Spiritual Health Learning Community Center
Exploring Life's Horizons
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"Be content with the state of steadfastness; do not be a seeker of miracles. It is your ego
that is excited by the search for miracles, while your Lord Almighty and Glorious calls for
you through steadfastness." - Abu Ali al-Juzjani
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Commitment
Many of us dislike being tied down. We like to keep our
options open.
We don't want to have to live with the regret of missed
opportunities. We want to be in a position of being free to
maximize our returns without having previous commitments
getting in the way to spoil, or complicate, matters.
Consequently, many of us hedge our bets. We deal in
semi-commitments. For example, we might indicate to
someone we'll do something with that person providing
certain other things don't happen.
If we say this to enough people, we are pretty much free to
wait and see what develops. We, then, can go with the most
attractive bid on the table, or we can go where the mood
takes us, or both.
There are strong currents of transience and tenuousness in
many of our relationships with other people. Our allegiances
tend to shift a lot in response to changing circumstances.
We are constantly evaluating the worth of our links with
others. A great deal of this evaluation is a function of the
ambivalence we feel toward people.
We are attracted to them in some ways, but we have
reason(s) to avoid them as well. Sometimes we can't make up
our minds if we want to be with various people or not.
Semi-commitments are a very useful way of dealing with such
situations. Nothing definite is said. No promises are made.
No commitments are given. However, when the appointed
time comes, and if the given event or meeting or gathering
serves our purposes or needs or mood or agenda or interests,
then we can exploit it and deign to show up.
Semi-commitments are exercises in disposability.
Semi-commitments are ways of killing time or stalling or
buying time. When they have served their ephemeral
purpose, they disappear.
Semi-commitments are buffers we set between ourselves and
commitment. They provide ready excuses for why we have no
time for important issues.
Semi-commitments are ways of filling out our existential
dance card until something more interesting comes along.
We are constantly using semi-commitments of passing fancy
to bump from that card other semi-commitments with which
we have become bored or annoyed.
We live in a world which increasingly is advocating we
become committed only to semi-commitments. The
accelerating rate of technological, economical, political,
educational and cultural change are placing more and more
pressure on us to avoid getting bogged down in long-term
commitments.
Everything is grist for the spinning wheels of
semi-commitment. Spouse, family, honor, environment,
integrity, identity, purpose, and friends can all be
accommodated.
Increasingly, we are being sucked into a nightmarish version
of 'Let's Make a Deal'. We can, for instance, keep whatever
self-respect we currently may have in our hands, or we can
take what is behind door number one.
To make things a little more interesting, we can have what's
in this envelope or the box on the table. Moreover, once we
choose, we will be asked if we want to keep what we have or
exchange it for the contents behind curtains two and three.
The deals are being updated on a daily, if not an hourly,
basis. Indeed, the siege of the Information Age has ensured
that the deals are changing at the rate of nanoseconds or
faster.
Surely, commitment is a liability in such an environment. The
future is not plastics. The future is semi-commitments.
The relationship between, on the one hand, a Sufi master or
shaykh and, on the other hand, a student or devotee will not
flourish in an atmosphere of semi-commitments. This is as
true for the teacher as it is for the initiate.
The shaykh is well aware of the bi-directional character of
the dimension of commitment at the time of initiation. The
student often is only dimly aware of the ramifications of
initiation for the issue of commitment.
In fact, more often than not, the student's initial idea of
commitment is really more akin to semi-commitment than to
anything else. This is so because after the initiation process,
many students tend to want to both enjoy whatever benefits
may accrue from being associated with a given Sufi master
while, simultaneously, keeping his or her distance from that
teacher.
"Distance" in the foregoing is measured by the extent to
which one is prepared to bind one's time and energy. The less
of our personal resources of time and energy, or love and
loyalty, we are willing to invest in our relationship with our
teacher, the more spiritually distant we remain from the
teacher, even though the teacher may be quite close to us
spiritually.
The student gives expression to the quality of distance by
making her or his relationship with the teacher a matter of
convenience. More specifically, if that relationship fits into
the student's current activities, interests and priorities, then
the student may become involved, within limits, with the
directives, indications and suggestions of the teacher.
The character and extent of the involvement, nonetheless,
still will be determined by how such activity fits into a set of
already existing priorities. The student will want to
accommodate the Sufi relationship to one's current
arrangements rather than organize the pattern's of one's life
style around the relationship with the teacher.
To the degree the shaykh's teachings or instructions are
perceived to be incompatible with, or problematic for, the
student's various priorities of the moment, then the student
will avoid or resist any spiritual requirements that bind one's
time and energy in ways which conflict with such priorities.
When push comes to shove, spiritual issues tend to get
bumped down the line by other commitments and
semi-commitments.
Many initiates try to keep their options open as long as they
can. They want to be able to switch back and forth between
spirituality and the world according to their shifting moods.
They want their relationship with the shaykh to be based on
semi-commitments.
The process of initiation, however, is, in essence, a
declaration of commitment. The teacher is making a
commitment to the student, and the student is making a
commitment to the teacher.
In accepting an individual as a student, the teacher is
committing himself or herself to serve the best spiritual
interests of the initiate. Whatever help, assistance, support,
or guidance may be needed by a student in the post-initiation
period, the teacher is placing herself or himself under a
standing obligation to do whatever God permits to be done to
honor those needs.
From the perspective of the one who is seeking to be initiated
by a spiritual teacher, the would-be student is swearing
fidelity to the shaykh as well as to the teachings and
instructions of the shaykh. The one undergoing initiation is
placing himself or herself under a duty of care concerning the
integrity of one's attitudes toward, and interaction with, the
teacher.
God will not permit the Sufi shaykh to forget the
commitments made to the student at the time of initiation.
The ego often will not permit the student to remember the
commitments made to the shaykh at the time of initiation.
A major, if not the primary, prerequisite for making progress
in the initial stages of the path revolves around this process
of traveling from an orientation of semi-commitment to one
of commitment. In fact, for the most part, the path will
remain closed to the individual until this transition is made.
People are variable in the amount of time required to make
this transition. Unfortunately, there are some individuals who
never achieve this.
Irrespective of whether or not a person makes the
aforementioned transition, a shaykh always will be a
well-wisher of the student. The shaykh will continue to assist
the initiate in whatever way he or she can. However, the
student herself or himself has placed constraints on what can
be done by the shaykh through the initiate's unwillingness to
leave semi-commitment behind and embrace genuine, sincere
commitment.
A shaykh will never force such a transition on the student.
There are several reasons for this.
From the Sufi perspective, any change, transformation or
transition in a student which does not sincerely emanate from
the heart of an individual is relatively worthless. Such
changes are not properly rooted and, therefore, are unlikely
to last. There will be a tendency for the individual to revert to
the condition of semi-commitment under the pressure of trials
and difficulties.
Secondly, there are benefits to be gained by the student
during the attempt to journey from the stage of
semi-commitment to the stage of commitment. Although this
transition will never occur without the presence of grace,
nonetheless, spiritual strength is acquired from the efforts
expended in the struggle.
Moreover, different kinds of experience are gained during
the course of the struggle. Such experience often proves to be
of value at other junctures of the path.
Consequently, if the shaykh were to force or impose
commitment, the individual would lose out in a number of
ways. There are many factors which must be taken into
consideration by the shaykh in determining how, and to what
extent, support and assistance should be given to an initiate.
The shaykh will not impose commitment on the individual.
Nevertheless, the shaykh constitutes the means through
which the initiate comes to recognize, if God wishes, the
difference between commitment and semi-commitment.
One of the defining features of the life of a shaykh is
commitment. Everything a Sufi master does radiates
commitment. In time this dimension of the life of the shaykh
may become very influential in shaping the perspective of the
student.
The relationship between commitment and semi-commitment
is not an all or none sort of thing for the initiate. They form a
ratio which fluctuates with time.
Sometimes we are more ensconced in semi-commitments,
rather than in commitment, to the teacher and the path. At
other times the weight has swung more in the direction of
commitment, although residues of semi-commitment may
remain.
Spiritual progress is made when the ratio between the two
acquires some degree of stability in favor of commitment
over semi-commitment. An important spiritual stage is
reached when semi-commitments disappear altogether.
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