REFLECTIONS
Love Is a Fire: The Sufi’s Mystical Journey Home
My intention with reading this book is to gain a deeper understanding of the Sufi tradition, its teachings, some of the Sufi Mystics, and practices in order to support my own development in immersing myself into God.
I found that not only the book allows me to study Sufism but it also support me in various personal discoveries so, I created various writings along the reading process.
These are rather self-reflection type of writings. I, nevertheless, included them in my study works because they reflect stages of my development as I am taking the ministerial study course.
July 7, 2016
Worthiness
I am reading Love Is a Fire: The Sufi’s Mystical Journey Home by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee. So, Love is supposed to be a fiery love affair.
Well, I don’t believe in “the artful postures of Love”. I do not see or experience anything around me that I would consider Love or Loving. I see people pose in the “artful postures of Love” as they act charitable and supportive towards others, as they devote themselves to a God or a Deity or as they hold onto the hands of their partners with starts in their eyes. None of it has anything to do with Love.
I feel as if “Oh, I am fortune’s fool!” because I have tricked myself into seeking something I do not comprehend. This morning in my meditation I shared that by now I have become convinced that this Path is not created for the likes of me. This path is for the blinded lovers, for those who can fathom the invisible and fill in the missing bits.
I cannot do that, I am way too matter of facts. In my opinion, Love is but a curse. Under the disguise of Love, we desperately seek out someone or something who meets our needs, who keeps us safe, and ensures us that we are not ultimately desolate and bereft in this dark world.
Most of us desperately seeks a special someone, Price Charming or Cinderella, who will lift us out of our self-loathing abyss and will provide us with the Love that “overthrows empires and captures the hearts”. Suddenly, we do not feel gloomy and lonely anymore. In return for our unexpected fortune, however, we become selfless puppets serving the needs of the other. It is a deal and we must meet both ends of the bargain.
The misfortune ones, who do not find the right chappie, will find a substitute and simply invent one in our imagination. For most devoted to a faith God is the all-encompassing Care-giver who patiently listens to our daily begging. And we, in exchange, faithfully believe that in some way or another our prayers are heard and we are delivered. When we are not actually given what we have particularly asked for we use our boundless imagination to fill in the gaps and explain our misfortunes still keeping God and his almightiness intact.
When I look at Love I see desperation. We desperately seek a way to feel worthy; when someone loves me, I must be worthy and lovable; when I know that God loves me, I must be worthy and lovable. Neither is correct, however, because both are only fictions of our imagination.
For me, Worthiness is the key to the Love described by Shakespeare so beautifully. It is the ultimate secret Grail that opens us to the chambers of treasures. The Love that we all so desperately seek is self-respect, deep care and embrace for the whole-Self at every single moment without fail. Worthiness is not the target but the bow that pierces through the veil of shadows. This is what Worthiness feels, sounds and looks like:
“My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.”
All quotes are from Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare and from Shakespeare in Love.