What does it take to bring something soft and precious into a hard world? Don’t you think that is a challenge? And particularly for those of us who have touched the source of life within ourselves? We seek to share that softness and preciousness with others, and sometimes it goes well. Sometimes it is met with love, and people embrace what we have shared. But not always. Other times we are subject to scorn, criticism, and shame. The question becomes: What do we do then? How do we bring something soft and precious and beautiful into the world as it is?
People of the Islamic faith speak of the soft spot within a person as fitrah. An Islamic scholar, Yasien Mohamed, said it this way:
What makes our religious understanding positive is that it not only acknowledges fitrah as a natural predisposition, but also one which is inclined towards right action and submission to Allah, the One God.
I am not Muslim. And yet it is beautiful to hear something very familiar through unfamiliar words.
I might call the soft spot the first love. There is the first love for us all. I do not just mean our first girlfriend or boyfriend. Our first love is the source of life. We are in the flow of the first love as a baby and as a child. At that age, we cannot help ourselves from being in the soft spot and in the flow of the first love.
Many of us can remember back to our first time of profound spiritual opening. We might call that our first love. It never goes away. And yet, some seem to become entranced or obsessed with other things.
How do we bring the first love into the world as it is? And what do we do when, confronting the things that we do in the world, we find that there is a rejection of what we are bringing? Or when there is neglect of us and coldness of heart toward us? Or perhaps we are ghosted.
Here is a foundational key: non-reaction. Do not react. If you bring the preciousness of life, and it is not received, do not react.
If you are not reacting, what are you doing? Be in a place of forgiveness and gratitude. Forgiveness and gratitude are practices of non-reaction. But they are proactive.
To forgive is to stay in the soft spot and allow the flow of the wonder of life to continue, even in the face of what you encounter. You may have been cold to me, but I am still flowing!
In all things, give thanks. This is the attitude of gratitude. No matter how what is soft and precious is rejected by another person or by the world, I am in a place of appreciation for the fact that I am here, and something is coming out of the world that is beautiful and worthwhile that I have to receive, however it comes. And while I can set aside unsavory things that are attacking and antithetical to what is true, I can embrace what is true, and I am grateful for that.
In Uranda’s 1936 booklet Lighting the Way in You, he said this:
Every “kick” becomes a true “boost,” and the world has no power to hurt in any way.
Every adverse reaction in the world in which we live can be used to connect more deeply with the Wonderful One within—to what is soft and precious to us. I will not just agonize over the fact that I got a kick. And we all get our kicks in one way or another in the world as it is. I will use that experience as an opportunity to cleave ever more profoundly to what I love, to declare my obedience and surrender to what I serve—as this Muslim scholar put it, my submission to Allah, the One God.
I love that name, Allah, not because it names a God of a religion but because the very sound of the word resonates with the vibration of the One God, however named. And for the very meaning of the name: the One God.
Every “kick” becomes a true “boost.” That is one of the keys to bringing something soft and precious to the world. Use any challenge as an opportunity to attune more fully to the One God.
There is a right protection for what is soft and precious. Think of the human heart. It is relatively soft, though muscular and full of a flowing fluid, blood. The HeartMath people tell us they can measure its vibrational impact at least six feet away. And we suspect that it goes well beyond that.
Our hearts aren’t located in our bellies. It would be vulnerable to impacts from the world in such a soft place. It is behind our breastbone, which acts as human armor, a breastplate that protects the heart. Behind that breastplate, the heart does its work, pumping blood throughout the body and resonating the vibration of love to the world.
There is part of us that is naturally and rightly soft. It is our fitrah. We are made to be soft as we hold what is precious and offer our hearts to the One we love. And at the same time, as we bring what we love into the world, strength is needed, a hardness.
In my own experience, there has been a growing realization over the years that my strength serves other people. Isn’t it true that other people need us to be strong for them? Yes, soft, soft-hearted, and gently holding them. But we can also hold them in our strength. It is a good way to hold another person, to say, in essence, I’ve got you. I’ve got your back. My strength is there for you through whatever challenge, through whatever is happening. My strength is with you.
What is our strength? There are all kinds of bad ways to be strong and hard—angry, punitive, and vindictive ways. How can we be strong in the world in a good way? True strength is born out of our softness. Out of our softness comes our love. Love can be gentle and affectionate, enfolding and encompassing. Love is a mother’s embrace. Love is the affection that one lover has for another.
Love is all that. But love is also an everlasting power. True love is an everlasting love. As the song goes, I love you with an everlasting love. I love you with a love that does not stop, a love that is strong. The power of love is an irrepressible flow. It is, by its nature, unstoppable unless I stop its movement through me. But I do not stop it, and so it keeps flowing. It is an everlasting love, an enduring love, an ever-flowing love.
That is the strength of love. It is the strength of a river, ever flowing down the mountainside. Do not wade into its current and try to hold it back! That is the nature of the love we bring to the world.
I am that love, and I do not stop.
There is a physical dimension to the flow of everlasting love. It is the right action of fitrah. It is committing our lives to something, working a full day to manifest it, seeing projects through to their completion, not shirking from responsibility, and being there dependably for others and the projects we commit ourselves to. Those are all human things that we do that are important. And yet those human things can allow the divine thing to happen. Those human things allow the divine vibration to be at work. And I am talking about vibratory things here.
Human activity can set up a vibratory pattern in which everlasting love can come into the world. That everlasting love is like the mountain stream that overcomes the resistance of rocks and earth in its path. Everlasting love can move past the resistance present in human hearts and in the vibration of the world. It changes that vibration so that it resonates with everlasting love.
For us, these are real things. They are for me. They are nice things to write about in an article such as this, but these are the real things of life. We might be challenged by the everyday things of the world that, in essence, say, No, you cannot do this. No, you are not allowed here. Or people might attempt to impugn the character of who we are and our mission. My answer is, I do not stop. Everlasting love does not stop. It is an enduring love.
One of the most pivotal things for a person to figure out in their life is what they ought to be soft to and what they ought to be hard to. I had this come dramatically to focus for me in a courtroom two weeks ago, when I was accused on the stand of being willfully neglectful. It was a time to remember what I was soft to and what I was hard to. I was soft to the truth of what Sunrise Ranch is and the truth of who I know I am. And every kick became a boost. I embraced the truth of Sunrise Ranch, the truth of Emissaries of Divine Light, and the truth of me. And I brought everlasting love into the courtroom, an enduring love that does not stop. I brought the power of love, something soft to me yet unyielding and massive in the human world. I brought the flow and the radiance of that love.
I am here to be soft with my God, with my first love. And I am here to be soft with all of you, who are my friends in that. We have the honor of sharing that yieldedness, that surrender with each other that we know for ourselves if we have the courage to share it. If we all do, there is a fused core of the highest love present in a body of people.
The soft spot in each of us challenges us not only to achieve greater and greater things in the world. Yes, we do have something to accomplish in the world. But beyond that, our first love challenges us to reach higher and higher levels of simply being together—higher and higher levels of spiritual intimacy and communion, where we are sharing what is soft in us with each other, where we are doing nothing except learning to be together.
Do you think that might be a good starting point for us as human beings? To learn to be together. And if we could learn to be together, we could learn to create together, to work together, and then to bring this powerful vibration of love, everlasting love, into the world. I am here for that, and I know you are too.
“My son, you will form an organization. The name will be Waqful Waqifin, and the name is translated into ‘Gift of the Givers’. You will serve all people, of all religions, of all colours, of all classes, of all political affiliations and of any geological location. You will serve them unconditionally.”
This was the command bestowed upon the young Imtiaz Sooliman, a young South African medical doctor who, in 1992, was visiting the Sufi sheik, Muhammed Safer Dal Effendi, in Istanbul. This was his commission. And, indeed, the gift has been given over, and over, and over. Floods, earthquakes, fire, drought, refugees…. Every “kick” is a boost to what is possible in seemly impossible situations.
In any circumstance, the gift can be given.
As those of Muslim faith understand ‘fitrah’ as a gateway to the divine, to Allah. There is an access point for us all to bring the invisible heaven ‘down here’, to be made real.
It’s all about response. As we look up and submit to what is higher, so the tasks become the gifts of those that give. And the world becomes a better place: “For you and for me and the entire human race”, to quote Michael Jackson.
Learning to BE together, seems to be the answer, again and again, in order to be the co-creators we were meant to be! Letting one’s own agenda flow with the collective.
I truly love this too!!!! Here is a foundational key: non-reaction. Do not react. If you bring the preciousness of life, and it is not received, do not react.
I’ve had many experiences throughout my life wherein kicks became boosts. In most such instances, those doing the kicking were striking out at something that did not really exist. Figments of their imagination if you will. Projections of one kind or another.
Human beings tend to create others in their own image. They are seeing mirror images of themselves. Filled with anger, hatred and prejudices of various kinds, their hearts hardened towards enemies, real or imagined, they lash out expecting to be met with hardness. When they find softness instead,Shazam, the backdraft creates a boost.
This thought of kicks becoming boosts is a good one. David, in his last post and in this one, has referred to the birthing process, so that’s been on my mind. I’m pretty sure David’s thinking of kicks as referring to setbacks, but my mind went to the kicks of the unborn fetus. Those kicks seem to always give a boost to the mother, that concrete evidence that there’s life growing within her. The fetus may be simply stretching itself or, if later in the term, may be expressing its will to escape its current confines and to explore the world it’s entering into. This is a new way for me to envision those setbacks that David’s referring to. When someone gives me a kick, are they expressing their desire to escape their current confines? Have I been, as your organization is so aptly called, an emissary of the divine light that’s awakened them to what that holy city could be like, a city of light? As they continue to kick, are they wanting to be a part of that holy city, and only know how to express their feeling of entrapment in their current environment in such a violent manner? Can their kick become a means to their freedom, in spite of the fact that it’s brought pain to myself? This is a new way for me to see the kicks as being an actual boost. Someone said that Jesus, on his way to the cross, was able to make a joke enroute – makes me wonder if he was taking the “kicks” against him as actual boosts that reminded him of why he’d come to Earth?
The answer to your question, David, is YES! I am here for that too and in concert with you and all who hold this TRUTH. Love, tom
I remember my first profound opening to the spiritual world. It truly changed everything about my worldview, and the way I saw myself, and myself in association with others. Because my worldview had completely changed, I’ve been misunderstood by many, and yes, even hated by some – nothing though which I hadn’t been told to expect. Now I’m prepared each day for such misunderstandings and hatred. As Jesus said from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Others can’t be expected to have spiritual vision and understanding if they don’t have spiritual organs of perception. But their behavior shouldn’t hold us back from becoming the best that we can be, and spiritually speaking, the best is motivated by love.
When I am constantly expressing the great Power of Love, no matter what the circumstances, we have the experience of knowing that I am an individual part of God, doing my part on earth as an Emissary of Divine Light, that is how we move mountains and the world changes because I have changed. What a beautiful service you presented in this message, David. God Bless.