How can we serve the highest purpose in life? By seeing all of the ways that we resist and make demands upon Life, and simply stop doing that. The whole overlay of beliefs and assumptions about our relationship to life have to come into question. This is like ceasing to become.
“But, wait! Won’t I just become a blob on the couch, never caring about anything, never doing anything. Aren’t we supposed to be engaged with life? Aren’t I supposed to ‘See and do’?”
We know that if we argue with “what is”, we are going to suffer. “What is” has no opposites. It happens beyond good and bad, right and wrong, caring and indifference. What we are seeing is the cost of this moment. This moment appears to come at a very high price. In order to view the earth from Saturn, we also have conflagration on earth. They go together in this moment.
What happens if we were to wholly accept the fact that we really don’t know anything about the reality we inhabit? The mind stops churning, we are brought up short, we become quiet. Not knowing robs us of our hubris. When we are humble and innocent, a new way of “not knowing” starts to open up and connects us to everything in a fresh and renewing way. Not knowing, not trying to reach closure or a sense or safety rooted in changing phenomena, opens us to a different state of consciousness.
As we enter the silence of our being and start to follow the fullness of it as a total movement – ceasing to distinguish emotion, sensation, thought, sight, sound, etc., as separate phenomena – experience takes on the quality of a silent river or wind. This movement has energy, vibrancy and aliveness to it. In the midst of this river is the still “experiencing” that follows every detail of the movement. This experiencing or witnessing is a verb, not a noun or a subject.
This living presence is alert, relaxed and totally present. It holds the world with engagement and appreciation. Relationship is fundamental to it because the substance of presence is made of every factor of the environment. It is like looking into a mirror that reflects everything, not just the image, as living experience. We as sentient beings in essence are the aliveness of the world reflected in consciousness.
In Mansur Johnson’s memoir Murshid, Murshid Samuel Lewis reminds his students to practice “non-dual thinking.” Murshid Sam always seems to be speaking to the place in his disciples that is already awake, correcting them when they are thinking or acting from an idea about who they are rather than from their essential nature. Do we bring this teaching into our Sufi practice? In this article, I would like to ask, “Who do we believe ourselves to be when we sit down to do practice?” Many of us likely begin practice taking for granted who we are. Who we think we are is usually not part of the equation of practice. So, it seems important to explore this question, because the answer we assume could make the difference between a self-improvement program, rather than communion with the Infinite, the Eternal, and the Silent.