Fazal Inayat-Khan, (Heart of a Sufi)

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Today, I would like to present something different. (There is always a worm inside me looking for variety!). After a long time, I looked into my Amazon Kindle collection and suddenly came across the book “Heart of a Sufi: Fazal Inayat-Khan – A Prism of Reflections”. I wouldn’t say I like to read books on PS or Kindle, so I overlooked this book in those days. Now, I have found it worth sitting and reading.

Fazal Inayat-Khan Fazal (July 20, 1942 – September 26, 1990), also known as Frank Kevlin, was a psychotherapist and poet. I didn’t know him before, and I must thank Ashen Venema, A great, wise friend (https://courseofmirrors.com/); I could get to know this brilliant Sufi. Now, under the motto “long story short,” I picked a part of this book written by Rahima Milburn, whose parents were taught Sufism by Fazal. I hope you will enjoy it.

If I thought I could change the world, I would try, but I am completely convinced, as most of us are, that I cannot. You eventually come to the realisation—and there is much maturity and existential self-possession in this realisation—that we can only change ourselves.
Fazal Inayat-Khan, Lecture, New Experiential Wisdom, 1989

Dutch painter Herman Smorenburg

In Roughwood

From “Heart of a Sufi: Fazal Inayat-Khan – A Prism of Reflections (English Edition  by Rahima Milburn (Author, Editor), Ashen Venema (Editor), Zohra Sharp (Editor) )”

I’m in Roughwood for the first time since the memorial last December. The first time, I was really touching the fact that you are dead. Dead? The word somehow doesn’t mesh with the reality. For you still are here. Not just your photos and your memories, but you. Your fragrance, your influence. No, YOU. Not just a semblance, an essence – really YOU. In this chilly sitting room, redolent with decades of incense and music, I find you in your silence, in your patience, and in the glad, unyielding faith you have in us. In me. That afternoon in the very early days, we talked here, and your eyes reached into me. To say follow your heart was infinitely more meaningful now I had located it. Or you had located it for me. I had dropped something, it seems. You stooped, picked it up, dusted it off and called after me, ‘Hey, you might be needing this.’ You blew on it to clean it, reached out your hand to give it, and now, in Roughwood, you do it once again.

Shadows of birds
swoop across the open windows.
In the distance, wood pigeons lament,
mourning throatily in the round.

Down this creaky hallway, you feel as we come in from out-of-doors and head for the kitchen. Here you are … passing in a hurry, going somewhere. The movement of you can be felt – that irresistible combination of childlike excitement and manly confidence pushing us, pulling us ever onwards. Never knowing what lies around the next bend but sure that if we could be true, it would be also. Urging me on … like that day you shooed me out of Roughwood to go sell books. ‘You never know how you might be spreading the message,’ you said. What a manipulator, I thought, not wanting to sell books or anything. And now, in Roughwood, you are doing it again. But now I see that it is true: endlessly down this path lies my challenge – the movement of you in me makes it so.

Overhead, almost in the clouds
in wide whistling circles,
the gliders swing.
Evidence.
One can soar – all is possible!

This morning, in the garden, you passed beneath the twin trees into that mystery foretold when under them long ago we sat and listened. That voice, wise, wily, winding ideas that mazed us turned the world inside out, flung us ready or not to the borders of reason. I can almost see that summer evening when, after a long hospital stay, you had us gather around. I was unbelieving you could actually have been ill but there you were, yellow to prove it. Speaking softly, slowly, you drew us back to the vistas of liberation. The promised land is one of joyful detachment, ongoing renewal and unquestioning love. You led us there – this brave troop beneath the cedars; brave because the one we followed was so alive, so sure, even when yellowed and frail. And now, in Roughwood, you are doing it again, doing it still. If we stop beneath these trees, with little effort, we can know the sublime, the simple, the outrageous, the evident, the effulgent light that is you.

Butterflies busy themselves
in Sitara’s garden, growing
as naturally as rain falls in England,
as unruly as his hair,
as magical as all we are
in whom he now lives.

Dead?
Slowly by slowly, I realise he has never been more alive.

Thank you! 🙏💖🙏

https://youtu.be/9iDsfu0YpTc?si=3vgHM6D6t-Wyrhm_

21 thoughts on “Fazal Inayat-Khan, (Heart of a Sufi)”

  8. elainemansfield's avatar elainemansfield

    This is beautiful and powerful. It takes me back to the days after my teacher’s death in 1984 and again to the days after my husband’s death in 2008. Vic’s presence lingers still like a fragrance that never fades. Thank you for the spiritual beauty, Ashen. Thank you for sharing this, Aladin. I’ll need to read it a few more times.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Oh, thank you, Elaine. This is really enlightening, and I am glad I read this book by Ashen. I completely understand Vic’s presence with you, as I always feel Al’s presence with me.🙏💖

      Like

  9. Lovely writing, for sure.

    Thank you, Aladin!

    It never ceases to amaze me, and fortify what I know and don’t know when I read words of thinkers, philosophers, analyzers and on.

    No matter the settings, colours, words, examples, direction of movement, origin etc. all have threads that cross, connect and even tangle.

    Thank you for sharing this writing!

    ❦🌟💓🫶🌹

    Liked by 1 person

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