threshold3inverted-blue-330-263x300Reflections on this month’s theme, ‘The natural state of the human being is worship. The human being needs God as the garden needs spring’.

Sufism is a very practical discipline. Part of it is about how we use our consciousness. Starting with a simple practice of directing our attention toward something ineffable but very real in our own being, behind thoughts and emotional reactions, where we are at home in pure presence, very near to the Divine.

We learn to awaken to our own presence and find a relationship with the larger Presence. In that Presence, the quality of our lives and relationships with others and with ourselves changes, our thinking, our feelings; we live from something deeper inside ourselves. The forms of prayer and worship are a way of expressing love, gifts to the Beloved. We learn to discern where the action of our worship is coming from, what our motivation is, that we may know the fake from the real.

As we gradually awaken a refined state of consciousness, a presence that accompanies us in every day life, an inner stability arises through sustained contact with something beyond all circumstances. With practice and cultivation, more and more of our actions are imbued with this presence, connected to meaning and intention, awakening our humanness. This same quality becomes a solace even in suffering and tragedy.