THE SUFI WAY OF SELF-UNFOLDMENT
(Excerpts Only)

By: Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri

Chapter 3
On Mind

Mind is the seat of emotion, and every person's mind has a different coloration, according to his own orientation. That orientation is what we call personality and we exaggerate its importance. We make it into a big shrine: 'This is MY personality – you cannot or must not change it!' This is idol-worship. It is worshipping something other than the real.

Mind is the center of all these aberrations and illusions. Many of us are more emotionally inclined. Generally speaking, women tend to be more emotional because of that biological imprint to look after and serve a child, which is sometimes not a very logical process. Men, by and large, are more logical. Some of us are more inclined to action; which neither involves a great deal of logic nor emotion. It is action, and man is a warrior, a fighter. Some of us are more devotionally inclined, we want to give of ourselves. These are different aspects; we are all made up of all these basic inclinations. Sometimes, for example, one may find oneself more emotional before breakfast and more logical afterwards. The mood changes with time and according to circumstances. You must bear in mind that this model we have tried to delineate is in flux. Nothing in it is permanent. One Reality is.

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The search for the permanent

The direction or goal is the news, which has come to us repeatedly through the prophets and messengers, that in reality there is nothing other than the Creator: there is only God. And everything else is a colored, tarnished or filtered version, which can also recognize the fact that it is tarnished because there is pure life in it, and life has come from that Source which is boundless. Life continues after, but life is in me. So what is my reality? What is that which remains? What is that which is permanent (because we constantly seek permanency)? If you watch yourself in action, you will see that as well as trying to equalize, you are also trying to permanentize, i.e. you seek the permanent within you.

Those of us who are intelligent only undertake tasks which we think will have a lasting effect. We only establish relationships in the hope that they last. If you knew that your prospective employee was very brilliant but unreliable, you would not take him on. You may compromise quality and have someone reliable. Reliability means security, which implies durability, permanency, a foundation, something you can always fall back upon. All of these are attributes of Reality.

Let us examine an aspect of security. Take, for example, a good job. What does one look for in a good job? First of all, when you say 'good job', you mean that the 'job' constitutes objects (offices, people, bosses), emotions (how they treat you) and thoughts (highly qualified people). When you say 'good' that means that you have already said that the match of the world with your expectations is a good one. That is the first thing.

The next thing we say is that it is 'secure'. We generally prefer not to take temporary jobs. If you had to take one, you would say, 'Oh, it's such a wonderful place, but the work is only for six months'. This is directly related to our natural urge to permanentize and to perpetualize – to reflect or echo Reality in us. We are at our most comfortable with the familiar; we feel secure. So Reality must be the most familiar thing to us!

In a sense we are running away from some tyranny. We have discovered that in our model describing the real situation there is no inherent stability, it is dynamic. We are growing older, our needs change, and we have also logically discovered that to have a complete match between our desires and achievements is next to impossible. We are always trying, but as soon as we seem to have it, it eludes us. We discover that this matching process is at best a compromise. The balance is never perfect; yet we want fullness and permanence. We want absoluteness. It is ingrained in our chromosomes. The absolute is God.

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Afflictions

The awakening of intelligence, the first step to be taken, is this awareness. And this can only come with dissatisfaction. It does not come if we are pampered and all seems well. In these so-called advanced societies there is less and less of a real search and questioning, because everything is programmed and done for us. There are no sparks that fly and therefore no current. It is usually when there are difficulties and discontent that a person begins to ask what is the cause of his misery. Difficulties are the blessings for an energetic start on the path of awakening. Difficulty at the physical level means illness. You ask why and the doctor tells you, 'Look here, you've been abusing yourself, too many late nights, bad eating habits... It is a blessing that it is only a mild flu it could have been pneumonia!'

At the mental level the same applies. If unknowingly you have allowed yourself to be emotionally attached and shattered, you have not constrained yourself, you have not delineated boundaries. Every system has to have a boundary, otherwise it is not a system. Every system has its outer limits, but it interacts and interrelates with systems around it.

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The positive function of mind

We need to add something else to this model, which is that although the mind is the seat of emotion, it is also where we begin to discern, to differentiate and appreciate. Here we find the Eastern terminology very useful. We have to take both mind and intellect in order to show you that the boundary we have tried to draw is an artificial one, limited for use as illustration.

With proper education and rehabilitation of our mind, we bring about great awareness. In Arabic it is dhikr. The root of this word means to remember. What is meant by 'remember'? It means remember yourself, take stock: in other words, if you freeze the action of this complex dynamic in one photographic frame, for one second, it makes you concentrate on it, be aware of it, see it as it is. When awareness occurs in the mental zone, the intellect begins to shed its own spontaneous light onto it. This is fikr, to reflect or think. It is discrimination.

The higher we move, the more we become alive, aware, awakened. This is the same awareness which brings about discrimination. It is related to total rehabilitation. There is no separation. One cannot take a bit of this knowledge, or select bits of it, in order to justify whatever action or situation we are living in or demanding. If you want to have self-knowledge, then it is about yourself, and you have only one self. We have come from the One. There is only one model, one reality. There is only one Lord. That is why it is important for us to understand and share this view of the one Reality. We move from one bit to another so that we then can see the whole integrated oneness. This is Divine Unity.

Energy and awareness

The same thing is related to energy. At a given situation or time we all have a certain amount of energy. However you like to measure it, you will find a certain total amount of energy available at any one time. Why are most of us unbalanced or dissatisfied at the moment? It is because our energy is not harnessed; we are not contained and therefore not wholesome. Part of our energy is leaking away in the form of anxiety or worry.

Self-knowledge is about wholesomeness. It is in order to see the totality inwardly, to see the absoluteness, to see the integratedness of everything, which is tawhid, Oneness. But, with regard to energy, if at the moment I have a third of my energy dwelling in the past, suffering from it or proud of it, and another third is concerned about the future – whether it is about the welfare of my children, my reputation, failure or success – then only a third remains. Therefore, only one third of me is really available to be drawn from now.

In any situation, the more you worry the less likely you are to achieve the expected result, because some of your energy is dissipated in anxiety. And the body is absorbing some of it in the form of perspiration, heat or nervousness. These are all forms of dissipation. So where are you now if half of you is buried in the past and the other half is anxiously concerned about the future? What is left of you?

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Knowledge and awareness

This is what this knowledge means and we are all hankering after it from the moment we are born. This is the meaning of humanity. We are all the same in wanting to find that absolute truth. But if the bulb keeps telling itself, 'I am this green bulb and I have given birth to two bulbs and have this responsibility and I am contented being green and I am doing very well in this world', it has no opportunity to see that it is only a bulb because there is electricity flowing through it. Then it could contemplate the nature of electric power. But usually we do not give ourselves that chance, for we are too busy with our responsibilities. These excuses are a trick of the mind. As every system veers towards it origin, it also perpetuates or reinforces itself at the same time, whatever that system may be. If we start lying we will begin to perpetuate lying and justify it. It is our nature, it is the nature of all systems in creation to perpetuate themselves.

Every system has it own cybernetics to perpetuate itself. That is why the mind is the biggest trickster: it perpetuates what it has been used to. As we said, it is the storehouse of memory, all it knows is what has been before. We now have a new definition of our actions. Every action we take is repeating what we have liked, ensuring the avoidance of what we dislike. This is what we mean by saying it is a cybernetic or self-feeding system. Every action we perform is to perpetuate, to reproduce what we like and avoid what we dislike. And yet we call ourselves very open-minded. Where is the open-mindedness?

The objective is to be in awareness. You must simply be aware of what you do when you are doing it, not afterwards! There is nothing wrong in wanting to reproduce what you like and avoid what you dislike. This is the way we are. What matters is the spontaneous awareness of what is happening. All human beings have the same essence and the same consciousness, because we are basically sentient through life and life is one. The only difference between beings is the degree of awareness.

Spontaneous awareness of our state, whether it be pleasure or anger, peace or violence, results in neutralization of the manifestation of these attributes. This is why we have the ritual washing before prayer. The intention of this cleansing is to render every moment pure and fresh, and that comes by pure awareness. It is alertness without being two. In most of our societies we have split ourselves, the judge and the judged. This is because there is hypocrisy in us. Self-judgment and blame are different from spontaneous, instantaneous awareness, which is the fruit of remembrance of God, dhikr.