Abandon Intellectual Security

"Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment." 

-Rumi

In every religion, no matter what it is, the vast majority of its practitioners and especially its leaders want you in some sense to foreclose your accounts with God. That God is X,Y, and Z and not some other way. This is because a book or some other authority tells you that it is. They may be well meaning in this, to give you commonly accepted bounds for your life. What they are not doing, however, is bringing you closer to God.

To desire absolute security in your knowledge of God, is to obstruct God's will in creating in you what He wills to create. I do not say you should abandon security in knowing that He is, that is altogether different. Depending on your beliefs about God is not the same as depending on God. Security in knowing exactly how or what He thinks is neither possible nor beneficial. Limiting what God chooses to do in you is not wisdom but foolishness


It is possible to talk to converse with God, to interact with God, but it is never possible to know God completely. God is unknowable.  A God that was not beyond you, would not be God. It is possible to encounter God, to see His effect on your life, even to be swept up by Him, but not to know Him absolutely. Abandon logical thought where God is concerned, it is beneath Him.

A conversation requires that you neither stop listening nor stop talking altogether. Only the very wise can stop talking and just listen. If you stop listening however, it is no longer a conversation. In a sense, this is the story of our lives, the story of our conversation or non-conversation with God. And God may have a plot twist planned in this story that you know nothing of, and that you will miss, if you stop listening. If you stop being open to whatever it is that God wills to work in your life now. Maybe something wonderful, maybe something beyond wonderful, even if it is something you never thought of or planned or desired or willed.

"Knock, And He'll open the door
Vanish, And He'll make you shine like the sun
Fall, And He'll raise you to the heavens
Become nothing, And He'll turn you into everything." 

-Rumi

Reason is fundamentally tied to self-will. We want reasons for God and we want God to be rational, because in so doing we take something wildly out of our control and think to put it under our own control. We have not thereby controlled God at all of course, we have deflected our primordial desire for God into a safe useful neutered container so that we can be rid of it. We have been sidetracked, if our desire was for God at all. The way to God is not control, it is surrender. Surrender, that He may recreate you. Surrender yourself, your will, your reason. God is not doing comfy, God is not doing secure and stable, God is not doing conformity, God is doing BLOW YOUR MIND. God is doing bliss. God is doing beyond your understanding.

This is the powderkeg that it is every organized religion's job to contain, because the people in them aren't prepared for it and maybe don't want it. God is a danger that must be contained in safe, comfy and cozy forms. Remember this quote from Jesus?

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. 

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.

“Woe to you, blind guides!

-Matthew 23:13-16

We can pretty much make a general rule, that whenever Jesus is talking about the Pharisees, he's not just talking about them. He's talking about religious leaders generally, whatever their religion happens to be. It pissed the Pharisees off so much, they had him killed.

It is not however fair to blame them. Just like in the economic marketplace, when nobody buys a product, it goes off the market. When people buy a lot of a product, it stays. People complain about the malaise in the Church these days and the decline of membership, but spiritual sterility is not accidental. As computer geeks like to say, it is not a bug: it's a feature.

Knowing God is not about having something to hang onto. It's about letting go. Letting go and listening.

The Bridge

This is not a typical post for this blog. It isn't really a post about God, not really. I would say more that God has put this message on my heart, for those who do not speak for themselves.

You know this bridge I am sure. It's world famous. It might conjure mental images of streetcars, fog, hilly steep streets, great food, or even Rice-A-Roni (which ran many ads featuring San Francisco streetcars when I was younger). It has appeared in many movies. It is an iconic emblem of San Francisco: The Golden Gate Bridge.

What it probably doesn't bring to mind, is that it is the number one location on Planet Earth for suicides. Not just in California, or the United States, but it is the number one location for suicides IN THE WHOLE WORLD. Even the Aokigahara suicide forest in Japan only takes second place to the Golden Gate Bridge.

And yet, despite decades of attempts to have it built, there is still no barrier to prevent people from jumping. The fence at the edge is only 4 feet high. Some argue that anyone who would commit suicide by jumping would do it anyway: they are wrong. Suicide is an acute threat: someone who is prevented from killing themselves in a 72 hour period of their worst risk is actually unlikely to do it at another time. Every minute of delay or inconvenience could save a life. The Golden Gate Bridge is like having a publicly accessible loaded handgun in a public place, where everyone knows it is there and anyone can use it at any time.

Many people who are having a suicidal crisis believe that nobody cares if they live or die. While that is not true of their family and friends, I am afraid it is true of the public at large. The reasons that the barrier has not been put up on the bridge as of yet boil down to issues of money and power. The bridge is a symbol of San Francisco, a contributing factor to the tourist economy. Almost any barrier will be less aesthetically pleasing than no barrier. The appearance of the bridge is a financial asset that people want to protect: lives lost are not really a concern since they are lost "voluntarily". People are also largely very unsympathetic to the depressed, as to the mentally ill in general. People raising funds on the street for a barrier are often accosted by people yelling "Jump! Jump!" and people throw soft drink cans at them. It's sickening.

And in fact there was no problem building a barrier partly on the Oakland side, because it overhung the land and people were dropping objects like bowling balls over the side. It was a public safety issue then. Assisting the emotionally distraught apparently is not a public safety issue.

So the people who think that the world is uncaring, that nobody cares, sadly for the most part they are right. There is still a huge stigma on mental illness in this country. Most people are very unsympathetic to the suicidal, to the point of even encouraging these extremely distraught individuals to end it all. One suicidal man wrote a suicide note saying that if only one person smiled at him as he went up the bridge, he wouldn't kill himself. Apparently, no one smiled. Most of the people who jumped, had a treatable mental illness. If there were a 72 hour virus that could kill you, but which was very much treatable, people would be urging people to get treatment and would be sympathetic to their situation. Towards people with a treatable mental illness that could end their life, however, there is often a great deal of hostility. Even hatred. Even in liberal San Francisco. A city where you can find groups that believe that pets should have human rights, isn't quite as enthusiastic about the human welfare of some human beings. We have removed stigmas about all sorts of things, even stigmas against gays and those with AIDS, but this stigma it seems, too few have the heart to fight to remove.

Anyone who wants to keep up with the barrier project, the link is http://www.ggbsuicidebarrier.org/

For anyone who is suicidal who might stumble across this page, I want to say this:

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DON'T DO IT, PLEASE. THIS IS ONLY A TEMPORARY AND TREATABLE CONDITION. YOU CAN GET HELP.

I know that it might feel like you are nobody and nothing, but that is a lie. You are in fact special. You can in fact make a difference for somebody else, just by being here. Don't buy into the lies that the World tries to sell you, to your detriment. You may not think or feel that there is a God, you may in fact be adamantly opposed to the idea, but I know there is one, and He doesn't want you to leave before you get to know Him. God loves you, and there are people who are sympathetic and know what you are going through. Find them, and Him. The results of suicide are tragic and permanent.
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Suicide Crisis Hotline:
1-800-SUICIDE (1-800-784-2433)
1-800-TALK (1-800-273-8255)

The Will to Power

"The World is a will to power, and nothing besides."
-Nietzsche

In order to understand where our hope lies, we have to truly understand this reality. We have to understand that if truth, love, harmony and peace are our guides, hope in this world (but not necessarily hope for all those within) is irredeemably lost. Lost from the beginning, lost by design.

Friedrich Nietzsche was the poet laureate of the Will to Power. Many people do not like to read him and see in him a symbol of evil, but this is mostly because he tells them a terrible truth (about this world anyway) that they do not want to hear. While Nietzsche thought of the will to truth as a variety of the will to power, in fact those who are the most interested in power hate the truth because it undermines their power. With this in mind, lets hear a few more words from him:

"My idea is that every specific body strives to become master over all space and to extend its force (its will to power) and to thrust back all that resists its extension. But it continually encounters similar efforts on the part of other bodies and ends by coming to an arrangement ("union") with those of them that are sufficiently related to it: thus they then conspire together for power. And the process goes on"

-Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, §636

Every living thing, in other words, strives to be God. Not to follow, love or obey God, but to be itself God. This process is by no means limited to human beings, but is implicit in every living thing. The first woodpecker with a beak suitable for drilling wood, its beak gave it a power over the grubs living in the wood and so it prospered over its neighbors that were without that power. The first bacterium that was able to eat its neighbor, extended its power over that neighbor and assimilated its material for itself. Human beings developed tools, to do what their weak bodies could not do. Because part of their success depended on cooperation and because of the advent of language, human beings became much more subtle in their methods of obtaining power, and power became much more dangerous. They used and twisted language to gain power over others. Their knowledge gave them power over the atom, allowed them to mitigate space and time, made them lords over all other living beings. The Will to Power didn't start with them, they simply took it to its logical conclusion.

But like Sauron's One Ring in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, power corrupts all, even those who say they want to use it for good. The nuclear power plants that we build to supply us with bountiful power in electrical form, are subject to disaster and poison the land and sea. Political power leads to war and destruction. Power over the ecology leads to ecological disaster. Power over men destroys mens lives and the souls of the ones who wields that power. Physically, power gives life: spiritually, power destroys life. And in the end, this massive all-encompassing Will to Power, is a plan destined to fail. Even if humans become immune to old age, extend their power over the stars themselves, become like gods, their end is unavoidable. Eventually the stars will grow dim and cold. Eventually the Universe and Power itself will die.

And yet to live here and now is to compromise with power, even to get what we need to keep surviving is part of that all-embracing Will to Power. To eat is power, even to breathe is power. Life itself in this world is a will to power. This is part of our nature, our original sin. The best thing we can do is to know this will to power for what it really is, to use it only when we must, to shed the light of God on the darkened world and in our own minds, to uproot the lies of power. In this, perhaps in this alone, Nietzsche was less than honest: his religious upbringing led to his thirst for truth (such as it was). The will to power only allows that truth that extends its power: shedding light on power itself undermines power. Human power hates the light, and lives in the darkness of lies and half-truths where it can work its evil will undetected.

Our bodies are slaves to power by birth. I believe our souls need not be.

We know that the Law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the Law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

-Romans 7:14-20

Culture of Death

There comes a time when you can no longer escape from the things you've done. And sometimes, often, what you do can never be undone. Until another heaven and earth comes to pass, that wrong can never be corrected. And we, human beings, are carrying forward such a burden of wrongs that it seems impossible that they will ever be righted. And they may never be in this world. The world grows dimmer, its burden of sin grows greater, as we shuffle towards some ignoble denouement. Enlightenment grows harder; ignorance easier. Truth and goodness are seen as weakness; lies and evil are considered strength.

What sparked today's post was a story I heard from someone I did not know, and I apologize if he ever sees this, but considering these issues are important to all of us. Important for the whole human race to consider. His teenage daughter put a pistol in her mouth and shot herself. He, the father, was apparently on the scene quickly and saw that the girl was choking on her own blood, so he tried to siphon the blood out of her airway with a rubber tube and his own mouth, spitting out blood and tissue, while waiting for the paramedics to arrive. She died sometime later, they took her off the respirator. Can you imagine, if you had been that father?

This story disturbed me so much, I felt I had to get to the bottom of why it disturbed me so much. I mean, sure, the story is disturbing in its own right, but it is not like I don't know that people get killed or kill themselves every day. I guess what disturbed me most, was the great ease and speed with which it was possible to end life. Filling out your taxes, drinking a cup of coffee, brushing your teeth, driving to work, most everything takes time. Handgun-initiated death, however, is instantaneous. As is bomb-induced death, machinegun-induced death, and all the other forms of death which are so prevalent and convenient. It is not necessarily so that the death itself is immediate, maybe it would take days, but the action of killing is instant.

And the worldwide culture of convenient murder, of a 7-11 store of instant mayhem, is an equal opportunity employer. Even those who invented the terms "culture of death" and "culture of life" are very selective in their use of those terms. The American Evangelicals who are so keen to save the unborn, and I think rightly so, are not quite as keen to limit firearms. In fact, they are dead set against it. Firearms in the home are much more likely to be used against a family member, than against anyone else. The father of the unfortunate girl I alluded to above, quite likely bought the pistol for "home defense" that his daughter used to end her life. These evangelicals are not so keen to protect the lives of those subject to the death penalty. A really "pro-life" philosophy would seek to protect all life, not simply the lives of a favored group. Anything less is merely politics, not ethics.

Those of a more liberal bent are quite ready to play God and end the life of the unborn, as long as the lives of the born are made supposedly more secure by gun control and abolishing the death penalty. Everyone looks to their own interests and not at what is right. And everyone doing this, for thousands of years, brings this world to its current state. A state of constant warfare, especially of more powerful nations against less powerful ones. A state where our abuse of the natural world threatens to disrupt millions of lives, with global warming and environmental degradation, massive oil spills and melting reactors. A Darwinian social condition where the ties that bind people together in brotherhood are overwhelmed by the economic war of man against man, leaving everyone isolated, leaving the least fortunate abandoned. A culture of artificiality, where important values are disregarded and artificial values revered. A condition where money and power are our true gods; pain, dehumanization and death their appointed sacrifices; and truth and goodness are either unknown or derided.

What had disturbed me so greatly is the stark dominance of evil, the enormity of it. The monumentality of evil, the degree to which the world has already been lost. There is no white-hatted cavalry coming over the hill at the last minute to save us from ourselves. How quick is judgement and murder, and how slow is healing and forgiveness.

And I knew this all along, and yet it still surprised me.

Sufi Poetry Part 2

A Palestinian Dervish, 1913

In the dead of night, a Sufi began to weep.
He said, "This world is like a closed coffin, in which
We are shut and in which, through our ignorance,
We spend our lives in folly and desolation.
When Death comes to open the lid of the coffin,
Each one who has wings will fly off to Eternity,
But those without will remain locked in the coffin.
So, my friends, before the lid of this coffin is taken off,
Do all you can to become a bird of the Way to God;
Do all you can to develop your wings and your feathers."

-Farid ud Din Attar, translation by Andrew Harvey and Eryk Hanut - 'Perfume of the Desert'




The clouds gave my soul an idea
So I pawned my gills
And rose like a winged diamond

Ever trying to be near
More love, more love
Like you.

-Hafiz - “The Gift” – translation by Daniel Ladinsky




Hidden behind the veil of mystery, Beauty is eternally free from the slightest stain of imperfection. From the atoms of the world, He created a multitude of mirrors; into each one of them He cast the image of His Face; to the awakened eye, anything that appears beautiful is only a reflection of that Face.

Now that you have seen the reflection, hurry to its Source; in that primordial Light the reflection vanishes completely. Do not linger far from that primal Source; when the reflection fades, you will be lost in darkness. The reflection is as transient as the smile of a rose; if you want permanence, turn towards the Source; if you want fidelity, look to the Mine of faithfulness. Why tear your soul apart over something here one moment and gone the next?

-Jami, translation by Andrew Harvey and Eryk Hanut - 'Perfume of the Desert'




The Jesus of your spirit is inside you now.
Ask that one for help, but don't ask for body-things...

Don't ask Moses for provisions
that you can get from Pharaoh.

Don't worry so much about livelihood.
Your livelihood will turn out as it should.
Be constantly occupied instead
with listening to God.

-Rumi, Mathnawi II:450-454




Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You're covered with a thick cloud.
Slide out the side. Die,
and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign
that you've died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.

The speechless full moon
comes out now.

-Rumi - The Essential Rumi - Coleman Barks




Don't speak of your suffering -- He is speaking.
Don't look for Him everywhere -- He's looking for you.

An ant's foot touches a leaf, He senses it;
A pebble shifts in a streambed, He knows it.

If there's a worm hidden deep in a rock,
He'll know its body, tinier than an atom,

The sound of its praise, its secret ecstasy --
All this He knows by divine knowing.

He has given the tiniest worm its food;
He has opened to you the Way of the Holy Ones.

-Sanai




'The Puzzle'

Someone who keeps aloof from suffering
is not a lover. I choose your love
above all else. As for wealth
if that comes, or goes, so be it.
Wealth and love inhabit separate worlds.

But as long as you live here inside me,
I cannot say that I am suffering.

-Sanai, translation by Coleman Barks - 'Persian Poems'



'The Beauty of Oneness'

Any eye filled with the vision of this world
cannot see the attributes of the Hereafter,
Any eye filled with the attributes of the Hereafter
would be deprived of the Beauty of Oneness.

-Sheikh Ansari - Kashf al_Asrar, Vol. 7, p. 511 - 'Maqulat-o Andarz-ha - Sayings and Advice' - A.G. Farhadi




Rabia was once asked, "How did you attain that which you have attained?"
"By often praying, 'I take refuge in You, O God, from everything that distracts me from You, and from every obstacle that prevents me from reaching You.'"

-Rabi´a al-Adawiyya, translation by Andrew Harvey and Eryk Hanut - 'Perfume of the Desert'




In love, nothing exists between heart and heart.
Speech is born out of longing,
True description from the real taste.
The one who tastes, knows;
the one who explains, lies.
How can you describe the true form of Something
In whose presence you are blotted out?
And in whose being you still exist?
And who lives as a sign for your journey?

-Rabia al-Adawiyya




I have two ways of loving You:
A selfish one
And another way that is worthy of You.
In my selfish love, I remember You and You alone.
In that other love, You lift the veil
And let me feast my eyes on Your Living Face.

-Rabi´a al-Adawiyya. Doorkeeper of the heart:versions of Rabia. Trans. Charles Upton




The source of my suffering and loneliness is deep in my heart.
This is a disease no doctor can cure.
Only Union with the Friend (God) can cure it.

-Rabi´a al-Adawiyya, translation by Andrew Harvey and Eryk Hanut - 'Perfume of the Desert'




I have made You the Companion of my heart.
But my body is available to those who desire its company,
And my body is friendly toward its guest,
But the Beloved of my heart is the guest of my soul.

-Rabi´a al-Adawiyya translation by Andrew Harvey and Eryk Hanut - 'Perfume of the Desert'




If you are seeking closeness to the Beloved,
love everyone.
Whether in their presence or absence,
see only their good.
If you want to be as clear and refreshing as
the breath of the morning breeze,
like the sun, have nothing but warmth and light
for everyone.

-Shaikh Abu-Saeed Abil-Kheir - 'Nobody, Son of Nobody' - Vraje Abramian




Beloved, show me the way out of this prison.
Make me needless of both worlds.
Pray, erase from mind all
that is not You.

Have mercy Beloved,
though I am nothing but forgetfulness,
You are the essence of forgiveness.
Make me needless of all but You.

-Shaikh Abu Saeed Abil Kheir - "Nobody, Son of Nobody" - Vraje Abramian




Piousness and the path of love
are two different roads.
Love is the fire that burns both belief
and non-belief.
Those who practice Love have neither
religion nor caste.

-Shaikh Abu Saeed Abil Kheir - "Nobody, Son of Nobody" - Vraje Abramian




Let sorrowful longing dwell in your heart,
never give up, never losing hope.
The Beloved says, "The broken ones are My darlings."
Crush your heart, be broken.

-Shaikh Abu Saeed Abil Kheir - "Nobody, Son of Nobody" - Vraje Abramian




If you do not give up the crowds
you won't find your way to Oneness.
If you do not drop your self
you won't find your true worth.
If you do not offer all you
have to the Beloved,
you will live this life free of that
pain which makes it worth living.

-Shaikh Abu Saeed Abil Kheir - "Nobody, Son of Nobody" - Vraje Abramian




All that is left
to us by tradition
is mere words.

It is up to us
to find out what they mean.

-ibn al-`Arabi, Tarjuman al-Ashwaq, in The Mystics of Islam,
translated by Reynold A Nicholson





When my Beloved appears, With what eye do I see Him?
With His eye, not with mine, For none sees Him except Himself.

-ibn al-`Arabi, Tarjuman al-Ashwaq, in The Mystics of Islam, translated by Reynold A Nicholson




The one who knows becomes perfect only when
all else is removed from in-between him and the Friend.
Either he remains or the Friend.

-Moinuddin Chishti

Sufi Poetry Part 1

Dervishes spinning near Rumi's tomb, Turkey

So long as we do not die to ourselves,
and so long as we identify with someone or something,
we shall never be free.
The spiritual way is not for those wrapped up in exterior life.

- Farid ud Din Attar

It is an interesting paradox that perhaps the most exoteric and legalistic religion on Earth (and the religion with the fewest redeeming features in my opinion), also has some of the most vibrant and widespread esoteric traditions of any religion. I am speaking here of the Sufis. Just about the only places on Earth where you will actually see Muslims and Hindus worshiping God together in the same place, are the tombs of the Sufi saints and poets. It may be to their credit that the Sufis are currently persecuted in many countries in the Muslim world, including even in Turkey where Sufism is still technically illegal, and in Iran where there is a massive government campaign against the Sufis, including the imprisonment or execution of their members and the destruction of their tombs, places of worship and so on.

If you remember the history of Islamic expansion though, it is perhaps not so remarkable that the Sufis arose in Islam. When the Muslims conquered Persia in 651 AD, they invaded an area that was the homeland of Zoroastrianism and of the Manicheans, who were non-Christian gnostics. Much of the previous religious practice of the inhabitants most likely went under cover, adopting an externally Islamic guise. When the Ottomans conquered the Byzantine empire, they conquered an area that was home both to Christian gnostics and mystics and also to Manicheans.



Manichean priests writing at their desks. Note similarity between the caps of the
dervishes in the picture at top with the headgear of these Manichean priests.
Probably coincidental but interesting nonetheless.

The status of Sufism both within and without Islam is subject to debate, with some Muslims saying that the Sufis are not Muslim, and some Westerners saying that they are part of a mystical strain that predates Islam. Most Sufis though place themselves firmly within the Islamic tradition, though in contrast to mainline Islam they are noted for their humanity and tolerance.

The most visible aspect of Sufism, and the aspect that most Sufis would probably say is the least important, is their tendency to spin. ;) This practice derives from the tale that Rumi, the great Sufi poet, started spinning spontaneously upon achieving enlightenment.





Sufis like all mystics properly understood, are non-literal. Which is to say, that they believe that what they have to teach is not susceptible to direct literal exposition, unlike, say, car mechanics or computer repair which in order to exist at all, must be explicable in language. Every mystical tradition has a different way of dealing with this. For example in the case of the Buddhist scripture The Diamond Sutra, the Buddha will go ahead and say something intended to be taken semi-literally, or "taken seriously", but preface it with an exposition of how unreal it is to say that words refer to real things. ;) Others use language while emphasizing that the language is not where "it is at." The 2500+ year old Daodejing (Tao Te Ching) uses a sort of prose poetry. For the Sufis, poetry is their main medium of expression. The most revered places of Sufi worship are the tombs of their poets.

Now that I have gotten the introduction out of the way, next up is the actual Sufi poetry itself.

The shadow of His wings

You are my God
I seek after no other
My whole being is full of longing
I thirst for you in a dry and desert land
where there is no water.

I have seen you in the high place
and have seen Your glory
Compared to the Beloved, life is nothing

In the restless nights I remember You.
As I toss and turn I think of You.
Because You are the heart of my heart
I sing in the shadow of Your wings

-Psalm 63, respoken in my own words
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