In Life

Life is the greatest teacher and as such will teach us the lessons we need.  I have been moving away from speaking about spirituality and simply speaking about life.  What is interesting is how several members of my group have also commented that they feel it is time to go back into life. 

My last article also dealt with this topic, and I am finding that I am being led to explore this area more. For as beautiful as the gatherings, as sweet as the discourses.  We cannot stay longer than we need to in the ashram or dargah as much as we wish too.

What liberation offered me was…

a way to see life so much more expansively than if I had continued to live in the story

In my own experience “losing” my teacher and school was a traumatic experience.  I was, or so I thought unable to make decisions and the teacher and his teachings offered me a way to hide from life. Even though at that time I would never had said I was hiding. 

Being a student offered me an effective way to bypass the problems in my life and to give myself some consolation that I was on a more enlightened path than most people.  This attitude was encouraged by several of the other students, as no doubt they also needed an excuse not to face life too. When finally, I found myself cast out I confess I struggled.  I had left under a dark cloud and had during my time there been told that he who did not have a teacher took the devil as a teacher.

For someone already suffering from depression and anxiety this was a scary proposition and I desperately looked for another teacher. None appeared, but unbeknown to me Life was now my teacher.

I moved to Glasgow and the peace and solitude of being by myself offered me an opportunity to take stock of my life and to pursue the goal of liberation much more intensely. When the idea of seeking came to an end, life had another journey in mind. One of teaching and traveling, again unknown to me I was being brought more into life.

I could never have imagined that someone who went days without eating or washing or generally doing the things we consider normal was now in front of rooms of people speaking. I had another move to Manchester where I met my partner and I published a book and then wrote another. The shy, depressed and anxiety ridden boy turned into a confident man and the journey continued.

The world was stopped by a pandemic and I found myself on the other side of the country away from my family. Again, life gave me another time of solitude and my ideas about liberation became subtler and moved more towards speaking of the joys of simple living.

Returning to Manchester as the lockdown eased. I noticed life trying to show me something more. I had always spoken about the ordinary, and I started experiencing it more in my own life. Life was about the simple things. People and relationships I had destroyed as they were not spiritual enough started to return and I noticed a wisdom in them that had eluded me.  Whereas avoiding my pain I had taken another journey, had I been braver and faced what ailed me I may never have taken the journey and yet I found that I was glad that I had taken the journey to liberation.

What liberation offered me was a way to see life so much more expansively than if I had continued to live in the story. There was a great freedom in entering into life without the veil of seeking. In that sense I started appreciating my time in the school so much more, including my leaving and spending what I thought was years in the wilderness. A newfound humility and gratitude towards life arose and I saw life’s hidden hand in my life and how I had always been where I needed to be. The realisation that I had always been in life was revelatory and taught me more about acceptance.

We sometimes rail about being in the wrong place at the wrong time or that we do not have time and that we have to wake up in some specified time frame and yet life in its perfection always has us in the right place at the right time. So even retreating from life meant I was in life. I realised my conditioning and the conditioning of others sometimes did not let us accept that we were exactly where we needed to be and if we just accepted that then everything would open up.

I titled this article In Life as the journey I appear to be on is the culmination of so many years of trying to gain some understanding or some miraculous event that would make sense of it all. I am reminded now of the saying, “everything at the appointed hour”.  We are not going into life after some understanding, we are already in life. Sometimes we do not understand that and maybe we are not meant too. Maybe there is a reasoning that life must withhold understanding as to why something is happening. The joy of discovery and realisation allows us constantly to reveal ourselves to ourselves. For are we separate from this life we seek to understand or are we one of a myriad of manifestations of this incredible play called existence.

I feel excited after so much turbulence that I am finally settling, going from seeking all those years to seeing. What I see now is so expansive and so alive. The moment is all we have and yet this moment offers so much. It is like the lover meeting the beloved and realising it is meeting itself. There is a bittersweet sweetness of being and witnessing the being. That love story in which the lover frantically tears at the veils of separation only to realise that he is tearing at his very existence. Those moments of rest constantly leading to a humbling and gratitude to life, that I knew so little and yet I was elevated by you.

Life is simpler now. It is observed, it is lived. There is laughter where once there were tears. A growing old in which there is an eternity meaning there is no death only an idea of it. An acceptance, an openness. A perfect love story in which the Sufi poet Amir Khusro sang:

Khusro baaji prem ki

Main khelun pee ke sang

Jeet gai toh piya more

Jo main haari pee ke sang

Khusro plays the game of love

I play with my dear one

If I win, my sweetheart is mine

If I lose, I am still with my dear one

Being Normal…

I had for years led a turbulent existence.

Moving from place to place and seeking out teachers and teachings hoping enlightenment would spell an end to my troubles.

In a recent conversation with a friend, I stated that finding my life becoming increasingly normal was both scary and exciting. I had for years led a turbulent existence. Moving from place to place and seeking out teachers and teachings hoping enlightenment would spell an end to my troubles.

It was after seeking ended that I noticed the troubles were still there. Old issues started appearing and slowly but surely, I started to deal with them. Life started to improve. I also noticed my communication of this reality became simpler and more focused on the ordinary and everyday existence of our lives. Something about an ordinary existence was so much clearer and simpler than the expansive and ecstatic utterances of my past. As life became even more ordinary the subtleties of existence started to make themselves apparent to me. Going further into this ordinariness, the need to speak a certain way was seen as redundant and almost an impediment to effectively communicating this reality of who we are.

Seemingly ordinary experiences such as going shopping or mowing the lawn felt so much more alive and I started looking at my life and realising that had I just dealt with my problems than maybe this whole journey may not have been needed. The term spiritual bypassing came into my life and I realised how incomplete our understanding of spirituality was and how we in the West are chasing the big enlightenment experiences, and yet sometimes it can be as simple as tidying your room.

That a complete teaching is practical and focuses on the ordinary and the extraordinary and then collapses the apparent separation to reveal it is all one reality. That whether we are on the mountaintop or whether at home washing the dishes that it is the one reality and that there is a myriad of ways to realise this. This seeing everything as it is allows us to fully engage in living instead of waiting. That what we spiritually bypass offers us the greatest opportunity to realise ourselves. That when we chase the big ecstatic experiences the answer may well lie in the pile of dirty washing and if we were to accept that our search could be over.

Life is infinitely simpler now.
I have travelled and loved and lost.
I have had my heart broken and screamed at my very maker.
I have been high, and I have been as Oscar Wilde stated, “in the gutter looking at the stars” and yet as beautiful as this adventure was, I have now found something so much more.

Life in all its form is beautiful and yet terrifying. For those of you who have dedicated your lives to truth. I say look around you. That which you are fleeing from may in fact be the answer. That broken relationship, that reminder from the debt collectors, that impossible situation may provide more of an understanding into your true nature than any holy man or holy book.

If you would but stop and see.

The Beloved

The Beloved

from “Reflections (Musings of a mad man in a sane world)”

Oh, my most perfect beloved

Only you are

Why then do I sin?

To talk of two in love

This most grievous of sins

This most heinous and hateful of sins

Eliminate this sin

I am tired

I wish for there to be silence

With no one to ever know it…

Reflections

In presenting this work. I present my love, my joy, my brokenness, my insecurities, my pains and my mistakes.

I am not perfect and yet your love and trust in me has elevated me to heights I never imagined.

For that then this book is dedicated to each and every one of you…

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Reflections (Musings of a mad man, in a ‘sane’ world) is available on Amazon as a print edition or ebook for Kindle.

The Inward Journey

Rumi stated

“The wound is where the light enters you”

In this article, I would like to discuss how this statement can be used to help us take the inward journey. The term going inward has become somewhat of a cliched saying in spiritual circles. At the risk of sounding cynical the term is bandied about by armies of seekers. Yes, we know that what is sought is inside us and that we have to look inwards and yet even with this knowledge, so many continue to seek outwardly while masquerading to themselves and others that they are on an inward journey. So, they are supposedly on a journey when in fact not a single step has been taken. And as ideas and teachers of self-realisation become more mainstream, why are so few waking up.

Honesty

The first point I’d like to put forward is that of honesty. If you really want to go inwards first get honest with yourself. Exactly why are you undertaking your spiritual practice. Is it because you enjoy seeking or the sense of purpose it gives you or the community it provides? Why exactly are you trying to wake up. I remember myself wanting to be enlightened as I felt that was the cure all to my problems. It was when I got honest with myself that I wanted to know what the teachers I had met knew that as I have stated so much of my seeking dissipated. After all, if I was honest with myself, I wasn’t there to do seva or fake humility. I wanted to know what the teacher knew, and that thought was freeing.

Your task is not to seek for love,

“but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it”

Trajectory

Which brings me to my second point. Are you a true and sincere seeker or are you spiritually bypassing? Spiritual bypassing is defined as

"Tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks" (wikipedia)

I believed, like many, that enlightenment would lead to unending bliss and a resolution of my problems. Nothing could have been further from the truth. The truth of the matter was that I was avoiding grieving over the loss of my father and the break up of a relationship as well as depression. Had I indeed just faced my unresolved issues I wonder if I would have even pursued enlightenment.

I remember an incident with my first teacher who told me to get a job. I didn’t fully understand then the wisdom of such a simple statement and instead by sitting with other students in the school, I convinced myself my teacher meant I had to work for the school and further its aims and teachings. When the teacher returned a year later and asked if was working. I replied no. It was only recently that I realised that had I taken that simple instruction that my life would have taken a different trajectory.

The Wound Is Where The Light Enters

This leads to my final point and an explanation of the above words of Rumi. The quote states the wound is where the light enters. Sometimes the wound can be a relationship breakdown, financial worries, weight issues or any manner of issues which plague us during our lives. Our conditioning has made us turn away from the pain that comes from these issues but isn’t this indeed the wound that offers us an opportunity to go inwards. The light enters and illuminates for us a path to who we truly are. In this light what we are not is seen through and the pain if we would accept it is transformative. Burning away the false idols of our conditioned beliefs. We are then able to able resolve our issues as we face them bravely and see they are not real. That the stories we have told ourselves are not real. That we are the answer to what is sought. To quote Rumi again:

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it”

This is what it means to go inwards. To shed the stories, traumas and ideas we have covered ourselves up with. The masks we so skilfully change as we travel through life. In going inwards and meeting honestly, bravely and authentically these barriers we may conclude our search with the knowing that we are what we have always sought and the blessing is that even as we travelled inwards regardless of what happened we carried the answer with us because the answer is us.

Musings Of A Mad Man In A “Sane” World

They ask that I speak

They tell me others will listen

I have been shunned for so long

That I am no longer sure

Speak they say

People will listen they say

I sit quietly

With memories of days gone by

The ridicule still fresh in me

The wound still raw

I sigh

Words start to tumble forth

Welcome then friends

To the musings of a mad man in a “sane” world…

Reflections

In presenting this work. I present my love, my joy, my brokenness, my insecurities, my pains and my mistakes.

I am not perfect and yet your love and trust in me has elevated me to heights I never imagined.

For that then this book is dedicated to each and every one of you…

---

Reflections (Musings of a mad man, in a ‘sane’ world) is available on Amazon as a print edition or ebook for Kindle.