Scanning the Sufi’s in a Library

Dreams Unfolding

I’m scanning a bookshelf in the Sufi section.  A man who is studying with me explains his resistance to keep exploring different subjects as he can always go further into his main interest. 

my response:

The dream series makes another swing, here a very different opposite, as if the pattern emerging is a star.  From the neolithic ritual focused on survival to the Sufi tradition which is in my view the most aesthetically developed of the spiritual paths. Even when considering the intellectual rigor of Ibn Arabi, there is an aesthetic formalism that emerges.

What is interesting is that the man articulates my own inner resistance to potentially needing to study cultures and traditions that I have no frame of reference for as yet, for instance if the course of study over the next five years requires Polynesian mythology.  The path I am entering on may demand the heavy lifting of developing yet further frames of reference, yet I experience the further need to work within the frames I’ve already read into.  In the end, the root fear is that the content will not ‘light up’, I’ll not catch hold of the unique spiritual expression.  As long as the content glows like coals, there really is no heavy lifting to be done.  Olson claimed if you read you way through any subject completely, everything else opens itself to you.  I know this to be true, but sense the dream series is questioning faith in these dreams, do I believe it to be so?  Do I believe that the inner spiritual needs will find their fulfillment if I follow paths that I have not chosen.  Control can be such a hang up.