Now you also brought up something where you said it sounds very lovely. I find in working with people who begin the spiritual path, often the initial phases have a great deal to do with healing. And so often the archetypal face of God that is sought to enable the journey, to enable one to go on to the journey or to move on to next stages of the journey may involve very deep healing. So the God ideal of love, or the God ideal of compassion, or the God ideal of the friend, or the God ideal of beauty, or the God ideal of the Divine Mother, often these are

[01:08]

instrumental in that deeply healing process. And it is also a place of refuge on the path. One takes refuge in the God ideal. Zuflucht. And so at least as I have known it in guiding people, there's a whole level of healing. Now there's another story that Hazrat Inayat Khan tells which I think offers another facet of it. So there was an Indian teacher who I had hundreds of thousands of students maybe.

[02:12]

And his students always took great pride in that he taught of only the highest God. The formless or the abstract or the absolute. He didn't take pride in that, but the students took pride in it. And the story is that one day he awoke and in the depth of his meditation, inwardly he felt directed to go and worship the goddess Kali in the temple dedicated to Kali. So he told the disciples that he would be making the journey to the temple of Kali and making an offering to her. Now, Kali is about the opposite to what they took pride in.

[03:37]

And I think here there's also a beautiful teaching about the opposites. And so the students were shocked. In part because they had a lot of their identity invested, their sense of value or superiority in the way they saw he presented. It was the highest. And often Kali is pictured with a kind of necklace of skulls around her. She doesn't look like the perfection of love, harmony, and beauty. And so he went, and as he went, he noticed that none of his disciples came. they all stayed quite disillusioned with him and when he goes to the temple he enters in and before the image of Kali in the temple he prostrates himself and he has a profound experience

[05:06]

he followed the calling, the inner movement of his being. And as he leaves, he sees that in fact there is one student who has followed him. And so he says, excuse me, but why did you follow me and why did everybody else leave? And the student said to him, what I was connected to in you was your connection. And when your connection moved, I moved.

[06:17]

Because it's where the connection is that the spiritual life is. And that's what I'm following is where the life is. Where the connection is. So the story illustrates the God ideal teachings in a number of ways. One is we can become attached to our God ideal in some unhealthy ways, like the student. And invest in a kind of spiritual persona around it. And superiority around it. And that could certainly be very true for those of us involved in the Sufi path.

[07:24]

The sense that, well, we've got the path of love or something like that. So I like what the Dalai Lama said. He said, Buddhism is the best religion for me. So it's what's the best God ideal for you. And often in the journey, I noticed that like the story, one stage of the God ideal ends for a person, has its purpose, has taken them on a journey, completed them. And sometimes the next stage, like in the story, is the opposite. That the spiritual life has moved, shall we say, to the other pole. There's something that needs to be gathered from there. Now the key, which is this is a phrase that David used last year, it's a very key phrase in Judaism, and I think very much in Sufism.

[08:46]

The key is the connection. What David called the living God. Where is it living for you? Wo lebt er für dich? Und es ist sinnlos, einem toten Gott zu dienen. So the key is, where is it living for you? Sometimes it's hard to stay with where it's living for us because it's living for other people in other places and then we begin to doubt where it lives for us. And what makes the teacher a true teacher is his willingness to not become captured in the expectations of the others. And to simply play a role which fulfills their attachments.

[09:56]

But to have the integrity to follow wherever he's called in that sense. It also reminds me of the story of Shams in Rumi. One of the versions is when they met... Shams had seen Rumi in Konya. And then he went about asking people who knew Rumi, who are the people he most despised? Who Rumi most despised? And he was told that Rumi most disliked this particular group, spiritual group, that used to cover them, they shaved all their head, and then they covered themselves in a kind of white clay, white ash.

[11:20]

So the story is that Shams went and shaved all his hair. And covered himself completely in that white ash. And that's the way he presented himself to Rumi. So sometimes you're led in the most unexpected ways. And Richard, the first year we were working together in the camp, Spoke also of the ego being based on likes and dislikes. So often we're led into the place where we have to confront the dislikes of our ego. To find a deeper... reality that wants to be met.

[12:32]

Okay. Any more questions before we take a break? Because on this particular theme, because then I'd like to go into another theme. What happened? To my knowledge, there's no recorded record, so I'll give you my interpretation. I would say he was first turned off and then he was turned on. Because often it can be sometimes the first response is the ego's response.

[13:33]

Now, there's also another story about their meeting. And these stories have value in their symbolic meaning as they relate to our own life. The story is that Rumi was carrying with him a great many books and imagine the value of books in those times and his identity was as a learned man and one of the stories is that Shams took the books grabbed them in the meeting and threw them in a well Now you can imagine Rumi's response. Especially if this guy's all decked out in white clay. And the story says, and then he looked at Rumi, and I think that's the key piece of the story. and said, do you want them back again?

[14:58]

I can bring them back so there's not a drop of water on them. And of course, what makes Rumi, Rumi, is he says no. Now the books, of course, in themselves can be of tremendous value At least for me, the story is, do you want the old identity back? Because here is a greater reality right here. And like I quoted the lines of Rumi, I think so beautifully said, I thought this was reality until I heard your laughter. Now Rumi also gave up something in this process.

[16:05]

I mean, in addition to something of his own personal persona. He said, that which I looked for as God in the heavens, I met in the guise of a human being today. So he had to give up a certain God ideal. And that's what I mean about the practice is it's an ongoing practice. At that moment he had to give up his attachment to the God ideal in the heavens. And the willingness to open to the reality of that right before him. In relationship. And that's a pretty powerful statement for Rumi to make coming from an Islamic religion and culture.

[17:22]

To see it right there in a human being. I mean, how do you know that the image is really the image that brings you further? Richard says the mind is tricky. So I think it's quite dangerous for you. David yesterday spoke about the knowledge of faith And Sufism speaks of the knowledge of the heart.

[18:30]

And I believe what Sufism seeks to develop in a person is a discernment, the capacity to recognize when the heart knows something. And that's where, I think that's another piece of the practice. It has to arise out of the knowing of the heart. Das ist ein Teil der Übung. Es muss daraus hervorkommen, aus dem Wissen des Herzens. Which is in part what I meant when I said you don't make the image, using Sufi language, the image arises, the image comes. Das ist, was ich damit sagen wollte, als ich gesagt habe, du machst nicht das Bild. Das Bild taucht auf aus deinem Herzen. And it comes out of the, we would say in Sufism, it comes out of the heart. So it's that kind of knowing difficult for me to describe, but I find as working as a psychotherapist or working as a spiritual guide, part of the work is to reflect back to a person

[19:49]

when there is that kind of knowing in them. What was the last to do? To mirror back to the person when they are in that state of knowing so they can be conscious of what they are experiencing. And so there's discernment there. There's discernment in the different... Where does it come from? That's, at least as I would understand it, the way to address that slipperiness. ... ... The same as in Bodh Gaya, people walk around the Buddha?

[21:00]

Is it not a collective God ideal? Well, there are collective God ideals, and... I would say they have their value. And one of the great concerns that Jung had for our time is as we lose, a large part of the society loses a religious myth that has bounded it together. The archetypal forces in the myth hold certain collective energies in the collective psyche. And Jung speaks of the fact that the archetypal myths of the goddess figures hold a collective consciousness. And when those, in a sense, are diminished, or the loss of that binding myth takes place, then those energies have no containment within large groups of people.

[22:13]

But here what I'm speaking about is something deeply personal. It has to do with finding in yourself at each stage what speaks to you. So the golden calf could be something that holds the society together and could build a morphogenetic field for the society. To produce a certain... I'll let David answer the questions about the golden calf. In Buddhism, people that are written from Sogyal, he says that the statues are the good.

[23:44]

What I would say that... What the golden calf would represent, as I would understand it in Sufism, would be contained in the phrase la ilaha illallah. Now here, I think you have a very interesting and potentially right point. I'm trying to answer it in the framework of the story as the story is given, as I understand it.

[24:50]

The zikr has to do with looking at what we have made into false gods. And if I looked at it from a Jungian viewpoint, it would say, what have I invested the kind of religious archetypal experience in that is not a worthy container? So the false gods, we can have them all through our life. Okay. It can... The zikr is a kind of reminder of where we've placed our attachments and what we have invested with numinosity that may not be numinous.

[26:03]

So then we would have to say that all the gods are wrong, because the numinous from today is the natural thing for tomorrow. Because we are all developing, you know? Yes, we are all developing. And it is a question, at least is the practice I'm offering, is one also, what's asked is to involve yourself and to give yourself and to fall in love with your God ideal. And at a certain point, having done that, at a certain point later on, to not be attached to it, because the beloved will appear potentially in another guise. We should have tea.

[27:30]

I think we usually take a 20-25 minute break. I understand it takes quite some time to get to the toilets in fact. See, the empty bowl is there. He's doing the practice already. Filling it with your poo. Someone just put a sign up that said alchemy.

[28:47]

And I'm afraid it's going to have to wait because I have to give the other part of the practice around God. So maybe we'll start it toward the end. I'd like to begin once again with the practice of, at this time, Hu Allah. And in the creation story, in the Jewish and Christian tradition, God creates, and not just in those traditions, in other creation stories, the human being is created out of the earth.

[29:58]

So a container is made out of the earth. And as Richard mentioned, there's the human body when it's alive, when there's consciousness and breath in it, and then there's the matter after death. And we obviously see a difference between a live body and a dead body. So when we do the practice, the who is like the breath of God that goes into the clay and makes it into Adam, into a human being. It's the breath that brings presence. So that's the who, and we're filled with it. And then the Allah, this time when we do it, you bow your head on the Hu and you bring your head up on the Allah.

[31:34]

And as we say the Allah, it's the opening that the Allah creates that allows the divine within you to be revealed. And this revealing, this manifesting, this expressing, this embodying of the divine is a very central part of Sufism. So the the spiritual purpose, one of the spiritual purposes of a person's life in Sufism is to give birth to the God seed within you.

[32:35]

That there is some divine configuration at the very core of your being which is unique to you and not found any place else in the universe. And what we speak of as the unfoldment of the soul is the realization of that, the bringing that into this world. So Rumi would express it in certain moments in which he speaks of how one's face becomes the face of the beloved. It is the beloved who which is not one's exclusive property, but the beloved revealed through the particularities of your face, your being.

[34:01]

So the who is the breath and the presence and the Allah is the revealing, the opening up and revealing the divine in you. So das Hu ist die Gegenwart, die Präsenz, und das Allah ist die Entschleierung, die Öffnung des Göttlichen in dir. Hu Allah [...] Hul Allah Hul [...] Allah

[35:07]

Who Allah [...] Allah hu Allah hu [...] Allah hu Allah

[36:14]

Allah [...] Now for those who would like to, we can end the practice with a sigh, but I'd like to say something about a certain kind of sigh.

[37:42]

There's the deliciousness of eating the meal But then there is the feeling after one has eaten the meal and one feels the sense of the essential taste of the food And that sense of the inner fullness from the meal. And here I'm speaking about the practice as the meal. So the sigh is You don't wash the practice out with the sight.

[39:04]

You savor the taste. The essential taste of the meal. I'd like now to share a teaching from one of the great Sufis, Ibn Arabi.

[40:17]

who lived at the same time as Jalaluddin Rumi, only was slightly older. And they are two of the great poles of Sufism that hold up the tent like we have here. And this is a kind of teaching that For it to have any reality to it, you have to enter into the atmosphere of the teaching. If you stand outside the atmosphere, it doesn't have much of a reality. You have to step into the atmosphere of the teaching. And what I'll say, I'll be using the terms and languages, the language terms from Ibn Arabi, but it's the feeling context, the heart context, that gives it meaning.

[41:33]

Ibn Arabi makes a distinction between God in a kind of large sense of that word. And what we would call in our time, he didn't use this term, but it's the term I can find most relevant to it, a personal God. And this will be different than a God ideal. Now Ibn Abi spoke the way he tried to render the teaching was through the metaphor of breath and sigh. He said there is a longing in us and there are levels of longing

[42:36]

But he spoke of the deepest longing is to know the God within you. Your personal God. And that that God within you lives also in a state of longing. That God longs to be found by you. So one of the key quotes upon which much of Sufism is built comes from the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. I am a hidden treasure longing to be found. So in this teaching, there is a hidden treasure that longs to be found in each of us.

[43:53]

And so even Arby speaks of a mutual longing. I long for the personal God within me. And underneath all of my longing, that is the longing in Sufism. And that is the longing to be found. So we're longing to meet. And we say in Sufism that often underneath what we feel is a kind of sadness about life and we look externally to see the causes of that sadness and

[45:04]

we may not really be able to find reasons that answer the depth of that sadness. But the depth of that is the longing of this God to be found. And it goes even further to say that the God within us suffers Through our incapacity, inability to find that God or to give expression to it. And that's why Ibn Abi says a very key point praise in his teaching is to know your God is to give your God life. So our gift is to know our God and then to give our God life. And from the perspective of his teaching, our inner life seeks continually to draw us into the knowing, into the finding of this treasure.

[46:28]

And Ibn Arabi speaks of two breaths, the inhalation and the exhalation. And the divine breath he speaks of as the breath, the sigh of divine compassion is the out-breath. Because it's in the out-breath that the potentialities of the divine being come into life and are realized. So they are released from, that's what makes it a compassionate breath. It is released out of potentiality into life. So Sufism sees the whole creation as the divine exhalation of divine compassion.

[47:45]

Then in every aspect of the creation something of the divine potentiality is unfolding into being. And in that God is being realized and God is becoming conscious of God. And each of us holds potentially that piece of God within us that is us. And as we realize that inner God, we become, our life becomes the breath of divine compassion. Because we're releasing that divine within us into life. So when the term in Ibn Arbi's work is used, self-realization,

[48:47]

It has a number of different ways of being interpreted. My work as a human being is to discover the self within me and here the self is that personal God. Meine Arbeit als menschliches Wesen ist, das Selbst in mir zu entdecken. Und hier bedeutet das Selbst, den persönlichen Gott zu entdecken. So realisiere ich das wahre Selbst und das echte Selbst. Eine Ebene davon. Now the way he describes it, which would be particular to language of Sufism, is that each of us at this core or essence of our being has a divine name. And the purpose of our life is to find that divine name.

[50:07]

And then to live it out. Now, in the context of Sufism, the divine names have a particular importance. There is what is called God beyond the names, but there is God, the God of the names. And the names are qualities. So it's to find, if we look at the metaphor of Sufism, to find one's divine name is to be able to name in the sense of become... I don't mean name with the small mind. I mean know. And in Ibn Arabi's teaching, there's what is called the heart of the Gnostic.

[51:11]

I didn't get it. Sure, I'm sorry. Part of the path is to know your name. To discover your name. Which is the name of the divine in you. And Ibn Arabi says, God's name for you. So we call each other with the same name. I call God, the God within, by the name, if I discover that name. But that God calls me by the same name. Because in the root it's the same. And as much as I know of that God, and here I don't mean with the small mind or the brain, I mean with what?

[52:35]

Even R.B. describes it as the Gnostic heart, or that way that I said last session, the way the heart knows. As much as I know of that God is the same as what that God knows of him or herself. So my knowing also helps that God to become conscious. Now remember, don't try to grasp it, but feel it. Okay? So self-realization is about this mutual knowing. that in knowing the God within me, the divine name within me, I will know, I will realize my true self.

[53:50]

Now that God within me is realized through me. So that God is also dependent upon me in order to be realized. Now, the language, the terms make it sound as very dualistic, but it's like the language of lover and beloved. It speaks of one underlying reality. And the discovery of that divine name at the core of one's being is, at least in the work of Ibn Arbi, central. Because if you know the name, you know how to call your God.

[55:08]

And you know how you are called. Now, I personally think it's too easy. I like mystery. It's too easy to say the name is simply compassion, the name is simply truth, the name is simply love. It It makes a very nice, neat little box, but I think the reality is much larger than that. So this is my interpretation of Ibn Arabi. I think the name has to do with the essential connection or the typography of one's path that opens the door to the all. Some years ago Richard spoke of a root practice. A practice that will eventually lead you to all other practices. And I feel that that for myself has to do with this name.

[56:31]

So it may be that at the very core of someone's being is the configuration, let us say, of love. But that love is like a root practice. It's webbed to all the qualities. Another way of looking at it is one of the major metaphors that the Sufis use, of course, is a carpet. And the carpet is woven of many, many different threads in many colors of threads. But what emerges out of the carpet is a design. So one way we could say is that all the divine qualities are the threads... woven into the configuration of who we are, but there is a design that emerges that is unique in each of us.

[57:43]

And that's the name. So let us say for someone the discovering of this God within and the name reveals itself to be in relationship with love. Through that name, one will discover the other divine qualities. To truly know love, you have to know truth. compassion, strength, power, light, peace, union, separation. It's all there. But it's held, let us say, in the design of love. And what the name can reflect back to you is not only a core identity, but also your path.

[58:56]

It shows you your way. And so another way of seeing one's path is the name. And what also makes it unique is though that configuration of divine qualities is expressed through you in a way that it will never be expressed in the same exact way through anyone else. So in that sense we're each a unique design of the divine being.

[59:57]

Now, when you begin to sense that name of your being, that what Ibn Arabi calls the Lord of your being, and I I tend not to use the word Lord because I know for some people it's a very masculine term. But then he offers us a metaphor which I think it's a metaphor from a different time but it gives us insight into the kind of relationship to establish between the ego and that Lord of our being. He said, when one begins to discover the Lord of one's being, there then arises a relationship of what he called sovereignty.

[61:06]

You can just say the word sovereignty. And it's a word that describes the archetypal relationship between the knight and the king that the knight serves. So that what he's advocating is when one has sensed that divine name, one enters into a pledge. And I'm using here his metaphors, which are medieval metaphors. you make a pledge to that Lord of your being, to that divine name within you. And that pledge is a vow. And the vow seeks... To dedicate one's journey to the realization of that divine name.

[62:14]

And the commitment to seek never to forget that that name, that God within us. And that's why in Sufism, in practice, there is such an emphasis placed upon forgetting and remembering. It's why the practice of remembrance is so important, because it's in the remembering process that I once again know my God and that God comes to life. And in the forgetting, I move us both into suffering. And the longing is the call, my longing is also the call of that God in my heart longing to be remembered.

[63:28]

So the Sufis are, however painful it is at certain moments, are filled with joy to feel longing. So wie schmerzvoll das auch sein mag, oft dieses Sehnen, manchmal ist es gefüllt mit Freude, weil dieses Leiden, diese Sehnsucht heißt, der Gott in mir ruft mich, sagt, erinnere dich an mich und such zu mir zu kommen. And so the model of the knight serving the king has to do with the recognition of the ego in service to this Lord within, to this divine name. And it establishes a kind of relationship between the ego as center of consciousness and this inner identity.

[64:46]

So for Hazrat Inayat Khan, in his teaching, he speaks of the art of personality. And that's why in both of these Sufi's teachers there is a value to the human. And for Hazrat Inayat Khan it is to develop a personality which is a container for this world, this human experience. in which the divine name or the personal God in us is humanized and revealed in this world. And then Sufism seems to like paradox, so it speaks of our, on one hand, our personality veils this God within,

[65:49]

And on the other hand, it reveals it. And we could say that the work with the personality in Sufism has more and more to do with the transformation of the personality to become shall we say, a clear container. In which the countenance of the divine deeper identity can be seen and expressed. So that's the sigh of divine compassion and it's one direction of Ibn Arabi's teaching. And then there is what is called the sigh of divine longing which is the inhalation.

[67:08]

And it is the other part of the path, shall we say. And the way even Arby expresses this, and here once again, the way into it is through a certain feeling. The longing of the revealed God to return to the state of being unrevealed. So the breath of divine compassion is the breath in which we long to be realized and manifested. But the breath of divine longing is to return to the unrevealed state. And that's another kind of longing we feel.

[68:21]

Often revealed in the longing for retreat. Or the longing in the midst of life for some very deep inner solitude. And that state, Sufism uses the language, the unity. The oneness. So it's a state beyond qualities. Because qualities are multiple. So there is also in us this divine inhalation, this inner sigh of longing calling us to that state.

[69:28]

And when we recognize those two longings, we recognize and begin to live the breaths of God in our life. And just like the natural breath alternates, there is, at certain stages of our life, the breath may be moved more toward the breath or the sigh of divine compassion. And at another stage, or another period of our life, the accent may be more on the breath of divine longing. Now, the last piece that I'd like to offer, which is in itself... A huge piece.

[70:48]

So what I'm giving is an appetizer. Which is Ibn Arabi's work on creative imagination. And this is an imagination that can only occur when the heart is in a certain state. So Ibn Arabi described that state of the heart as himma. And for him it was very much associated with what he called the heart of the Gnostic, a certain knowing. And he spoke of three worlds. The physical, sensory world. And the world of the absolute, beyond all form.

[71:50]

And then he spoke of an intermediate world. And this was the world of creative imagination. When someone asked the question the other day about the place of imagery and vision in Sufism, it's this world. And for Ibn Arabi that world is a world, it's a reality. It's not a fantasy, it's not something that we make up. And it's a world in which a deeper reality reveals itself through an image. And the image is a certain kind of embodiment of that reality.

[73:01]

So one of the ways in which to discover the divine name in one's being is when the heart is in a certain state So diesen göttlichen Namen in uns können wir entdecken, einerseits durch einen Bewusstseinszustand und andererseits auch durch Bilder, die uns gegeben werden. Ibn Arabi spricht von den Bildern, die zu uns kommen, von unserem persönlichen Gott. And therefore it chooses appropriate imagery in which to reveal itself.

[74:04]

And sometimes that world and this world become interfaced. And sometimes these two worlds meet. And so, like with Shams and Rumi, Jalal ibn Arabi had a very profound experience with someone that changed his life. He was already considered a great mystic and teacher in Islam. And he made a journey to Mecca, which is a place of pilgrimage. And he circumambulated the spot, the holy spot, which is called the Kaaba.

[75:15]

And there was a woman with him who was the daughter of a Sheikh that he was visiting. And there is a poem that he wrote out of the experience, the Sophianic poem. And as he was walking around the Kaaba, inwardly he had a question very deep in his heart. And the question is this. When I forget the Lord of my being, is it because the Lord of my being has forgotten me? Or, although I may feel deeply connected love transformed by the Lord of my being, is it mutual?

[76:30]

And he was circumambulating, which the Ka'aba in Islamic Sufism represents, shall we say, the center of the world. And this is important in terms of sacred space. So he is circumambulating the center of the world. And I mean that also as an inner state inside of himself. And he's asking this question. And the woman, the daughter of Sheikh, starts to answer his question. without her ever saying it, without him ever telling her the question.

[77:41]

And as they make the circumambulation, begins a dialogue in which he experiences her as the figure Sophia, which is the figure of wisdom. And she begins to respond to his unspoken question. And she begins to speak with all of this. She becomes the divine answer to his question. And answers much more than he has even made conscious of. And part of the poem is very beautifully stated. It speaks of how the Divine has tried to reach Ibn Arbi through all the senses, through the relationships in his life, that the Divine is always, always, always coming toward him.

[78:56]

And it's been a question of Ibn Arabi's capacity to realize that, to see that it's always coming. And also part of the answer is how could the Lord of your being forget you since without the Lord of your being you're not. You may not be conscious of it, you may feel separate, but it is the very core of who you are. So for Ibn Arabi, he attempted to map out spiritual practices and a world in which through creative imagination, there is continual interaction and union with that deeper reality.

[80:12]

And sometimes that's in terms of inner vision, such as in meditation. And sometimes that transpires through a person or a scene in nature. And he took great pains to say that it's not an either or. It's not just that this is an image or a dialogue with just the archetypal figure of Sophia. It is also a person who on one hand embodies something of that archetype but that there is the greater reality of that archetype. So part of the work of Ibn Arbi is that it becomes these worlds are not as separate as they may initially appear.

[81:55]

They are infused. So these worlds are not as separated from each other as it initially appears. They are mixed. more and more in that journey. Let me see. And so I'd like to end with one last quote. It's one of my favorite from Ibn Arabi. And it gives us some sense of Ibn Arabi's God, shall we say. And it's using his language, the language of his time, but he said, God is a beautiful being who loves beauty. Now, what I take from that in terms of my own personal practice, the Sufis speak of to see with the divine glance.

[83:13]

So not to see from the life in the world, as Richard was mentioning, from our flattened out conceptions for our personal prejudices, our likes or dislikes. But to see with the divine glance. And for me, one of the states that that means is is to see from the viewpoint of a beautiful being. We see from the viewpoint of a beautiful being. Now, that means in that state you have to experience yourself as a beautiful being. You can't see the beauty, you can't have that glance if everything else is beautiful and you're ugly and awful.

[84:36]

Because it means you have to be one, you have to be in the state of the beautiful being. To see with the glance of that God. And then with that glance comes the gift of seeing beauty in everything. Now, that also means recognizing that beauty can have an infinite number of forms and expressions. And by that I don't mean it's just sweet and lovely. But it's a certain glance that reveals beauty even in the depth of what we would normally describe as ugliness. And I want to be very clear, at least in my rendering of it, it's a very deep experience.

[85:53]

It's not the sense of trying to make everything sweet and lovely. And I'm almost afraid to say this because it can sound like a cliché or a caricature. One has to be in a certain state for the experience to be real. Man muss in einem gewissen Zustand sein, damit dieses Erlebnis real ist. And it even brings with it the capacity to see a certain kind of beauty in suffering.

[86:54]

That's not to justify suffering or excuse suffering or pretend suffering doesn't exist or make it pretty. It's none of those things. It may be seeing the depth of the beauty of an individual as they stand in the midst of suffering. So, thank you. And I'll just end with a small piece from Ibn Arabi because I've mentioned remembrance and forgetting and sometimes we can feel oh I keep forgetting all the time what's the use and he said come come whoever you are

[88:09]

Ours is not a caravan of despair. No matter if you've broken your vow, and remember how I use the word vow. A thousand times. Come. Come. Because it's the moment that's important. There's the opportunity. So enjoy your lunch. Thank you very, very much.

[88:59]

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