The Journey Home

– Artwork: Niki Bowers

The Wild Reed’s 2024 Advent series concludes with a third excerpt from Sufism: Transformation of the Heart by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee. (To start at the beginning of this series and to learn why I chose this book, click here.)

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Sufism is the ancient wisdom of the heart. Like a stream which goes underground and then reappears, this wisdom is always present in the world, sometimes visible and sometimes hidden. Some great Sufis have been public figures; many have worked in the disguise of ordinary men and women. They belong to God and respond to the need of the time. At the present time in the West there is a need for this path of the heart to be made known, for this ancient tradition to be made accessible.

In our Western world there is a hunger for the wisdom and nourishment that come from the inner world. In dreams, visions, and the silence of longing, the inner journey awakens within us and we are called back “to the root of the root of our own self.” Yet our culture has forgotten the way of the mystic, which is so at variance with the rational and material values that surround us. There appear to be few signposts to guide the traveller, who is so often left stranded, confusing longing with depression, or believing that the desire for God is just an inability to adjust to the “real” world.

In [the twentieth-century], psychology and the many different forms of therapy [arose and] helped us to understand the dynamics of the unconscious. We are beginning to learn about the healing and transformation that can come from within. Psychology is a valuable contemporary science, but the mystic has different intentions from those who seek psychological healing or the resolution of problems. The heart’s desire for union with God activates a process of psychological ego-destruction that is both terrifying and intoxicating, The mystic does not seek ego-fulfillment, but to be lost in the abyss of nothingness. At the same time we need to live a balanced life and not allow the contents of the unconscious to overwhelm us. The Sufi path has explored and documented the psychological and spiritual unfolding that belongs to the journey Home. This wisdom is valuable not only to those who follow the Sufi path, but to others who need to understand the processes of transformation that belong to the mystical journey.

The wayfarer follows love’s call, like the moth drawn to the flame of annihilation. At the same time the Sufi lives an everyday life in the world. We have to learn to live in two worlds, to have both feet firmly on the ground and yet with our head to support the sky. Living in two worlds is an integral part of the Sufi tradition. The subtle balance of inner and outer states, the integration of the spiritual and everyday life, belongs to the wisdom of this path.

. . . Living in both realms – working in the world, having a family, while at the same time realizing the Truth – is a cornerstone of the Sufi path. The inner and outer world, the heart’s secrets and the most ordinary things, combine to create the necessary conditions for the path. The friction between the two worlds wears away the ego, which is unable to contain the seeming contradiction of the endless inner expansion and the limitations of everyday life. The prison of our temporal home contains the key of the heart's freedom. Here lies the secret alchemy of the Sufi path.

The combination of the inner and outer worlds produces a powerful dynamic that helps the wayfarer to realize her true nature. Remembering God in our daily life, we bring the imprint of the soul into the world of time and space. Only within the heart can we contain the most primal pair of opposites, that we are at the same time divine, immortal spirits and temporal creatures. The tension between our divine and human natures produces the longing that burns [and transforms us] us and takes us Home.

Inwardly looking towards God, we learn to live our devotion not as some idealized state, but as a center of stillness and love within the limitations and difficulties of the world. We do not reject God’s creation but rather come to know its deeper purpose, as a reflection of God’s Oneness. When we love God in the midst of the world, amidst our mundane, everyday life, we realize this hidden secret of creation – “in everything there is a sign, a clue to 'God is One.’”*

The way of the Sufi is to contain duality within the oneness of love. We are both separate and united with the Beloved whom we love.

– Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Excerpted from Sufism: The Transformation of the Heart
The Golden Sufi Center, 1995
pp. 144-145

* Fakhruddīn Irāqī, Divine Flashes, translated by William Chittick and Peter Lamborn Wilson, p. 126.

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Something special now to mark the conclusion of this series: a 40-minute talk by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee that serves as a very accessible and eloquent introduction to Sufism, the “path of love” that reveals the “secrets of mystical Oneness.” This talk was recorded on October 18, 2009 in Tiburon, California.





See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Held in the Presence of God
• The Act of Surrrender
• The Sufi Way
• Sufism: Way of Love, Tradition of Enlightenment, and Antidote to Fanaticism
• Doris Lessing on the Sufi Way
• Sufism: A Living Twenty-First Century Tradition
• “Joined at the Heart”: Robert Thompson on Christianity and Sufism
• Sufism: A Call to Awaken
• Don’t Go Back to Sleep
• Clarity, Hope, and Courage
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Doris Lessing
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Kabir Helminski
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Inayat Khan
• Inayat Khan and the Heart of Sufism
• Inayat Khan: “There Must Be Balance”
• Inayat Khan on the Art of Selflessness
• The Most Sacred and Simple Mystery of All
• Prayer of the Week – October 28, 2013
• Neil Douglas-Klotz: Quote of the Day – December 29, 2011
• Birthday Musings
• The Onward Call
• A Sacred Journey, a Pilgrim Path
• In the Footsteps of Spring: Introduction | Part I | II | III | IV | V
• New Horizons
• Advent: Renewing Our Connection to the Sacred
• Advent Questions for These Times of Challenge and Change
• Advent Thoughts
• A Threshold Season
• A New Beginning
• Advent: The Season of Blessed Paradox
• An Advent Prayer
• Advent: A “ChristoPagan” Perspective
• Guidelines for the Advent of a Universal Mysticism: An Introduction | Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
• Active Waiting: A Radical Attitude Toward Life
• Bismillah
• Cultivating Stillness
• Thoughts on Transformation | II | III
• As the Last Walls Dissolve . . . Everything Is Possible

Opening image: “Serpentine Starlings” by Niki Bowers.