The recent post in which Hazrat Inayat talked about the difficulties encountered by some mureeds on the spiritual path provoked interesting reactions, both in comments here and in private communication.  Hazrat Inayat said that mureeds could generally be divided in two groups; one group, although often well educated and highly qualified, has difficulty going on in the spiritual path because this sort of student has ‘made a kind of knot in his mind and the thread is not smooth all through, there is a knot.’  Not surprisingly, devoted and hard-working mureeds from all over the world wrote, lamenting the knots they feel in their own minds, and wondering (in a despairing tone) if they could ever get them untied.  It is a good question, of course, but perhaps there is a better one that could be asked.

The other group, upon hearing something about divine knowledge, ‘seemed to have had it always in their hearts.’ It is a kind of awakening to something that they already knew, and that is not surprising, inasmuch as divine truth is omnipresent, and belongs to the soul itself—to all souls, although not all recognise the truth so easily.

Instead of asking how to untie one’s knots, then, the better question might be, “How to be like the other kind of mureed?  How to open one’s heart and accept what is already there?”  Untying knots is sometimes necessary, and yet by that very activity we also confirm the existence of the knot.  If it were the case of a knot in the hair of a child, it might be wiser simply to snip away the knot and let the fine hair grow again, free. And speaking of children, it is their innocence that so easily wins our hearts; if an adult tells them the name of something, they do not quarrel; they simply accept what they are told.

Jesus said that we will not enter into the kingdom of heaven until we become like little children, and that is the clue to the question we have raised: if we are troubled with knots in our mind, then perhaps our efforts should be to relax our heart and spirit toward that childlike innocence, and accept the Truth that is constantly speaking from within.