Perhaps we can all recognize something familiar in this scenario. Two people meet; one begins to complain about something; the other person suggests a way to fix the problem; the first one waves the suggestion aside, saying, ‘No, you don’t understand, that won’t work.’
Perhaps the one with the complaint is right to dismiss the suggestion, perhaps not, but it seems that very often we don’t actually want to solve our problems, we just want people to agree that we have a very difficult life. We hear it in this story of Nasruddin, who wanted to complain about the bad character of his donkey, but didn’t want to get rid of it.
The goal of the Sufi path is spiritual liberty, by which Hazrat Inayat Khan meant not the freedom to do whatever we want (which might be called not liberty but ‘libertine-ism’) but rather the freedom of the spirit from all that binds it. Therefore it seems clear that a genuine seeker must find a way out of this habitual attachment to our difficulties. To identify ourselves by our limitations is the equivalent of making sure that the door of our prison cell is firmly locked (although real freedom will only come when we abandon all forms of identification, the positive as well as the negative).
Life in the world is an endless series of problems – or a better term might be ‘questions’. What to cook for dinner? Where to park the car? How to pay the bills? How to keep the children healthy? And so on. We occupy ourselves with the tangible, external questions, but at the root of all the uncertainties is a fundamental, existential question that we could word this way: who am I, and what is my purpose in life? All the little questions stand on top of this one big question, and if we can solve that, then the smaller dilemmas will not disappear but they will be put into perspective and become much more manageable.
Very near the beginning of the Gayan, in the Alapas section, we find, “God is the answer to every question.” The phrase does not come with instructions just how to apply the answer. Many of the questions of daily life don’t obviously seem to involve the divine presence – if we think of God as some distant non-participant in creation. But the wise have always taught that God can never be discovered in a building, however sacred, nor in a book, however inspired it may be, but only in the human heart. That is the first place to look for God’s participation in our life. Therefore, when we are confronted by any question, if we become silent and consult the voice and the light within, we will certainly be helped. Anyone who practices this regularly will make a reality of these words from Gayan Boulas, “Those who live in the presence of God look to Him for guidance at every move they make.”