August 22, 2014 by IdealisticRebel

Have we Forgotten the Rules for Living?

Since the time, many millennia ago when Moses went upon the mountain to talk to God. First God was in the form of the burning bush and later he gave Moses the two tablets of the ten commandments. Much of western society use the Ten Commandments as a measure for what is good behavior. From the first, when Moses descended the mountain, he found the people celebrating life in a manner which he know would not please Adonai. There are times human beings follow the commandments and times we have strayed very far from their guiding precepts.

There have been other rules given later in history that fill in the gaps between the original ten commandments. These were recorded by Hazrat Inayat Khan and brought out of India to the West.

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Golden Rules

My conscientious self:

Keep to your principles in prosperity as well as in adversity.

Be firm in faith through life’s tests and trials.

Guard the secrets of friends as your most sacred trust.

Observe constancy in love.

Break not your word of honor whatever may befall.

Meet the world with smiles in all conditions of life.

When you posses something, think of the one who does not possess it.

Uphold your honor at any cost.

Do not neglect those who depend on you.

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Silver Rules

My conscientious self:

Consider duty as sacred as religion.

Use tact on all occasions.

Place people rightly in your estimation.

Be no more to anyone than you are expected to be.

Have regards for every soul.

Do not challenge anyone who is not your equal.

Do not make a show of your generosity.

Do not ask a favor of those who will not grant it to you.

Meet your shortcomings with a sword of self-respect.

Let not your spirit be humbled in adversity.

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Copper Rules

My conscientious self:

Consider your responsibility sacred.

Be polite to all.

Do nothing which will make your conscience feel guilty.

Extend your help willingly to those in need.

Do not look down upon the one who looks up to you.

Judge not another by your own law.

Bear no malice against against your worst enemy.

Influence no one to do wrong.

Be prejudiced against no one.

Prove trustworthy in all your dealings.

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Iron Rules

My conscientious self:

Make no false claims.

Speak not against others in their absence.

Do not take advantage of a person’s ignorance.

Do not boast of your good deeds.

Do not claim that which belongs to another.

Do not reproach others, making them firm in their faults.

Do not spare yourself in the work which you must accomplish.

Render your services faithfully to all who require them.

Seek not profit by putting someone in straits.

Harm no one for your own benefit.

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Quote by Rumi

Cleveland skyline from Huntington Beach. Photographed and copyrighted by Barbara Mattio 2010

November 12, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

Heart and Wings

Hazarat Inayat Khan mystic and musician

Hazarat Inayat Khan grew up and lived in India. He was a wonderful musician and had a spiritual teacher. In time, he began to study a path called Sufism. His spiritual teacher told him to take what he learned to the West and teach it to the people. So he and his brothers left India and went to Europe. They began meeting people and telling them about a philosophy that was a mysticism. He even came to America. He gave lectures coast to coast. The Sufi movement was called the Chisti order. The Chisti order is Westernized. Women are equal. There is studying, singing and the Universal dance.There are groups who practice healing and who do practices together.

Sufi Murshid brought Sufism to the West

” If one is able to expand oneself to the consciousness of another person, one’s consciousness becomes as large as two persons’. And so it can become as large as a thousand persons’ when one accustoms oneself to try and see what others think. It is the understanding of two points of view, the opposite points of view, that gives a fuller insight into life. The ” I ” and ” you ” only remain so long as we see ourselves, but when we rise above them or beyond them, the thought brings us nearer and nearer to God in the consciousness in which we all unite.” –Hazrat Inayat Khan

” The Soul of the whole of creation is one, the life behind all these ever-moving phantoms is one. Meditation on this truth and the awakening to it will harmonize the condition of the world.” —Hazrat Inayat Khan

” Holy One, All-powerful, The overcomer, The firm,

Free us and protect us from impressions of alienation, illusion, nonsense; And strengthen us in cooperation, friendship, discernment and wisdom, as we learn how to walk in balance on the earth.”

Sufism does not partake in politics or war. Hazrat Inayat Khan went back to India to visit and died. His son, Pir Valayat Khan took over leadership of the Chisti order. Pir passed away in France. Now Hazrat’s grandson Pir Zia is the leader and spiritual head of the order now. Sufi’s can trace themselves back to Zoroaster and Mohammed gave them mystical teachings. They sat on sofas in the inner circle and so with time they became Sufis. Sufi’s say that there is no God but that which is God.

The Sufi Heart and Wings

July 2, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

The Tribute

A Tribute to my Murshid Hazarat Inayat Khan

You found your pearl in the wine
But you became the vessel to carry my lilac
When in the ocean of purple wisdom
I look for myself being lost and drifted-
The vessel that contains the True-Love finds me within distilled wine.

Oh Beloved-
Hold my wine as an ’embryo’ beholds all that Truth
As for the pearl- I am the womb…
And you are born each night being the pearl within me…that ‘the night vigil’

As I evporate in you
And you contain me- for the room is for one only…
Oh my Beloved, my Murshid, my son
I am the oyster, you are the pearl
Born each night, within the wine the very you hold for me
Being the vessel- containing the ocean within…

I was meant to find you-
Beyond the horizon of right and wrong, truth of lie
Beyond all that is ‘limitless’
I will meet you there floating on the notes of pure music
Will hold your hands- whether it is paradise or not
The womb will meet the drop of wine which creates the ‘Best of the Pearl.'”

——Naajnin Soofian; 21 January 2013

The path of Sufism can be orally traced back to Zoraster.It teaches the unity between religions. During the Universal Worship, all of the major religions are recognized and honored. Sufism is a mystical philosophy and Hazrat Inayat Khan brought it from the East to share it in the West. All have been touched.

We all come from star dust

A whirling dirvish

January 5, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

Dear Mother Earth

Autumn blooming clematis

Autumn blooming clematis

Cleveland Metropolitan Zoo

Botanical gardens

Raptor center, Charlotte, NC

Blue Ridge Mountains

” Life has always seemed to me

Like a plant that lives on its

Rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome.

The part that appears above ground

Lasts only a single summer.

Then it withers away–an ephemeral apparition.

When we think of the unending growth and decay and life and civilization,

We cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity.

Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures

Underneath the eternal flux.

What we see is the blossom, which passes, the rhizome remains.”

————————C.G. Jung

“The soul of the whole of creation is one, the life behind all these ever-moving phantoms is one. Meditation on this truth and the awakening to it will harmonize the condition of the World.”

Hazrat Inayat Khan

December 6, 2012 by IdealisticRebel

The One and Love

My Heart has Become Capable of Every Form

My heart has become capable of every form;

For gazelles and a retreat for Christian monks,

And a temple for idols, and the pilgrims’s Ka’ba

And the tables of the Torah and the book of the Koran.

I follow the religion of Love, whichever way his camels take.

My religion and my faith is the true religion.

——Ibn al–Arabi

“Fact is intelligible, but truth is beyond comprehension, for truth is unlimited.” ——-Hazarat Inayat Khan

“Love in reality creates harmony in one’s life on earth and peace in Heaven.” ———Hazrat Inayat Khan

“The principal work of the prophet is to glorify the name of God, and to raise humanity from the denseness of the earth,

To open the doors of the human heart to the divine beauty

Which is everywhere manifested, and to illuminate souls

Which are groping in darkness for years. The prophet brings

The Message of the day, a reform for that particular period in which he is born.” ——Hazrat Inayat Khan

October 11, 2012 by IdealisticRebel

Through Life’s Experiences

” A person who has gone through all experiences and has held his spirit high, not allowing it to be stained, such a person may be said to be pure-minded. The person who could be called pure because he had no knowledge of either good or evil would in reality be merely a simpleton. To go through all that takes away the original purity and yet to rise above everything that seeks to overwhelm it and drag it down, that is spirituality; the light of the spirit held high and burning clear and pure.”

—-Hazrat Inayat Khan

Water garden. Cleveland Botanical Gardens; Photo by Barbara Mattio

God and man are not two; a spiritual person does not consider God separate from him/herself. God is not in heaven alone; The Beloved is everywhere. We see God in the unseen and in the seen; the spiritual person recognizes The Divine within and without. So, in reality there is no name which is not the name of God, and there is no form which is not the form of Divinity.

We need to recognize the imperfect and mortal aspect of our being as well as the perfect, the immortal aspect of our beings. The imperfect self covers the soul and confines it in a limited being, and calls itself “I”, a servant of God, and the calls The One, the Lord of the whole of existence.
–Excerpted from The Unity of Religious Ideals

In our daily lives, if we can grasp the truth that the all-knowing Divine is within us and everywhere we travel or have experiences then we will truly begin to experience the unlimited, infinite aspects of God. How you choose to work on this in your life is your choice. All paths can take you to the experience of the infinite , all encompassing experience of God in the Universe. Simply put, The Beloved is everywhere and within all sentient beings. Being God-conscious gives us the ability to see all people as children of the Universe. Not different, not hateful, not wrong; just other children of the Universe. The spiritual path shows us that God is in the seen and the unseen. There is no name which is not the name of God.