An Extraordinary, Precious Opportunity

– Artwork: Niki Bowers

The Wild Reed’s 2023 Advent series continues with a second excerpt from Awakening: A Sufi Experience, a collection of writings by the late Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan. (For the first installment of this series, click here.)

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What exactly do we mean by the concept of the “moment” or “now”? If you are listening to music, the note you have just heard continues to resound in your ears, even as you begin to take in the next note. In this “moment” there are no boundaries between the past or the future. Thus Sufis [and all you walk the path of mysticism] do not see individuals as victims of an inexorably preordained fate, nor as autocratic masters of their individual destiny. Rather, they take into account the existence of a higher intelligence that, through an innovative, trial-and-error, evolutionary process, is embedded within humanity to creatively shape and reshape life in an endless array of new images, patterns, and paradigms.

This transcendent force is what some call God and what I call the “Universe.” Like a cosmic pull that exerts a force of its own over humanity, the Universe is constantly compelling us to break free of the conditioning of the past in order to transform and evolve. Just like the constant changes and adaptations in nature that have been occurring for aeons of time – resulting in emerald rainforests, exotic animals, and complex, intelligent creatures called people – this evolutionary force functions like a spiritual magnet to draw humanity beyond its limitations into further dimensions of consciousness and levels of perception. Indeed, the impetus to span the cleft from the past to the future is part of an on-going, billions-of-years-old process by which the Universe has been fashioning its stardust into human beings. The planning of the Universe is affected by humankind’s free, creative participation; thus the goal for humans is to become conscious of their profound impact upon the unfolding of creation.

Should such a quantum shift in consciousness actually occur, it would represent an heroic victory over determinism – not over nature, but over the limitations of our own minds that prevent us from working in harmony with the Universe. Conscious evolution is humankind’s final frontier, the ultimate freedom sought by humanity since the dawn of time. Thus the challenge seems to be one of overcoming the fear of the unexplored territory that lies ahead, and finding the courage and optimism to illuminate the spiritual dimension hidden within our nature. For it is the intuitive, rader-like quality of this transcendent faculty that will help to guide us through the darkness of the unknown – illuminating our minds and awakening our hearts to the splendor of a new consciousness.

“Participators in the evolution of the Universe”: it is a phrase that resonates with possibility and potential. For this means to realize that the future is not just waiting to happen; instead, it is taking shape right here and now in the attitudes we hold, the choices we make, and the values we cherish. It means to become fully aware of the fact that humanity holds in its hands an extraordinary, precious opportunity to shape the future tomorrows of this planet. One way of doing this is through our Divinely inspired creativity – imagining and envisioning a world that is different from the one that has gone before. This does not mean abandoning all that humanity has attained thus far. Rather, it means carefully sifting through the past – preserving the legacy bequeathed by the great civilizations of antiquity, while at the same time improving our social structures to eschew the sad trail of suffering wreaked by the cruel against the victims of oppression.

– Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
Excerpted from Awakening: A Sufi Experience
Tarcher/Putnam, 2000
pp. 7-10

NEXT:
Part III – The Task at Hand


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Awakening
• The Beauty and Challenge of Being Present in the Moment
• Stepping Out of Time
• Sufism: A Call to Awaken
• Don’t Go Back to Sleep
• Sufism: Way of Love, Tradition of Enlightenment, and Antidote to Fanaticism
• The Sufi Way
• Clarity, Hope, and Courage
• “Joined at the Heart”: Robert Thompson on Christianity and Sufism
• Doris Lessing on the Sufi Way
• Sufism: A Living Twenty-First Century Tradition
• In the Dance of Light, Eyes of Fiery Passion
• The Winged Heart
• The Most Sacred and Simple Mystery of All
• The Source Is Within You
• Jesus: Mystic and Prophet
• Called to the Field of Compassion
• Michael Morwood on the Divine Presence
• Prayer and the Experience of God in an Ever-Unfolding Universe
• Prayer of the Week – October 28, 2013
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Hazrat Inayat Khan
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Doris Lessing
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Kabir Helminski
• Neil Douglas-Klotz: Quote of the Day – December 29, 2011
• Advent: Renewing Our Connection to the Sacred
• A Threshold Season
• Advent Thoughts
• Bismillah
• Cultivating Stillness
• A New Beginning
• As the Last Walls Dissolve . . . Everything Is Possible

Opening image: Niki Bowers.