The Soul’s Journey Part I — Talk by Pir Zia Inayat-Khan

THE EYE OF THE HEART

The essence and direction of our journey during our lives, are hidden in the “Intention” that has driven and therefore shaped our destiny. As a human being our experience of this force of nature, this manifestation of God in our very being, is an aspect of our will and resolve. When combined in a harmonious expression they become a divine declaration via the heart (resolve) and the mind (will). Action and non-action, movement and rest are felt as clues illuminating a path that reveals itself in a flurry of impressions both instinctive and intuitive, whirling madly around each other in search of balance, of harmony, which is, for the one who endures the experience, Love Divine.

What do we know of this Love Divine? Through meditations we have identified this condition to be the natural state of our being. Nevertheless, we need to remember that the intensity of our pleasure in love, is in proportion to the intensity of our experience of separation, of our longing to reunite with this natural condition, which again and again we forget. Yet, we also known that a balance between these opposites can only be a brief experience, due to the essential mandate of nature, to create friction as the source of all that is, particularly divine intelligence.

Wajid

Our Challenge…

The temptation, when feeling powerless, is to move to anger and to join others in their anger… Makes us feel ten feet tall & covered with hair, right? But it’s a brittle, false strength that clouds our vision and erodes our capacity to act effectively — and damn, we need EVERYONE fully on-line right now to get us through this period of the latent American fascism now surfacing.
And it’s not just the hatefulness of those in power we need to deal with; it’s also our brothers & sisters who are acting-out their own Shadow stuff in the political sphere.

So get the therapy, and do the spiritual practices, that will expose and dismantle your feelings of helplessness and sand-pounding rage. You’ll know that it’s working when you can read of some new outrage (and there will be plenty of opportunities) feeling centered, calm, and trusting in the larger process — not as a pollyanna but as an authentic light-worker who really carries more light than darkness.

We re being tested severely in the authentic depth of our inner work… but it’s also an opportunity to further de-squam ourselves of the inessential egoic contrivances and empty ourselves of our “stories” and history and be really, really *present* with what’s possible.

And the spiritual powers we need to further-develop are not mushy, accepting pseudo-Love — that’s just a dodge to avoid facing our own Shadow, and believe-you-me, Trump and his minions is all of our Shadow, incarnate.

What’s needed is the kind of spiritual sovereignty that confers inner mastery over our own process. This isn’t the kind of “man-up,” macho-it-through” control that is really an ego that is out-of-control. It’s standing in the clear light of what is most authentic and real about ourselves, irrespective of what’s happening outside our skins. This mastery is just like being on skis or sailing a watercraft; the “givens” are the wind and waves of the world and of our own emotions, but we have a firm and practiced hand on the tiller and can use the wind & currents to go where we will.

This is what real spiritual practice is about, not “manifesting” things or manipulating phenomena or adding to arcane intellectual knowledge of historical metaphysical descriptions.

What the Teacher Does

People misunderstand the real work of a spiritual teacher. It’s not to give you information about metaphysics or read your aura or help you fix your goofy relationships or realize “abundance.” All of that is superficial and basically irrelevant.

A teacher does three things:

• S/he prescribes and customizes the right spiritual practice to support each next step you take in your spiritual unfoldment. This s/he does through training in that art, and the expertise gained from having traveled the path ahead of you.
• Through the effect of the teacher’s elevated consciousness on your being, s/he directly catalyzes your spiritual unfoldment. This is real and it’s very powerful, and it’s beyond mind and language.
• But the most important thing a teacher does is to perceive and mirror to you the magnificence and unique gifts of your real being and potential — and to hold that steadfast in spite of your best and most sincere attempts to prove to both of you that you are something else. Your teacher can do this in a way that can only be authentic to someone who wants nothing from you except your absolute freedom.