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Cloudy Evening... Old Orchard Beach
Old Orchard Beach, Maine
A disciple questioned the Sage, "You discourage our seeking paranormal or ecstatic experiences. What if it happens anyway?" "Then, remember," said the Sage, "it is an experience, and what your heart longs for is a non-experience."
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The Sufis tell a story about two Sufis, Rabia (b. 712) and Hasan (b. 641) ...
The much-adored Rabia and the eminent teacher Hasan were sitting under a tree just outside a popular marketplace. They shared about spiritual matters.
Rabia’s beauty enchanted the teacher. So, when it came time for prayers, Hasan unfurled his prayer rug and placed it on the water. Standing on the floating rug, he invited Rabia to join him, hoping to impress her. Instead, she spread out her prayer rug, perched on it, and levitated above Hasan, inviting him to join her.
Rabia teased Hasan, "Isn't this what you want, for the people in the bazaar to see us and be astounded by our magical feat?" She continued, "Hasan, what you did, a fish can do. What I did, a moth can do. You forget that what we're called to do is more difficult and more important: the work of transforming ourselves."
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Pursuit of the sensational is a bypass from the most critical work - the transformation of self. The self self-dazzling is not the way. The self displaying spiritual prowess is not the path.
The most important appointment is not to elevated states of consciousness or moments of ecstasy but the ordinariness of daily life. Daily life does not come and go, while moments of ecstatic experience do. The opposites of life, like pleasure and suffering, are equally grist for the mill of an awakened life.
We work with what is always here, where we are - ourselves, our life. We work with whatever situation we are in, painful or pleasant or neutral. We do not try to hide. We meet it; we work with it. In doing so, we sanctify the common, and we hallow ourselves.
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*©Brian K. Wilcox, 2021.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
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