Kabir Helminski - The Knowing Heart: A Sufi Path of Transformation

ABOUT THE BOOK

As human beings we stand on the threshold between two realities: the world of material existence and the world of spiritual Being. The knowing heart is the sacred place where these two dimensions meet and are integrated.

In Sufi teaching the human heart is not a fanciful metaphor but an objective organ of intuition and perception. It is able to perceive all that is beautiful, lovely, and meaningful in lifeand to reflect these spiritual qualities in the world, for the benefit of others. Every human heart has the capacity and the destiny to bring that world of divine reality into this world of appearances.

The Sufis, mystics of Islam, have been educators of the heart for some fourteen centuries. Their teachings and methods are designed to help us awaken and purify the heart, to learn to listen to our deepest knowing. In The Knowing Heart, Kabir Helminski presents the Sufi way as a practical spirituality suitable for all cultures and timesand offers insights that are especially valuable for our life in today's world. In cultivating a knowing heart, we learn to experience a new sense of self, transform our relationships, and enhance our creative capacities. Most important, we learn how to meet the spiritual challenge of our time: to realize our sacred humanness.

KABIR HELMINSKI is the author of Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness and the Essential Self, as well as the translator of numerous books of Sufi literature and especially Rumi. He is the codirector, with his wife, Camille Helminski, of the Threshold Society, a nonprofit organization dedicated to sharing the knowledge and practice of Sufism. As the publisher of Threshold Books for some twenty years, he was largely responsible for making Rumi the most widely read poet of our time. As a producer and writer of Sufi music, he has gained recognition for numerous recordings, including his own Garden within the Flames. He is a representative of the Mevlevi tradition founded by Jalaluddin Rumi.

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THE KNOWING HEART

A Sufi Path of Transformation

Kabir Helminski

SHAMBHALA

Boston & London

2012

SHAMBHALA PUBLICATIONS, INC.

Horticultural Hall

300 Massachusetts Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

www.shambhala.com

1999 by Kabir Helminski

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

The Library of Congress catalogues the hardcover edition of this book as follows:

Helminski, Kabir, 1947

The knowing heart: a Sufi path of transformation / by Kabir Helminski.1st ed.

p. cm.

eISBN 978-0-8348-2460-7

ISBN 978-1-57062-408-7 (alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-57062-566-4 (pbk.)

1. Sufism. I. Title.

BP189.H45 1999 98-31122

294.4 4dc21 CIP

Dedicated to those anonymous friends

who recognized my longing as their own,

without whom I could not have learned

what little I know of the Heart.

Contents

Quotations from the Qurn appear in italic type throughout the book, and most translations of the Qurn are from Muhammad Asad, The Message of the Qurn (Gibraltar: Dar al-Andalus, 1980), although sometimes I have translated anew to bring out the necessary meanings.

Extra-Qurnic divine sayings transmitted by Muhammad (Hadth Quds) and traditional sayings of Muhammad (Hadth) are in Roman type.

Citations to the Divan of Rm are indicated by a D (e.g., Rm, D 1652). Citations to the Mathnaw are indicated by an M (e.g, Rm, M, I, 366566).

A simplified system of transliteration is used, with macrons indicating long vowels. Thus, for example, murd is pronounced mureed.

Unless otherwise noted, translations are my own.

With profound gratitude to these beloveds and elders who lived to share the Truth and were part of the living transmission for me. It is inevitable that their voices should mix with mine in this book: Refik Algan, Assad Ali, Andac Arbas, Metin Bobaroglu, Sefik Can, Tosun Bayrak, Daud Bellak, Suleyman Dede, Cahid Gzkan, Bilal Hyde, Feridun zgoren, Selim zich, Feisal Rauf, Abdul Aziz Said, Hasan Shushud, Ahmed Tijani, Yannis Toussulis, Murat Yagan, Celalettin and Faruk Celebi, the Celebi family, and my wife, Camille.

A STORY

Attributed to Shaikh Ibn al-Arab

O NE DAY, ONE OF GODS LOVERS GOES TO THE HOME OF his shaikh. The shaikh begins to speak to him about love. Little by little, as the shaikh speaks, the lover begins to melt, becoming more and more subtle until he just flows like a trickling stream. His whole physical being dissolved in front of the shaikh, until there was nothing but some water on the floor.

Just then a friend of the shaikh enters the room and asks, Where is that fellow who just arrived? The shaikh points to the water on the floor and says, That man is that water.

This kind of melting is an astonishing transformation of state. The man lost his density in such a way that he became what he originally was: a drop of liquid. Originally he had arrived at human form from water, for as God has said: We created all of life from water.

This lover merely returned to his original essence, the water that is the source of life. And so we may draw the following conclusion: A lover is that being by whom everything is brought to life.

T HE REAL AND ESSENTIAL NEEDS OF THE HUMAN BEING have not changed very much over the centuries. Eight hundred years ago, the theologian and mystic Ab Hamd al-Ghazl asserted: Human perfection resides in this, that the love of God should conquer the human heart and possess it wholly, and even if it does not possess it wholly, it should predominate in the heart over the love of all things.

To grasp his statement, we must understand that this word God has the following synonyms: Reality, the Source of Life, the Most Subtle State of Everything. The love of God is the love of the greatest Truth. This quest concerns Reality, not religion. The love of God is our essential relationship with what is most real.

What has changed over the centuries, perhaps, is the form and pressure of those forces that could displace the love of the Real, the love of God from the heart. And what may change further is that human beings may lose the whole notion of love of God as the criterion for human perfection and well-being.

To be a Sufi is to be a lover, but not just any kind of lover. We need knowledge to know what to love and what love asks of us, in says: There is no greater love than love with no object.

There was once a time, perhaps, when people felt themselves to be part of a cosmic order that offered a straight path to salvation, truth, or enlightenment. In that time before spiritual truth was marginalized, the Divine love and mercy were extended to anyone, no matter what his or her circumstances, who fulfilled the necessary moral and religious duties. Almost every person could find in his or her own humanness the precondition of hope.