Revision Self Portrait

Revision Self Portrait
Originally uploaded by M R Goodwin

Light, Dark, Shades of grey

So many paths! I scarcely notice that my Murshid has gotten up and moved to the kitchen. I hear the scrape of earthenware bowls on the counter, the ringing of metal lids as he checks the state of the cooking. He calls me to him and tells me to fetch a loaf from the street. Then, hesitating a moment, he smiles at me. I see the depths of his love, the fire in his eyes. I see he is deciding what to say to me. I wait what seems a very long time, until at last he says, ``We are eating a strongly flavored dish.''

The air outside in the alley has chilled somewhat from the day. I move toward the loaves and stare at them, all dimly visible in the starlight. I cannot distinguish one from the other. Their smells faint now that they are cooled, their odors mingled together. His words ring in my ears, We are eating a strongly flavored dish, and I am stymied by not knowing which loaf to choose, nor even being able to see them enough to distinguish one from the other. How will I know what loaf is best for our meal. I do not want to disappoint my master.

If only I had light.

In this was the lesson. To see the loaves we need illumination. To understand ourselves and our world, we need illumination. The beloved, the Divine-Presence, is our illumination.

My master has lead me to understand that our memory of the divine and our experience of joy, elation, bliss led us to try to share that with others. Knowledge of our union with the divine was unveiled, and we expressed it in word, song, prophecy and ritual. Each who saw, who awoke, tried to share the vision with his fellows. It is inexpressible. A thousand scriptures, a hundred poems, all the teachings of the world are whispers on the wind, a zephyr upon the dunes, next to the boundless and free sky of union with the divine. Effort does not take us there, but unless we practice the techniques and apply them with effort we cannot learn to be effortless.

No matter how foolish, I am trying to rush my master's teaching, I seek to out-think his lesson of the loaves, to try to discern the answer before I am fertile enough for the lesson to take root.

All people remember the time when we were all connected, undifferentiated from the divine. This memory, often little more than a vague feeling, drives us to seek union with the divine again in a myriad of ways - through the religions of the Silk Road, through the worship of wealth and power, through the creation of art, poetry and music. It keeps us moving - out of Africa, into Europe, India, Asia, the Americas. It drives us both to noble and foul deeds. The memory lies deep within. The memory itself is where we draw closer to each other, where our dreams and experiences overlap, where the boundaries between objects, time, space, stars, people and all that is seen and unseen begin to blur and overlap. We were all at the beginning, because we are all indistinct from the divine.

Perhaps my master placed the loaves to illuminate our common origins. Bread, despite differences in seasonings, shape, leavenings and other surface qualities is essentially the same. It is the union of the mind and labor of the baker and the ingredients. I don't know if it is a moment of transparency on my part, or some other private thought, but I see him smile his half smile. No, of course, any answer that simple and doctrinaire is only right if it is not borrowed knowledge.

Walking the back streets of this Persian city, the scrape of my sandals echoing against the dusty stones of a back alley in the market quarter, I hear the call to prayer. A broad grin touches my face, for at the very moment the muezzin calls out the greatness of the divine, I see five loaves of bread at my master's door. He has anticipated my return; he has prepared a lesson.

Up two stairs to the door. As I reach for it, my master's servant, a brother of our order, opens the door and we embrace, tears of reunion run down our cheeks, the musk of clove and rose flowing out from my master's house. Here all hearts open, here all are welcome, and among us, all are brothers. I place my sandals by the door and wash my feet in the crumbling tiled basin set into the floor by the entry. Between my toes I watch the broken patterns that had once been whole, and I begin to weep, as I do so often when I am reminded of that night lost in time when the divine expressed itself in a moment of forgetfulness, and we were born: man, woman, animal, rock, wind, wave, time space, life - all things that now are.

Five loaves, set by the door, each different. Each feeds hunger, each appeals to one but not to another. Each appears one way on the outside, another on the inside. What lesson might the Master, in his wry and twisted way, be teaching?

I know better than to broach the subject of the loaves with him. He teaches in his time, in his way. When he sees I am fertile ground, he plants the seed, when he sees I am bearing fruit, he harvests. When I am before him, I may as well be naked, as my motivations, my fears, my doubts are as obvious as if I were wearing them written on my forehead. It is like the deceptions of a child that are so clear to a parent.