Kopperregel nr 6

Døm ikke en annen etter egen lov.

Pir Zias kommentar:

This rule is a reminder of a teaching that Inayat Khan gives in the context of kinship. You know that Kinship is one of the five activities inaugurated by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan. In addition to the Esoteric School, there is Kinship, the Universal Worship, Ziraat, and Healing. And, just as the Esoteric School has its course of study, there is a study in the cultivation of kinship, the primary focus of which is the horizontal dimension of becoming, becoming in relationship. And Inayat Khan describes here five stages in this unfoldment, five stages you might say of deep dialogue, of progressive profundity in the encounter with another soul.

The first of the five stages is respect. We begin by exercising a manner that is respectful, conscientious, and aware—which takes some effort. When we are not mindful, of course, we have a tendency to be disrespectful, which means, in our language and our body language, disregarding the feelings of another person. So the height of respect is an intense awareness and a demonstration of that awareness of the feelings of another person. Boorish manners demonstrate the opposite, thinking only of oneself.

So, we learn this on the path by practicing adab. And adab is a value that sometimes has been disregarded in our modern culture, from the perspective that there is something artificial and even presumptuous about holding oneself to a code of etiquette. Particularly in the 1960s there was a movement for change, liberation, freedom from perceived ideas and modes of formal behavior, the freedom just to do as one wished and follow one’s heart. Of course, when manners lose their grounding in sincerity and become an empty lifeless code, the need arises, from time to time, to break down the old structure, so that something new can be born.

But the consequence of that revolution can be that, in breaking away from the old, one misses something. Something has been lost, and that is the quality of attention that is required in fine manner, because liberation might involve negligence of the needs and feelings of one’s fellows. So there is a need to be free, but there is also a need to be responsible.

Manner is something that we as a culture are still, I think, in the modern West, trying to resolve appropriately. There is, on the one extreme, hollow insincere formalism, and on the other hand, shoddy antinomianism. There must be a way to express our love in a manner that is beautiful, in a sincere and elegant etiquette that is relevant to our times. That is what we are seeking.

So the first stage is manner. For the seeker, every word is an opportunity for self-examination. In every mode of expression, one wants to seek beauty of expression, the affirmation of the other person in every possible way, and to see how even subtle turns of language sometimes are off-putting and demonstrate a preoccupation with one’s own ego and disregard of the other. So one begins to really scrutinize one’s self, one’s verbal language, one’s body language, and look for every opportunity for refinement. One can feel it in the presence of someone who has so perfectly refined this respectful manner. It doesn’t have to be in the form of flattery, or a kind of ostentatious humility and self-abasement. There can be dignity in this refinement. But it is such a quality of manner that makes the other person feel totally recognized and accepted and affirmed. And that’s what generates tremendous magnetism and charisma.

It’s a regal personality with whom you feel taken up in his or her being and totally validated in your own being. Murshid was known to have such a high degree of this quality that everyone he met, all those who spoke with him came away feeling that they were the dearest to his heart, they were his most beloved friend. And only later when they compared notes did they realize that they all enjoyed this same status!

The first stage is respect and the second is sympathy. It begins with demonstrating a quality of awareness. If one does not create an accommodation in one’s speech and manner, sympathy is impossible. But as soon as one begins to respect people at the level of form, a channel is opened which makes it possible for sympathy to deepen at the level of meaning. And so the second stage of this process is to really care, to see another as in some sense another oneself, to overcome indifference.

And then the third stage: if one has established a relationship of sympathy, then one can begin to understand the person with whom one sympathizes. If one is not sympathetic in the first place, there is no motivation to understand. One will listen to what is being said, but one will not hear, because there is no resonance of hearts. As soon as one listens with the heart, then there is a readiness to understand. And readiness to understand, of course, means that one interprets what the other says in the best possible light and makes every effort to see the merits of that person’s point of view.

Much of our education teaches us to be competitive and to hone in on the weaknesses of others. But what if we learned to do just the opposite of that; in other words, to restate what the other person has said even better than they could, and articulate, in our own mind, a formulation of what the other person is trying to put across that is more true to their intention than even their own words have succeeded in doing?

That is the next stage: understanding, really getting inside the other. First you have to open a channel of the heart and once the heart channel is open, the mind can mesh more easily. Biologists speak of limbic resonance, an understanding that is established beyond rationality that has to do with the interface in the glance, and where the limbic cortex in the brain of each is warmed and mutually melded in such a way that there is a wordless understanding. From that pre-conceptual foundation, a conceptual mutual understanding can be then constructed. So that’s the third stage, first respect, then sympathy, then understanding.

And then, fourthly, comes tolerance and forgiveness. So long as there is no sympathy and understanding, it’s very easy to judge and to judge negatively. But as soon as there is sympathy and understanding, even the worst mistakes, from one’s own point of view, committed by another person, become totally explicable and understandable. It’s not that you would want to aid and abet the person in continuing to do something that, from the vantage point that you enjoy, seems totally wrong. But, at least, you see perfectly clearly that, from that person’s point of view, there really was no other choice. They acted perfectly and truly according to their understanding, their conditioning.

And remember that conditioning is deep, very deep. It even precedes our incarnation. There is conditioning right from the moment the divine ray shines out from the essence and descends through the planes. At each plane, there is a structuring, from the subtle spheres right out to the grossest spheres; at each level of the way, proclivities, inclinations, and received concepts aggregate.

And so, by the time a person incarnates, the planets have already had their say, the stars have had their say. The history of humanity as well as the biological saga has had its input, and a person is already deeply conditioned.

But then, of course, in childhood, in education, in acculturation, the experiences of a person impel him or her to think in certain ways, and the brain becomes wired so that thought flows in those channels. And so you realize that your resentment toward a person, your sense of disappointment, is really rather ridiculous. Everything in nature has conspired to set the person on that particular path, that course of action, that course of thinking. And when you see this, to blame the person, to resent the person, is impossible.

So, at that point, one recognizes that, while one may from one’s own vantage point completely disagree, one has to acknowledge the decision that the other person has come to as the consequence of his or her own life. That is why Murshid always reminds us the Sufi always has two points of view, her own point of view and the point of view of another. And sometimes it’s said, three points of view, the third being the divine point of view, which reconciles, paradoxically, all points of view.

Now, sometimes the reason that we are not able to do this is because we are afraid that, if we saw clearly another point of view, we would lose our own point of view, and we would no longer be able to safeguard our own interests, because our own point of view has a validity just as that person has a validity. And if I become so sympathetic to their point of view, who is going to represent my point of view? And so one wants to retain it. But, really, the danger is an imagined one, because your own point of view is easily recoverable.

To be able to step outside of one’s own point of view doesn’t mean that you’ve lost it. You might still, having looked at the situation from the other vantage point, come right back to your point of view and to your course of action. Your opposition to the other person will remain as staunch as ever before, outwardly. Inwardly, however, you have attained a completely different moral and spiritual posture, because there is no resentment. You don’t take the conflict personally. You see you’ve been impelled in the world to take a certain position, and that person is impelled to take another position, but in your heart of hearts there is no animosity whatsoever.

And ultimately, then, you come to the fifth stage of the process which is unity, which is again the third point of view: first seeing your point of view, then seeing the other person’s point of view, and then seeing that there is a divine point of view. The divine perspective defies literal, concrete interpretation, because it is so paradoxical. Vast and tremendous, it integrates and transcends all angles of vision.