Several weeks ago in a post about the need of the world today, Hazrat Inayat Khan said that the Movement is ‘the answer to the cry of humanity.’ As almost all of our posts are now being kindly translated into Spanish, this phrase gave rise to a translator’s question: what kind of a cry? A shout? A scream? A whimper? A sob? Or perhaps simply a loud call, such as might reach from the valley to the nearby mountaintop? Each possibility gives a slightly different nuance to the thought, but we can only consult Hazrat Inayat through our intuition now, and perhaps the most appropriate illustration we could find would be the cry of a baby. Experienced parents show a very fine discernment between crying that perhaps indicates nothing more than fretful boredom, and is better ignored for the moment, and a cry of real distress. In the same way, the Divine Creator hears all our complaints – a never-ending tumult, like the sound of the sea upon the shore, for like the sea we are always in motion, beating against the resistance of this world – but when our cries reach a certain level of real distress, then there is a response from Above.
The present response, in the words of Hazrat Inayat, is the Movement: not the man-made and imperfect organisation, with its officials and committees and structures, but the living impulse that comes like a wave to move humanity onward. And although the visible members of the Movement are not many, yet, as he points out, the members of our ideal are very many; there are millions and millions in the world who have the ideal of unity, longing and struggling to rise above the distinctions and differences that divide us.
If we are conscious of the cry of the present need–and who could not be!–then we might want to ask ourselves, how can we be of service to this Movement? There are many ways, and each person will have their own path forward, but one basic task all could undertake is to review our understanding of religion. Mankind has become so focused on the external forms that the general perception is one of many different religions; even the followers of the same prophet will say they have different religions if one worships in one building and the other worships in another. But as Hazrat Inayat has emphasised in recent posts, there cannot be many religions; there are many forms, but religion, real religion, is one, as Truth is one, and it is the neglect of it that is harming humanity now.
Nor should we think that we are closer to unity by rejecting religion. A person may reject some particular form or other, but if there is no understanding of the truth concealed behind the form, then we are not free; we are imprisoned by another dogma, only this time they are iron bars of our own making.
Today it is Easter; it is Passover; and in the north, it is Spring. The Earth does not refuse to embrace any seed, nor does the Sun withheld its warmth from any leaf. May our hearts be like the generous, welcoming Earth, and may our smiles be like the warm Sun, encouraging all we meet to grow according to the divine Nature within them.