The Enlightenment Experience in the Contemporary West ...

Posted: Jun 5, 08 3:03pm

What is the nature of this thing we call enlightenment in contemporary or western society? A few of my friends have recently asked me to share my story, my perspective on both enlightenment AND my spiritual Masters ( Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan & Alexander P. Hixon, Jr. )

In late 1981, as I recall, I was about ready to return to the road,

literally & figuratively, stick out my thumb and beginning hitch-

hiking from Florida where I found myself at that moment, West.

Prior to embarking on such a journey I wanted to get a massage,

a real massage of the therapeutic variety that is, which was nigh

on to impossible at the time as there were no known massage

therapists in Florida's 19th Judicial District, north of Miami that

is.

Imagine my surprise when one morning I awoke to the local

paper and found two articles, above and below the fold telling of

a young woman affiliated with both a Tampa Sports Medicine

physician and a local Chiropractor. She had just opened a

practice nearby.

I hopped on my bike ( bicycle- 1 1970's Schwinn Road Bike )

and road down to her clinic. As luck would have it she had an

opening and began the massage. ( $ 45.00 for fifty-minute hour ).

My how times have changed ...

For some reason, unknown to either of us, half-way throught the

massage she blurted out. " My husband & I are going to north

Florida in two weeks on a spiritual retreat. Would you like to go along? "

" Retreat ?, " I quipped, " What kind of retreat ? "

" A Sufi Retreat, Under the guidance of Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan. Five days."

Suddenly my quest for over ten years flooded back into my mind

and I remembered the search for the mystical Sufis of Idries Shah.

Before I resume the story, an aside is necessary. At this point in

my life several ingredients were missing. In order to join my new

companions on the retreat, I needed several hundred dollars I

did not have.

While I was pondering the young woman's gracious offer, the

phone rang. A local inn keeper had heard of my reputation as

an intelligence analyst ( another even longer story best told

later ) and wished to retain my services. He suspected, he said,

that some one was skimming the drawer at a local resort, and

he wished to put an end to this practice. I took the assignment

and posed as a night auditor on the front desk.

Days before the scheduled start of the spiritual retreat I gave

my client a preliminary report and much to my surprise, he let

me go. Unknown to me, my client was he who was cooking

the books < Grin >. He assumed all the while that his crimes

were perfect and therefor undetectable.

When he let me go, He gave me a check for, you guessed it,

exactly the amount required to make the journey. I called the

young woman in question and packed a few meager things.

It was nearly sunset when we arrived at the retreat center in

Northern Florida, near Ocala, a rustic center on a small lake,

predominantly pines planted post-depression, therefore some

fifty years old. We hurriedly pitched our tents at the edge of

the center and prepared for sleep, nothing seen.

At some point, about med-night, I walked alone down the pine

chip paths to the rest-rooms and along the way encountered a

lone man. We stopped, both surprised by the chance meeting

and looked into one another's eyes, moving on.

It was, and I had no way of knowing it at the time ( He was in

mufti ) Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan. A rare encounter. I looked into

his eyes, He looked into the very core of my being and touched

my soul.

In the morning I strolled toward the morning gathering and in

my usual manner sat on the edge, off to his right, where I could

witness all but a few of those so assembled. Mind you, I did not

and could not know what a Sufi was, nor did I have any notions,

preconceived or otherwise of what a Sufi was or looked like.

There, in the center, under a huge Oak that towered above the

circle and was certainly no less than one-hundred-and-fifty

years old, was Pir Vilayat dressed in traditional Northern India

attire, seated crossed legged in the regal style and on a sheep

skin with Zafu & Zabuton ...

Over night I had resolved to simply relax completely and enjoy

this opportunity before I stuck out my thumb and surrendered

to what lay before me. I simply went into a meditative state and

surrendered to what ever would unfold before me.

The next morning I would repeat this experience and surrender

instead to his hands. I became his Mureed, took Darshan and

a mantra. My life was to be transfigured and changed forever.

Would you like me to go on?

There is no way I could write here, certainly at this point in our

relationship, short of a novel of epic proportion, the detail, the

completeness, the number of relationships that were forged,

rather reinforced at Sufi Winter Camp 1980. Needless to say

they were myriad & complex in nature.

I will say that I was invited by the then Director of the Abode

of The Message to join the family in upstate New York near

Pittsfield & New Lebanon as well as to visit with the community

just outside of Charlottesville VA.

Both these things I was to do, after an interlude in and near

the Miami Tekke ( Which was to disolve just after my visit and

follow me ). Rather I should say the lives and careers of quite

literally hundreds were guided by events that seemed to

focus on this retreat. Ego, no ones ego, had any thing to do

with it, mine or anyone's else.

We were here all touched by one another on seven levels of

consciousness.

As I alluded earlier, an entire novel could and perhaps should

be written on the events that began to unfold in and around the

Florida Winter Camp. Time, Space, Place and Circumstance

simply do not allow that here. It might take twenty-seven years

to express. In the interest of time therefore, I will fast-forward

to certain pivotal moments.

The Miami Tekke was built in and around a Banyan tree well

over a quarter of an acre, such that minimally forty-five minutes

after it rained in Miami a gentle rain caressed the grounds of

the Tekke ...

There were four vantage points thus protected by this ancient

canopy- Each unique in nature.

My personal favorite was on what I'll call the 'front side', to the

left facing the front ( There really was no front as the Tekke was

built at an angle in and around the tree in such a manner as to

preserve the integrity of this monolith ) and adjacent to a long,

wide, gravel driveway which served as a parking area for up

to twenty-four cars.

On a full-moon night the entire property was dappled by the

light of the moon above & took upon itself magical properties.

On one such night I sat in lotus posture, the city at my back,

gazing gently down at the ground utilizing that approach often

referred to as 'The Divine Glance' within the Order. My eyes

half-opened as if focused on infinity, relaxed, simply aware.

Suddenly the earth itself dropped away, completely in such

a way as to find myself, in a manner of speaking, without a

body, without a ground of being whatsoever, in the very

depths of infinite space, enfolded in a blanket of stars in

all directions.

There was only this. Only the stars existed. Only the stars.