“The solution to irrational fear isn’t to adopt positive thinking and try to overwrite the fear with affirmations. That’s just dumb. The real solution is to turn on our wonderful brains and dive more deeply into our fears in order to really understand them. Underlying irrational fears are irrational assumptions about reality. Once we can see this clearly, it’s natural and normal to simply drop those irrational assumptions altogether. So the big problem with fear is that it’s based on an inaccurate model of reality. If we could perceive reality accurately, we would be much less afraid.”
“When fear gets out of the way, then a positive emotional state becomes the norm. Not neutral – positive. This is the state of joy, where you go through your days feeling ridiculously happy, highly motivated, and passionately driven by the desire to serve others… and for no apparent reason. […]
One of the most difficult problems is that fear has become such an integral component of life on earth these days. When people are afraid, they’re easy to manipulate. They can be controlled by pulling on their fear strings. Stirring up fear is an effective way to induce action because deep down, we all desire to be unafraid, so the elimination of fear is a powerful incentive for spending. There are more positive reasons for spending money too, but too many companies today are aligned with this fear model. This is particularly true in the USA, where our media is largely devoted to stirring up fear and then using it to shape public opinion in a manner that drives sales for the companies of greatest influence.
Part of the reason people use fear to manipulate others is that they mistakenly believe it will help them assuage their own fears. A common way of dealing with fear is to try to control that which you fear. But this only perpetuates and strengthens fear in the long run, so more and more control is needed. This happens at the individual level as well as the community level. For example, fear is one of the driving forces behind how the USA deals with the rest of the planet. This country’s strategy is based on achieving greater and greater control in order to assuage the fears of its citizens. For non-Americans this is easier to see, but there are those of us in this country who recognize the severity of this problem and are working to change it. In the long run, I believe the control strategy will ultimately fail. It just isn’t necessary for human beings to relate to each other this way any longer. We’re going to have to let it go.”
You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing there will be no result.
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
The Prophet Muhammad said,
“There is no better companion
on this way than what you do. Your actions will be
your best friend, or if you’re cruel and selfish,
your actions will be a poisonous snake
that lives in your grave.”
But tell me,
can you do the good work without a teacher?
Can you even know what it is without the presence
of a Master? Notice how the lowest livelihood
requires some instruction.
First comes knowledge,
then the doing of the job. And much later,
perhaps after you’re dead, something grows
from what you’ve done.
Look for help and guidance
in whatever craft you’re learning. Look for a generous
teacher, one who has absorbed the tradition he’s in.
Look for pearls in oyster shells.
Learn technical skill from a craftsman.
Whenever you meet genuine spiritual teachers,
be gentle and polite and fair with them.
Ask them quetsions, and be eager
for answers. Never condescend.
If a master tanner wears an old, threadbare smock,
that doesn’t diminish his mastery.
If a find blacksmith works at the bellows
in a patched apron, it doesn’t affect
how he bends the iron.
Strip away your pride,
and put on humble clothes.
If you want to learn theory,
talk with theoreticians. That way is oral.
When you learn a craft, practice it.
That learning comes through the hands.
If you want dervishhood, spiritual poverty,
and emptiness, you must be friends with a sheikh.
Talking about it, reading books, and doing practices
don’t help. Soul receives from soul that knowing.
The mystery of spiritual emptiness
may be living in a pilgrim’s heart, and yet
the knowing of it may not yet be his.
Wait for the illuminating openness,
as though your chest were filling with light,
as when God said,
Did We not expand you?
(Qur’an 94:1)
Don’t look for it outside yourself.
You are the source of milk. Don’t milk others!
There is a milk fountain inside you.
Don’t walk around with an empty bucket.
You have a channel into the ocean, and yet
you ask for water from a little pool.
Beg for that love expansion. Meditate only
on THAT. The Qur’an says,
And He is with you
(57:4).
There is a basket of fresh bread on your head,
and yet you go door to door asking or crusts.
Knock on your inner door. No other.
Sloshing knee-deep in fresh riverwater, yet
you keep wanting a drink from other people’s waterbags.
Water is everywhere around you, but you see only
barriers that keep you from water.
The horse is beneath the rider’s thighs, and still
he asks, “Where’s my horse?”
Right there, under you?
“Yes, this is a horse, but where’s the horse?”
Can’t you see!
“Yes, I can see, but whoever saw such a horse?”
Mad with thirst, he can’t drink from the stream
running so close by his face. He’s like a pearl
on the deep bottom, wondering, inside his shell,
Where’s the ocean?
His mental questionings
form the barrier. His physical eyesight
bandages his knowing. Self-consciousness
plugs his ears.
Stay bewildered in God,
and only that.
Those of you who are scattered,
simplify your worrying lives. There is one
righteousness: Water the fruit trees,
and don’t water the thorns. Be generous
to what nurtures the spirit and God’s luminous
reason-light. Don’t honor what causes
dysentery and knotted-up tumors.
Don’t feed both sides of yourself equally.
The spirit and the body carry different loads
and require different attentions.
Too often
we put saddlebags on Jesus and let the donkey
run loose in the pasture.
Don’t make the body do
what the spirit does best, and don’t put a big load
on the spirit that the body could carry easily.
