What is mostly not understood to many who look at spiritual paths from the outside, is that the process is an energetic one. It’s not the words, or the information, or the rituals – those are only a means to connect to higher energies. And higher energies are what develop us. What are we developing toward? Being in service to all that exists, which is the noble purpose of the human being. (At the end of this post there are instructions and a link to download this recording to your computer.)
John: The first Sufi conference that I went to and there was a lady Sheikh. She had a Dhikr that was set up where she made the big circle, and then she went counter-clockwise around the circle and kept leaning into the circle a little bit, facilitating the energetic that way.
And in the very center of the circle would be music and whatnot supporting all of that, and she was carrying out another tradition energetically.
What made this thing so meaningful to me, that I got, but not necessarily at the time, was that I had been talking to an older woman that was very, very sharp, and I took it that it was like maybe her first time and it was like maybe my first time.
We were talking how we perceive and how we relate to this sort of thing kind of approach. It was a very insightful conversation we were having in terms of my take on it, and her take on things. Little did I know that she came from this tradition, and that she was very subtle and knew how to talk to me so that it didn’t disturb or something.
After that Dhikr which was an evening Dhikr, she asked me how it was. Of course, that was a question that was still like I hadn’t identified at all. I just thought she was looking around just like me or something. She then explained to me what took place in that circle, and what that Sheikh was doing energetically, and I got it, I understood it.
And then I realized, wow, she’s more than I ever thought. She had me completely fooled and she held back to a point where she developed an understanding and a trust so that when she did say what she needed to say to me, I could hear it. Otherwise, if we had been strangers or something and she would have said it, there would have been a certain resistance, but I heard it. I heard it. I heard how she heard it because we had been open and receptive to each other enough, I could understand that. In other words, this is how these notes come across.
When I first went, he carefully explained to everybody that I get my guidance at night. They hear it in a certain way, so they were coming up to me and asking me how does this work, how can you do this, without all these practices? He said, “Given a lifetime you can’t possibly have the experiences, all the experiences that you need.” Which is like a tease that you have to make a big leap where you actually have them all vibrationally.
I remember when I was fairly young in my 20s, I could get around people that smoked dope and whatnot and go off and be in some state where I just had a sense of things that I normally wouldn’t have in my normal natural state.
Did that get me anywhere? No, I was peeling onions over and over and over and over, and that actually was counterproductive because it took me out of the overall vibrationalism. I never could understand that. I always was enamored when I would get into this altered state and do that, and I would think that that was important, but all it tended to do was keep me outside of a greater overallness that I carry naturally, from actually admitting it or accepting it, because it was too subtle.
It’s nice they make it something you can wrap your hands around or something. But you can’t – it’s that subtle.
Both of them play with this quality, and they both have the duties and they just perform their duties. It’s not a question about, okay, I’m doing this because I decided that this is interesting and I want to be a plumber and this is my way of being a plumber. Uh uh, they’re both following their duties; they have to be surrendered to that. Whether you take it in or you don’t take it in, they have to be surrendered to that.
If a teacher can’t just be doing their duties, then they’re scurrying because that’s where abuse can come in. But if they’re just doing their duties, looking at something that they’re listening to and being directed to, it’s a very energetic subtle life.
And I like the deep statements: that God is the hidden treasure that longs to be known. And so I guess we are the means by which the eyes and the ears can kind of happen. All of it, of course, from a hiddenness put into action, into motion, but still the hiddenness, still the emptiness, still the stillness.
Both of them aiming and pointing to something that lets go and lets go and becomes emptier and emptier and emptier and emptier and emptier. And it being a note that you can best hear to get into that real-depth emptiness.
That’s a devotional path, just like the Naqshbands are a devotional path. That’s why there’s the statement: “I don’t know what you are, but until you become less than the dust at my feet…” meaning you have to merge into something.
It’s hard to do. It’s like in this game of throwing everything out there into the multiplicity and then you have to come back to the simplicity. Everything seems to be against you and yet you do it. Yet you recognize the unrecognizable. And you have to do it with dignity. You have to do that holding that inner quality, not trying to act like, can somebody do it for you or something.
And it all does come through you. All is given, but you have to hold it. And in that regard, there’s really no difference, it’s just a question of the listening center, or I should say, the way that it works.
You have to look at your dreams as you have them and you will recognize that what you are is a reflection of your experiences, the experiences that you’re touched with. And your dreams will reflect that. Your dreams initially give you a little better access, but not much better because they’re still reflections, but they get better and better as you polish the heart more and more, or as you “tune the rabbit ears.”
The key is to not to get too thrown around to the point where you don’t stand on your own two feet, because a human being’s meant to be very, very powerful, but how do you be powerful and not go around with your chest out and big ego?
In other words, he’s always passing things to a higher and higher and higher quality of a touching. And when you’re following a teacher, it gets to a point where the teacher passes you on to his teacher, and his teacher to his teacher; you keep climbing the vibration. It’s a quality.
In other words, you come to lose yourself, and each way has to work at that in its own capacity. How is it that you finish things? Certain things are done with an aspect of ego that you confront and deal with in terms of your will. You have to be very, very careful of that because a wonderful experience at a depth inside of yourself can bring all of that out, and you don’t necessarily have to live it out on the outer. How do you let go in each particular case?
I mean I’m a little thrown around because I’m sitting with something in which there is a horrible thing that’s going on in this area that I can actually perhaps do something about. If I looked at it from maybe more of the will and the Chisti thing, I might be inclined to think I have to do this.
But if I look at the pain of that, and how it blurs something, and how it keeps me on a tangent, then I come to realize that there might be a subtler way – energetically. It’s just different ways of finding the scale of things, the note of things, the music on a vibrational level, differently.
It may be the music is more literal, initially, and then eventually it’s like it goes beyond the music. A human being is fragile, and you have to somehow or another break through where you disintegrate things into a chaos. You have to pull out the will, the something of a conviction of yourself, and yet at the same time, if you don’t hold it in a secret, and you don’t hold it in a proper way, it blows up too. It’s powerful, but then it blows itself up by being too something or another.
How do you accommodate that so that it flows, and you allow Creation to have its input in there – which is everything else? So you could say that it’s everything else, from the dense on up – and it’s all important.
To download this file, Right Click (for PCs) or Control Click (for Macs) and Save: The Hidden Treasure
