A Sufi teaching tale expresses many levels of meaning, simultaneously. Such a tale penetrates one’s mechanical nature, overwhelms one’s presumptions, and infiltrates one’s state of conventional sleep.
I find that, with exquisite precision, it is tailored exactly to my own state of being, and it shows me what I need to work on, as well as, my further possibilities.
It is ruthless, in the way that truth is ruthless. It does not equivocate, and lays open the present experience, as it is, without an overlay of interpretation and doubt.
A young man learns of a Sufi Master, a hermit who by reputation is a very wise person. He lives halfway up a mountain, and so the young man—who considers himself to be a very ardent seeker—takes the entire morning to climb up the mountain. He finds the Master sitting before the opening of his cave. The hermit is very cordial, and he and invites him into his home.
The young man has many questions, and the teacher answers each one with grace and simplicity. Finally, the young man is about to take his leave—it is a long way back down the mountain!—and he says to the Master, “I really do not know if I can choose you as my teacher, or not.”
The Master regards the younger person before him, rather wistfully, and replies, “Ah…if you only knew the freedom of having no choice!”
POINTS FOR REFLECTION
1) Is there a paradox here? Is it possible that the ego, with its limited view, finds the soul’s choices paradoxical?
2) What does this imply for my ordinary view of the world?
3) Am I able to accept that whatever is happening in the present moment is precisely what is required for the growth of the soul?
4) Am I able to imagine the sheer freedom of experiencing the soul’s movement along its divine trajectory?