Evolving Consciousness

A young man once came to Dhun-Nun, an Egyptian mystic, insisting that the Sufis were wrong.

Dhun-Nun removed a ring from his finger and handed it to the young man. "Take this gem to the market stallholders over there and see if you can get a gold piece for it," he said.

Nobody among the market people offered more than a single silver piece for the ring.

The young man brought the ring back.

"Now," said Dhun-Nun, "take the ring to a real jeweler and see what he will pay."

The jeweler offered a thousand gold pieces for the gem.
The youth was amazed.

"Now," said Dhun-Nun, "your knowledge of the Sufis is as great as the knowledge of the stallholders is of jewelry. If you wish to value gems, become a jeweler."

Storytelling is a thread that goes back through all of human history. It is our nature to tell stories. In telling the stories of our lives we solidify an experience that would otherwise be stuck, running in circles, in our heads. This is what confession is all about. Our daily moments are important.

But why wait until everything has gone bad to start telling your stories? It is a wonderful feeling to sit around and chat openly with friends. Too bad our society doesn't have a module for story telling.

Remember when you first met your lover and how wonderful it felt to sit closely and tell the story of your life? Remember your best friend who used to sit and listen to your little adventures - even share them with you? But time erodes these things. As working adults we come home tired and never tell our stories to our spouse: if we do happen to gather in a group the whole time is taken up with some agenda or activity, any conversation is trite and never comes around to real stories. Our story telling urge has turned into listening-to-television.

GETTING THERE THROUGH PRAYER

In the Sufi tradition there are three levels of awareness: prayer, meditation, and sorbet'.

The first level is prayer. Prayer is acknowledging god, but is also a separation of you and god. When you pray the impression is that you are small and you are trying to get in touch with something bigger which can help you. You can pray to one god, or many gods and guides. In prayer you usually want something to happen. You pray for a new car, more friends, new love, or more money.

Prayer is the religion of primitive peoples. It has a certain beauty to it. You don't understand where babies come from, why crops fail, or where the game has gone. In true prayer you surrender to the enormity of it all: if you are kind to the great spirit, he will be kind to you. Sometimes people aren't so nice. Creepy people try to manipulate the one they are praying to by offering sacrifices, or making deals.

Prayer has certain limitations.

MEDITATION

Meditation is the next step. Meditation is inquiring rather than asking. You are bigger, more mature. Perhaps you are disappointed with your prayers, or you've developed a certain dignity. You say, "Wait a minute. I can discover the truth behind things if I look closely enough." Through meditation you discover that your interfering mind is the thing that is keeping you from communing with the whole. So you practice silencing the mind. You come closer to the divine.

Krishnamurti says, "One cannot learn about oneself unless one is free, free so that one can observe, not according to any pattern, formula or concept, but actually observe oneself as one is."

Meditation is learning to remain silent and watching. You observe yourself, and you observe your world. Through your own experiences, or through listening to the experiences of others, you see that you are not a little bug trampled by the whims of the giant universe. You are a piece of a puzzle, part of the whole.

But, meditation is not the end; it is merely the means to the end; and there ends our simple explanation.

Up to this point the explanation has been easy. Now only poetry will do. When you reach the no-mind state of the buddha, sajd of the sufis, or the grace of the christians, you run out of explanations. You've discovered that what is, simply is. It can't be explained in general terms.

The master sees the connection of the universe and he wants to bring you to it. When the master explains about beauty he has to talk about something that is nearby because he wants you to see.

Somebody once asked Rinzai, a Zen master, "What is the way to know the ultimate?"

Rinzai had gone for a morning walk with his staff in his hand. He raised the staff and shouted, "Watch this staff!

But the seeker didn't get it. He was looking for something far away and beautiful and could not see the miracle in a plain stick right in front of his eyes.

Once a sufi master was walking through a town and a klutzy guy fell off a roof and landed on him. The sufi master's neck was broken but the faller was not hurt at all. They rushed the master to the hospital. Disciples gathered and asked the master what the situation meant. The master answered, "This just goes to prove that the theory of karma is false. They say that you reap what you sow. But somebody falls, and somebody else's neck is broken. So somebody else can sow, and somebody else can reap."

This sort of thing is sorbet'. The story was told long ago but remains true today. Ecologists tell us the same thing - watch what you sow because everyone else is going to have to reap it. The universe is so complicated and vast that no platitude can cover the possibilities, we can only tell it with infinite stories.

SORBET

The third level is a call to action: sorbet', conversation of the gods. When you realize yourself as you are, it is such an ego-shattering moment that you also recognize all the gods around you - and now you want to play, dance and talk. You are not praying for anything anymore. You are not seeking bliss through meditation. You are a god sitting with many gods and telling stories. Gods conversing.

The sufi idea of sorbet reminds me of a Zen saying about the seeker: Before going on the path you see a mountain as a mountain; while on the path you see a mountain as everything but a mountain; when you've found yourself, you again see a mountain as a mountain.

Seekers in the United States have an unique problem that has never been encountered in the east. We are too independent. We have appliances instead of helpers. We work too hard in isolated positions. Our social interaction is superficial. We never get a chance to come together for conversation about the deeper issues of being human. Sorbet is the answer to the west's dilemma.

We've got to start getting out and telling true stories to affirm ourselves and to counteract the lies we are fed. Think of the millions of stories that are being told to encourage us to spend and consume more: Visions of how we should look and what we should own: Soap opera stories of how we should fight for our piece of the pie: gossip of who did what to whom and how everyone else is wrong, wrong, wrong.

There are lots of good stories in our world that should be emphasized: Movies of love and relating: Little gifts you are given: The smile of a clerk: A book that opens your mind: A new scientific discovery: The birdie that fell from a tree, and let you hold it, and then flew away. These are the stories that will save the planet.
Let's talk.

Rumi quotes are from: OPEN SECRET, Versions of Rumi by John Moyne and Coleman Barks.