Tweedie

" It is quite simple, you see. But you have to be ready. You cannot have the cake and eat it. If you want spiritual life, you have to give up everything. That is a fact. There is a most significant painting in the Tate Gallery in London. Many years ago I went three or four times to see this painting alone. It was a painting of a young Arab leaning against a pillar. Jesus and his disciples are there, but they are walking away. And underneath it was written "and he could not do it." Jesus had said, "If you want to follow me, leave your father and mother. Give away your possessions, and follow me." But the secret is that you don't give up anything. It falls away from you. In other words, the values change.

Let me give you a very simple and very banal example. A mother comes into the room and sees her little child playing with matches. She's horrified. If she takes the box of matches away, the child will cry. So she quickly grasps a lovely red bowl. "Look, darling, look." The child drops the matches and grasps the bowl. That's what the Teacher does. He changes the values within you. Suddenly something is not so interesting anymore. The values have changed. Then it is not crazy, you know, because you are being given something more precious, like the child.

Spiritual life is infinitely logical. It obeys the laws of this world of logic and of common sense. The other day in San Francisco, I met my friends of the Theosophical Society, and we had a walk in Golden Gate Park. The man was giving us a little talk and he said, "What is spiritual life? Common sense. Then aspiration, endeavor, and then there is a third factor."

"And people asked, "Please tell me, what is the third factor?"

He said, "More common sense."

And our Teacher said it in the book. "No hysteria, please, no exaggerations. Have both feet firmly on the ground. But with your head you have to support the vault of the sky, so that people shouldn't think that it falls on them."

When I was young there was a popular song that said "You belong to my heart once and forever. Our love had a start long, long ago." When you can say that to the Beloved with all your love, with all your tears, with all your heart, then you are there."

~ Irina Tweedie was born in Russia and studied in Vienna and Paris. After the Second World War she married a British naval officer, whose death in 1954 led her on a spiritual quest. Little did she know that her trip to India in 1959, at the age of fifty-two, would mysteriously lead her to a Sufi Master from the Naqshbandiyya-Mujadiddiya Sufi Order, whom she called Bhai Sahib (Elder Brother). This meeting set her upon a journey to the "heart of hearts," the Sufi path of self-realization.