Beloved Friend
by Will Johnson
 Can
a man who longs for a woman to complete him really believe that he needs to do
nothing more than lose himself in television sports and drink imported beer
while he's waiting for his beloved to appear? If he then walked into a room, his
head filled with alcohol and his mind distracted by homerun statistics, and
Parvati herself were standing there, would she really be attracted to him?
If you truly want a friend with whom to enter into the practices, then work
to become the best that you are on your own, a person with whom an angel of God
would want to associate. For your beloved friend will become like an angel to
you, as you will to him or her. However, if you don't properly prepare yourself
for a meeting of this magnitude, you may miss it entirely when it appears. The
perfect friend may walk right past you, and you may not even notice:
In order to see you,
Your face, your eyes,
One must first clean the surface
Of the heart's mirror with love.
Prepare yourself by continually cleaning the surface and depths of your
heart, and commit yourself to a disciplined practice.
It's not just a physical beauty that draws you to the beloved friend. It's an
inner presence as well ? an inner radiance. Sometimes, the friend in the
practice who comes into your life may not look anything at all like the kind of
person to whom you're ordinarily attracted. Trust your feelings and trust your
eyes. Don't miss what's just arrived on your doorstep because you haven't
cultivated enough vision to see it for what it is. Anyone can fall in love with
a beautiful face only to realize, many months down the road, that there was much
about this person that was somehow ignored or unnoticed at the initial meeting.
Practice seeing. Continually examine the relationship between the part of you
that sees and the visual field onto which you look. Notice that when you're lost
in thought, you lose your awareness of both bodily sensations and the visual
field. All preliminary practices serve to help us learn how to be present in
each moment ? this moment ? in the most relaxed way possible. There's never been
a better time than right now to see and feel. And in the next moment, right now
is again just as good, as it is in the next one and the next one still.
The more you can practice seeing and feeling, perhaps formally in a sitting
meditation practice, perhaps informally as you move about in your life, the
better prepared you will be when the one you have been seeking finally appears.
Moreover, the ability to see and feel generates a palpable energy with a strong
field of influence; this field of energy will help draw your friend to you.
Throughout his poetry Rumi keeps referring, over and over again, to two
specific practices that can powerfully support the practitioner on the path of
love. Both help prepare a person's body for the shock to the system that
inevitably occurs when the beloved appears, and both help to keep the body
healthy and the mind fluid during the mingling with the beloved.
The first of these practices is the periodic withdrawal of food through
fasting:
Try to obtain the eyes which see God
Through the eyesight of fasting.
Food is the addictive drug of choice in Western culture. We are all like the
caricature of the Mexican laborer who wisely takes a siesta after his heavy
midday meal. The purpose of the practice of gazing at the beloved, however, is
not to enter into a soothing slumber, but to wake up to the reality of union. To
be hungry and in need of food is a terrible thing, but to overeat because of the
abundance of food that's available is one of the guaranteed ways to stay forever
domiciled in the land of separation. Learning to eat nutritiously and lightly is
one of the cornerstones on which good physical health is built, and
practitioners on the path of love must keep their bodies healthy and strong.
Even fat and happy Buddhas have likely undergone periods in which they
temporarily refrained from eating.
Food isn't all that nourishes the practitioner oh the path of love:
Don't eat too much of the food
That becomes a curtain over your eyes.
If you do, you won't be able to find your way back home.
Although you think your life
Depends on this little morsel of food,
It's actually more like a hair
That has grown too long
And is covering over the eyes of your soul,
A curtain covering over your head's eye.
Too much food dulls the awareness of your bodily sensations and sets you
dreamily adrift in your mind. When you eat lightly, however, it becomes much
easier to feel the full range of the body's sensations and to yield to the pulls
and currents that draw two friends in the practice together into union. Eating
lightly turns food for the body into food for the soul, and powerfully
stimulates the practice of gazing at the beloved.
Just as you want to decrease the amount of food that you routinely take into
your body and to undergo periodic fasting, so too do you want to increase the
amount of oxygen that you inhale with each breath. Surrendering to the cleansing
power of the breath is the second technique to which Rumi constantly refers in
his writings. A full and natural breath blows you to the shore of union while a
restricted and shallow breath will tie you up at the dock of separation:
Just as wind is under God's command,
So is breath under yours.
Breath can either curse loudly or sing praises.
It all depends on you.
The condition of your body is a direct reflection of the condition of your
breath. If your breath is shallow and restricted, you will have only a very
limited awareness of the sensations of your body, but if your breath is
naturally full and free, then your body will be filled with vibrant sensations.
One of the most effective ways you have to practice surrender to God is to
give in, as much as possible, to each and every breath you take. You can turn
your back on the energies of God, but you can never completely banish their
controlling influence in your life. So too can you diminish the force of the
breath you allow into your body, but you can never ever stop breathing until it
is time for you to leave this world. Surrendering to each and every breath gives
birth to God through your body, over and over and yet over again:
See how you can bring new Soul
Into every breath you take
And turn into the Messiah.
When your soul becomes cleansed
In each breath you breathe,
You will understand
How Jesus was born from every breath.
Just as you can train yourself to remain aware of the full range of
sensations that you feel in your body, so too can you learn to feel the full
force of your breath moving through your entire body from head to foot. When you
truly relax and surrender your will, your breath naturally explodes open.
Instead of your lungs and diaphragm, your whole body then becomes your organ of
respiration, just as your whole body can be experienced as your organ of vision.
From time to time during the day, as often as you possibly can, remember to
examine your breath. Feel how the holding and tension in your body interfere
with the free flow of breath. Relax the holding and tension and see how your
breath immediately opens and becomes fuller. Feel the entire range of sensations
that exist in your body right now, and then join your awareness of breathing to
the feeling-presence of your entire body.
Life is a journey that you ride on your breath, from your first inhalation to
your last exhalation. Unfurl the sail of your body, and let your breath fill you
from head to foot and guide you on your way. Feel how this powerful, yet
completely natural and unforced breath wants to fill your sails and move through
your whole body, massaging sensations into wakefulness as it passes over them.
Prepare yourself well for meeting your friend. Prepare your body and mind as
best you can for the encounter that you're drawing to yourself. Use this time
wisely. Do sitting practices in front of a mirror. Practice gazing at a candle
or a piece of sacred art. Eat lightly. Bring your awareness to your full range
of bodily sensations and the fullest expression of your breath. Remain mindful
of the sounds, sights, and sensations of this moment as you move about in your
life. And keep your heart open as much as you possibly can. You never know when
the beloved is going to show up. It is this passion and dedication, combined
with the longing you feel for the beloved who hasn't yet appeared, that will
draw him or her to you.
Work. Keep digging your well.
Don't think about getting off from work.
Water is there somewhere.
Submit to a daily practice.
Your loyalty to that
is a ring on the door:
Keep knocking, and the joy inside
Will eventually open a window
And look out to see who's there.
When the beloved finally knocks on your door, when suddenly the friend
appears, standing innocently in front of you, welcome him or her immediately
with open arms and heart. When, through the perfect mixture of preparation and
grace, someone comes to you and you are both drawn into the practice,
acknowledge your great good fortune. Honor and respect your friend, because
nothing in the world can compare to the wonderment of this encounter:
When the ocean finally comes to you as a lover,
Marry, at once, quickly,
For Gods sake!
Don't postpone it!
Existence has no better gift.
No amount of searching
Will find this.
A perfect falcon, for no reason,
has landed on your shoulder,
And become yours.
What brings two friends in the practice together? It's that something in each
soul needs something in the other soul in order to grow and evolve. What, then,
are friends for? First and foremost, friends are permission givers, offering
each other complete permission to be themselves. What a blessing to relax
completely in the presence of another! By feeling fully accepted by your friend,
you feel safe to accept yourself more fully. Real friendship always requires a
deep surrender to the mixing of souls that the friendship has brought into
being. Two friends bring out what's inside each other and protect the easement
that takes them both into the world of union. Through this shared trust, friends
give each other what they desire the most:
At last I have found what patience can bring,
This one whose face can answer any question,
Who simply by looking can loosen the knot of intellectual discussion.
You translate what is inside us.
If you were to vanish,
This vast meeting room would shrink to a closet.
Protect us.
While you can profitably explore the practice of gazing at the beloved with
anyone, you'll feel much more of an attraction to enter into it with some people
over others. Eventually, someone may come into your life that you feel so
magnetically drawn to that all you want is to do the practice with him or her.
Until that time comes, continue to do your preparation, explore the practice
informally with as many people as possible, and trust in the ultimate
matchmaking skills of God. The person that you most need to encounter in your
life may be knocking at your door right now.
Don't turn someone away because he or she doesn't match your perfect pictures
of what a beloved friend should look and act like. At the same time, don't
settle for a lesser relationship than you deserve. We all crave connection and
long for completion. Keep as a constant prayer in your heart your burning desire
to meet your friend.
As human beings, we have but three requirements in life: food, shelter, and
someone to love and be loved by. If we have these three, then our journey
through life can be a journey of riches. Everything else is filler. When queried
as to their hopes for their twilight years, most people reply that they hope for
a comfortable life and someone to share it with. Only rarely do we come across
anyone who hopes to remove himself or herself completely from the social fabric
of life and live alone in a cave.
We're all on a journey back home to God. The only unknown is whether we'll
experience that homecoming while we're still alive in our physical body or enter
into it when we die. Meeting the friend, with all the joys and heartaches that
may entail, can help move you along on your journey so that you can live your
passion here and now.
So do whatever it takes to find your friend. Play together. Bathe in the
practice together. Explore this most consummate of mysteries together. Find out
what it means, no, what it feels like to be human, what it feels like to be
fully alive, what it feels like to be one with a friend.
This
article was excerpted from:
 Rumi Gazing at the Beloved
by Will
Johnson.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Inner Traditions Intl. ©2003.
www.innertraditions.com
Info/Order this book.
About the Author
WILL
JOHNSON is the founder and director of the Institute for Embodiment Training,
which combines Western somatic practices with Eastern meditation techniques. He
is the author of Balance of Body, Balance of Mind;
The Posture of Meditation; and
Aligned, Relaxed, Resilient: The Physical Foundations of
Mindfulness. He lives in British Columbia, Canada.
Visit his website at
http://www.embodiment.net.
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