As a child grows, graduating from infancy to toddlerhood to superhero of the playground, it learns the mostly logical rules of manifestation: there are objects, forces make them move, some are soft, some are dangerous and so on. In this way we discover how to I’ve and satisfy our desires. But in the case of spiritual desires, suddenly the rules seem to change. When we hear a statement like ‘You yourself are the veil over that which you seek,’ it is like stumbling upon the ‘uncertainty principle’ in physics that tells us that our attempt to observe alters that which we are observing.

The language used may vary from tradition to tradition, but the book of Exodus puts it quite clearly when God declares, “You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” Therefore the seeker wishing to know the Divine is faced with the task of somehow disappearing, or as some Sufis have said, of ‘dying before death.’ But how do we accomplish that paradox?

Some approach the task by attempting to dismantle themselves. ‘If I am the problem, I will get rid of myself,’ they say, and they fight with their desires, thrash any signs of ego, bite their tongue if they should say ‘I’ and do everything possible to push the self into a cupboard so the door can be closed and the ‘me’ can be forgotten. There might be some merit in this method, insofar as the common illness of the world is ‘ego-fluenza’ and we could wish that more people would try to discipline their tendency to self-display. But if we apply only this method, what often happens is not that we become free of our ‘self’ but quite the opposite. We find ourselves pressed into full time service as the ego’s jailer; the ‘me’ may be behind bars but the jailer is chained to the prison he has built, and this is a rather depressing result.

Another approach could be called the way of the lover. On this path, we give all our thought to that which we wish to reach – call it God or Allah or the Perfection of Beauty, as you wish. The lover may be separated from the Beloved, but in any case pauses often to feel the Beloved in the heart. Sufi poets give the image of the lover sitting day and night, year after year, outside the door of the beloved, longing for any sign.

Our constant attention to the goal makes it ever more present in our consciousness. There is no need to invent the goal, for it must already be all around us and within us as well. If it were not so, it would not be worthy of our quest. In the beginning, though our search goes slowly because our destination is no more than a vague concept. By investing our thoughts and feelings in our ideal, though, it grows to fill us and in time accompanies us on all occasions. As the poet William Blake said, “We become what we behold.” And as we find in the Gayan Alapas, “Make God a reality, and God will make you the truth.”