The Struggle Continues

The above photo is of my much loved, now with Allah, sufi teacher, Fazal Inayat Khan as he was back when I had the honor of living in his school in southern England. The photo comes from the following website;

http://www.movimentosufi.com/Aggressivit%E0FazalG63.htm


The teenage group habits. Photo found at the following link;
http://www.pakskarate.com/mandarin/year2002.shtm

The individual habit;

http://www.idiomsbykids.com/taylor/mrtaylor/class20022003/idioms/idioms2003/idiomst.htm

It was the summer of 1972 in a beach near Katwijk, the Netherlands. I was attending a summer school of the International Sufi Movement. The link to the summer school for this year follows. http://www.sufimovement.org/events.htm
That summer our teacher was Murshid Fazal Inayat Khan. Fazal had taken us to the ocean' s edge to share his teachings. He had us gather around in a circle. Inside the circle was one of our fellow students. The student was tied up by a thick rope, hands and feet both bound. We watched our friend and classmate struggle with his bondage until he managed to escape. Fazal than tied up another student and she too managed to free herself. This went on for some time. One after another of us were bound and one after another, after shorter of longer struggles, managed to free themselves. Finally, Fazil stopped the process and explained. He said the robes were the negative or bad habits and situations we created for ourselves. We had to struggle with these self created habits and situations until we found our way to freedom. We must not give up struggling against the bandages of habits or self created bad situations or there would be no possibility to walk the earth as free people and find the joys and adventures life has to offer.

I asked Fazal a question. I said, " These ropes are thick and easier to get free of. What if the ropes were of silk?" He said that if the habits or self created situations were more difficult, than all the more reason and urgent was it to struggle even harder and with more determination until we were free. He said we should use whatever habit or situation was most obvious to work with first. Than as we liberated ourselves form those habits we would be developing the skill sets to use when we struggle with the more subtle and more complicated and difficult habits and situations. The key was to keep on struggling and never stop. True, we have to take rests and we need to accept that many habits or situations will take a long time to change. Perhaps lifetimes. But the struggle it's self is the key to developing ourselves as free beings. Some times the struggle is physical, more often than not it is psychological and spiritual. Sometimes it requires effort, sometimes letting go of trying to hard and being more accepting of the situation. There is no one definition fits all when it comes to struggle or outcome of the struggle.

More often than not we feel so terrible about our habits and self created bad situations. Because of that feeling and the terrible self condemning thoughts and emotions that accompany them we feel even more trapped and hopeless. So the first thing we might want to do is turn poison into medicine as the Chinese say. That means first and foremost accept our habits and situations as teachers and friends. There is a story about this kind of thing. I will not tell it now. I will just repeat one line that I think many of us can relate too, " It is not always your enemies who put you in the crap and it is not always your friends who take you out of it." I will tell the whole story at another time. On the first page of this blog is a poem by Rumi. It's truth and beauty is useful to read in connection with how best to start to deal with our bad habits and situations. So here it is again.



The Guest House



This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.



A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.



Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.



The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.



Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

~ Rumi ~


(The Essential Rumi, versions by Coleman Barks)