'I do know, sir. I can read everything that the Great Celestial Father writes?'
'But how?'
The humble servant explained.
'When you receive a letter from someone far away, how do you recognize the writer?'
'By the handwriting.'
'When you receive a jewel, how do you know who made it?'
'By the goldsmith's mark.'
'When you hear animals moving about near the tent, how do you know if it was a sheep, a horse, or an ox?'
'By its footprints,' replied the owner, surprised at all these questions.
The old man invited him to come outside with him and showed him the sky.
'Neither the things written up there, nor the desert down below, could have been made or written by the hand of man.'
Alone on the Road
Life is like a great bicycle race, whose aim is to fulfil our personal legend, which, according to the ancient alchemists, is our true mission on earth.
We all set off together, sharing friendship and enthusiasm; but as the race progresses, that initial happiness gives way to the real challenges: tiredness, boredom, doubts about our own abilities. We notice that a few friends have, in their hearts, already given up. They are still cycling, but only because they cannot stop in the middle of the road. There are more and more of them, pedalling along beside the support vehicle - also known as routine - talking amongst themselves, fulfilling their obligations, but oblivious to the beauties and challenges of the road.
We eventually leave them behind us, and then we come face to face with loneliness, with unfamiliar bends in the road, and mechanical problems with our bicycle. At a certain stage, after suffering a few falls with no one near at hand to help, we begin to ask ourselves if it's really worth all the effort.
Yes, it is. It's just a question of not giving up. Father Alan Jones says that in order to overcome these obstacles, we need four invisible forces: love, death, power and time.
We must love because we ourselves are loved by God.
We must have an awareness of death in order fully to understand life.
We must struggle in order to grow, but without allowing ourselves to be deceived by the power that is gained through that struggle, because we know that such power is worthless.
Finally, we must accept that our soul - even though it is eternal - is at this moment caught in the web of time, with all its opportunities and limitations.
Therefore, on our solitary bicycle race, we must behave as if time existed and do everything we can to value each second, to rest when necessary, but to keep cycling towards the divine light, and not be put off by any moments of anxiety.
These four forces cannot be treated as problems to be solved, because they are beyond anyone's control. We must accept them, and let them teach us what we need to learn.
We live in a universe that is at once vast enough to enclose us, and small enough to fit inside our heart. In the soul of man is the soul of the world, the silence of wisdom. As we pedal towards our goal, we must make a point of asking ourselves: 'What is beautiful about today?' The sun might be shining, but if it happens to be raining, always remember that this only means that the dark clouds will soon have disappeared. The clouds do disappear; but the sun remains the same, and never goes away. In moments of loneliness, it is important to remember this.
When things get hard, let us not forget that - independent of race, colour, social situation, beliefs, or culture - everyone has experienced exactly the same. A lovely prayer written by the Egyptian Sufi master Dhu 'l-Nun (d. ad 861) neatly sums up the attitude one needs to adopt at such times:
O God, when I listen to the voices of the animals, to the sound of the trees, the murmur of the water, the singing of the birds, to the rushing of the wind or to the rumble of thunder, I see in them evidence of Your unity; I feel that You are supreme power, supreme knowledge, supreme wisdom, supreme justice.
O God, I also recognize you in the difficulties I am experiencing now. God, let Your satisfaction be my satisfaction, and let me be Your joy, the joy that a Father takes in his child. And let me remember You with calmness and determination, even when it is hard for me to say: I love You.
The Funny Thing About Human Beings
A man asked my friend Jaime Cohen: 'What is the human being's funniest characteristic?'
Cohen said: 'Our contradictoriness. We are in such a hurry to grow up, and then we long for our lost childhood. We make ourselves ill earning money, and then spend all our money on getting well again. We think so much about the future that we neglect the present, and thus experience neither the present nor the future. We live as if we were never going to die, and die as if we had never lived.'
An Around-the-World Trip After Death
I have often thought about what happens as we scatter little bits of ourselves around the world. I have cut my hair in Tokyo, trimmed my nails in Norway, and spilled my own blood on a mountain in France. In my first book, The Archives of Hell, I speculated briefly on this subject, about whether we had to sow a little of our own body in various parts of the world so that, in a future life, we would be sure to find something familiar. Recently, I read in the French newspaper Le Figaro an article by Guy Barret about a real-life event in June 2001 when someone took this idea to its ultimate consequences.
The article was about an American woman, Vera Anderson, who spent all her life in Medford, Oregon. When she was getting on in years, she suffered a stroke, aggravated by pulmonary emphysema, which forced her to spend years confined to her room, connected up to an oxygen machine. This was, in itself, a torment, but in Vera's case, it was even more of one, because she had always dreamed of travelling the world, and had saved up her money in order to be able to do so when she retired.
Vera managed to move to Colorado so that she could spend the rest of her days with her son, Ross. There, before making her final journey - the one from which we never return - she made a decision. She might not have been able to travel even in her own country while alive, but she would travel the world after her death.
Ross went to the local notary public and registered his mother's will. When she died, she would like to be cremated. Nothing unusual about that. But the will went on to stipulate that her ashes were to be placed in 241 small bags, which were to be sent to the heads of postal services in the 50 American states, and to each of the 191 countries of the world, so that at least part of her body would end up visiting the places she had always dreamed about.
As soon as Vera died, Ross carried out her last wishes with all the respect one could hope for in a son. With each remittance, he enclosed a brief letter in which he asked that his mother be given a decent funeral.
Everyone who received Vera Anderson's ashes treated Ross's request with utter seriousness. In the four corners of the earth, a silent chain of solidarity was formed, in which sympathetic strangers organized the most diverse of ceremonies, depending on the place that the late Mrs Anderson would have liked to visit.
Thus Vera's ashes were scattered in Lake Titicaca, in Bolivia, according to the ancient traditions of the Aymara Indians; they were scattered on the river in front of the royal palace in Stockholm; on the banks of the Chao Phraya in Thailand; in a Shinto temple in Japan; on the glaciers of Antarctica; and in the Sahara desert. The sisters of charity in an orphanage in South America (the article does not specify in which country) prayed for a week before scattering the ashes in the garden, and then decided that Vera Anderson should be considered a kind of guardian angel of the place.
Ross Anderson received photos from the five continents, from all races and all cultures, showing men and women honouring his mother's last wishes. When we see today's divided world, a world in which no one seems to care about anyone else, Vera Anderson's last journey fills us with hope, for it shows us that there is still respect, love and generosity in the souls of our fellow human beings, however far away they may be.
Who Would Like This Twenty-Dollar Bill?
Cassan Said Amer tells the story of a lecturer who began a seminar by holding up a twenty-dollar bill and asking: 'Who would like this twenty-dollar bill?'
Several hands went up, but the lecturer said: 'Before I give it to you, I have to do something.'
He screwed it up into a ball and said: 'Who still wants this bill?'
The hands went up again.
'And what if I do this to it?'
He threw the crumpled bill at the wall, dropped it on the floor, insulted it, trampled on it, and once more showed them the bill - now all creased and dirty. He repeated the question, and the hands stayed up.
'Never forget this scene,' he said. 'It doesn't matter what I do to this money. It is still a twenty-dollar bill. So often in our lives, we are crumpled, trampled, ill-treated, insulted, and yet, despite all that, we are still worth the same.'
The Two Jewels
From the Cistercian monk, Marcos Garria, in Burgos, in Spain.
'Sometimes God withdraws a particular blessing from someone so that the person can comprehend Him as something other than a being of whom one asks favours and makes requests. He knows how far He can test a soul, and never goes beyond that point. At such moments, we must never say: "God has abandoned me." He will never do that, even though we may sometimes abandon Him. If the Lord sets us a great test, he always gives us sufficient - I would say more than sufficient - grace to pass that test.'
In this regard, one of my readers, Camila Galvao Piva, sent me an interesting story, entitled 'The Two Jewels'.
A very devout rabbi lived happily with his family - an admirable wife and their two beloved sons. Once, because of his work, the rabbi had to be away from home for several days. During that period, both children were killed in a terrible car accident.
Alone, the mother suffered in silence. However, because she was a strong woman, sustained by faith and trust in God, she endured the shock with dignity and courage. But how was she to break the tragic news to her husband? His faith was equally strong, but he had, in the past, been taken into hospital with heart problems, and his wife feared that finding out about the tragedy might cause his death too.
All she could do was to pray to God to advise her on the best way to act. On the eve of her husband's return, she prayed hard and was granted the grace of an answer.
The following day, the rabbi arrived home, embraced his wife, and asked after the children. The woman told him not to worry about them now, but to take a bath and rest.
Some time later, they sat down to lunch. She asked him all about his trip, and he told her everything that had happened to him; he spoke about God's mercy, and then again asked about the children.
The wife, somewhat awkwardly, replied: 'Don't worry about the children. We'll deal with them later. First, I need your help to solve what I consider to be a very grave problem.'
Her husband asked anxiously: 'What's happened? I thought you looked distressed. Tell me everything that is on your mind, and I'm sure that, with God's help, we can solve any problem together.'
'While you were away, a friend of ours visited us and left two jewels of incalculable value here for me to look after. They're really lovely jewels! I've never seen anything so beautiful before. He has since come to claim them back, and I don't want to return them. I've grown too fond of them. What should I do?'
'I can't understand your behaviour at all! You've never been a woman given to vanity!'
'It's just that I've never seen such jewels before! I can't bear the idea of losing them forever.'
And the rabbi said firmly: 'No one can lose something he or she has not possessed. Keeping those jewels would be tantamount to stealing them. We will give them back, and I will help you make up for their loss. We will do this together today.'
'As you wish, my love. The treasures will be returned. In fact, they already have been. The two precious jewels were our sons. God entrusted them to our care, and while you were away, he came to fetch them back. They have gone.'
The rabbi understood. He embraced his wife, and together they wept many tears; but he had understood the message and, from that day on, they struggled to bear their loss together.
Self-Deception
It is part of human nature always to judge others very severely and, when the wind turns against us, always to find an excuse for our own misdeeds, or to blame someone else for our mistakes. The story that follows illustrates what I mean.
A messenger was sent on an urgent mission to a distant city. He saddled up his horse and set off at a gallop. After passing several inns where animals like him were normally fed, the horse thought: 'We're not stopping to eat at any stables, which means that I'm being treated, not like a horse, but like a human being. Like all other men, I will eat in the next big city we reach.'
But the big cities all passed by, one after the other, and his rider continued on his way. The horse began to think: 'Perhaps I haven't been changed into a human being after all, but into an angel, because angels have no need to eat.'
Finally, they reached their destination and the animal was led to the stable, where he greedily devoured the hay he found there.
'Why believe that things have changed simply because they do not happen quite as expected?' he said to himself. 'I'm not a man or an angel. I'm simply a hungry horse.'
The Art of Trying
Pablo Picasso said: 'God is, above all, an artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the ant. He never tried to follow one particular style. He simply kept on doing whatever he felt like doing.'
It is the desire to walk that creates the path ahead; however, when we set off on the journey towards our dream, we feel very afraid, as if we had to get everything right first time. But, given that we all live different lives, who decided what 'getting everything right' means? If God made the giraffe, the elephant, and the ant, and we are trying to live in His image, why do we have to follow any other model? A model might sometimes help us to avoid repeating the stupid mistakes that others have made, but, more often than not, it becomes a prison that makes us repeat what everyone else has always done.
It means making sure your tie always matches your socks. It means being forced to have the same opinions tomorrow as you had today. Where does that leave the constantly shifting world?
As long as it doesn't harm anyone, change your opinions now and then and be unashamedly contradictory. You have that right; it doesn't matter what other people think, because they're going to think something anyway.
When we decide to act, some excesses may occur. An old culinary adage says: 'You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.' It's also natural that unexpected conflicts should arise, and it's natural that wounds may be inflicted during those conflicts. The wounds pass, and only the scars remain.
This is a blessing. These scars stay with us throughout our life and are very helpful. If, at some point - simply because it would make life easier, or for whatever other reason - the desire to return to the past becomes very great, we need only look at those scars. They are the marks left by the handcuffs, and will remind us of the horrors of prison, and we will keep walking straight ahead.
So, relax. Let the universe move around you and discover the joy of surprising yourself. 'God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise,' says St Paul.
A warrior of light often finds that certain moments repeat themselves. He is often faced by the same problems and situations and, seeing these difficult situations return, he grows depressed, thinking that he is incapable of making any progress in life.
'I've been through all this before,' he says to his heart.
'Yes, you have been through all this before,' replies his heart. 'But you have never been beyond it.'
Then the warrior realizes that these repeated experiences have but one aim: to teach him what he has not yet learned. He always finds a different solution for each repeated battle, and he does not consider his failures to be mistakes but, rather, as steps along the path to a meeting with himself.
/> The Dangers Besetting the Spiritual Search
As people start to pay more attention to the things of the spirit, another phenomenon occurs: a feeling of intolerance towards the spiritual search of others. Every day, I receive magazines, e-mails, letters, and pamphlets, trying to prove that one path is better than another, and containing a whole series of rules to follow in order to achieve 'enlightenment'. Given the growing volume of such correspondence, I have decided to write a little about what I consider to be the dangers of this search.
Myth 1: The mind can cure everything
This is not true, and I prefer to illustrate this particular myth with a story. Some years ago, a friend of mine - deeply involved in the spiritual search - began to feel feverish and ill. She spent the whole night trying to 'mentalize' her body, using all the techniques she knew, in order to cure herself purely with the power of the mind. The following day, her children, who were getting worried, urged her to go to the doctor, but she refused, saying that she was 'purifying' her spirit. Only when the situation became untenable did she agree to go to the hospital, where she had to have an emergency operation for appendicitis. So, be very careful: it's better sometimes to ask God to guide your doctor's hands than to try to cure yourself alone.
Myth 2: Red meat drives away the divine light
Obviously, if you belong to a certain religion, you will have to respect established rules - Jews and Muslims, for example, do not eat pork, and, in their case, this practice forms part of their faith. However, the world is being flooded with a wave of 'purification through food'. Radical vegetarians look at people who eat meat as if they had murdered the animal themselves; but, then, aren't plants living things too? Nature is a constant cycle of life and death and, one day, we will be the ones going back into the earth to feed it. So if you don't belong to a religion that forbids certain foods, eat whatever your organism needs. I would like to tell a story about the Russian magus Gurdjieff. When he was young, he went to visit a great teacher and, in order to impress him, he ate only vegetables. One night, the teacher asked him why he kept to such a strict diet. Gurdjieff replied: 'In order to keep my body clean.' The teacher laughed and advised him to stop this practice at once. If he continued, he would end up like a hothouse flower - very pure, but incapable of withstanding the challenges of travelling and of life. As Jesus said: 'It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth.'