From In the House of Remembering, by Kabir Helminski

I was talking to somebody recently who, with a good heart, said, “I have no need for religion. I know what is right and what is wrong.” I didn’t comment or argue, but, actually, this brings up some very important subjects.

Do we need God? Do we need God to do and be good? The answer is no, up to a certain point. You can do good without God. You can be kind, generous, respectful, and sensitive to other human beings without bringing God into it. What’s the significance of bringing God into it?

First of all, my sense is that people are led to various religions and mystical traditions by a yearning from within. Something in them feels unfulfilled. It’s like an inner drive or hunger. It’s not, “I want to follow a religion so I can be a good person.” Or maybe it’s more a sense of “I don’t want to just be at home. I want to be together with others. I feel like I need to be in a holy place.” There is something more than just being nice, kind, and all of that. There’s a deeper yearning operating within humans who undertake a spiritual practice. There is something else calling us. These things are part of a bigger whole.

The second aspect is that what we mean by “religion” is a reality that calls to us from a higher level. It is aspirational and transformational. Throughout history we see that people have not been very good to each other. Something else has been needed. Muhammad said: “Verily, Allah when He created the creation, He personally prescribed for himself: ‘My mercy prevails over My wrath.’” This gives us what we need. It provides a sense of something that is good. It is better than how we are. The soul longs for a state of perfection. It’s an ideal that is also timeless and spaceless. It includes the ultimate freedom to just expand, to merge with all that is. It’s a bit like meditation. We long for something that is ideally free, beautiful, good, and generous. This longing contrasts with our limited self. If we’re honest and conscious, this self is not always quite like that.

We spend much of our time doing what we want to do, or doing what we have to do to attain some desires of the self in the short or long term. In other words, we are always at the center of our own choices, we follow our own desires, and there is little that we feel answerable to.

Most of the time, it’s our ego, or nafs, that is pulling us by the forelock here and there. We see ourselves sent in more directions than we can possibly go. We ask the question, “Which of the many impulses of my own ego will I follow? I can’t follow them all.” That’s the big struggle. The real question is: What is to be attained by following our own nafs? To say, “I have no need for religion,” is to say that I’m satisfied following myself, above all. And what is attained by following a traditional teaching, especially one like Sufism that is grounded in a lineage of enlightened and morally exceptional human beings?

The spiritual path, the path of transformation, is about following something other than our own whims and desires, even when these are within a basic moral structure. With a practice like ours, you are able to break the unconscious momentum of your self’s activities. You are able to come into the center of your being and be there, face-to-face, with the Divine. You learn to love that. There’s always a continual relationship between these two elements: the limited, imperfect part of ourselves and the eternal, pure part. The self, in a way, is blessed by that unconditioned, pure being. It is nurtured and transformed by it because that part of ourselves is intimate with the Divine.

Spiritual practice can also be undertaken with ambition, in a self-serving way. It can be done with an unconscious ego sense of “I want to gain something for myself.” That’s not the best way to approach a spiritual practice, but no one’s intentions are totally pure, free of self-interest. And ultimately the spiritual path is more in your self-interest than unconsciously following the demands of the ego. But the point is that we are practicing for the sake of something that gradually frees us from many forms of psychological tyranny—the tyranny of the ego, the tyranny of unconsciously needing to please others, of conforming to the worldly values around us.

There’s a transformative power that exists in the nature of Reality. There is something that can almost miraculously transform human beings. We need that. It’s within ourselves, yes, but not as our selves. It is not there as an object. This is a subtle, metaphysical distinction.

To invite God into a conversation is to open the door of mystery and possibility. It is not about an exchange between two people, with the thought of “I’ll do this for you, maybe someday you’ll do it for me.” It has nothing to do with expectation. It’s not a quid pro quo. It’s something entirely of a different order and unpredictable.

And so on the spiritual path we choose to give a certain amount of time and effort to be in the company of the Divine consciously and intentionally. It’s appropriate to have, as we have in our Tradition, times of the day dedicated to this. There are times when we make an effort to bring ourselves into the presence of God. In our Tradition there is a physical effort involved in worship—the postures of bowing and prostration during salaat, or the practice of turning.[1] There’s a “doing,” not just a “being” in Sufi spiritual practice. It’s “doing” with “being.” The physical efforts in the ritual prayer also are done in time. We undertake the ritual prayers at the times indicated, following what we believe to be a heavenly, ordained pattern, not merely at our convenience, not just when we want to.

Yet we’re really quite free. We have much time to do what we want to do. We also have some time we must reserve for our relationship with the Divine. How much is “a little bit of time”? Is it five minutes or an hour? These are small periods of time compared to the 24 hours that are in a day.

 

Someone says,
“I must provide for my family.
I have to work so hard to earn a living.”
He can do without God,
but not without food;
he can do without Religion,
but not without idols.
Where is one who’ll say,
“If I eat a piece of bread
without awareness of God,
I will choke.”

[Rumi, Masnavi II, 3071–79]

 

We fool ourselves by saying we don’t have time for spiritual practice. How else will we take care of ourselves, our hearts, our souls?

There is a story in Rumi’s Masnavi[2] about the relativity of our sense of time and the urgency needed to spur us on in this work:

Once there was a man who planted a thorn bush in the middle of the lane outside his home. Those who passed along that way complained to him about the inconvenience it caused, but he did nothing about it. All the while the thorn bush was growing bigger; the people’s feet were bleeding from its pricks. People’s clothes were torn by the thorns, and the poor passers-by were getting nasty scratches.

“Root it up!” the governor told him.

“Very well, one day I will root it up,” the man replied.

So for a long while he promised “tomorrow” and “tomorrow”; meanwhile his thorn bush grew strong and thrived.

“Stop procrastinating,” said the governor to him one day, “and finish the job. Remove this hazard.”

“There is still plenty of time, uncle,” the man answered.

“No, hurry up at once,” cried the governor. “Stop postponing the work.”

Commenting on the story, Rumi says: “Blessed is he who profits from the days of youth to settle debts, in the days when there is still the power, the health, and strength of heart and vigor; before the days of old age arrive, when the roots of bad habits are firmly established, and the power to pull them up is diminished.”

Don’t put it off, don’t wait too long. When we truly commit ourselves to a spiritual path and practice, something in Reality rises up to support us. The destiny of what we’re designed to be becomes real, and the fate of unconscious behaviours is avoided. Or, even if not avoided, our mistakes become learning experiences, blessed by some invisible Mercy. As Yunus Emre said, “Ever since the glance of the mature fell upon me, nothing has been a misfortune.”

 

***

 

So how do we begin to fulfill our destiny as spiritual beings? How do we enter into a real, experiential relationship with the Divine? We can reserve a portion of everyday life to strengthen our practice. In the ordinary places where our lives are lived, we can make an offering of time and space to be in the presence of God. Sometimes the offering may take the form of simple stillness. We stop what we’re doing, disengage from our worldly pre-occupations, and make ourselves still and quiet in every aspect of our being.

Sometimes when we’re in nature, on retreat, or on a journey with friends to sacred places, we have the experience of feeling closer to the Divine. We feel that we slip into and remain much more easily in states of stillness, silence, remembrance, and awe. We can experience a practice more deeply. These experiences in holy places such as Mecca, Medina, Konya, Istanbul, or Jerusalem can provide a taste and fragrance of sanctity as we undertake our spiritual practices there. The everyday practices of our Path, however, help us to internally create that sense of sacredness independent of circumstances.

In our Tradition, we use the body to experience the presence of God. We can teach the body what it feels like to surrender to the Divine as our forehead touches the ground during our prayer. This is something the body needs to tangibly experience.

 

Remembrance in its most elementary, tangible form is to chant the names of God. Remembrance is everything. Our destination as spiritually developing human beings is to live our lives in such a way that we are completely within that continual remembrance. That is the world and universe we live in. It surrounds and informs us. It illuminates our perception and softens our hearts. It should also bring us joy and happiness. That is our reality, because looking at life through the distorting eyes of the ego is, at best, a secondhand reality.

The word for “remembrance” in Arabic literally means “to mention,” yet we translate it as “remembrance.” When you mention someone, in a way, you’re remembering the one you are calling to mind. We are remembering our Origin, remembering that we come from God and to God we will return. People sometimes talk about how children have an open channel to the Divine because they just came from God relatively recently. Remembering our Origin is a fundamental truth that we need to call to mind. This is expressed in the hadith “Whoever belongs to God, God will belong to him or her.”

In that sense, if remembrance is deep enough, complete enough, it is the Divine remembering in you. In the state of belonging to God, what you want is not different than what the Divine wants. And “God” wants what you want; there is then no separate “you” wanting. There is no duality or personal will pulling in the opposite direction.

Rumi calls that being under the “compulsion of love.” He says to be utterly compelled by love every moment is the only freedom. Otherwise you’re just digging your heels in. Sometimes, your very self is mostly resistance. Otherwise we would just know, do, give, and love. There would be no “ifs” or “buts,” no hesitations and doubts. This is a journey and a process.

 

 

 

[1]. A specific Mevlevi practice, also known as whirling.

[2]. Rumi’s six volume work of didactic poetry, also written as Mathnawi.