In the recent post from The Book of Love, after describing the manner in which a certain Sufi intentionally destroyed his reputation for goodness, Al Ghazali explains why this would be useful to one who seeks the Divine Presence. God must be omnipresent, and yet our heart often feels isolated; why? Al Ghazali tells us: Between the heart and God there is no estranging distance or intervening obstacle; the heart’s distance comes about only from its being absorbed in things other than Him or in itself. In fact, the mightiest of all obstructions is self-absorption.

This thought is repeated in several places by Hazrat Inayat Khan. While speaking about concentration — and we may remember that the ultimate purpose of concentration for a Sufi is to focus the mind upon the Divine Ideal — he says : The great hindrance that stands against concentration is the thought of one’s own being. … The more one loses the thought of his own being from his consciousness, the more he becomes capable of concentration.

Similarly, in a passage where Hazrat Inayat discusses ‘responsiveness,’ — which could be understood as ‘the quality of being more alive’, as a plant is more responsive than a rock, and as a human should be more responsive than a plant — he says : The mystery of responsiveness is that the responsive one must forget himself in order to respond; and the same mystery may be called the path of perfection. A person who is not capable of forgetting himself, however good, pious, or spiritual, will always prove imperfect in his life. All misery comes from the consciousness of the self.

Naturally, the question then arises : how do we forget our ‘self’? How do we pull aside the veil of illusion that is called ‘me’? For that we need the cleansing recognition of the ultimate reality that erases all boundaries. As Hazrat Inayat Khan says, “Make God a reality, and God will make you the Truth.” And to continue the theme, one aspect that is essential for the awakening of the Ideal is the development of concentration. Hazrat Inayat says : Concentration is to avoid self-consciousness and, at the same time, self-consciousness is the only thing that keeps one from progress. The Sufi, while concentrating, uses abstinence against the constant and uncontrollable activity of the mind.

It may seem surprising that abstinence should be a tool against the jumping of our ‘monkey’ mind, but what is abstinence if not the control of our impulses? And what is concentration, if not the power to resist any impulse to look away? When we wish to look upon the face of our beloved ideal — the ‘perfection of love, harmony and beauty,’ for example — it is also the power that pulls aside the veil.