Why don’t we laugh right now..?

“There are both Sunni and Shia Sufis. In fact, there are also non-Muslim Sufis, primarily Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus who practice Sufi spirituality and call themselves Sufis. How is this “dual citizenship” possible? Sufis explain this with a metaphor. During prayer, Muslims bow and prostrate themselves in the direction of the symbolic house of God, the Kabah in Mecca. What happens if non-Muslims, following their chosen path, become enlightened? It is as if they are praying inside the Kabah. In that state, does it matter in what direction the prayer rug is pointing..?


• If God wanted, He could have sent full-blown enlightened beings to Earth, but He chose to send imperfect beings like us.
• How astonishing that God hides from humanity, creating wild speculations and crazy strife. As Rumi exclaims, “The lover visible, the Beloved invisible: whose crazy idea was this?”
• All traditions that mention God proclaim that Divinity is genderless, yet the holy books and practitioners insist on calling God by a masculine pronoun.
• No human being who has arrived here from the mysterious realms has ever come with a mandate or mission statement, yet some of us talk and argue as if we know why we are here, and others talk as if they don’t care.
• None of our revealed holy books has ever been accompanied by footnotes, yet we argue as if we know the real meanings.
• We are all afraid that one day we shall pass away into nonexistence. But if the truth be known, nonexistence is trembling in fear that it might be given human shape.
• When we go over to the other side and look back at our dramas and melodramas, we shall laugh and laugh. So why don’t we laugh right now..?


The Mulla stories convey a common thread of Sufi teachings, which can be summarized as follows:


• Every human has a divine spark veiled by the layers of personality. Whether we call it Allah, Jesus, Elohim, Krishna, or any other name, that spark is the same and we are foolish not to realize our astounding potential.
• An essential spiritual practice is to observe and witness oneself continuously and compassionately, acknowledging and laughing at foibles and weaknesses while working relentlessly to evolve into higher consciousness.
• The light of persistent awareness is bound, little by little, to dissolve our false self and bring us closer to our authentic self. We may not become perfect human beings, but that is not the goal. The goal is to become more aligned with our higher self and expand our worldview as we learn to see the Face of God in everyone we meet.
• Institutions and those who serve institutions cannot be trusted to acknowledge their weaknesses and serve the common good, and we would be wise to emulate the Mulla’s healthy skepticism about their moral leadership.
• Our human understanding of divine verses, such as those in the Qur’an, can be less than divine.
• With grace and courage we must work to change or eliminate religious customs and scriptural interpretations that do not meet the test of divine compassion and generosity.”


~ Imam Jamal Rahman, Sacred Laughter of the Sufis: Awakening the Soul with the Mulla's Comic Teaching Stories and Other Islamic Wisdom