VISIONARY TEACHINGS
by Gill Schwartz

THE 28 ASPECTS OF SUFI AWAKENING
My Personal Experience of the Sufi Stations on the Path

Gill Schwartz, Yusuph
A Member of the Shadalia Sufi Order

In many Sufi Teachings, these aspects are presented in a well purified and

formulated sequence. One gets the image of steps to be ascended or the rungs of a

ladder. In experience, I find they are more like the facets of a whirling helix of

transformation that spirals up and down through my being, as my being, again and

again. Through this little peep hole that is the extent of my human consciousness, I

can grasp no more. But each time hopefully deepens and enriches my experience. I

do believe, and my visions confirm that it is about my looking for the Looker,

finding the god in me, that is me. This is the goal this Practice is meant to wake me

to. Then these are not perceived as 28 separate levels but revealed as individual

facets of the jewel of the Self, absorbed in and reflecting the Divine Radiance.

Then I can truly know and live, "There is no Truth but God." This is the Self I seek.

I begin by honoring this Truth that I am part of. I study the masters in this

quest from different traditions with honor and esteem. In my understanding and

experience of these Aspects I refer to other Paths of Awakening that it parallels and

resonates with that make it fuller and more personal for me, to maintain a

universality and ease of identifying with. But in opening my being to this pursuit,

the bountiful Lord assures me that there is for me, as for all His blessed ones, a

unique and ultimately person Path for us to travel. Alhamd'allah.

The focus of this Work is on the level and quality of consciousness and its

reflection in our relationship with the world and God. The universal visionary and

mystic recognizes that you can only bring back from the Boundless Eternal what

you have an appropriate vessel to carry It in, to be reflected through the heart and

mind.

The first concern to focus on, and the most obvious calling, is:

SEVEN ASPECTS OF AWAKENING FROM THE NAFS

(The Conditioned Egoic Self).

1 OBEYING ONLY MY NAFS. Total Self Hypnosis.

2. COMING TO DOUBT MY NAFS: I Sense the Call and the Resulting Inner Conflict
for Control between the Call and my denouncing Nafs

3. MY FAITH AND TRUST AWAKEN: God's Song is The Nature of the Call.

4. SECURITY IN ESSENCE: Sense The True "I". My Shift in Attachment.

5. MY CALL TO DEDICATION: Deeper Release Awakens Inner Aliveness.

6. UNQUESTIONING ACCEPTANCE: Desperate, Humble Handing Over.

7. FULFILLMENT OF THE HUMAN CREATURE SELF: A Permeable Expression of Spirit.

1. Obeying Only The Deluded, Commanding Nafs: Self-enslavement.

"The individual is out of personal control and believes himself to be a

coherent personality. He starts to learn that he, like all undeveloped individuals,

has a multiple and changing personality." "The Sufis". Idries Shah.

"Reversing the Mind from Samsara: Having generated a strong sense of

renunciation by contemplating the law of Karmic cause and result, death, and

impermanence, one completely abandons shortsightedness and thinks, "'All who

take birth die. I too will die leaving everything behind, nothing being of any use.""

"Meditate with compassion on the suffering created by not recognizing

oneself, not realizing that my mind is the Truth Body, or grasp that my conditioned

"I" and "self" do not exists. (Like reflections on water.) "Introduction to

Mahamudra the Co-emergent Unification." Drigung Kyopa Jigten Sumgon

"Recognize the Shadow-theater of human existence while being aware of its

metaphysical and spiritual implications. It is the Image of universal "Return" to

Highest Being And Consciousness. The spiritual orientation and navigation in

"seeing through the shadow" calls for realization and intelligence. These are the

successive stages of realization." "Mecca Illuminations" Ibn Arabi

The human condition: Personality is a socially constructed fantasy (the Nafs).

Sense impressions and subconscious thought go first to our Cental Nervous System,

our survival based conditioned impressions and responses. Some microseconds

later, this is shunted to the Cerebral Cortex. This activates whatever capacity for

conscious awareness one might have. Together, our limited senses and awareness

can only observe a fraction of the happening: our peek hole consciousness. And

you can only relate to this in terms of the history of the experiences you associate it

with. Never the happening, pure and simple, in itself.

Yet our access to transmental awareness and the malleability of brain

patterns encourages the possibilities of the Journey of Self Realization. Thus

Buddhism and other spiritual traditions honor our time of incarnation as a great

opportunity for taking part in one's spiritual Awakening.

I begin my pilgrimage on this Path lost in a state of primal delusion. Here I

take my conditioned egoic self to be my sole reality. This Illusion is my sole basis

of my ambition and arrogance, vanity and greed. Fear and defensiveness are my

basic modes. I am identified and enthralled with the sensations, thoughts and

feelings that permeate my "me" field. This is the subjective aura of beliefs and

habit that surrounds and permeates my life and all my experience. It colors, flavors

and defines everything and gives it a sense of personal reality. It is my medium of

perception and makes up everything to fit my personal phantasms, one way or

another. My Nafs is the source of my self-identity. In spite of much pain and doubt,

I obey and shape my life around it.

The beliefs, yearnings and wounds that define it are the imaginative remains

of my subjective, personal history. Its source was my family's interjected dynamics

and society's "insanity of consensus." The constructs of delusion express how as I

personally and uniquely experienced them. They are the petrified remnants of my

formative life. Everything not held in this field of awareness is relegated to the

unconscious and darkness: my shadow self. The "me" field can enmesh and keep

me captive in its habitual and primitive delusions because I believe that's who I am.

Self entrapping hypnosis. Thus my conditioned egoic self, as an internalized facet

of that consensus, is secure with its hypnotic powers. It evokes fear, enticement and

emotional pain to manipulate and punish me if I doubt or resist its control.

This first Aspect of my awakening is completely taken up with my

circumstances, inner and outer. My Naf's interpretations and projections on them

are the basis of my living. Its desperation is partly in retaliation for the impossible

expectations I impose on it. Because I have so little reflective, self awareness, I'm

not able to engage in these circumstance with any independence from my

conditioning.

In this most superficial realm of my selfhood, I am habituated to its inherent

duality, compromise, delusion and inevitable loss. Worst of all, the genuine needs

and gifts of my body and soul are distorted and crippled by these patterns imposed

on them. Identified with this narrow, deluded aspect of my self therefore brings a

destroying hopelessness that doesn't let me quench my being's vital longings.

Seeing this forces me to recognize that this Nafs part of me can't possibly do

what I blindly expect of it. And, in the restricted confines of my "me" field, my

awareness can't open to where true guidance and support come from. So, I

aimlessly stumble on.

2. COMING TO DOUBT MY NAFS: I Sense the Call and the Resulting Inner Conflict for Control between the Call and my accusing Nafs.

"The dawn of self-awareness and 'accusation,' in which automatic thoughts are

seen for what they are." "The Sufis" Idries Shah.

The inherent devotion and the yearning of my soul awaken me enough to

recognize how bound I am to this persona, this pretend image of myself. My

overripe desperation against that self-hypnosis give me courage to open to my

intuition and higher knowing. Though distant and muffled, my soul feels some Call

in response to its yearning and I open as fully as I'm able to trustingly attend to it.

Although heart is grateful and deeply moved, my egoic self recoils, resists and

sabotages. It resurges with all its guile and force, to make me continue to walk the

same old go nowhere path. "Why must the change be so radical," it argues. "If you

question all this, there will be no place for you to be in the world. You won't

survive."

I understand that the core of my "me" field is the delusion that what I seek lies

outside me, as "other" than myself. This myth did serve as a necessary survival

assumption in my infancy and youth as survival skills. But, as I have matured and

grown discerning, I recognize it as a restricting bondage and the source of much of

my suffering.

With its hypnotic powers of fear and promise, the "me" field enmeshes and

keeps me captive in its childish survival based and primitive delusions. Worst of

all, being so enslaved doesn't let me quench my soul's vital longings.

I observe myself with intended kindness and meditative detachment. Not to

judge or analyze, simply to recognize my "me" field's influence on my imaginings,

thoughts, feelings and actions. I come to discern my habitual ways of perceiving

things. I might recall relevant incidents in the past to give my observations greater

depth and get insight into how their patterns relate.

Although my "me" field is shaped and colored by my moods, circumstances,

dominant concerns, etc., I recognize its consistent and unique atmosphere more

clearly. The field of my awareness rather than my usual total identification with

this remnant, adapted aspect of myself as my only choice, With compassionate

detachment, my relationship with it can change. A greater awareness of my fuller

reality creates freedom and space for me to recognize and make other possibilities.

Observer consciousness allows deeper self knowing and perspective to come

through. If I find myself either judging or justifying my subjective projections, I

remember it is a favorite control ploy of the fearful, control desperate egoic self to

undermine with , "Yes, but..But... But..." it perpetually insists. There is a faith and a

yearning that the process of releasing from my "me" field will naturally draw me

closer to recognizing my true Self. Some blessed certainty assures me that I am

looking for the Looker, the Consciousness, not its contents.

Although there is only a shred of me that tastes that certainty, and that bit

seems barely real, my frustration and desperation with this kind of life is very ripe.

This gives me courage to open to God's Call, to follow it as fully and trustingly as I

can. And to treat my conditioned and delusioned egoic self

The rest of me is in the throes of gut-clenching doubt and viscous questioning.

It cries:

God is an affliction that comes to torment my soul with hopes of

something more, something deeper than the pointless dreams and

longings that ruffle the dark waters of my despair.

I am a God Infested Bag Of Shit

The holy inner war, the jihad, between my spirit that hears that Call

and my delusionary self has begun.

3. Faith and Trust Awaken: God's Song. The Nature of the Call. The Inspired Self

"The beginning of real mental integration, when the mind is

becoming capable of operating on a higher level than was its previous futile

custom." "The Sufis" Idries Shah.

God's wordless song of heartfelt Knowing continues in my being. "I

Am the Heart of your heart," He sings, "the Self of your self. Offer up all of

your self that resists your answering My Call. The promise is within you to

reflect My Face and My Love."

I know the nature of this Call: It is to turn around in the deepest

center of my Heart; To the renewal of my soul (Metanoia); To my dying

before I die; To remembering who I truly Am.

As my self-knowing deepens and I am less identified with that level

of mind that is filled with fantasized circumstance and unfullfilable desires;

the source and energizer of my "me" field, I recognize that all that is truly

mechanical and impersonal. I watch it projected out from "me", but not

really meaningful to me at all. I am a ghost in the works. My compulsion to

live my life from that place is painful and burdensome self torment.

Now, unburdened from all those trappings and expectations I'd

tormented my egoic self with, its evident that it is simply the focal reference

of my human creature self's mind that is its sense of identity. I'm touched

with its basic quality of childlike innocence and life adventure it emanated,

like an innocent pup. Committed to mistakingly believing it was to be

obeyed it all those years, I recognized that it had been like having a

desperate, overburdened 6 year old forced to lead me about, or a simple-

minded deranged tyrant telling me how to live.

Now that I know this, I might elect to either have compassion for this

distorted, now somewhat awoken egoic self or to disown and reject it.

Either choice has its ramifications in relating to all "others", but both make a

clear discernment between my limited artifact human "mind" and my real

self, my "Other". I experience, too, that de-identifying and disengaging from

my "me" field makes greater room for my Self awareness to flourish.

Now that I am de-hypnotized from that restricted state, I devoutly

open my soul and cry, "Help me, dear Lord, God. I can do nothing without

You." So I begin the ultimate Quest. Though this Path is unknown, I place

one foot before the other with only the longing to hear His voice to guide

me. Through all the daily scramble of survival concerns that still draw me to

be hypnotized with taunting outer meanings and goals, I longingly await His

awakening touch on my soul.

Nurtured solely by this faith and trust, I wake daily to give thanks

and pray for His guidance. Though still estranged from my "Other", my High

Self, I follow in my stumbling way, colliding with obstacles, slipping and

falling in doubt and confusion..

Only at night before sleep, the day's chores and "ought-to"s done

with, is there respite. Then, for some while, I rest with a peacefully quiet

mind and Heart and receive the dear Lord's reassurance.

4. Security in Essence: I Sense My True "I". The Shift In Attachment. The Serene Self

"Serene balance, equilibrium of the true individuality." "The Sufis"

Idries Shah.

With ongoing recognition of its futile mechanisms, blind

identification with my "me" field gradually releases. At first I might image it

like a kind of fog surrounding me that colors and obscures everything I

experience. But its significance dispels as I more awarely observe its

ephemeral falseness. The attitude I took towards my conditioned, egoic self

in the last stage --compassion or isolating rejection of the egoic self--

becomes the means to draw me to higher Consciousness. As I am more fully

absorbed into that Self, I am less confused into believing in that labyrinth of

obsolete mirages that I thought was me.

As I'm freer from attachment to that outer conditioned self, I live

more fully within. The eye of my inner Heart begins to open to witness that

all I seek does truly come from God, not from the chaotic flux of

circumstance. A deep voice in me is always in prayer, even when the outer

self is confused and suffering. When I focus in my heart and join in with the

chants there it sweetly floods and awakens my hole being. I begin to

recognize and release the old beliefs and pictures created by my limited

awareness, by my ego's demon fears and desires. There are moments of

experiencing every part of me now --mind, heart, body and spirit-- as being

of God. There is the Knowing that when I says "I", I can only mean my god-

self. Only that essence has identity. This is the root of my peace, compassion

and service. This is the source of incredible vital energy to flood into my

life.

This Light that gradually awakens and enfolds me is the sought for

Truth. I see that this is the Consciousness that contains my mind and its

perceptions as well as many other facets. Its Light reflects off the things I

experience to give them an appearance of reality. Recognizing this is the

beginning of awakening to I Am Truth.

5. Call to Dedication: Deeper Release and Inner Aliveness. The Fulfilled Self.

"The power of fulfillment, New ranges of experience, not susceptible

to description beyond appropriate analogy." "The Sufis" Idries Shah.

Even in the midst of the awing life changes before me, and the still

cluttered state of my mind and heart, the assurance of that Knowing lets me

give over my being ever more fully to the Call.

I recognize that my conditioned self is not truly me, but functions

like a diving suit the inner self needs to function in the outer, material

world. I had been bewildered, hypnotized into believing it was the source of

my aliveness. Now I see that my true aliveness, "Though inside, it appears to

be outside, like the world seen in a dream." In this Aspect, I begin to turn

from that delusion so that I may come face to Face with the Beloved.

6. Unquestioning Acceptance: Desperate, Humble Handing Over. The Fulfilling Self

"A new activity and function, including extra dimensions of the individuality." "The Sufis" Idries Shah.

The devotional ache in my Heart is the awakening of submission to

the Call. I accept that things aren't at all as they have seemed to me. In this

awareness, it is clear that my conditioned, outer self is a figment of my own

imagining. This recognition promotes a selflessness as I do my daily needful

activities. All is offered with the prayer, "May I be Your witness and Your

servant, Lord."

I have opened to the Knowing enough to recognize that what I long

for is not to be found in that outer, superficial self. That was shaped and

driven by my instinctual needs for nurturing, security, survival and control,

as interpreted by my 'me' field of personality and social nature. Without

regret or fear, I gradually release the tendency to identify only with my

conditioned mind and senses. I strive to break attachment to all those beliefs

created in emptiness and awkward striving. I can detach from them some so

that I'm not so blinded to higher aspects of myself. It is relearning my

habitual gesture of defensive perception to a more humble, trusting,

receptive one. Not continually talking with myself to self-justify and judge,

analyze and criticize, I stay more firmly present of what is happening. This

allows such distinctions to dissolve and be offered it up to a truer, soul

based process.

In this new gesture of consciousness, I feel I am more in His

Presence, secure that He guides and supports me in my Path. I regain a

childlike trust and innocence, resting in an inherent sense of safety.

7. Fulfillment of the Outer Self: A Permeable Expression of Spirit. The Purified and Complete Self.

"Completion of the task of reconstitution, possibility of teaching

others. A capacity for objective understanding." "The Sufis" Idries Shah.

How does this conditioned "me" field that has been my sole means of

perception and action become aligned with my True Self?

Although my outer self is much the same as before --perhaps less

driven, less anger defended-- it is more cleansed of attachment, more

permeable to align with the Call. It grows to be a more fit offering and

expression as I'm readied to move into the deeper Aspects of the Heart.

The qualities of my questing soul can now penetrate my awareness

and guide me better. My Walk grows wholer, more authentic to the God

Love that Calls. The center of my sense of self releases from that outermost

dimension of my being to move deeper into truer levels. Unburdened of the

responsibility to guide and justify my life, my egoic self is freed to align and

serve as an instrument and means to further my intention to fully answer the

Call.

This calls us to the next level of Awakening:

SEVEN ASPECTS OF AWAKENING IN THE HEART

1. MY RETURN TO GOD: The Fierce Blessing.

2. SURRENDER TO GOD: May I Be Your Offering.

3. THE CONSIDERATION: His Presence Awakens Deepest Respect.

4. THE AWE OF GOD: Not With Empty Gestures, But With Heartfelt Devotion.

5. RIGHTEOUSNESS: His Is Beyond Our Do's and Don'ts.

6. DISCOVERING THE TRUTH: That Which Alone IS.

7. ESSENTIAL LOVE: The Ocean The Heart Floats In.

"What you experience as suffering, we hopefully anticipate. It is a

key in the transformation to individual perfection and completeness of

being. We spirits can draw near the Divine Presence, but through this sacred

Work you may become more God like." Guidance from spirits awaiting

incarnation.

"Freed from the bondage to his surface mind, life and body, his inner

being present greater probabilities to awaken and pushes him to a constant

pursuit of greater beauty, harmony, power and knowledge." Sri Aurobindo

1. RETURN TO GOD: The Fierce Blessing.

As benefit of the work through the first seven Aspects, I have more

recognition of the various faces of my conditioned self. With the de-

hypnotizing release of layers of self-delusion, my inner assurance grows

stronger. I'm relieved of the hallucination that the meaning of my life is

outside me, and the focus of my quest turns within. As I attend more fully to

my Heart, what had been muffled, only vaguely intuited, now comes to be

made real for me. .

What before I had only known about, now is made real. Now, more

present and clearly heard, every fiber in my being responds to that Divine

Call, that desperate blessing. My Heart gasps from it, like a woman in labor.

Only in return to Him can there be peace and fulfillment for me, I know.

Only with my Source and Goal can I know my true fullness of being..

The fragrance of His Presence transforms old hurts into sacramental

wounds, pains and needs that had prepared the way for Him, intimations of

my path. My Heart is his altar.

2. SURRENDER TO GOD: May I Be Your Offering.

This return to the Beloved's Presence opens loves floodgates. My

soul's chant, "There is no Lord but God", leaves everything else without

meaning or purpose. The waves of my longing strive to wash away

everything but His Heart at the core of mine. In this Aspect of Surrender, I

witness His Love transcending all names and forms. I am thus born anew

again and again. Here I know the affirming truths, "This is God Gill

Schwartzing", and "I am but dust and ashes. A humble offering".

Not just as a word or an intention, but in the firmest Knowing that I

have no other way to go, I surrender to God with love. Abandoning myself to

this, I am returned to creation's first moment when everything is filled with

His truth and grace.

3. CONSIDERATION: His Presence Awakens Respect.

Now that I have returned and surrender to God, a new realm of

awareness and sensitivity open for me to Him and His ways, His Presence

and guiding attention. I'm aware of listening for His voice in every voice I

hear. When I look at anything, it's the beauty of His Formlessness I seek. All

are mirrors to my Beloved, for He fills my eyes and Heart.

Because I only want to draw ever nearer to His Presence through all

that is, I carefully appraise everything I do or say so that it is courteous to

His will. Although this love empowers me to witness His Presence fill

everything with radiant being, I feel humbled and timidly pray to please Him

in all things and gratefully place all things on His altar.

4. THE AWE OF GOD: Not Mere Gesture, But Heartfelt Devotion.

Every Aspect has its own torments and well as transformational

grace. Because my heart is landscaped with wounds and abysses of unfilled

hopes of my past, when His Hand rips and turns the soil for new planting

these Aspects of the Heart are especially grief filled. Because my awe of

God is founded in longings for His healing Presence, it has priority over any

other emotion or concern.

Anxious to ease the way of His Work in me, I remain in the place that

He puts me. I strive not to ignore any guidance He gives me and to do

whatever He wants. This nurtures my devotion and be special love for Him.

Cleared of all other purpose, I long only to look in His Face. All else, I

believe, is simply passing delusion. My awe of God is fear in its obedient

form. I sit in this holy Aspect and await His healing my wound tattered

heart and creating a new, loving one.

5. RIGHTEOUSNESS: His Righteousness Is Beyond Our Do's And Don'ts

The outer guise of righteousness is based on agreed upon "do that no

don't do this". Such simplistic laws and guidelines are suited for mankind

still caged in the monkey mind. Now we are called to carry the rights and

burdens of co-creators.

To rest in righteousness, I no more want to act out of my own

conditioned, egocentric nature than on the basis of a controlling and limited

codification. The other Aspects of my heart's journey -my return and

surrender to Him, my courtesy to His way and awe-based fear of His

Majesty- impel me to trustingly surrender everything to Him, all the time.

They call for a sacred purging of all else so that I come to rest in God's

righteous doing through me. As Job was called to forsake his guise of

piousness so that he could rest, face down in the dust, in God's

Righteousness alone.

6. DISCOVERING THE TRUTH: That Which Alone IS.

Resting in alignment with the Divine Impulse, His Wisdom and doing

flow through me. I am freed from the distorting torrent of endless "wants"

and "don't wants". Truth is revealed by penetrating the veil of my delusions

of separateness, the strange constrictions and distorting patterns of my

personal history. I am finally released to the certainty I can rest in, the core

of God's abiding Truth, His love and provision. Trust in this emancipates my

simple mind's grasping to understand, to own and control. I am freed to live

in openheartedness and the peaceful trust of the deep Love. This is my real

heart, my truth.

7. ESSENTIAL LOVE: The Ocean The Heart Floats In.

This Aspect is the Heart of my heart, the doorway and gathering

place for all the parts and realms of me. This love transcends, embraces and

nurtures all facets of me. Its outpouring dissolves my delusional fears,

defenses and darkness, creations of my limited, social mind. Here is the true

organ of knowing in my life. The radiant center of my universe.

It is the Eye in my Heart. I see everything through this Eye in the

light of His love. I can see Him in every person and thing that He created to

mirror Himself. And I see all of them in Him; the true fulfillment of each

one's personhood. His love for me is all I need and want. The wine of Divine

intoxication's, the flesh of the secret Love. I give everything to Him when I

place my heart in His fire. I give everything to my Lord till I am empty.

Thus I find everything and understand all the secrets. I live out of my Heart's

deep knowing rather than my mind's delusions.

I speak only with Him, in the language of the soul. This is my god-

self loving God .

SEVEN ASPECTS OF AWAKENING TO THE SOUL

!. SILENT REMEMBRANCE: I Am In Prayer, Always.

2. SINCERITY OF THE LOVE: No Circumstance Soils This Truth.

3. KNOWING FREEDOM: No Longer My Own Slave, I Am The Master's Alone.

4. I AM HIS WITNESS AND SERVANT: His Call Is My Empowerment.

5. DEEPER KNOWING OF THE TRUTH: All Distractions Dissolve In IT.

6. FREEDOM IN THE TRUTH: IT Alone Moves Me.

7. MY DISSOLVING INTO GOD: Who I Am Now Is Only For Him.

1. SILENT REMEMBRANCE: I Am In Prayer, Always.

I am drawn into a higher, truer state of being. There is a Rite of

Passage where my Heart and mind and merge into my soul self. I live from

there now and know His meaning for all things, jewels of knowledge far

more precious than anything I've known before. This is my sunrise.

My soul is awoken to holy meanings so that I see His Name in all

things. From this vista I learn this vision of all that has passed in my life. In

this true seeing, I'm held mute with awe-filled gratitude. This lets me

peacefully release everything in me that's antiquated, that's no longer of use

to this new self.

Filled with the secret reality, in deep, wordless prayer, I leave all

else behind, with relief and mercy. This I can see the secret inside everyone.

2. SINCERITY OF THE LOVE: No Circumstance Soils This Truth.

From the perspective of this Aspect, I recognize that the love I have

offered before, even to God, was based on what I expected in return. At this

level, so much closer to the splendor of Source, love becomes more an

honoring of being rather than a manipulation of it, an out flowing rather than

a doing with intention.

His love calls me to put my soul inside His heart forever and to be

His eyes and ears and hands in this world as a servant. I can touch the mercy

f his love like a flame of yearning for the fire of His love to erase everything

fro me but Him, my Beloved.

The longing is a shared gift...

With great relief, that old mode of love and all its pictures dissolve

as I am change by His love. This is what I've always soul hungered for, the

highest love. My Soul dies to the old to live with my heart as the home of my

Beloved. It will speak a new language from the Voice of God. He gives me

everything that I have and everything expresses His love.

3. KNOWING FREEDOM: No Longer My Own Slave, I Am an Offering to The Master.

4. SERVANT OF GOD: As A Witness, His Call Is My Empowerment.

5. DEEPER KNOWING OF THE TRUTH: All Distractions Dissolve Into IT.

"Do not confuse intellectual understanding with spiritual insight nor

personality's desires with the will of the Spirit. "The human gnosis is

supreme over mere social and physical restraints. The unfettered human

consciousness is the final frontier, the bridge to Ultimate Reality." Gnostic

Teachings.

6. FREEDOM IN THE TRUTH: IT Alone Moves Me.

7. DISSOLVING INTO GOD: Who I Am Is Only For Him.

Fanna. "Everything earthly vanishes. Only the Face of your

Lord remains in majesty and honor." Ibn Arabi

My body weakens and shrivels, consumed from within. Appetites and

interests weaken, grow transparent, dissolve, for food, for company, for all

in the world around me. It feels a sweet loss, for as my human, outermost

guise grows less real, my innermost heart opens to the Knowing.

It takes no effort. The bonds with the outer world reveal their

pointlessness, patterns and assumptions that have no basic reality.

Memories of memories. Self delusions as defenses against hurts and fears

that that passed long, long ago. Memories drift by in leave-taking: warmly

meeting with a poet-soul friend on a corner in Istanbul, the strangeness, of

the people and buildings about us, gave our contact a special sense; on

vacation before starting a new career, mindlessly resting in a small, rolling

boat off the shore of Cozumel, entranced by the sunset turned to symphony

reflected off the interlacing wavelets; in our tiny, 6th floor walkup

apartment in Paris, the heart wrenching tearing apart from a deceiving lover

I knew I would never see again. All gone, truly gone. And the emptying and

scouring I feel at this turns to bliss in filling more fully and deeply with the

Presence.

THE SEVEN ASPECTS OF DISSOLVING INTO GOD.

!. PRE-ETERNITY: Time That Not Yet Is.

2. THE ESSENTIAL LOVE: At One With "I AM".

3. FATHER OF THE SPIRIT: He Is My Sire.

4. THE HEART OF THE SECRET: Where Darkness Turns To

Revelation.

5. THE WELL OF LOVE: Infinite Thirst And Boundless Quenching.

6. THE PRESENCE OF FREEDOM: Spirit Alone Fills My Life.

7. THE HOLY SUN OF TRUTH: Source And Fulfillment Merge.

!. PRE-ETERNITY: Time That Not Yet Is.

2. ESSENTIAL LOVE: My Heart Is At One With "I AM".

3. THE FATHER OF THE SPIRIT: He Is My Sire.

In this next heavenly Aspect, I am opened to the most awing of the

mysteries: How the Eternal, Infinite One becomes the transitory many. I

prayed to understand this Aspect of the Secret and this is the vision I was

given:

I am merged, dissolved into the Unity. Only the wisdom Eye of my

spirit's heart is left of me to observe. It 'sees' that within the Source, the

Mystery that IS, there is pre-eternity and pre-spacetime. Totally free of

form and intent, simply my being in Its Being brings me wonder-filled

fulfillment. Eternities pass in this gratifying completeness.

In all this Ocean of Being there is no purpose because their is no

need and no fulfillment of need, no question and therefore no solution. This

is Beyond the dance of opposites. All is primal Unity. Eternities pass in this

sating completeness.

Then, in the endless passing of eons, I observe a motion start, a

gesture of flows arises in the Infinite Ocean of Universality. The watcher of

my wisdom eye is startled to see such separateness arise in this Sacred

Realm of Sameness.

"It is the Divine Impulse arising," my High Self explains. "The

Boundless One has a longing." I ponder this in amazement. It is the

Creative Urge, an overflowing expression of the Eternal Bounty of Being.

"It craves to see Itself reflected in the mirror of matter, to find Its Urge

reflected in circumstance.

This wave of Divine Impulse circles in upon Itself, gathers into a

mighty whirl of a Wave. Further amazed, I watch the Wave take direction

and come to the edge of what had been Boundless Being. There, where the

Wave of the Divine Impulse touches the edge of what the boundless

Infinite, a kind of matrix comes into being. It is formed of the subtlest

vibratory forces that appear like multidimensional spider-webs.

Eye understands that this is the fundamental infrastructure for all

creation, the means for the Ineffable to take form, to create detailing

mirrors in tangible reality. The Wave passes through this catalytic interface

between formless, eternal Being and the ephemeral realms of space and

time.

Now my witnessing Eye takes a wider perspective so that I can watch

the Wave descend down through the denser and denser layers of Becoming.

I'm shown endless formations of individuals lined though out time. But they

are clearly "down" in some semi-real way, without the breath of life in

them. Then, as the Wave sweeps though them, in their innermosts, they are

"lifted up" into being then swept back "down" as the Wave rolls on.

It is the breath of God wafting into the clay figures He'd made, I

recognize. My wisdom Eye sees that Divine Impulse offers of Its own Spirit

in each individual's moment of being. It sweeps within the inanimate forms

as a potential within the inert physicality. This is the spiritual aspects

things can hold, I understand.

As the mind is but a vessel to hold consciousness for our use, the

dynamics of an individual life, in space time and form, is a momentary

expressions of the Wave's potentiality, consecrating each of us as a gesture

of the Most High. I witness how He is the Father of my spirit. My face does

mirror His. So His love binds us, to Him and to each other. I understand that

I honor my mirroring It by knowing how to live in the outside world, with

others. Because, on merging with Him, there is no "other". There is only

Him.

4. THE HEART OF THE SECRET: Where Darkness Turns To Revelation.

5. THE WELL OF THE LOVE: Infinite Thirst And Boundless Quenching.

6. THE PRESENCE OF FREEDOM : Spirit Alone Fills My Life.

7. THE HOLY SUN OF TRUTH: Source And Consummation Merge.

Return to top