Where Do I Live?

(Introduction to the Series)

Where do I live? That question can be taken in at least two ways: physically and spiritually. What is my spiritual home, my inner home? It is my default inner state, the inner psychological and spiritual mode that I am most often in. For that reason, the question "where do I live inwardly?" is related to the question "where am I now inwardly?" The usual answer to the latter is, in effect, my inner home. These questions matter, because our understanding of the range of our possible states and our default state defines the trajectory of our evolution. Where we live now, inwardly, is the starting point for where we might grow to live, as we make our way along the spiritual path.

In the Sufi terminology, this is explicit. Hal is state, our immediate inner situation. Makam is station, our default inner situation. Where we typically live is our makam, our station. Where we are now is our hal, our state. Our hal fluctuates. Our makam remains stable. Our personal evolution, the transformation of our being, involves a change of makam, a change of station.

States come and go. It behooves us not be too excited about very high states that may come our way, nor too despondent about low states that come over us. What matters is our typical state, our station. And our inner work, though it may raise our state temporarily, aims toward raising our state often enough and for long enough to establish that as our new station, as our next level station. That takes persistent practice of the methods of the path, persisting through thick and thin, through high and low, to become remade, transformed.

If we wish to change our station, to live in a new way, we work toward that, in part, by living that way now, by repeatedly bringing ourselves into the state that we seek to make our station. If we wish to have an inner body, we need to practice living in it, living in its developing version. If we wish to live in presence, we need to practice living in presence. If we wish to be free of the illusion of ego, we need to practice seeing it in action, seeing thoughts as just thoughts and not as who we are, seeing reactive emotions as just emotions and not as who we are, seeing body impulses as just impulses and not as who we are, and seeing our self-centered attitudes as attitudes without an actual self behind them. These kinds of persistent practice of inner work are necessary, but the culmination of any stage of transformation also depends on grace, on help from the spiritual world, help which is ready and available.

One key is not to try to jump two or more rungs up the ladder of spiritual stations. Instead, we aim for the next rung and consolidate at that level. Nevertheless, the path is not linear, a truth that manifests in our states. We may experience a state far beyond our current station. And some of our necessary inner work is aimed at levels well beyond where we live now. All that, however, refers to states.

Real transformation means a change of station. So, it helps to know ourselves, to know our current station, and to have a map to point us toward the next one. Yet this is not so easy. As infants it takes us years to make sense of the physical world around us. As spiritual seekers we face the even more daunting task of making sense of our inner and spiritual landscape, internalizing a map of the spirit. As infants we have the instant feedback of the laws of nature and the kind adults around us. As seekers, no such immediate feedback about the inner worlds is available. We do the practices with diligence, intelligence, and heart. We notice how we are inwardly, compare that to what we know of the spiritual map, make a guess about our current position and needs, and repeat. Gradually we begin to acquire the taste that shows us where we are and then plot our path forward and upward. The work becomes alive in us, and we in it.

The starting point for many who enter the path is the station of inner homelessness, being inwardly scattered to the point of not having a regular place within ourselves, not truly having an inner life. Everything takes us and we take everything as us. Every stray thought, every reactive emotion, every physical impulse, has the potential to, and often does, take us completely under its spell. And there we are, lost to a thought-train, driven by an emotional reaction, or pushed by a bodily impulse. We have no stable self. We muddle through life on autopilot, frequently falling into desperate identification with the random thing currently passing through our mind, heart, body, or external senses. We grab at anything that will make us feel, even temporarily, that we exist, that we are something.

Even through that fog, though, our inner depth, our possible life, calls to us, with the promise of home. And we begin to work again.

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