Life is a temporary loan, and this world is nothing but a sketchy imitation of Reality. Only children would mistake a toy for the real thing. And yet human beings either become infatuated with the toy or disrespectfully break it and throw it aside. In this life stay away from all kinds of extremities, for they will destroy your inner balance. Sufis do not go to extremes. A Sufi always remains mild and moderate.
My life is not mine. (Rumi)*
The first half sentence of this quote questions a lot of what we are used to: We have received this life, we take it and make out of it what we want. What could it mean that our life is just a loan?
First of all, a loan is something, which the loaner can claim to be returned whenever he wants. The end of the loan is not in our hands. We forget about this easily. Further more, this means that we have to take care of the loan, that we have to treat it carefully to able to return it in good shape. Finally we owe gratitude to the loaner as long as he allows us to use what he owns.
Part of the careful treatment of this life, which was entrusted to us, is that we actively foster the growth of our consciousness. We can do this mainly by facing our inner reality to find out who we truly are. We encounter new aspects of this which was loaned to us and can increasingly make more use of it. We honor this life best when we allow it to become a piece of art by letting our talents which are part of the loan, evolve in a creative way. Finally we can return the loan, whenever the time has come, enriched with all the blossoms we have added.
When we see the enfolding of our life mainly as heaping up goods and other things we cannot come closer to reality. We are driven by the fear that things can offer us safety. By this, we give ourselves over to the sphere of objects. Secretly we know that things cannot liberate us from fears or make us happy. On the contrary, the more we have, the more we notice what we are lacking. The spiral of greed goes on by itself, almost without our activity. So we have entrusted the power of things and its immanent logic to run our life, a logic which is fuelled by our wanting to have more and more.
This is the scenario of an alienated experience of reality. This is a caricature of reality which is mirrored by opulent shopping centers and palaces of consumption. This is also the selling of our soul to the world of objects which throws us out of our inner balance. Our inner reality more and more moves away from ourselves while we run after success and self approval. Fascinated by the abundance of offers for happiness in the toy shops of the consuming society we forget about the meaning of our loan.
This way, we are lived by a life programmed by the mechanisms of the market, instead of directing our life ourselves. Life sometimes goes up, and sometimes throws us right down, like a merry go round. As we think, that the circumstances run our life, we make them responsible when it goes down.
The wise teachers, mystics and prophets are talking themselves hoarse since ages to free people from these meanders. In a contrary trend, the economic apparatus is growing immensely which has these abductions as center of its endeavors. Yet we can trust that in this field of tension a growth in individual and collective consciousness happens which strives to overcome these oppressions and compulsions. In as much as we look through the promises of the world of products as make-belief we allow a change in our needs and slowly change the system which is based on the old needs. We no longer allow prescribed desires to control our actions and motivations but follow the calls which come from deeper inside and around us and which want to express our true being.
On this way, we are looking for an alignment in our being and with the world in which we live. This way we tune in to a civilization and its growth and co create by this the development of the world as a whole, with each tiny step of our growth.
The feeling we find when we immerge in the sphere of alignment is the equanimity and balanced of a wise man. In this mood, we do not need any extremes, but we stay in connection with our inner center.
* The Essential Rumi. Translation by Coleman Barks. New York
The rules are taken from Elif Shafak's novel “The Forty Rules of Love” (Viking 2010). They are inspired by the Sufi tradition and worded by the autor's imagination. www.elifshafak.com
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