My heart has become an ocean, Beloved, since Thou hast poured Thy love into it.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
Long before I knew what a Sufi was I had a copy of Pir Vilayat’s first book, or I guess it was his first book, “Toward The One.” It had a lot of good information in it but it was almost impossible to read because of the type font and the lay out. But, inside was a poster, which I still have somewhere. I had this poster hanging in the wall of my bedroom and I used to sit on my bed and read it over and over. The above quote was the main sentence, larger than all the others, more prominent on the poster. I used to puzzle over this saying, not being sure who the Beloved was. I figured it had to be some kind of reference to God but it certainly was not the God I was taught about, a remote amorphous being who occasionally, and apparently quite randomly, deigned to notice and even less often, interfere in human affairs. I was taught that if one prayed often enough and sincerely enough that I might, just might, get noticed and replied to. How this reply would come was not very well explained but I would have to keep an eye out. It was all very elusive while appearing to be definitive. At least that is my memory of that training.
As has happened to many others, there came a point when I simply stopped paying attention to this training, rejected it, but did not have anything to replace it with. So, as with so many others my age, I became a hippie. That is another story but the point is that the search went on. Even as a pot smoking hippie I knew it too was false. The whole flower child ideal was a kind of illusion, created to respond to an inner pressure to understand the Universe in some way other than the way it had been explained by theologians determined to be in control. So, in the search for something to replace this obviously flawed system I read everything I could find. And that book, “Toward The One” appeared.
So, I would sit on my bed and read the poster over and over. Mostly I would roll the above quote around in my mind, trying to understand what it really meant. Of course the mind is not the proper place for such statements, they belong in the heart but I didn’t know that at the time.
What I firmly believe is that this book, with it’s poster, came to me as a clue or maybe as a kind of starting place. The journey from getting the book to finding my teacher was a long and confusing one but worth every bit of effort expended in both directions. It is as if one is unwittingly drawn to one’s true path through all sorts of little clues that one may or may not understand at the time, probably not. Maybe it doesn’t matter. What is probably more important is for each of us to recognize our own need to be recognized as precious. Little clues come to you that you will not recognize or that you will insist are something else. Perfectly normal. But, when something resonates deep in your being, seemingly more powerfully, as well as more subtly, than other things seem to, then you can allow this resonance to expand and become the road that leads you to who you really are.
Love & Blessing, Fatah
