The Dergah and Servanthood
Formulated by Richard Balcon
with
some suggestions from
Shaykh Kabir Helminski
The dergah
provides us with an environment where we may come together to develop in our
spiritual work of feeling our movement into union. It allows us to be in the
company of the friends of God. It also allows us the opportunity to both
deepen our understanding of the elements of spiritual work and our own state,
mirrored by our actions. On the Sufi path, one manner this happens is in our
accepting the growth of responsibility for our inner work and the tasks
necessary for the maintaining the environment that supports that growth; the
growth of both the community and the individual.
Tasks are required to maintain the
sacred space of the Dergah. These are not just tasks, but another way we can
support the growth of spirit. Simply put, such tasks could be described as
having the following aims:
·
Awakening
to an aim beyond our limited ego
Any service is intended for an aim
beyond our limited ego and develops our spirit.
·
Acknowledgement of our
interdependence
Performing functions allow us to
recognize our interdependence and need for each other, allowing awakening
through relationship.
·
Mirrors of our own state
Each function we undertake is a
mirror for own consciousness or heedlessness. Our faithfulness to the task
becomes the mirror of our own state.
As we deepen our involvement with
the path we should endeavor to deepen our servanthood. This happens through
the deepening of our involvement with the path itself; our level of our
involvement with the community; the awareness, being and beauty we bring to
the act of service; and the level at which we share that being and service
with others. As we progress we will be asked to accept tasks, take on
responsibility for those tasks, and pass on the inner knowledge gained to
our companions.
Service within the Divine Unknown (an excerpt from Living Presence)
When we are aware of the abundance of life,
synchronous events unfold in the continuum of time; love brings
together what needs to be brought together. Often in the Middle East my
companions and I would find ourselves more clearly in that space of
imminent meaning and grace.
The psyche’s refinement toward a deeper and more continuous presence
results in our being able to meet more and more manifestations of Life
with unconditional Love. We are able to overcome our separation to such an
extent that we feel at one with more and more. Our awareness of our
connection with Life increases our sensitivity to our environment and
awakens us to more and more opportunities for service, interaction, and
cross-fertilization; we find that our needs are met as well, and the
circle continues. In every moment our environment presents us with needs.
Our service is the natural outcome—one could almost say the mechanical
consequence—of our awareness of our environment as a whole and our
connection with the Creative Power.
If
we find that we are incapable of meeting life with unconditional love, we
can at least begin to practice shifting awareness from the preoccupation
with ourselves to a wider field of awareness, including the needs of those
around us. As we become accustomed to this shift, opportunities for
service arise often and naturally. But service without presence is sleep,
and if we are identified with service, if we expect thanks or some reward,
it instead becomes a demand.
Any action without presence is mechanical, and any step outward requires a
corresponding step inward. If we are to truly grow in service, we must
simultaneously grow in presence. The more our inner faculties are engaged,
the more service will come naturally.
As
the psyche opens in love to its milieu, a marriage
occurs between the heart and the electromagnetic milieu of love, and a
child is born: will, or conscious action. Until then we only have ego—the
bastard child of intellect and desire. The marriage of the subtle
faculties of mind, or the heart, with unconditional love gives birth to
the true, conscious, unqualified will. The quality of action at this level
of human functioning is creative and holistic. The soul has the
possibility to act from its own initiative and in the name of love, not
merely to react from personal desire and insecurity. Since the refined
psyche extends far beyond the phenomenal self, its actions have a magnetic,
even a miraculous quality.
Unconditioning
This merging of the heart with the milieu of Love brings us to the stage
known as unconditioning, which is the highest state of subtlety of the
mind and heart. The subtle faculties become so expansive and all-embracing
that we see our own Self in everything. The identity becomes so expansive
that it feels its union with Divine Being. It is as if the human being
were a pole, with individuality at one end and the Divine Being at the
other.
Through learning to love we come to a perception of the deeper dimensions
present in the real world. Love is no longer merely a form of attraction,
nor is it some virtuous sentiment that improves the character. It is the
cause of everything and the electromagnetic milieu in which we live.
Wherever we find love, it will lead us further along the path of Return to
the Source of Love.
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