Day 9
Allah is the Only Healer
“The Core of Masculinity” (Rumi)
The core of masculinity does not derive
from being male,
nor friendliness from those who console.
Your old grandmother says, “Maybe you shouldn’t
go to school. You look a little pale.”
Run when you hear that.
A father’s stern slaps are better.
Your bodily soul wants comforting.
The severe father wants spiritual clarity.
He scolds but eventually
leads you into the open.
Pray for a tough instructor
to hear and act and stay within you.
We have been busy accumulating solace.
Make us afraid of how we were.
I honor those who try
to rid themselves of any lying,
who empty the self
and have only clear being there.
Greetings beloveds,
Before going to be last night I began reading a talk from Hazrat Inayat Khan about the soul. What is the soul, the ruh, the divine breath which is the mirror, the consciousness that animates the body? I thought I would write about that today. And then I slept and dreamt.
A little over a year ago I had a falling out with two friends I felt sure would be lifelong friends. Our falling out resulted in the complete loss of friendship. I felt sure I was on the right side of it and they clearly on the misguided side. “I can’t have you in my life as a close friend,” one said. We stopped speaking entirely. Since then, much to my chagrin, I’ve had dreams about them, dreams insisting that the tale was not as finished as I wished it to be. After each dream, I would wake, full of anger, full of sadness, full of grief. Once, the sadness and grief, along with a deep sense of incomprehensibility, kept me in bed for a day. Last night’s dream was different. In it, I spoke with them for the first time since our falling out and I was not angry. I could feel the essential light of our souls shining clearly through.
Earlier this year, Allah gave me my vocation, my calling, in terms uncertain only if I wished to engage in willful blindness: I am a healer, or rather Allah is the only healer and I am simply Allah’s instrument.
“There is a believer in God who may be called pious, but it is the God-conscious who become spiritual. It is the belief and realization that, “I do not exist, but God,” which gives power to the healer to heal…” (The Heart of Sufism: Essential Writings of Hazrat Inayat Khan, p. 214)
All my life, for as long as I can remember, I’ve always been compelled by an overwhelming sense of purpose. The details remained shrouded to me. So, I followed my intuition, making choices that took me closer to it, like a blind woman making my way down the hallway of my life, in search of the door to crystal clarity. For example, become a UN employee for life? No, intuition said,teach. Now I know Jin Shin Jyutsu is my modality, social justice education is my modality, Coming Out Muslim is my modality, making things is my modality. Ya Alim! Ya Hadi! Ya Rashid! Ya Razzaq! Ya Barr! (The All-knowing, the Guide, the Director, the Provider) Since finding this door, fear has had its way with me. There is everything I don’t know, there is my own self-fretfulness, its distracting and persistent song in my ear. There is also the steady voice of Allah telling me, all you seek is already inside you. Look there, find me there. And it becomes clear that I can only be an effective instrument by emptying myself, by forgetting myself so that dissolution into Allah is all there is. Love.
It is an irony of being that what you seek to intentionally forget, you remember all the more. I had not wrestled with anger as deeply as I have this year. It turns out that I do not know myself as well as I imagined. In taking stock of all that is within me, I find feelings I am uncomfortable having, anger in particular. There is the conditioning of society for women to be sweet and nice most of the time, all the shoulds of embarrassment and apology if you don’t always feel that way, the ways I feel bad when I do not feel transcendent and benevolent. It turns out that part of being human is embracing my own darkness, my own cloudiness, that dark spot on my heart. In thinking of my two friends, I wanted to skip over the anger directly into transcendence, but no amount of wishing made it so, no amount of thinking made it so. A quivering caterpillar does not become a butterfly simply through its yearning. I do not become a healer by skipping steps to the removal of the veils of human life, to disappearance into Allah. Last night’s dream was a gift, to feel the burden of my anger removed feels miraculous. I still feel the sadness and grief, yes, and I am certain that I did not think my way beyond the anger, no. I prayed. I know that every prayer is answered and that Allah is the Most Generous. Ya Shafi! Allah alone is the healer of hearts.
