The Sufi "Hal"
"Now, I can see you can do this level of application and you can see it too. What is your third time going to produce and then the fourth and fifth? Bear in mind that the value must be increasing towards source each time and also be a more sourceful value to the matters you are applying yourself in. We do not need to see more lateral examples, where there is differing content showing the same resolution."
Sensei,
I have so far been attempting to make sure that I understand the terminology of the Art of Giving (AoG), using the opportunity afforded by this forum. I said early on in my postings that I didn’t consciously practise it, though I found it vaguely familiar. I think that might have been because I used to practise something essentially similar, though I never really systematised it. As I perceive it, what I have been doing in this discussion is mapping my experience (and perhaps that of others) to your terminology as a means of finding out whether I understand you correctly, rather than practising the AoG methodology per se.
I like the concepts and the terminology, though things seem a little strange at first; it is easy to become confused, because familiar words have unfamiliar meanings. I suppose the hope is that understanding your meaning will enable me to develop a vocabulary that will offer insight into experiences that I haven’t gone into in detail about earlier. More than that really: that they would help me go further into new territory. It’s an exciting idea that a single set of concepts could be applied at different stages and levels of one’s own development, so that things that once seemed different and unconnected could be linked in what you seem to indicate is a continuum. A grand unifying theory of everything, so to speak.
Having said that, I have been reluctant to go in that direction, if only because it was first of all necessary to verify that my understandings of the AoG terminology were correct, and the easiest way to do that seemed to be with reference to a basic level of application, viz. the one that was similar to what I used to do. Not having systematised the latter at the time, or envisaged it as being universally applicable, there are seeming discontinuities in different phases of my particular journey. Mapping all those to the AoG seems to me to necessarily involve a certain amount of speculation, which, as I say, I have been reluctant to do. However, seeing as it appears you have invited me to explore the continuum further, I will venture to do that.
I will begin with a metaphor. A raw learner driver of a car has to be able to identify the controls (e.g. steering wheel, gear lever, clutch, brakes, accelerator) and other functional devices (rear-view mirror, seatbelts, lights, windscreen wipers, etc.), and understand the function of each. He also has to learn how to employ them in getting the vehicle from A to B. At first, this is a very hesitant, step-by-step process, and mistakes are bound to be made, perhaps the same ones over and over again.
However, at some stage, the operations and their coordination become more or less automatic. The learner driver makes the transition to being a competent driver, one who can eventually travel a hundred miles along busy roads without once having thought about the processes involved. Those have been absorbed into his very being. He started off as one kind of being, then went through an iterative transition phase, and ended up as an enhanced kind of being.
It needn’t stop there: there are a number of possible further stages of iterative learning, alternating with further enhancements, that might culminate in his acquiring world-class-formula-one-driver-being.
As below, so above. There is no a priori reason I can think of why something that applies at the level of motor skills shouldn’t also apply at the level of spiritual skills. Strangely, we rarely stop to reflect on the miraculousness of being able to change being at lower levels (I mean: why should the universe be so structured that the quality of being itself can evolve, even at the level of motor skills?). However, despite that, the idea of being able to change the quality of one’s spiritual being often seems like an impossible dream, a real miracle.
I digress: the main point I’m making is that periods of iterative learning can alternate with periods of enhancement to being, and each cycle builds on what went before.
I think this can be applied in the context of Values. At any moment, we operate within a Value system that is part and parcel of our current being. We may hardly think about it, any more than a fish thinks about water. It is like a railway line segment whose length and position along the Matter-Source continuum limits how far we can travel Matterwards or Sourcewards on our Kalamazoo. A while ago, that segment may have been at a certain locus, but today, if we are lucky, it might have shifted, as a unit, Sourcewards, as a result of sincere iterative efforts to do that.
I suppose those efforts need not in principle have been completely conscious or systematised, and serendipity could have played a part: we could, for example, have experienced something that catalysed the migration of being – could be anything, whether on the face of it negative/unpleasant (e.g. illness or bereavement), or positive/pleasant (e.g. marriage or parenthood). And, incidentally, that’s another rarely-considered miracle: that whatever stuff happens, it can have positive potential if we approach it with a positive attitude.
To me, a key Value to embed into one’s Value system is what I’d describe as a “metaValue”, i.e., a Value about Values. Put as simply as I can, this metaValue is the sincere adoption of the principle that in any given moment, any given situation, at any stage of our journey, there lies the information and potential to enter a new iterative phase of Value development.
In the past, when I wasn’t thinking in AoG terminology, I used to term this (possibly rather idiosyncratically), as the development of an always-in-residence “observer” or “witness” faculty. That’s because it is experienced internally as a kind of detachment, something that enables one to be objective, not identified with negative thoughts and feelings that come from the Matterwards direction. This MetaValue is itself, of course, a Value that can evolve and refine over time.
Sometimes, when in a veritable hurricane of negative thoughts and feelings, one is able to stop them taking hold even if one is unable to stop them arising. One doesn’t have to act on negativity, isn’t its slave. It’s not simply putting in constant effort, being consciously vigilant, though it may start off in one’s practice that way. No: it is an embedded awareness, a state of being.
One might think of it in terms of Adam nature always being awake on the job, never sitting out on the Kalamazoo, but at the same time, sometimes he’s fighting Eve; she is trying to pump Matterwards, but he’s holding the lever, stopping it rocking, so at least one’s Values, as expressed in actions, aren’t slipping, even if one isn’t moving Sourcewards.
In the relatively tranquil times, Adam, not having to fight Eve, is constantly alive to the possibilities of the situation. It’s as if Values are signalled by landmarks; somewhere off Sourcewards, he catches a glimpse of a new landmark, a new desirable locus to shift towards. He senses that when the Kalamazoo gets there, Eve will be able to Appreciate in new and better ways. For her part, she’s compliant, interested in seeing what will come of it.
Which brings me to another experience I seemingly have to take account of and have briefly referred to before. Sometimes, you seem to get a gift from Source. It’s as if Source reaches out in a fourth dimension, grabs your Kalamazoo/line segment, and transports the whole kit and caboodle, Adam and Eve and all, an appreciable distance Sourcewards. Suddenly, and inexplicably, you can operate with ease at a higher level of being (i.e. demonstrate Appreciation and Gratitude at higher levels). You can’t see what it was that was limiting you at your previous locus.
In Sufi terminology, I think what might be said to be happening is that God, through an act of grace, is offering you a glimpse of a possible future stage of being. This glimpse is termed a hal, a temporary state, not an embedded stage (makam). One is extremely fortunate if one experiences such a thing, for even when the glimpse disappears (it can last hours, days or weeks), and one finds oneself back in accustomed territory with all its limitations, one’s faith is strengthened.
However hard things get, one can hold on to the heart-memory, if not the current substance, of the hal. One yearns for it to reappear, and the sense of bliss it brought, but that bliss isn’t the really Valuable thing. No: what was truly Valuable was being able to live and give at the higher level of being, and I think one has to focus on that, rather than “getting sidetracked” into the lesser Value of seeking thrills and spills. When the pauper moves into the palace he’s been bequeathed, for a while he is amazed, awed and delighted by it, but eventually, comes to function in it from day to day just as he had to in the hovel he came from.
So actually, extrapolating AoG terminology to a number of things I once thought of as disparate and hard to connect (I could probably mention further examples as well as cite specific cases), seems to be uniting them into a seamless continuum.
Is this practice, or is it merely an exercise in explication? Does it provide evidence of something beyond beginner-level application? Does it have significant Value? If so, what might that be? Apart, that is, from the satisfaction one always seems to get from a clearer understanding of a field of study, be that exoteric or esoteric?
August 6, 2009 at 5:57 | ML
ML;
It is an exercise in Explication. And there is certainly value in that. Your Sufi "hal" is an example of the area within yourself that can be addressed with more effective practice.
First, I do commend your observations of Adam and Eve. There is more to discover and understand about them and by spending more time considering them, you will open more into the "hal" effect.
The "hal" is pretty simple to explain. The Grace from God is an effect which occurs when the gratitude principle has been realized to a more inward point of value in the moment than the normal dwelling of the experiencer. I have written about this already in previous posts and it should be in the Sensei area of this EA site.
The greater value of knowing this is that you can apply yourself through these principles in ways I have described to actualize the "hal" experience and to change your dwell not only more inward (as your example of a tenant changing dwellings only to reset back into their normal way of being), but to develop through a focused practice a change in the nature of your givings where you dwell as a way of being in the inward values; where you are constantly going inward while engaging outward in ever more sourceful ways.
Your own practice can accomplish this if you accomplish this practice.
August 6, 2009 at 11:17 | sensei