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Iron Rule 7

The next Iron Rule is this: My conscientious self, do not spare yourself in the work you must accomplish. I can imagine that might not be what you want to hear—and understandably so. But before recoiling, consider closely the implications of the words. What one must not spare oneself in is specifically the work one must accomplish, not any work, not all work, but specifically in the work one must accomplish. And work seems to bring to our attention the idea of activity, exertion, strain. But work, if it is true work, if it is successful work, must have another component as well. It must have a component of repose, of serenity, of inspiration, of passivity, of rest.

Inayat Khan continuously emphasizes the need for balance. In fact he says that the keynote of the Message today is balance. So if we assume that this rule is goading us into extreme exertion, it may be that we are misinterpreting the rule because what is the result of extreme exertion? Our culture has a tendency to extremity of exertion, which is very different from the lifeways of other people who more closely follow the rhythms of nature, and in which every aspect of human life is proportionately represented. The day is punctuated by moments of inwardness, of prayer, time spent in communion with nature, time spent with family, whereas these essential aspects of human life are more and more compressed under the pressure of the economic imperatives of our society.

So it is very important to notice the effects of over-exertion; that the effect is not, as one might expect, greater productivity—maybe in the short term, but certainly not in the long term and not in terms of meaningful productivity. Perhaps artificial, superficial products, dead things can be made through abusive over-exertion of one’s body, of one’s mind, but nothing that has real life and can give life to others can come of it. The other result is that in the extremity of over-exertion in labor, whatever repose one does allow oneself is not true repose. One’s rest becomes permeated with anxiety and tension. Just because you sleep doesn’t necessarily mean you relax. In sleep, too, we are beset with the anxiety and the tension of the day. So for the repose to be truly regenerative and deeply restorative, it must be kept in balance with activity and the whole rhythm of life must be continuously self-supporting rather than driving one into the ground. That caveat, I think, must come first in considering this saying. When we look at the saying do not spare yourself in the work you must accomplish, the very first thing to be remembered is balance is a must.

But now let’s look at what is meant by not sparing oneself in the work you must accomplish. Not every work is the work you must accomplish. It may be that we are over-exerting ourselves in all kinds of directions that are not ultimately productive of what it is that is our life’s purpose. But when it comes to one’s life purpose, one must pursue it with complete resolve. So let me, first of all, share a passage from Creating the Person on willpower.

Afterward Inayat Khan was asked a question about why it is that we succumb to self-pity, and he answered that the reason lies in love. The essence of self-pity is compassion. But it is compassion that has become constricted and distorted by the narrow boundaries of our limited self-image. Love is thus reduced and immobilized. When it is liberated from these boundaries, we have compassion for ourselves, but we also have compassion for others, and what is more, we have hope, a hope grounded in the powerful force of positive will that arises from pure love.

If one considers the course of one’s life, no doubt one will recollect actions, words, thoughts which have not really contributed to who we have become, which are, so to speak, gratuitous, incidental in our becoming; let’s say the by-products, the symptoms of a process. Then there are other memories, other experiences and achievements which are crucial to our path of becoming, and we can see retrospectively that by committing ourselves, orienting to these desires, aligning our self to this sense of purpose we have achieved something that, when we look back over it, is a record of meaningfulness. In the moment, at the time, the decision was not perhaps so clear. It took great resolve and determination to take the course of action that retrospectively seems so natural and necessary. But at the time we were perhaps confronted with powerful pressures of temptation, and insofar as we did yield, as we look back, we see that nothing significant has come.

Therefore when we look at our lives in the present time, we see that we have the same choices to make and that the choices that are in each moment the easiest, the most apparently comfortable and convenient, are not the ones ultimately that are conducive to true happiness or true fulfillment. It’s an irony of life, it’s a paradox, that what seems at the most external, most superficial level of being, the most gratifying and rewarding, in the larger scope of things is precisely that which undermines the fulfillment that we truly desire. So at every moment in life we are confronted with a test to our scale of values, and the temptation is always to succumb to the gratification of that which is easiest, most tangible, most available at the expense of that which is, in the scale of one’s values, most essential, most meaningful, most productive of truth, goodness, purity, essence, compassion, intelligence. This is what I think Inayat Khan means when he speaks of the battle of life, the struggle. It’s not a struggle between people or even a struggle between parts of your true self. It’s a struggle in bringing into resolution one’s relationship with a range of options.

It’s helpful here, I think, to invoke histeaching on desire. You may know that at the same time that he was delivering his Message in the West, in the 1920’s, the discipline of psychotherapy was developing in Europe and within the first generation of its introduction a diverse field of analytical perspectives and techniques were already unfolding. If one studies, for example, the theories of Freud and Jung, one sees that there’s an essential perspective that is common but Jung develops the ideas of Freud along a different track, ultimately coming to the archetypes and the collective unconscious and so on. Since that time, the field of psychology has encompassed a wide variety of ideas and methods, some of which are very resonant with and compatible with the Sufi Message that Inayat Khan gave, and others so charged with rational materialist assumptions that there’s greater distance.

One of the figures that is most indicative of the interrelationship between his spiritual vision and Western psychotherapy is Roberto Assagioli, who was a keen devotee of Inayat Khan, and translated his lectures whenever he was in Italy. Dr. Assagioli was the founder of the method called Psychosynthesis, which is the title of a book of his which has been translated into English. The reason I mention this is because Dr. Assagioli’s ideas help us to elaborate and ramify Inayat Khan’s teaching on the achievement of willpower. And for me the best way to understand this is in 3 stages, and these are implicit in Inayat Khan’s teaching. The first stage is the stage of pure desire.

A hallmark of Inayat Khan’s teaching that we must never ever forget, that really makes Sufism distinct, is the emphasis on the divine desire as the origin of every impulse in the world. From the perspective of Sufism, the emphasis is on the positive valuation of the yearning of the Absolute Being. Sometimes, in other systems of thought, when attention is given to origins, the emphasis is on a fall from grace or the arising of ignorance, but what Sufism stresses is the need of the Needless One for our need, the need of the One who has no need for our need, or the fact that the state of unity demands the state of separation for its fulfillment; that God was a Hidden Treasure that desired to be known and so created the world. And from that point of view, nothing can be seen as random or arbitrary. Everything has its origin in that one, ineffable, indescribable wave of yearning. Even the contemporary cosmological accounts of the unfoldment of the universe through the Big Bang—though we might object to the violence of the term “Big Bang,” and we might propose instead the Sufi term the “sigh of infinite compassion”—in any case the model clearly communicates the Sufi perception of the unfoldment, from a single point, of all things and all beings, all motivated by the same driving force, the same desire. And so every subsequent thought, word, and deed is a playing out of the one self-same desire.

We begin our understanding of the force of will with recognizing that universal desire that moves through us, that there is no impulse that can be said to originate in isolation in our fragmentary being. We’re carried on the wave of the divine desire. So the first stage in fulfillment is to recollect and reaffirm that transcendent, overriding, absolute wave of purposefulness that carries one.

Correspondingly, in the theory of psychosynthesis, Dr. Assagioli speaks of, first of all, acknowledging one’s goal, one’s larger sense of purpose, one’s orientation. I think orientation is a wonderful word, the sense of being oriented to the dawning place of light. The word orientation means to be directed toward the Orient and the Orient means the place where the sun rises. So the first thing is to have that sense of moving in life, progressively, toward the fulfillment of purpose, having the sense that it’s inevitable that one will move toward the goal, and that the goal can only ever possibly be one.

Then, valuation, that is to say, to see clearly the scale of values, how the multiple possibilities available to one in every decision in life, and some choices, some actions, are less precious, less meaningful, less conducive of that ultimate fulfillment and are more or less symptomatic, gratuitous, or excessive, and others are more of the nature of what is demanded of one by reality itself. So there’s a whole schema of values, and one has to have a sense of what is urgent as distinct from what is important and realize that so much of what one is caught up in is the urgency of immediate imperatives in which, ultimately, the important purpose is lost in the details. We need to evaluate.

And then, motivation, which is the sense of energy and confidence that comes with having a clear purpose and feeling that inasmuch as my purpose is known to me, it is within my power to fulfill and it must be fulfilled. So one has the clarity of one who steps forth toward the destination.

And then one comes to the next level, which is when (we’re still at the level of abstract desire) desire incarnates as wish. If one did not, at the level of desire, have a clear perception of the divine impulse that is pervading the universe, would be paralyzed in a state of inertia and pointlessness. But secondly, at the level of wish, if one’s motive is not distinct, one might have an abstract intuition of the universal desire, but one still might be muddled and obstructed by confusion as to how to proceed. So Inayat Khan says, at the level of wish, failure is caused by indistinctness of motive. We’re always undoing ourselves by exerting ourselves in one direction and in another direction, and the two are canceling each other out.

At this level Dr. Assagioli says the first necessary exercise is deliberation, that is with cool, clear intelligence, consider the range of options that are before you, look out into the future and see what are the various factors that impinge upon your action, what are the resources that are available and realize that no one option is ever perfect. There is a range of choices and, having studied that range, the second necessary exercise is to take up a particular course of action, knowing that no course of action is complete or perfect; each one has its own particular risks and dangers. When you have, with keen judgment, surveyed them all and made a decision, then you commit yourself to a definite undertaking and refrain from constantly questioning yourself and looking over your shoulder and wishing it had been otherwise. You have clearly made the most intelligent decision and then you pursue it with confidence. So deliberation, careful, thoughtful, advanced planning is followed by the act of making the decision, of committing oneself to a course of action, and saying that hereby I resolve to undertake this.

Then one enters the stage of wish, that is the stage of wishfulness, of not only knowing the force within oneself that is driving one forward, but projecting that desire out into the future and crystallizing it in the object of attainment. One must see it very clearly, observing how it looks, feeling its texture; one must, that is to say, visualize it into existence. Because everything that has been accomplished in this plane, from the most magnificent of ancient monuments to the greatest of contemporary technological wonders, has come through this very process, of feeling the need for it, of visualizing it, and following through precisely on that vision.

So one comes then ultimately, having made the decision, to the level of actual embodiment in the will. Inayat Khan says here, when a desire becomes a steady thought, its success is assured. That’s the secret of will, that when the winds of change blow, when conflicting impressions swirl in the air, when one is pressured by contrary expectations, and when the temptation of gratification and indulgence in comfort and convenience overpower one, then, even though one may intuitively feel the universal drive of desire behind one, if one cannot keep one’s thought still, focused, and concentrated, then the project will come to naught.

Identification with the universal desire is necessary but not sufficient for true fulfillment. Desire has to be brought right down into something very specific; it must be brought into the minutiae of one’s undertaking in each passing moment of awareness. One’s dedication and will must be so powerful and complete that one cannot be distracted and caught up in matters that belong to a lower scale of priority. When a desire becomes a steady thought, its success is assured.

Dr. Assagioli reminds us of the stages of this fulfillment in affirmation, each day, or at each critical juncture, reaffirming one’s desire, one’s wish, one’s decision, returning again and again to that clarity because that clarity can easily be broken. The confusion of other people is infectious, and it confuses our own minds even when we have achieved clarity. So return to that clear decision and reaffirm it again and again. And then plan. Make detailed preparations, and then finally execute the plan. Having outlined one’s course of action and being able to see into the future the specific details of each level of its execution then, stage by stage, according to one’s progressive schedule, complete each task. In this way, this grand universal desire is channeled through you and fulfilled concretely in life as it is intended. Otherwise what is the purpose of this manifestation?

Commentary on the “Iron Rules”of Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Commentary on the “Iron Rules”
of Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan