Can someone explain...

[Tiassa]

Yes, Leo. Whatever exists outside your immediate focus doesn't exist.

Okay, okay. I admit, I'm too much into the feisty spirit of this topic.

It's not that it's too multifaceted and balanced to claim a point, but that your balance focuses on superficial aspects. Sufism often represents itself in a cryptic manner that suggests a multivalent cognitive process that defies certain specific attempts to focus on any one aspect. The result is that Sufis seem to delight in deflecting wrong notions of their identity while withholding any affirmations of what Sufism is. It's sort of a cat and mouse game, but part of the point is to not chase the bait.

While I agree with the "forgotten more than you know" aspect to a certain degree, I reiterate that it is superficial, as my understanding is that the proper Sufi hasn't learned a damn thing.

Personally, I will never be a Sufi. But one thing I am comfortable asserting is that it will be vastly enlightening moment when the proper context of not learning a thing clicks into rhythm in my mind.

I am uncomfortable, however, asserting that such a day will ever come.

 

[Leo Volont]

Yes, Leo. Whatever exists outside your immediate focus doesn't exist.

Okay, okay. I admit, I'm too much into the feisty spirit of this topic.

It's not that it's too multifaceted and balanced to claim a point, but that your balance focuses on superficial aspects. Sufism often represents itself in a cryptic manner that suggests a multivalent cognitive process that defies certain specific attempts to focus on any one aspect. The result is that Sufis seem to delight in deflecting wrong notions of their identity while withholding any affirmations of what Sufism is. It's sort of a cat and mouse game, but part of the point is to not chase the bait.

While I agree with the "forgotten more than you know" aspect to a certain degree, I reiterate that it is superficial, as my understanding is that the proper Sufi hasn't learned a damn thing.

Personally, I will never be a Sufi. But one thing I am comfortable asserting is that it will be vastly enlightening moment when the proper context of not learning a thing clicks into rhythm in my mind.

I am uncomfortable, however, asserting that such a day will ever come.

I respect the traditions where you are coming from, but this idea where we have to compete with each other to see which one of us makes the least amount of sense is annoying. Yes I know about Spiritual Paradox and how one awakens during moments of fractured attention... blah blah blah. But when we are in the Intellectual Realm lets just agree to make sense.

It reminds me of when the Fourth Zen Patriarch was dying and decided to hold a Zen Poetry Contest to see who would be the next, the Fifth Zen Patriarch.

The Favorite was of course the Schools appointed Administrator -- he had been the Protege of the 4th Patriarch from the beginning and it was assumed he was the obvious choice. The 4th Patriarch had developed all the Spiritual Nonsense you speak of to the highest art form. Nothing made sense six different ways. Everyone went about with perfectly boggled minds nearly all of the time. Students who were NOT confused were told to study their lessons and come back when they were. In this mileau the Favorite wrote his Poem... it said something like "A Dusty Mirror Perfectly Reflects the Dust while being a perfect mirror beneath". This was a perfect expression of the thought of this school as it stood.

But there was the Head Cook. He had started as a common laborer, and then cook and eventually because he could manage cooking, buying the food and organizing the budget for such a large establishment, he was eventually made Head Cook. While everyone else was dazed and confused in their mystical and fuzzy Zen pursuits, this man had to keep his head and frankly resented everyone else for being, well, to his mind, quite silly. So in a fit a pique he walked up to the Contest Board and Posted his own Poem. It read something like, "There is no Stupid Mirror and if there is Dust then wipe it away". The 4th Zen Patriarch came by in his wheel chair and saw a Winner. The Head Cook. The 4th Zen Patriarch supposed that the regime of confusion, contradiction and silliness had gone along far enough. The Zen Schools would now Breath In after such a long time of Breathing Out. There would be a Generation of Good Sense so that the Zen School could evaluate exactly where it was and were it was going.

The problem with Sufism, perhaps, is that it has not had its 5th Patriarch.

 

[everneo]

Sufism predates Islam. Sufism is traceable to pre-Islamic and even pre-Christian ascetic mystical traditions. If you are looking for a historic starting point, probably Zorastrianism -- the Eternal Battle between Good and Evil, the Good being represented by Light and the Eternal Flame.

Sufi view resembles some ancient views on God, that is inevitable in any spritual tradition.

During the Golden Age of Islam, Sufism was tolerated by Islam and was very popular across the Arab World, especially in Persia and Northern India. But the stupider barbarians who invaded Islam in the 12th, 13th and 14th Centuries could not comprehend anything beyond a simplistic Fundamentalism and so they persecuted the Sufi Sects. When the Mongols effectively wiped out the population of Persia (wiping out 99.9% of the Primary Historical Sources of Persian Civilization) most of what we know about Sufism was destroyed. But from the sources we do have, we know that Modern Sufis have obviously lost their Mantle -- the Pre-Mogol Sufis were Magical as well as Mystical: Miracles, flying carpets, objective dreaming, clairovoyance -- they had control of the entire Supernatural Cookbook. Now they just talk, talk, talk... about how great they used to be.

Some of them talk with out knowing what they talk. Sufism has become a trendy thing.

But then the filthy-minded Sufi dogs turned the Marian Devotion into an excuse for pornographic poetry with the thinnest veils of mystical religiousity.

Every tradition deviates from its orginal form. Could you locate any pornographic poetry in Sufism prevailed in Indian sub-continent ? Ofcourse there might be some romance could be found in the soul-God relationship. Its love, that is not new ; That reflected in their relationship with fellow humans around too. They renounced their comforts; and practiced that serving humanity is serving God. If they look like 'sissy' for their tender heart it is the fault of the society that hails machoism in everything.

But Sufism has generally been associated with Islam since Islam has hosted and tolerated Sufism the longest and the best.

That is natural. But sufis claim their spiritual lineage starting from Mohammad, Ali .... They still refer God as Allah. In east, while thousands were converted to islam by force, millions voluntarily converted to islam before sufi saints. The orthodox clergy might renounce sufism as un-islamic but millions of muslims still visit the sufis' shrines dotting indian subcontinent.

 

[Leo Volont]

Could you locate any pornographic poetry in Sufism prevailed in Indian sub-continent ? Ofcourse there might be some romance could be found in the soul-God relationship. Its love, that is not new ... If they look like 'sissy' for their tender heart it is the fault of the society that hails machoism in everything.

Yeah, I got this big macho thing going, but it is everything that seems to say 'sissy' when you look at the Sufis. They simply seem to return to often to the merely sensual. Dancing, love poetry, and then the Poetry which uses drug and alcohol metaphors. I was once a hippy too, but then I grew up. It seems like Sufism never grew up. Here I think I'll write a Sufi Poem right now.. here goes:

"What is the Way to God?

Start by going out with the Party Girl of Knowledge

Get Drunk with the Drink of Wisdom

Dance the Night Away on the Floor of Experience

Mellow out with a Pipe Full of Reflection

Then hope copulating with Knowledge will bring it all Home

Because eventually I need to sleep.


Now to me writing that lowlife crap with a glaze of a few spiritual words does not change it from being lowlife crap. But that is how nearly all Sufi Poetry reads to me -- worldly poetry with the thinnest of spiritual glazes. Hey, a suger-coated turd is still a turd.

 

[Leo Volont]

The orthodox clergy might renounce sufism as un-islamic but millions of muslims still visit the sufis' shrines dotting indian subcontinent.

It seems to be like the divide between the Secular Catholic Bishops and the Religious Confraternities -- the Religious Orders.

Somewhere in its 2000 year old History the Catholic Church grew wise enough to incorporate certain powerful spiritual movements, so that they would be nominally Catholic and mature in the Catholic setting, when in the Early Centuries their first impulse would have been to declare them heretical.

It reminds me of how Louis the XIV pacified France. France had been overrun by bands of maurauders left over from the Hundred Years War. The Roads were not safe and Commerce was stopped. So Louis the XIV decides which group of Bandits was the absolute most terrible worst horde of killer of the bunch, and he goes to them and offers them big salaries and French Uniforms so that they can be the Police and shut down and take the territories away from all the other bandits. He told them "you can make more money by organizing a healthy flow of commerce then you can by picking the pockets of the dead". He was right. You can assimilate an enemy. It is a lesson that many statemen have still not learned.

One instance of the Catholic Church reaching accomodations -- the Church was having problems with egalitarian communisitic groups in the Southern France and Northern Italy. The Aristocracy would get worried and go on a killing frenzy to purge out the revolutionaries. Then the Church would be caught in between. So the Church eventually learned to be proactive and to sweep in and either create a new Religious Brotherhood or place the new zealots into an existing poverty-centered egalitarian Brotherhood. The Brotherhood of Saint Francis was one such accomodation. Just a hundred years before Francis probably would have been murdered for being a dangerous radical. But the Church learned how to coopt and channel this type of 'dangerous charismatic leader' so that they were not only no longer dangerous but almost entirely socially useful.

 

[Tiassa]

The problem with Sufism, perhaps, is that it has not had its 5th Patriarch.

Sounds reasonable enough, but with the natural condition that the Patriarchal titles are accretions in and of themselves, which in turn could be symptomatic of ....

Er ... at any rate, it may also be that Sufism is just a game to keep us distracted from doing too much harm in the world before God smashes our mirrors.

 

[Leo Volont]

Er ... at any rate, it may also be that Sufism is just a game to keep us distracted from doing too much harm in the world before God smashes our mirrors.

Certainly much of the prophecy for the End Times justifies the violent tone of your statement -- "God smashing mirrors". But in one Dream I had the Angel showed me that God, or at least the Angels, seemed solicitous for our collective spiritual welfares. I was shown that the Peoples were in a Spiritual Drought and that efforts would be made to bring them to water. Not Rain. I was shown a lake. The Peoples would have to move. Some farther then others.