In the art of Being, Hazrat Inayat Khan says that the Sufi flies with wings on his heart. This is a Sufi teaching about being free from the nafs, from the ego, from your misconceptions.
You’ll notice that I used the pronoun “he” very specifically. I’ll talk about that later because that’s very important, but first, let’s talk about the wings on the heart.
One of the Sufi symbols we use is a heart with wings. Hazrat Inayat Khan says the wings represent independence and indifference. Those are two harsh-sounding descriptions. But we’re not meaning independence like an individual, and we’re not meaning indifference like being indifferent to the people around you, to suffering, to the problems on the earth, and things like that. We are talking about independence from your craziness, independence from these nafs, free from your ego. A state where you are the master of yourself. In this place we are able to live as a free being, even as the ego and emotions drift by.
We are independent of the nafs. Your ego doesn’t define you. You are something awake underneath the craziness of the ego, independent of the craziness of mind. You are independent of the craziness of society.
Indifference fits right in with the independence because you are indifferent to your own suffering. That’s what makes you free from suffering. It’s not like suffering just quits, but in this highly evolved state of indifference, you are able to maintain your equilibrium no matter what comes up.
This is one of the main teachings in Sufism. It’s one of the reasons Sufi practices focus on things like the breath. Controlling the breath, in and out, allows us to be the master of breath. It helps you eventually become the master of yourself.
Breath practices is one of the best ways to practice independence and indifference. As you breathe in, the entity of you that is ‘breathing in’ is independent of the action of breathing. You’re the one that decides. You decide when the breath comes in, when the breath goes out. You’re being is the master.
Breath is a perfect example for the Sufi because throughout the day, when we’re not paying attention, breath goes by itself. So do emotions. Throughout the day emotions come and go, whether or not we are paying attention. These things can operate by themselves, and can also be done with awareness.
Throughout the day, when we’re not paying attention to our thoughts, it’s like a river running by itself. Other bodily functions, like your heartbeat, always runs by itself. We have a little bit of control. We can calm down and calm the heart, or we can go for a jog and speed it up. But mostly the aliveness within us keeps itself running.
You are the awake ‘you’ inside this Sufi heart. The awake ‘you’ is independent of these things. This awake you is independent of life and death as well.
Indifference simply means that you know it. You know, and are aware of your aliveness.
Independence and indifference at first may seem like a strange teaching. But it is actually much deeper and more useful than saying the wings are love and joy.
Love and joy are both emotions that drift in an out. Love and joy arise from things that happen to you in the moment. Just like pain and suffering. The awake you is independent of love and joy. The awake you is indifferent to what arises.
You’re like, “Wait a minute, I don’t want to be indifferent to joy and happiness.”
Well, yes, you do. It’s actually more poignant to feel your joy from a place where you’re awake, to feel the happiness from a place where you’re awake. The awake you knows that the joy will rise and then drift away. The happiness will come and then it’ll go. And so, because you know that, you can really enjoy it more.
Same thing with pain and suffering. Pain comes. You know it’s going to go. Pain is much harder, way harder to deal with than joy, yes, but the awake you knows that equilibrium will come back.
Independence and indifference are the two wings. Right in the center of these two wings is the Sufi heart. This is you. The awakened being of you that’s always there. It doesn’t matter if you get sucked into illusion, if you lose your independence, if you get sucked into the drama of your life. The Sufi heart is always there, beating. It doesn’t go away.
Breath is, again, another very good example of that, because no matter what, breath keeps coming. You can come back from some terrible disaster, and there you are. Obviously, without any doubt, your breath kept going through the whole disaster, whatever it was.
You can come back from joy. Perhaps you are lost in the bliss of existence. You come back, your breath continued going through the whole thing. So breath is the perfect metaphor of this awakened heart because it’s the awakened you that comes to remember the breath. It’s you, the awakened you, that is there as the breath goes in and out.
What About Misogyny?
Hazrat Andaya Khan used male pronouns all the time. That’s why I quoted him as saying, “The Sufi flies with wings on his heart”. What are we going to do about that?
Well… we can be independent of it, and we can be indifferent to it. Or we can be all upset by it. The thing is, being upset by it doesn’t change it. Being indifferent to it and independent of it gives us our own self-mastery. It opens this place where we’re able to examine this situation and do something about it. It creates room where we are can communicate effectively with other people about it.
I think we can be better human beings by studying native wisdom and native societies. One thing that you’ll notice from the stories of people a long time ago, way back before civilization came, is that everything is gendered, and women were there. One thing we’re always told in native wisdom stories is that the ancient world had no hierarchy. Nobody was better than anybody else.
Some people could do particular things better. One of the native wisdom speakers I read was talking about how shaman were not seen as special. Us modern folk tend to idolize a shaman. We idolize the idea of a priestess. Like they had some special power.
Back in a native society, a shaman would be simply someone who did herbs well, who had a particular skill in calming a person for healing. They wouldn’t be put up on a pedestal any more than the person who tanned hides well, or the person who was really good at making arrowheads, or a person who could make beads. Everyone had different skills. None of them were seen as more special than any others.
One of the things I think is most important, that’s being brought to us from these native wisdom keepers, is that native societies consciously avoided hierarchy. They knew that as soon as you get into hierarchy, madness starts in human beings. Without any hierarchy, there’s no competition. As soon as you have competition and ownership then oppression can start.
The problem with ownership is that there is always going to be someone who is really good at grasping and keeping things. Ownership creates a momentum of itself. One person can get more and more stuff and then hold people down
So, back to the fact that Hazrat Inayan Khan used a male pronoun.
I think this is a much deeper problem in Sufism than simply male pronouns. On a scale of one to a hundred using a male pronoun is way down at a two. Hierarchy is way up at a hundred. because hierarchy is the thing that causes the issue with the male pronoun. If it wasn’t for the hierarchy, we would care less about what pronoun we use. We would be indifferent.
As a matter of fact, in our English language the word “he” can include everyone. “Human being,” that’s all of us. “History.” That’s all of us. We want to change it to “her story” which then excludes men. It puts woman into a place of dominace and the real problem hasn’t been addressed. We don’t have to exclude men in order to bring women up. What we have to do is get rid of the hierarchy.
Sufism, the way it is today, is stinking with hierarchy. It’s a problem that sends us around and around through the world of problems. We don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
There is a reason why the hierarchy is so deeply embedded in Sufism. One reason is that the culture that Sufism comes from stamps women down. That’s bad. Needs to be overcome.
Two is the fact that the transmission of enlightenment traditions needs to go from awakened person to awakened person to awakened person. The reason for this is because unawakened people are so easily fooled. If you don’t have this lineage of awakened people then anyone can throw out a shingle as a spiritual teacher. Narcissists are particularly drawn to it.
When the transmission works in a healthy way one guy will have a student, and he’ll see that student come awake. He’ll bring that student up into the hierarchy, and eventually, that person could even be the lineage carrier in the Sufi tradition.
It can’t be done any other way. The only person who can tell if another person is awake is an awake person. An unawakened person can’t tell. Unenlightened people get fooled too easily. They’ll always get fooled by the most beautiful teacher who’s teaching love. They’ll get fooled by someone who’s teaching happiness and freedom from suffering.
The Sufi heart is the perfect example. Who would you be more attracted to at the very beginning of your spiritual journey? Would you be attracted to somebody who was teaching independence and indifference? Or would you be attracted to someone who’s teaching beauty and happiness? You’re going to be attracted to the beauty and the happiness because we want that. I want that. You want that.
The actual awakened person knows that we have to get through the thing that’s fooling us, which is our nafs and our ego, in order to live life from an awakened state. So, in Sufism we have this necessary lineage. And it’s all men.
We are at a point where it’s not working all that great. There are so many places where the lineage is broken, and you have unenlightened people, who aren’t masters, bringing other people who aren’t masters up into the Sufi lineage. When Sufism loses its self-mastery what is revealed is the dominance of the hierarchy itself. And hierarchy is so attractive to our wounded egos from both sides. Some wounded egos try to get up the hierarchy. Some wounded egos become slaves the hierarchy trying to find safety.
This is a prominent difficulty in Sufism since Sufism has such beautiful teachings about surrender. We get confused, and instead of surrendering to this Sufi heart, surrendering to this state of independence and indifference, we surrender to some beautiful narcissist who fools us.
Changing he to she, or it, has no power over this problem because it’s not the source of the problem. We cannot fix the overall hierarchy problem simply by paying attention to pronouns. It’s not going to work. It’s just not a battle worth fighting. If we fight windmills we lose our independence, we lose our indifference, we lose our reverence.
We have teachers like Hazrat Inayat Khan who deserves respect. He passed away a long, long time ago, and so everything that he’s written reflects the culture that he was in then. We don’t want to throw away the true lineage keeper and replace him with people who are mad about pronouns. As a Sufi, we should have some respect for what he said and try to understand the meaning rather than pick away at the words of it.
The Sufi heart gives the Sufi wings that allows him to soar into the realms of mysticism and reality. That means you and me.
Changing pronouns in books that were written a long time ago changes nothing. Really understanding what was being transmitted will change everything.
I want to bring back one of my favorite sayings from Hazrat Inayat Khan about his reasons for forming his Sufi order. It was to create a world where where mysticism is no longer a mystery. We can use the wings of our Sufi heart, independence and indifference, to rise us above the difficulties that are happening to us in our lives.