Kundalini Splendor

This morning, I ran across an article on Sufism, describing it as "The Path of Love." As I read, I realized once again that the "Path of Love' is also the way of Kundalini, for it opens the heart to union with the divine not through creed or formulas, not through rituals and law, but through connection with the divine in the deepest possible sense. One becomes single--both Lover and Beloved, Witness and Subject. Kundalini, in its highest form, tells us that we too are divine, part of the divine flow, God embodied as self.

The article itself is titled "On the 'Path of Love' Towards the Divine: A Journey with Muslim Mystics." The author is Omid Safi of Colgate University. It was published in "The Journal of Scriptural Reasoning," No. 3.2, August 2003. I found it by "accident" when I googled Sufi.

Here are some excerpts from the article, including poems from various authors. I will not try to identify these--they are listed in footnotes to the article:


"Hazrat Inayat Khan's heartfelt poem in many ways stands in a thousand-year-old line of what has been referred to as the madhhab-i 'ishq, or "Path of Love" in Islam. What holds this thousand-year old "path" together is neither creedal statements nor particular initiatory rituals, but rather an aesthetic, a "mood", a rasa: the intuitive experience of love, which must be tasted personally. This is what the Sufis of this path referred to as the "taste" (dhauq) of love:

Of love one can only speak with lovers. Only a lover knows the true value of love. One who has not experienced it considers it all a legend. For such a person, even the claim of love, even the name of love, are forbidden![2]

******************

You!
always traversing the world
searching...
tell me:
what benefit has come of it?

That
which you are seeking
is with you;
and you seek
elsewhere[7]
('Ayn al-Qozat)

****************

I will incinerate this creed and religion, and burn it.
Then I will put your love in its place.
How long must I hide
this love in my heart?
What the traveler seeks
is not the religion
and not the creed:
Only You.[12]

***************

And this, from Rumi, speaking to the travelers to Mecca in sacred pilgrimage:

O you who have left for Hajj,
where are you?
where are you?
The beloved is here!
Come, come!

The Beloved is your neighbor
what are you doing,
lost in the wilderness?

If you could see the formless face
of the Beloved
you'd know that you are the lord,
the house, and the Ka'ba![19]

So many times you set out on that road to that house;
Just once...
come to the roof of this house.[20]

Yes, that house [Ka'ba] is subtle,
you've told me about it.
But show me something
about the Lord of that house!

If you saw that garden,
where are the flowers?
If you dove in God's ocean,
where is a single soul-jewel?[21]

(Image found on google)