On The Cusp


What… 9 days to go to the US elections? I don’t believe I have ever been quite so concerned as to the direction a single election could take us, but these are ‘interesting times’. I will not slag McCain, or Palin as I feel they both truly believe that their way is correct. You must give them their due; they are products of a mind-set that has worked remarkably well for over the century or so, even to the detriment of the planet as a whole.
They are the remnants of a tattered meme that exends back to the Neolithic Agrarian Upheaval that brought us priest-craft, organized military, hierarchies and division by class and race…. Which leads one to ask, what is coming then?
If Obama/Biden wins, what does it portend? A major shift surely? I Think I see hints of it; something along the lines of what Riane Eisler, a feminist revisionist of history, coined the term ‘Gylanic Revival’ (GR) in her book The Chalice and the Blade…
We stand at a crossroads, that may determine the fate of our poor beleaguered planet. This is a moment perhaps like no other in the history of the US. We are offered a choice that has been played out ad nauseaum for centuries, and a choice where we move into a world of multi-lateral cooperation, of multi-cultural integration, and a world where we look to the futures needs, a world of bold sacrifice perhaps, but a world made better for those who come after.
On that note, I dream of Shift, of dissolving memes, and of a brave new future.
For Your Enjoyment: (an example of memes that change….)
Wassup – @008

Bright Blessings,

Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

Sufi Quotes

Azam Ali – innal malak

A Curriculum of a School – Idries Shah

A Blessing Of Love: The Poetry Of Rumi

Niyaz – Sadrang

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Sufi Quotes:
Asking good questions is half of learning.

Muhammad (Essential Sufism)
A donkey with a load of holy books is still a donkey.

Traditional (Essential Sufism)
Whatever you have in your mind – forget it;

Whatever you have in your hand – give it;

Whatever is to be your fate – face it!

Abu Sa’id (Essential Sufism)
For every sin but the killing of Time there is forgiveness.

Traditional (Essential Sufism)
If someone remarks: “What an excellent man you are!” and this pleases you more than his saying, “What a bad man you are!” know that you are still a bad man.

Sufyan al Thawri (Essential Sufism)
A seeker went to ask a sage for guidance on the Sufi way.
The sage counseled,
“if you have never trodden the path of love, go away and fall in love;

then come back and see us.”

Jami (Essential Sufism)
“The sun never says to the earth,

‘You owe me.’
Look what happens with a love like that.

It lights up the whole sky.”

The poet Hafiz
“I searched for God and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only God”.

Sufi Proverb

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Azam Ali – innal malak

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A Curriculum of a School

– Idries Shah



“Q: Could you give us a view of the curriculum of a School, from ‘inside the School’ so to speak?”
“A: In our teaching, we must group correctly these elements: the pupils, the teacher and the circumstances of study. Only at the right time and place, with the teacher suitable to these, and with the right body of students, can our studies be said to be capable of coherent development.”
“Does this sound difficult or unreasonable? Let us compare these requirements with an analogy of our needs: the ordinary educational institution.”
“If we are learning, say, physics, we must have a man skilled in physics [having successfully completed his own training; able also to teach; and with a mandate to teach]; students who want to learn and who have capacity and some background for the study; and adequate laboratories and other facilities for the studies to take place.”
“A physics teacher could not make any real progress with a class of idiots, or people who primarily wanted power or fame or gain through physics. These factors would be getting in the way of the teaching. A class of brilliant students, faced with a man who knew no physics, or who only had a smattering, would make little progress. A good teacher, with a student body, could do little unless the instruments and equipment, the building and so on, were available as and when needed.”
“Yet this principle, so well established in conventional studies of all kinds, is largely passed over and has fallen into disuse, among esotericists. Why? Because they have a primitive and unenlightened attitude towards teaching. Like an oaf who has just heard of physics or only seen some of its manifestations, the would-be student wants it all *now*. He does

not care about the necessary presence of other students. He wants to skip the curriculum and he sees no connection between the building and the subject of physics. So he does not want a laboratory.”
“Just observe what happens when people try to carry on learning or teaching without the correct grouping of the three essentials:”
“Would-be students always try to operate their studies with only one, or at the most two, of the three factors. Teachers try to teach those who are unsuitable, because of the difficulties of finding enough people to form a class. Students who have no teacher try to teach themselves. Transpose this into a group of people trying to learn physics, and you will see some of their problems. Others group themselves around the literature and methodology of older schools, trying to make the scrap material of someone else’s physics laboratory work. They formalize rituals, become obsessed by principles and slogans, assign disproportionate importance to the elements which are only tools, but which they regard as a more significant heritage.”
“Anyone can think of several schools, cults, religions, systems of psychology or philosophy which fall into the above classifications.”
“We must categorically affirm that it is impossible to increase human knowledge in the higher field by these methods. The statistical possibility of useful gains within a reasonable time is so remote as to be excluded from one’s calculations.”
“Why, then, do people insist on raking over the embers and looking for truth when they have little chance of finding it? Simply because they are using their conditioning propensity, not their capacity for higher perception, to try to follow the path. There is intellectual stimulus and emotional attraction in the mere effort to plumb the unknown. When the ordinary human mind encounters evidences of a higher state of being, of even when it conceives the possibility of them, it will invariably conclude that there is some possibility of progress for that mind without the application of the factors of teaching-teacher-students-time-and-place which are essentials.”
“Man has few alternatives in his search for truth. He may rely upon his unaided intellect, and gamble that he is capable of perceiving truth or even the way to truth. This is a poor, but an attractive, gamble. Or he can gamble upon the claims of an individual or institution which claims to have such a way. This gamble, too, is a poor one. Aside from a very few, wo/men in general lack a sufficiently developed perception to tell them:”
1. Not to trust their own unaided mentation;

2. Who or what to trust.
“There are, in consequence, two main schools of thought in this matter. Some say ‘Follow your own promptings’; the other says: ‘Trust this or that intuition’. Each is really useless to the ordinary wo/man. Each will help him use up his time.”
“The bitter truth is that before man can know his own inadequacy, or the competence of another man or institution, he must first learn something which will enable him to perceive both. Note well that his perception itself is a product of right study; not of instinct or emotional attraction to the individual, nor yet of desiring to ‘go it alone’. This is ‘Learning How To

Learn.”
“All this means, of course, that we are postulating here the need for preparatory study before school work takes place. We deny that a man can study and properly benefit from school work until he is equipped for it: any more than a person can study space-navigation unless he has a grasp of mathematics.”
“This is not to say that a man (or a woman) cannot have a sensation of truth. But the unorganized and fragmented mind which is most people’s heritage tends to distort the quality and quantity of this sensation, leading to almost completely false conclusions about what can or should be done.”
“This is not to say, either, that man cannot take part in studies and activities which impinge upon that portion of him which is connected with a higher life and cognition. But the mere application of special techniques [often to everyone, regardless of their current state and requirements] will not transform that man’s consciousness. It will only feed into, and disturb, more or less permanently, centers of thought and feeling where it does not belong. Thus it is that something which should be a blessing becomes a curse. Sugar, shall we say, for a normal person is nutritionally useful. To a diabetic, it can be poison.”
“Therefore, before the techniques of study and development are made available to the student, he must be enabled to profit by them in the direction in which they are supposed to lead, not in short-term indulgence.”
“Thus our curriculum takes two parts: the first is in the providing of materials of a preparatory nature, in order to equip the individual to become a student. The second is the development itself.”
“If we, or anybody else, supply such study or preparatory material prematurely, it will only operate on a lower level than it could. The result will be harmless at best. At worst, it will condition, train, the mind of the individual to think and behave in patterns which are nothing less than automatic. In this latter way one can make what seem to be converts, unwittingly play upon emotions, on lesser desires and the conditioning propensity; train people to loyalty to individuals, found and maintain institutions which seem more or less serious or constructive. But no real progress towards knowledge of the human being and the other dimension in which he partly lives will in fact be made… … ….”

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A Blessing Of Love: The Poetry Of Rumi

O heart let go of your soul

Until you see the soul maker

Leave behind this deceptive faker

So you reach your real goal.
Unless you pass through here

You will never reach the beyond

Free yourself from worldly bond

Doubtless clear, to you appear.
If it is a sign that you seek

In this path, my dear friend

Yourself you must transcend

And signs to you will speak.
Go past the four and five

From six and seven look away

Rise above this earth and clay

Seven skies become alive.
When you’ve seen the seventh sky

Go to the eighth sphere

Step upon the things that appear

You’ll find the void nearby.
Within the void you shall see

The souls of dear friends

Disembodied floating heads

In the spaceless roaming free.
Close the critical eye

Appeal to the inner sight

From yourself briefly take flight

The beloved will appear nigh.
You who have never taken a pace

On the path of misfortune

To soul’s treasure won’t attune

Unless this costly pain embrace.
O hear ye, Shams-e Tabriz

Silently speak the word

With your soul be in accord

Which you’ll see joyously frees.

Alas that now from our midst you are gone

In spite of the pain you resist, you are gone

Once the circle of friends you blissed

Now with the dust of ants and snakes blissed, you are gone.

What of all the knowledge you endlessly list

What of such mind, in the secret list you are gone.

What of the helping hand the once would assist

What of the feet that gardens assist, you are gone.

Gentle and kind, people you charmed and wist

Then earth’s dust your dust wist, you are gone.

Your sweet replies no more persist

No more tongue that can persist, you are gone.

Jealously repented, strove to desist

Pilgrim of death, from living itself desist, you are gone.

Whither to, can’t see your dust nor your mist

This bloody path, disappearing mist, you are gone.

Silent O heart, tongue shackles your soul’s wrist

What use the flames that turn and twist, you are gone.


O heart, when the secrets themselves unveiled

No more exerted yourself, nor travailed

In your imagination and madness remain

Why senses regain, why your mind hailed?

Like Romeo in senseless chaos

All orders before you failed.

Ingesting spirits if you refrain

Why in the market drunken wailed?

Idleness and sitting brings you no gain

If with the seafarers forward you sailed.

Go to the desert and try to cross

You’ve seen what these ruins entailed.

Your neighbors of wine reek and stain

Drunken fragrance of wine staled.

Follow this aroma to the tavern lane

Light as the wind, the lanes brailled

Go to Shams-e Tabriz’s abode of loss

Idle, unemployed, round the world trailed.

To this world you have brought the fragrance

Yet perfume you have hidden from appearance

A million excitements this aroma belies

That you have thrown upon the earth and the skies.

From thy own radiant light and heat

You have set fire to the mind and soul’s seat

From taking thy life-giving jewel

The mine and the ocean have lost their cool.

Millions of souls with radiant faces

Have been confined to dark spaces.

You take the certainty of fools

And give them doubt with mental tools.

They ply themselves with their own hand

And with sweetness take a bloody stand.

The heartful find their hearts broken

The heartless with cries of alas are woken.

Shams-e Tabrizi from thy kindness

To lovers have given this madness.

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Niyaz – Sadrang

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