‘This is how we go about discovering happiness and meaning, and guidance from within.’ Photo: by MIGUEL GASCOJ on Unsplash
‘This is how we go about discovering happiness and meaning, and guidance from within.’ Photo: by MIGUEL GASCOJ on Unsplash
For some years now, together with a local Friend, and in the spirit of being ‘open to new light, from whatever source it may come’ (Advices & queries 7), I have been exploring a path of ‘non-duality’. Non-duality is a term some spiritual teachers use to describe the interconnectedness of everything, and how we can experience this as one whole. Our practice has involved daily meditation, silence, and slow meditative reading together every week. It sustains and illuminates our lives.
We draw on various teachers, including Adyashanti and Eckhart Tolle, whose Stillness Speaks we are currently working through. Over the past year we have also begun to open ourselves to Sufi writings and poetry. These are full of love, beauty and gentleness, and come from a non-dual perspective. Elias Amidon, the spiritual director of the Sufi Way International, illustrates this beautifully: ‘We can learn how to relax, how to open into openness, and how to simply be the presence of now, by following the scent of gentleness. Gentleness is the sign and the assurance, and we can feel this “gentleness” spontaneously and directly in our body. If you feel stuck in old patterns of self-identity or nervousness, you can start by noticing the gentleness of your breath, especially how gently each breath appears and disappears so subtly. Gradually the gentleness of your very presence will reveal itself. Let that gentleness take you. Whatever stories, fears, or grief might trouble your daily life, whatever pains or depressions you may feel, give them to the gentleness.’
I was so taken with this piece about gentleness that, when I read it a couple of months ago, I felt a wish to share it more widely. But I never got round to it – until now, unexpectedly, it has found its way into this article. I just love the energy of ‘gentleness’. I wonder if you can ‘feel’ it?
Another Sufi, Philip Jacobs – not so poetic perhaps, but from deep experience – illustrates the ‘transformation’ that can arise out of the hardest of circumstances. His book One Self begins by describing simply and easily how we are all, underneath, aspects of the one undivided whole. This whole expresses itself in myriad, complimentary ways, which we can both struggle to understand and cope with. But we can also sense them through our inner and outer lives, grow to trust them, and then to let go and let life flow, both through us and around us.
What is so compelling about Jacobs’ writing is that it comes out of a particularly painful and challenging life path, one of long-term debilitating illness and loss, over many years. He describes how he felt pushed to the edge on a number of occasions but, somehow, at every moment, he felt he ‘was being lovingly led and looked after’, and that ultimately all his varied life experiences were about the discovery of his true self – the person we really are at the depths of our being. He writes about how, in discovering this, and in living life to the full, we prepare ourselves for the ultimate moment of letting go – the death of the physical body. In this journey he emphasises the importance of being (and responding) in the present moment, of letting go, and of surrender. This is how we go about discovering happiness and meaning, and guidance from within. As George Fox said, ‘Look within, for the measure is within, and the light of God is within, and the pearl is within you’.
Does that mean we just sit passively meditating all day and ‘do nothing’? Definitely not. Here’s Elias Amidon again: ‘If you’re a detached observer or some kind of opinionated authority you will only make matters worse. It is when you are intimately present with the situation that you will know what to do… Your spontaneous gesture will arrive from within – born from your intimacy with life… It isn’t what you do that makes a difference, but the love inside what you do. And for that love to be present you don’t have to do anything. It will come by itself, revealing the way forward.’
‘But what canst thou say?’ asked George Fox. Important question!
I feel but a beginner on this path. For several years I have definitely felt a strong urge to explore it; and I do sometimes feel prompted to say or do something, even something quite challenging. At other times it is as if I just respond automatically to someone or something, and I think ‘Where did that come from?’ Often, however, the (intuitive?) feeling is so quiet that it hardly registers, or I don’t take it seriously – until someone else voices the same thing.
This happened today. I had a slight thought that I should respond personally in some way to what I have written here, and to the quotes I have given. But I rejected the thought, concerned that it could bring the whole piece down to an egoic level. When I shared my first draft with a Friend, however, she asked me how I experienced it personally. So then I knew I had to write something from my own experience.
Something I have discovered from my experience of ‘reaching out’ (in my case this is in relation to nurturing our hurting children in schools) is the importance of letting go of outcomes, and of expectations, in relation to our actions. As Adyashanti has said: ‘If the impulse to love and be of service is coming from your higher nature, it will flow from a natural abundance of wellbeing and you will feel no attachment to being viewed as a good or helpful person, or to any particular outcomes’.
This ‘looking within’, and responding to the ‘promptings of love and truth in my heart’ with no expectations, can sometimes give me glimpses of life and love flowing all by themselves, often affirmed by synchronistic comments from others.
I sometimes get a hint of how these actions are part of the great flow of life, or of the words just being evoked by the situation. Living gently in the present. Yes! Sufis call it Ihsan: ‘Doing the beautiful’.
‘Perhaps “doing the beautiful” reveals itself spontaneously’ says Amidon, ‘responding with complete freshness unencumbered by effort of any kind.’
This is not as idealistic as it sounds. Mostly, I get caught up in thinking and doing, and forget to stop and listen a moment to that still small voice. Maybe we all do.
I’d like to say one more thing from a non-dual point of view. In January, I stayed at an ashram for a short retreat, and the question of whether to take initiatives about a long-term concern, or whether to just wait and see, was on my mind – again! After a couple of days I had an opportunity to ask the Zen teacher about this. After quite a silence he said, ‘When you feel that prompting, just ask yourself “Who is wanting to do this?”’. I immediately resonated with where he was coming from. ‘Adyashanti would have said the same,’ I replied.
Since then I have felt a little less conflicted, and frequently my initiatives are prompted by some present-moment situation. It just ‘happens’, and then I may think no more about it – until it comes up again.
Thank you so much for this reflection. It really has spoken to my condition! I feel different already.
By Lee@No18 on 31st August 2023 - 13:12
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