Interview #2 Winding Down--Portugal Next.

Friends

Famous French Cheese Platter for lunch one day

Ross teaching

Winter woodlands--walking

Incredible winter weather with sun everyday, so enjoying walking as usual. The depth of the interview process and the twining together of my evolution to this point still leaves me in awe. I have been examining a question to ask Gurudev and Pahari Baba, it has finally crystalized. The inner sense of beauty, gratitude, expansiveness, and love is still unshakeable as I move about the globe. Headed to Portugal tomorrow.

Thank you Bowl of Saki for the continual support of my inner journey.

The source of truth is within man; he himself is the object of his realization.

                        Bowl of Saki, March 12, by Hazrat Inayat Khan

Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:

In point of fact truth is simple; it is man who makes it difficult for himself. For all other aspects of knowledge he has to get from outside, but truth is something which is within man himself. It is something which is nearest to us though we imagine it to be farthest; it is something which is within, though we imagine it to be outside; it is knowledge itself we want to acquire. Thus the seeker is engaged in a continual struggle: struggle with himself, struggle with others, and struggle with life. And at the end of the journey he always finds that he has traveled because it was his destiny to travel, and he discovers that his starting-point is the same as his final goal.

Then the question arises: what is the way to attain the truth? Can it be attained through study? The answer is that the source of realizing the truth is within man. But man is the object of his realization. There are words of Hazrat 'Ali, saying that the one who knows himself truly knows God.

Man, absorbed from morning till evening in his occupations which engage his every attention to the things of the earth and of self interest, remains intoxicated. Seldom there are moments in his life, brought about by pain or suffering, when he experiences a state of mind which can be called soberness. Hindus call this state of mind sat, which is a state of tranquility. Man then begins to become conscious of some part of his being which he finds to have almost covered his eyes. When we look at life from this point of view we find that an individual who claims to be a living being is not necessarily living a full life. It is only a realization of inner life which at every moment unveils the soul, and brings before man another aspect of life in which he finds fullness, a greater satisfaction, and a rest which gives true peace.

Heaven is not a country or a continent; it is a state, a condition within oneself, only experienced when the rhythm is in perfect working order. If one knows this, one realizes that happiness is man's own property. Man is his own enemy: he seeks for happiness in the wrong direction and never finds it. It is a continual illusion. Man thinks, 'If I had this or that I should be happy for ever', and he never arrives at happiness because he pursues an illusion instead of the truth. Happiness is only to be found within, and when man tunes himself he finds all for which his soul yearns within himself.