent creates a loving environment for His child to grow. If God is the Father, and this world that environment, then what does that imply?

Children are engaged in two principles activities as they develop: learning and play. They work too, but hopefully not too much or for too long. We enact laws to prevent this. Too much work robs the child of his childhood; enough work teaches him the meaning of responsibility. There is a balance to be struck.

I believe I am a child of the spirit. This life, like a womb, is a matrix for the development of my higher capacities. Watching over me is a loving Father Who guides my development, but does not interfere. If we pay too much attention to children, or give them the answers, they do not learn for themselves – which is one of their principle activities. If I am a spiritual child, and this world is my first home, then perhaps I, too, have two basic impulses to explore: to learn and to play. There is work, chores, to do, but never so much as to dim my spirit.

What would it mean to learn and play spiritually? I am still learning these things. I find that such learning increases my vision, which engenders virtue, while play is the exploration of my spiritual powers, such as imagination, creativity, invention, and dreams. These are what inspire me, and make me feel amazement at being alive.

There is nothing to say that what earns us money is not also play, in this sense. These two elements exist on separate levels: the material activity and the spiritual. What is important is that the path we choose for ourselves fit our needs as immature beings: that we allow for making mistakes, remember the value of joy, and never lose sight of the fact that life is essentially a thing of wonder and mystery.

The importance of this idea – of recognizing that we are “as little children” – has to do with the plans we make for ourselves and the guidance we give others. If we create an atmosphere in ignorance of the realities of childhood, growth and development may be inhibited. If school and society are too Draconian in their demands, we know it hinders innovation and creativity. If we are too hard on ourselves, we restrict our willingness to try new things, or to change in unexpected ways. This world is intended for our education; we must look to its needs in those terms.

If a community of children were to design a plan of activity intended for adults, it would fail to engage the interest of its members. This happens because what works for adults does not serve children. So if in fact we are children spiritually, things here should have more the character of a playground, and a school, than a place for the endeavors of maturity. To regard it otherwise is to take our lives and our efforts far too seriously, too soon. We end up constantly chastising ourselves for our failures and shortcomings.

If this metaphor describes our relation to life, then our first objective is to learn, and the second is to explore with joy the possibilities of our nature. These two activities increase spirit and cause upliftment. Anything more grave than this, I fear, will lead to weariness, and a simple longing to free. Can that be right? Treat a child as an adult, and he takes no genuine interest in his life. He does what he must, but only because he “should”. Yet if you let a child explore his childhood, he will naturally find his way to joy. It is natural for a child to be happy. They possess an inherent exuberance at being alive. I think our souls, too, share this feeling, whenever we safeguard the requirements of its nature.

If we see ourselves as little children, perhaps we can better understand the value of this existence, and find it easier to fulfill our purpose. We are babes in a mystical sandbox, youth in a spiritual playground, only beginning to discern the purpose for our being. We have chores to accomplish, and laws from the Parent to follow, but otherwise let us enjoy the infancy in our soul’s existence, and take pleasure in the opportunities of life.

when tragedy befalls the truly kind,  
they look tenderly on their malefactor,  
wondering more at the strange variety of God  
than cursing the Hand of fate and glory.

when anguish settles into the heart of a lover  
the only fear to cross his mind  
is the discovery of this pain by his Beloved;  
so he grips it tight, folding it into his bone.

when sorrow pays call on those who wonder,  
sweet nostalgia is their only perception;  
a remembrance of how things aren't, now,  
filled with the mystery of how they could be.

life offers a full, four-course meal:  
Let the hearty diners dig in.

In a single clap of thunder  
I heard the angels hold concourse.  
Speaking a myriad of tongues  
they spoke meaning with a single syllable.

In the aftermath of silence,  
as the rains dissolved me into a dew,  
I stepped beyond my puddle  
to join the rays that dry the land...

The lover carves himself into a feast,  
to be dined on and reunited with his Friend.  
His glory, then, is the ruddy glow  
of his Beloved's fattened cheeks!

Now I walk on gravel to soothe my feet,  
and dry my hands in a running brook;  
I look for warmth in the chill of dawn  
and cool myself under a noon-day sun.

My peace is the heart of cities: honking, ringing, smoking.  
Everywhere I look, the crowds are still.  
Not a sound beneath all the vaults of heaven.  
In this silence of prayer, all voices speak to me, screaming.

I find the living under the ground,  
and corpses throughout the land.  
The world as described to me makes no sense,  
while the world I experience is indescribable.

Schools only empty me of knowledge;  
in forgetting, I remember the important things.  
Too serious and grave, I play the fool;  
with a child's heart, I see the meaning of it all.

The faster I move, the longer it takes to arrive;  
in stillness, I visit every place at every moment.  
I close my eyes to see, and plug my ears to hear:  
I fast to train the palate and quench my thirst.

Now is time to throw away my pen,  
and begin the real writing:  
Let all contradictions twirl and blend:  
There is only He.

When there is only God,  
there is not even what is not He.

If I reach to touch that Ocean  
it will be a hand of watery form:  
that Ocean caressing its own waves.

Of what use is all this striving,  
this development,  
if my longing is already satisfied?

It seems there is a beauty to growing,  
and this is why we grow:  
that growth befits His Name "The Fashioner".  
Then, even my movement, my stillness,  
is a thing of service to Him.

As for me, myself, alone -- this not-me --  
there is neither need, nor place, nor movement:  
only He.

I feel upon my heart  
a sacred fire.  
It consumes me;  
I am its fuel.

Slowly, it turns a thing  
of oil and wood  
into light and warming heat.  
I am the mystery of transformation.

I am now a beacon in the dark,  
a torch in the hand of the Divine.

Look not at the black pitch  
of my heart,  
it is needed for the flames.

Consenting to burn,  
I find meaning  
in each of my wooden imperfections.

Now the anguish is upon me;  
the darkness scatters at my touch.

I burn to nothing,  
casting light on all around me:  
I burn to illumine.

I may be only a rod of wood,  
but what I reveal  
is beyond compare.

The evanescence of vapor;  
or of dreams;  
or the humble devotion  
of planets about their sun  
who in the end  
must be consumed in its fire.

In limitation there is a special beauty. Whatever is limited is more dear. The less time we spend with someone, the more precious it is. The less a commodity is found, the higher its price. Limitation may confine our existence, but it is also the heart of value. When limits are placed on people, they become creative; when placed on experience, we become more aware. Few people pay attention so well as those who know things will end.

Limitation is not the bane of our existence, but its life. Whenever a person accomplishes great things by little means, there is cause for awe. The ninth symphony by Beethoven – my favorite work of music – was composed by a man who could not hear it. That fact alone speaks of glory.

We long to escape our bonds. We would rather have perfect sight, perfect hearing, perfect abilities. But if we had them, there would be no great beauty to our actions, no reason for stories to be written of great heroes facing tremendous odds. Life would be too perfect. There would be no thrill at the fact of accomplishment.

My friend Sina took up his pool cue one night, and jumped a ball over another to make a beautiful bank shot. He planned the shot, but was about to step away, saying it would be impossible. I said, it’s just a game, what can it hurt? So he did, and made it flawlessly. It was not the perfection of the shot that I admired most, but that he, a human being, had done such a thing. We were both in awe. It sent a chill through the room. I had to take a moment, just to appreciate the beauty of what I’d seen – even if it was something so simple, so meaningless.

Had Sina been a perfect being, I would have been no more impressed than if a robot had done it. It was not the action that was so beautiful, but the difficulty. Because I know the limits of human nature, I recognized in his actions a rare beauty.

In this way, the beauty of life lies, not in the perfections we achieve, but in the limitations we overcome to reach them. Who would watch the Olympics if it were not difficult to do such things? It is moving from a lower state to a higher that is glorious, not the higher state alone. It is not the top of a mountain alone which makes it worth climbing, but that it takes climbing to get there. There is something soulful to the climb, which a quick helicopter ride can never offer.

Imperfections, then, grant us access to the Divine, to beauty and glory. They are a doorway to different grade of being. They are the spirit’s foil, against whom the meaning of this drama unfolds.

Whenever I see you,  
my eyes feel as if  
soaked in wine  
and kindled into flame...

Two burning orbs,  
which lose their color  
in the ruddy fire.  
All vision is gone  
but your memory.

I was thinking today how if we focus on the parts of the body, each individually, we cannot see the larger movement that is “the body”. And if we focus on the body, we will not see the dynamics of human interaction. And if we focus on only the relationships we see, we will never comprehend the complex dynamics of society.

In order to apprehend the greater sphere, we must, in a way, see the whole beyond the parts. Engineers do this when they think about a computer system. There are too many parts to pay attention to all at once: so they think of the system as a construct, moving in and out of focus as they examine the relationships of the different parts.

In life, too, this happens. For instance, the appearance of “evil” hinges on our seeing only fragments of a larger scheme. “Evil” comes into being when we confine an infinite movement into a fixed, finite view. This idea is given in an allegorical form in the Qur’an, and in the Bahá’í Writings. The constraints of our awareness act like a horse’s blinders, which cut the overall scene into small sections, each telling a different story, and none reflecting the view as a whole.

To move from a limited view to a larger view is the role of education. For example, an engineer must learn thousands of details to understand a computer. In the beginning, it seems magical. No matter how much is learned, the relation of the countless parts is a mystery. Then, once a critical mass of understanding is achieved, the blocks of knowledge begin to fit like puzzle pieces. The principles can be abstracted from the details, and since the principles are few, the engineer is no longer defeated by the magnitude of the details.

But no engineer can overcome the limitations of his focus. He will never be able to hold in his mind a vision of all the details, all at once. However, since he possesses an understanding of the directing principles, he can visualize the computer as a whole even though he cannot see it whole. He will never see every part at once, but by his understanding he can see the computer as a whole nonetheless. The limits of his vision relate to him; the extent of the subject relates to the machine. To see the machine as it is, rather than how it appears within the confines of his eye, he must give up the way he sees things, in order to understand them despite his eyes.

In so doing, the engineer’s mind traverses from one plane – the perception of individual details – to another plane, which he cannot reach without education. It is not that the concepts are impossible, but that nature of vision cannot be expressed. It must be awakened through the process of education. (There is more on this in an earlier essay, The process of learning and mystical pursuit).

To give another example: At ground level in a city, we can see the individual people, streets, and buildings. But we are unable to see the whole city. Even with binoculars, or a high power telescope, we would no be able to see beyond the range of the horizon.

If we could soar like a bird, however, we would be able to see more: how the streets connect, how traffic flows, how the city is laid out. To gain that higher view, we must give up our sight of the smaller parts. It is not possible to see it all, because the eye is limited. We can see some of the parts, or all of the whole, but never all the parts at once.

Moving higher, we see how the cities connect – losing altogether our view of the buildings and streets. Higher still, and we see how nations are situated. Further and further out, we become aware of galaxies, clusters, even universal harmonies – by depriving ourselves of the ability to see anything in detail, at all.

But then we move back down. Having seen all we can, and how unity works even at universal scales, we return to our original city and see it with new eyes. It still has the same details – and we, the same limited vision; we can’t see beyond a city block – but now we see far more than the street and the buildings alone. We look at the street – and see the city, the nation, the world, of which that street is a part. Even though our view end at the next hill, we see the street as part of something immense beyond imagining, a nested set of interrelationships binding each bit of matter throughout the universe. We look at the parts, but see the whole.

Education thus requires that we sacrifice our knowledge of things, and how we see them. We must give up seeing the street, to see the city. Education destroys the models we’re used to. It changes the world, much as every youngster’s world is shattered when he leaves his childhood town for the first time. The world forever after is bigger, and cannot fit back into how we used to see it.

By sacrificing what we see, we come to see more: without our eyes. The engineer does not need to look at computer chips to know they are there, or how they function. He now has a sight which does not depend on sight. Even if he looks at the chips themselves, he does not see them individually, but as a function within the whole. The way he saw the world before is forever gone, replaced by a vision larger than eyes are capable of.

I think that, in this way, we are transformed but never destroyed. If our “self” is in fact the confines of our vision – the finite models we use to grasp an infinite reality – then we abandon our “selves” a little bit each time we learn. We sacrifice what our eyes see, to gain sight. We give up the limits of the subject, to embrace the unseeable dimensions of the object. We climb higher and higher on the ladders of perception, until our vision is no longer determined by our own sight, but the expanse of the realities we examine.

Before the advent of blogging, I used to jot my thoughts on paper in composition books. I’ve finally gathered these past entries together into a kind of historical blog. It may have nothing more than sentimental value, but it’s there if anyone is interested. The entries range from 1997 until 2003, although since I no longer know the actual dates, none are given.

In the philosophy of non-dualism, it is often the thinker’s goal to “go beyond” the multiple appearances which present themselves to the mind, and thus to commune with “pure being”. This transcendentalist ideal is rather common, and I think I was trying to get there myself as recently as my essay on the Hidden Door.

In the past month and a half, however, my objective has changed. Although I agree with the concept of maya – that we project our selfhood upon the infinite possibilities of the Divine, which becomes the world of our experience – I do not think our goal is simply to step beyond it. It would be sadly ironic if the purpose of life were merely to escape it.

Instead, I think our condition has itself a purpose, and a fulfillment. For instance: In its pure essence, light contains every color, and is completely white. The eye has the ability to see its different aspects when reflects from material objects, which filter the light by absorbing some of it to themselves. So when light emanates from the Sun, it is almost pure, complete; when it hits the Earth, it divides and fractures – and hence we are able to see its colors.

In a sense, maya is the many colors of the light, that we see in its countless, varying forms. The eye is able to perceive in these forms different aspects of the pure, undifferentiated light shone from the Sun. Yet there is great beauty in these colors and the things we see. I don’t think that the existence of light as a pure essence means that we need to see beyond color, and cause them to disappear from our vision. The beauty may be in the pure light, but it’s potential is manifested by its division in this world.

The real question, I think, is one of relationship. How we relate to the pure essence, on the one hand, and how we relate to its plural manifestations on the other. As for reality, only light itself is real: color is perceived. As for experience, only color is seen, with light serving as a foundation. The eye will never perceive pure light, even though light is the basis of its function, nor will it perceive color without implying the presence of light.

These two aspects: the undifferentiated light, and differentiated color, serve each other. Color shows us the beauty hidden in the light, and light reveals the glories manifested by color. The light begins its journey at the sun, and ends in the visual cortex of the brain. Trying to remove color from this dynamic – by apprehending directly the essence of the light – is little different from wishing we never had a cortex in the first place. It omits the manifest dimension of the light.

This idea is still non-dual, in the sense that there is only light. Perception does not add anything real to the experience, only our awareness of it. It is dual, in the sense that light has all of these capacities to amaze us, and reveal new secrets. Thus, it is both non-dual and dual, as regards its essence and its manifestation. It is one, in a way that includes even the many.

How do this relate to purpose? Instead of seeking to obviate the manifest dimension of the light – and remove from experience this aspect of being – I think we are just meant to enjoy it, explore it, revel in it. We are to know and worship the light, by apprehending the significance of color. Light is a message of love from the Sun, and color, its language. By reading it, we connect to the Sun, just as a lover connects to the heart of his loved one when he reads her letters. Since we cannot approach the sun directly – without consuming our delicate nature – these epistles of light form the bond. We bridge the gap of end space in our hearts, by using our minds on Earth. This is the special power of the soul: to transcend by faith, using common words.

Once this is done, the lover does not end his life. To do so would also end his love. Rather, he yields consciousness of anything but the beloved. He strives, not to end color, but to magnify and laud and revel in the beauties of light. He becomes an artist, extracting from its potential all the possibilities it contains. Such is his communion. He may never bridge the limits of space, but he can climb the ladder of his love, and never cease to grow in wonder.

To light, color is not real – but it is real enough to the eye. Maya is not what we see, rather it is the truth of seeing. Would not ending maya altogether be the same as blindness? Perhaps maya is the glory of the Infinite as it shines and reaches our eyes, with their inherent limitations. In this way, every aspect of being contributes to the same end, the purpose of the light’s shining.

In 13th century Christianity, a practice arose among the believers of beating themselves publically while they urged others to repent. The concept of being harsh with ourselves for our flaws, while exhorting those around us to act better and smarter, is an attitude which has always followed religion.

Why the recurring pattern? Being hard on ourselves seems so unlike what God would intend. It may even cause Him pain. Imagine how a parent would feel if their child constantly berated himself for his lack of maturity. Yet that is the meaning of childhood! If knowledge of his immaturity were to deprive the child of the joys of his childhood, what parent wouldn’t moan in despair? Then I wonder what we do to our Parent, when we do this to ourselves.

Too many of the people I talk to beat themselves with the cudgel of perfection. It is not even true perfection, but what we imagine of perfection: a thing we have never observed. Perhaps there is a kinder view of perfection, one in which a child may be a child, and an adult an adult, with time allowed between. If our flaws stem from a lack of vision and understanding, isn’t there a perfection where this is OK for a while? Perhaps even necessary for that vision to unfold as it should?

As I write these entries, I rewrite for myself the models presented to me in my youth. There has always been so much pressure, from every side, not to fail. In high school, bad grades were connected to complete failure in life. Without them, I could not get into the right school, find a prestigious degree, a high-paying job, gain respect, have a life… Every moment, my whole future was made dependent on making the right choices – even if I was just learning how to make good choices! It’s a chicken and egg problem: how to make good decisions without the experience of making good decisions. Sometimes we resolve the dilemma by collapsing into a heap, and beating ourselves up to remove the strain of impending punishment. After which we just want to check out for a while, go get a drink, watch TV, do something utterly mindless – vegetate as we relieve the impossible pressures of being flawed at becoming perfect.

I cannot believe God intended things this way. The more I read, the more I think it is not the way of growth. Bahá’u’lláh wrote:

Lay not upon your souls that which will weary them and weigh them down, but rather what will lighten and uplift them, so that they may soar on the wings of the Divine verses towards the Dawning-place of His manifest signs; this will draw you nearer to God, did ye but comprehend.

If I seek what uplifts me, it is very different from seeking perfection. If I seek perfection, I will always fail; I must always be in a constant state of failing. If I seek upliftment – joy, beauty, wonder – I can succeed every time I make an effort. I only fail only if I don’t. It doesn’t even matter how uplifting that upliftment is – whereas the goal of perfection demands nothing less. The path of upliftment says I am at zero only as long as I do nothing; the path of perfection says I’m at negative for the rest of eternity.

Being always at negative causes me to grow weary of the enterprise. It makes me depressed, frustrated. My unruly nature simply can’t gain an inch on perfection. I try a little, or try a lot, basically I never move. No wonder my heart gives up on the goal, and turns its focus to blaming the limitations of my petty nature. It was this I spoke against in an earlier essay, The Cause of Joy.

But I cannot believe life is this hard. We are taking things too seriously. A child is not expected to fill the shoes of an adult. He grows every day, in every way, but is not chastised for his rate of growth. No parent would plan an educational system with the enduring result of hating the need to be educated. It is a self-imagined hell, whose bleak horizons are the belief that we are not worthy of love.

If a loving Parent – God, the Father – created this schoolhouse of life out of love, to educate us, how have we reshaped it into a place of torment, where the heart does penance for failing to be perfect? Education is so easily a cause of joy and wonderment, why has the process of life become a horror? Ignorance and failure are the hallmarks of a student, why have they become brands of shame? The purpose of this mortal education is to train our wings for endless flight, why do we dwell on the weakness of their present, fledgling nature? If I flagellate myself for being what I am, and for not being what I am not, how can this be what God intended.

As I drive along the highway, losing myself to the being of Driving, I find that a couple strange things occur: First, I no longer feel a sense of loneliness. The road, the car, the passing trees, and I, all create something together of which we’re all a part. It feels like a community of spirit, a greater experience that we all share. Funny that the road could seem like a friend, but in those moments it does.

Second, I start to hear the road and the car – and everything else – talking to me. They don’t use words, of course, but through my intuition the road tells me how to steer, the engine tells me how to shift and apply the gas, the trees tell me where to look for possible dangers. As one, an intimate communication develops, which also dispels my feeling of loneliness.

My instinct is to say I am becoming “one with the road”, but I find something wrong in that. When I think of my body, I think of it as a unit: it functions as a unit, the parts interact as a unit. It may be that the brain and heart are more critical to its operation, but this does not mean that my body is “my heart becoming one with the other organs”. Speaking of my body in terms of any one part being “one” with the others sounds strange. There is only one “body”, which is made up of “body parts”. Viewed as a separate, they are separate; viewed as a whole, there is only the whole. It would sound odd to say that one part is at one with the other parts.

The same holds for myself. If I imagine I am “one with the road”, I am still failing to accept the unity of Driving. I am not giving my selfhood up to it. I still want to be an “I” who is “at one” with other things. But there is only Driving. As parts, we each have our names; but as a greater unity, we all disappear. There is no room for self within the higher Beings we participate in.

It is so natural to constantly set myself apart from the world that I can see why unity is so difficult for me to grasp. It is all around us, all the time – the unity of our body, of the ecosystem, of natural phenomena – but instinctively the mind wants to name and categorize; not for a particular purpose, but as though to establish the being of the things it sees, and thus make itself the ground of its experience of being.

There is an enormous difference between relating to a name, as a symbol, and relating to it as if it were real. This July I wrote several entries on the difference between these two: ideas and reality. The kind of naming that makes unity difficult to grasp is when I see things through their names, rather than just using the name to direct my eyes.

So I find myself in the situation of driving along, being “I” with respect to myself – and an odd form of nothingness with respect to Driving – when suddenly I look at the road passing under me and think, “I am driving this car.” That is like the brain claiming it moves my limbs, when in fact countless organic processes occur between my intention and the muscle’s contraction. In the abstract, yes, I drive the car, but in reality, there is only Driving.

This leads me to realize that the unity of Driving itself is just part of another unity. Driving combined with Destination make Travel. Joined with Purpose these form Wayfaring. And so on. All these unities, each part of a higher unity – until they merge into an Absolute Unity. This Absolute Unity is where all the differences between the lesser Unities are subsumed, and where their identities disappear.

In this station of Being, every beginning and end is merged. Even the concepts of beginning and end are swept away. They remain separate in regard to themselves, but naught with respect to the All. Can anyone say where the body begins and ends? A particular process, perhaps, but as a whole, there is a only a unified organic movement. I may be driving home in one aspect of my being, but I am also simultaneously leaving and returning: still in relation to my car, speeding along in relation to the highway. All of these particulars, each subsumed in the unity it helps to form, until all of them are lost in the final, Absolute Unity.

This is the plane whereon the vestiges of all things are destroyed in the traveler, and on the horizon of eternity the Divine Face riseth out of the darkness, and the meaning of “All on the earth shall pass away, but the face of thy Lord….” is made manifest.

Sometimes I refer to this as “being one with everything”, but now I suspect this phrase is confusing me. Referring oneness to my self only enforces the sense of separation. Rather, on the plane of the Absolute, there is only that. There is only the being of an All which is neither many, nor one-in-contrast-to-many. It combines even the concepts of manyness and oneness. Hmm…. what is that Being… If oneness with it is anything like giving myself up to Driving, I would think all loneliness should disappear, and that the universe would start “talking” to me. That sounds like a good experiment.

Driving the road between Yosemite Park and San Francisco, my skin toasting in the sun and my heart communing with the spirit of Driving, a thought came to me about the nature of this world – the veil. It stems from a story written by `Attar. He writes that a great king once possessed such dazzling beauty, his subjects expired instantly on meeting him. Wishing the well-being of his people, he locked himself away in his castle, but set up a huge mirror so he could still wave to them and show them that he loved them. He separated himself out of love, that they would not be overcome, and have a chance to know his love.

This caused me to imagine a perfect Being, possessed of an equal love. Since it is the nature of love to express itself, and shower its light, He chose to bring into being creatures to receive that love, the way some parents are inspired to have children. This, then, would be the reason we are here, because He wished that love to be known.

Having created us, He could not reveal His love right away. Such an outpouring would obliterate us before we could appreciate it. If the sun rose too quickly, plants would not survive the transition from darkness to light, from coolness to warmth. The way of fragile things is graduation, so He needed a way to manifest His love gradually, in order for it to be known.

If love is light, then we are the eyes to see it. But if a bright light appears too suddenly, it brings only blindness and pain. We would not appreciate a single moment of its brilliance. Thus, in consideration of our frailty, darkness was created. In the relative darkness we can open our eyes, and accustom ourselves to vision. By appearing gradually, we learn to appreciate the light, and its infinite varieties of shape, texture, and color. We can see the beauty hidden in the light because it is reduced from its pure whiteness, to the shades and hues of physical objects. The world is our veil – and our filter, allowing us to see what otherwise would overwhelm our vision completely.

So the perfect Being created a world of limitation, of seeming imperfection, to attenuate His love to the hearts of its recipients. Out of love, He created the veil of the world: an act of love to protect us from the overpowering force of that love. The imperfection we see are mercy, for without them, we would carried away by His awesome beauty. Without the limits of our awareness, we would not be aware at all. Our limitations, then, aid our awareness, much as warming up aids physical exercise. There is nothing but love implied in the nature of our being.

If this rings a note of truth, it indicates a fundamental shift in how I view my flaws. They are like the lid upon my eye, at once obscuring my vision, but also protecting it. To see, I must open my eye – and remove the obstruction. But until I am ready to see, the lid serves me at the same time it inhibits me. Removing the veil in order to see is a boon to awareness; but having flaws is also a boon to awareness, protecting it until the time is ripe. It may even be that the process of removal is what prepares my soul for its accomplishment, much like a protective skin to be shed off as I grow.

It means there is nothing but love to be seen in the fact of creation. Even what seems to have nothing to do with love, is another kind of love. I cannot imagine the alternative, a world full of peril and deceit, with a wrathful God waiting to judge our mistakes at the end of life. I think, rather, He simply reveals himself to the extent we have matured. Our flaws are there to give us the chance to grow. The purpose of life is not only to remove them, but to outgrow them, in order to see what lies beyond.

Otherwise, we would be like hapless citizens meeting that beautiful King, and throwing away our lives away at His feet. How can we know His love, unless we live long enough to feel it? The nature of this world, the veil, is like a nursery for rearing tender plants, guided by the loving hand of the Gardener. What gardener plants his seeds, only to scorn those that grow more slowly than others? He would know only love for them all – and sorrow for those who give up on growing, and slowly recline into the waning hues of death.

The veil is both our life and our death, just as sleep is both the enemy and the friend of consciousness: Enough of it, and we are readied to face the new day; too little, and we cannot concentrate; too much, and we miss the day entirely. If this is true of all our flaws – of the veil itself – then, like a bandage on a wound, let us appreciate its role until the need is ended. The purpose is to know His love, after all. Dwelling on our flaws, or fearing them, or focusing solely upon them, is to give them much more importance than they deserve.