It was a question arising from a saying in the Gayan. Very often, if one simply opens this book at random, with a willing attitude, one finds a phrase perched on the page like a jewelled phoenix that speaks with an amazing, almost ‘oracular’ directness to whatever is puzzling us at the moment. Nevertheless, there are also thoughts here that, for the moment at least, leave us in more confusion. This was one:
Your great enemies are those who are near and dear to you,
but your still greater enemy is your own self.
If this is the Message of Love, Harmony and Beauty, we might ask, how is it that the Gayan warns us about those near and dear to us? Are we not constantly advised to overlook the shortcomings of others, and seek harmony with all? Must we now look on our loved ones as adversaries? One might be led to think of telenovelas, those long-running dramatic soap-operas that are a special feature of Latin-American television, in which various members of sprawling, intricately tangled families plot and conspire endlessly against each other. “My half-brother’s second wife says she is concerned for me–but is she telling the truth or is she trying to get her hands on my uncle’s adopted daughter’s coffee business?”
To understand the phrase, though, we must first ask what battle is under consideration. The clue to this is in the second part of the phrase, which warns us that our greater enemy is our own self. In purely worldly affairs–although it is not really possible to distinguish between the outer and the inner world–our self or our ‘me’ is not always our enemy. Very often, yes, it gets us into hot water, but if we manage to discipline it to some extent it also helps us to journey on the path of attainment, which Hazrat Inayat Khan explained in this recent post. The moment in which the ego is really out of place, though, is when we turn inward and seek the perfection of Love, Harmony and Beauty. (This is the path of renunciation, which Hazrat Inayat describes here.) So long as we carry even a trace of this veil, the recognition of Unity will evade us–for how can we dissolve in the One if we are ‘we’?
From this point of view, it becomes clear that the battle is to overcome our conviction that ‘we’ are real, and those who are near and dear to us can unintentionally hinder this work by their love and admiration. The danger is not in what they offer, but in how we take it. Those near and dear to us may pour out sincere feelings from the depth of their heart, and those certainly come as a blessing–but if we misuse that kindness to luxuriate in a self-satisfying ego-massage, we remain stuck fast in the mud of duality, and the Goal, although Right Here stands infinitely far away.