In a recent post, the theme was the application of Sufi teachings to the innumerable problems we face in life, and the post quoted Hazrat Inayat Khan referring to the teaching of Jesus: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God.” This may sound to us like good counsel, but then comes the obvious question: where and how do we seek for that?

The ancient Greeks had the concept of the Elysian fields or the Islands of the Blessed, which lay at the westernmost edge of the world.  A few heroic souls, such as Heracles, Odysseus and Aeneas, managed to visit this place while still alive, so it was a physical or semi-physical location.  Now, humanity has travelled much further than the ancient Greeks, and we can say with certainty that the kingdom of heaven is not a geographical location.  Nor is it an astronomical one, awaiting us somewhere beyond Pluto, or in the constellation of the Pleiades. So, where is it?

If we are honest, we will all admit that we have sometimes closed ourselves off to the appreciation of something; perhaps we were too absorbed in our own thoughts to see the beauty of the sky, or too busy to let the music touch our spirit, or perhaps we were too irritated to notice the innocence of the child. This tells us that we could be in the very center of the ‘kingdom of heaven,’ and if our awareness is not tuned properly, we will have no enjoyment of it.

To put it another way, if the heart is closed, how can one enter heaven?  And conversely, if the heart is open, without effort we recognise the kingdom of God both within and without.

In many of his lectures Hazrat Inayat talks of the spiritual journey as the opening of communication with one’s self. This may sound puzzling; surely we know ourselves very well, don’t we?  But usually, what we know is the surface, the cloud of external names and forms that surrounds us and that we assume defines us, including our impressions, our possessions, and our various roles.  Through time, and through some spiritual practice, we slowly realise that none of those names and forms is permanent – and yet, some life is there, like a brilliant light within the cloud.  When we begin to communicate with that, then we have truly begin the spiritual path.

To borrow from the Greeks we could say, at that moment the keel of our ship is beginning to touch the Islands of the Blessed.