Many doors to permeation
“Let yourself be gently pulled by the more profound desire of what you want.”- Rumi
My dream partner described how she had traveled to another planet in her dream. The planet was a monochromatic white, so much so that she could barely make out the environment which seemed to be composed of pure light. In the dream she tried to intertwine and connect with the light. She tried to affect the whiteness by introducing colors. It’s an awkward approach to try to introduce colors to light. There’s something forceful about it that seems unnecessary.
In a meditation dream I found myself struggling because of something that I’d learned. I was told that to be a mystic one must suffer. The Naqshbandi Sufis with whom I’ve studied have a phrase for this. They call themselves, “those who weep.” I feel that this idea is in conflict with how I experience devotion. My experience does not require self-denial and suffering. My view seems more natural.
The Sufis with whom I have studied share the idea that we are an undifferentiated part of the overallness, inextricably intertwined in it, the micro of the macro. We are not different from the cells and synapses of the universe. We can take a view of ourselves in which we are not just the cell or synapse but also as the permeation that sweeps through all.
As a Sufi mystic I’ve gone through practices of purging. In this dream I see that perhaps the ideas that I’ve acquired through learning to be a mystic must too be purged. We suffer in life. But we can replace the clutter of the outer overallness with an emptiness that allows in permeation, and this can bring us to gnosis and perhaps it does not need our suffering. More suffering may not be the best way to get there.
In a sleep dream I was asked what is to be gained by the traditional approach? I wondered, am I throwing tradition in the garbage? I see that what is occurring is an awakening in life and this awakening causes life to move and take action. I considered a question that I’d heard, “How do you help a person who doesn’t want help?” My reply is, “you’ll help them anyway.” But then I see that those who do not want help may, in their own way, still be helpful to mankind.
The Sufi path, or any other path, is helpful in this same way--to a point. To my view the help has a backward way, because it does not happen naturally, which is the way of permeation. There is a connection that is natural, as opposed to one that causes awakening by default or force. The embedded collective consciousness is ingrained in the idea of “no pain, no gain,” and this now seems to me to be untrue.
In another sleep dream I am with someone. We are in the downtown of a city where I am trying to get a job done. There’s somewhere that we need to go to get help, and someone that we need to meet there, but I find myself saying that we are not going to go there. Suddenly it’s too late, the clock reads 5:25, everything closes at 5:30, and time is running out. I realized then that we had parked the car right where we need to be.
The office we’re supposed to go to is closed and the energy of the dream tightens. I had the idea that sometimes even if the door seems to be closed that someone may still respond. “I think it’s the next block,” I say in the dream. I cross the street and run into a woman whom I ask, “Are we going the right way?” She is the wife of the person we’re seeking, and says he does not have time but advises us that he is the only one who can help us and she tells us how to catch up with her husband. Then she lowers a boom, which is something that was covering what we needed for us to make the connection.
I realized that I needed to listen.
Interpretation
In the first dream my partner represents color and manifestation. The pure light doesn’t move around or enter into objects and it doesn’t permeate. Permeation is different; it saturates everything in the overallness. In the overallness we are the light and the aliveness which one may call God, and which permeates through light. This dream image is like what we’ve been doing in the outer for generations: using forcefulness towards something that could be natural. Trying to force colors into light is a tactic of the mind senses which misses the naturalness, which is the true way.
Taking a forceful view is like losing breath. The breath is natural, we don’t have to make it happen and yet it happens. I realize this and I can see that permeation is always moving deeper into and saturating overallness. Permeation is like this because its quality is one of seeping into and through the overallness, a natural process which is how the outer acquires consciousness.
Overallness is what we experience with the lower self. But God is a permeation that we sense with our higher self. There’s nothing wrong with being in our lower self so long as we are what we are. The permeation that is sweeping through the lower self also has its life in the overallness and both aspects are God. God is the life in us and the life we live in. I feel that the dreams tell me that we are not meant to suffer endlessly or act as if we are in purgatory awaiting forgiveness. Feeling this way, deficient, obstructs our goal of gnosis.
A way that I perceive this gnosis has to do with the breath. The overall mind senses perceive reflectively through the inbreath and the outbreath. Permeation can be detected in the intervals that are between in- breath and outbreath if we make the intervals conscious.
When we are unconscious of the space between the breaths we may feel suffering and pain. The still point of our breath is meant to be conscious. In this curious transition we can discover love, gnosis, who we are, and realize that we are already free. A lesson that I found here is that our task is to adhere to what we are. In the second dream I remember that the intervals between breaths are very important. The intervals offer a way out of feeling that we are in a never-ending beta testing laboratory. The still points in the breath relieve us of our attachment to our weaknesses and it frees us from suffering and purgatory.
Suggested Contemplations
Use breathing to go deeper into your life’s questions. For this exercise choose a question, something broad and open such as, “is it necessary for me to feel rushed to do things if rushing causes anxiety?” Or, “what’s a way that I can listen better?”
Let the questions come into you through a slow and quiet inbreath. Hold the breath for the moment at the top of the inhale and also at the bottom of the exhale (the intervals) before gently exhaling. Relax into your awareness of how you feel about your response to the question and see if the question feels different.
Consider the times in your life in which effort felt necessary. Stop and squeeze your two hands tightly into fists. As you release the grip and soften your hands say the words, “there is nothing to do, and nowhere to go.” Feel the sensation of letting go of effort.
Can you sense something natural, something coming in? Consider the times in your life in which you felt that effort was necessary again and imagine what may have been if you let go instead of efforting.
What are the qualities of being natural? Do they have to do with your senses? What is it like to listen naturally, to look naturally, to taste naturally and to feel naturally? How is this different from using your senses with effort behind them?
How does trust play into this natural way of being?
Breathe in each of these questions as if savoring it like a delicious treat. Notice how it feels to your heart, your solar plexus, and behind your navel. You are learning to experience your internal states where judgment is withheld and where you can have your own experience and your own answers. You are learning to be natural.
“Remember, the entrance to the sanctuary is within you. The world exists as you perceive it. It is not what you see, but how you see it, It is not what you hear, but how you hear it, It is not what you feel, but how you feel it.” -Rumi
Share this post