• Secrets of the Work #1

    January 13, 2020

    This is my failsafe, my touchstone. Can I let my mind rest upon nothing? Just for a moment? I am not talking about blanking out the mind or stopping thought. This is the opposite of control. Can I let go, fully release? Can I, in one moment, completely submit…my self, my breath, my posture. And if I can? I get an immediate hit of ecstasy.

    Now I’ll warn you about this ecstasy thing. It’s not the same as extra joy, not euphoria nor extreme happiness. Ecstasy is laced with pain, with sorrow and with exaltation. Its exquisite intensity is inherent in its contradictory nature. Ecstasy is not one thing but rather the simultaneity of many things…a dose of another reality. This is the door-opener that takes you to the heart of the Universe.

    This is not something that can be maintained for long periods, at least in my experience. But if I can perform this maneuver, it’s like being shot out of a cannon and I have a moment when the work can be remembered and understood.

    The key is submission. Can I learn to submit? The whole of life is a lesson in submission. Every sacrifice I make for another’s sake, every sincere confession of my limitations, every time I voluntarily give up my point of view, I am learning the path of submission.

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  • Preliminaries

    November 6, 2015

    Group invocation last night was such an extraordinary experience. I feel that we were taken to another place. Why is this not the main practice of our work together?

    It is. In fourth way terms, what we are doing Thursday night is Objective Prayer, prayer that serves creation, which Sufis call zikr. This is the purpose and pinnacle of our work together. It also has personal benefit but that is the backwash from our invocation, not the purpose.

    This is an experienced group. We have worked together for a long time. We did not start with Objective Prayer. We started with, and we continue with, work on self—attention,  presence and observation of self. This is the work that makes it possible to invoke without aborting into personal spaces.

    Do you know your state? Can you shift it to the state required for invocation? Can you attend to the unfolding of the invocation without interruption? This is what it means to be housebroken. You do not make a mess on the carpet. If you bring a personal state into zikr, the entire effect is lost. At the very least, you must attain a kind of receptive neutrality.

    All of us need the preliminaries, always. Know where your attention is now. Be able to call it to the needs of the present moment.

    Without the preliminaries, zikr easily turns subjective, even emotional and self-indulgent. This is not a practice for getting high or ecstatic, as some groups like to do. There is ecstasy at times but sobriety is always present, reflecting its purpose.

    What about groups that do not have this prayer form?

    For years I did not have it. The possibility emerged from my researches and work on self. We are not a particularly talented group. Our capacities are not unique. The laws governing Objective Prayer can be discovered, or perhaps I should say remembered. The form itself can vary in accordance with the different traditions which have recognized the importance of it.

    There is always help for those who truly need it.

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