Rule 21: Acknowledging the Diversity of Creation

We were all created in God’s image and yet we were each created different and unique. No two people are alike. No two hearts beat to the same rhythm. If God had wanted everyone to be the same, He would have made it so. Therefore disrespecting differences and imposing your thoughts on others is tantamount to disrespecting God’s holy scheme.

This quote indicates how infinitely manifold God must be, how inexhaustible his/her creativity. Our individuality is an outcome of this creative power and forms a contribution to the diversity and beauty of this world. This we should be aware of when we start to doubt about ourselves or when we take over the doubt that others have about us. This does not mean that we are perfect and impeccable. We are unique beings in development, we are learning and integrating, learning and integration as long as there is life inside of us.

Of course we have our difficulties (and this is an important part of learning) to appreciate all aspects of this creation. We meet many things which are opposite to our taste, sensitivity and life plan. We experience friction here and there, and our edges get sharper by these confrontations. Our individuality gains contour and the difference to others gets more accentuated.

The other side of the coin is the adaptation and adjustment to others. In the different social interaction in which we move around we often align ourselves with our vis-á-vis. Our subconscious tells us how we should act in order to please the other person so that he or she is benevolent towards us. We take our own impulses back in order not to offend someone but to appear nice and likable. We renounce parts of our individuality in favor of alignment. So partners in a long term marriage tend to resemble one another, and dog owners take on the habitual patterns of their pets.

Still it is an expression of our individuality in which manner we adapt ourselves. Every person has a different way to adapt or resist alignment and does this in different situations and occasions.

So we should not see our individuality as a fixed and unchangeable image but as a construction which changes constantly. We form our assumption about who or how we are which can be inaccurate in the next moment. And the way in which we make such assumptions is again expression of our peculiarity.

As we have problems in accepting the mystery of our individuality as a gift and to appreciate it as unsolvable enigma we tend to impose our manner onto others by for instance assuming others should have to think or act as we do. Or by criticizing others about how they think or act. Or by dictating other people about how they should think or act, and so on.

We walk on the street in the city, the pavement is narrow, someone walking too slowly for our speed in front of us. Immediately a voice appears in our head which makes the other person wrong because he/she does not walk in the most appropriate way for us. When we allow the thought instead that this person might have more leisure than we have, we accept the individuality of the other person and open ourselves up for learning from the individuality of the other person and recognize a part of our individuality in doing so.

Or we are in a similar situation, but we are in no hurry but someone in our back wants to take over, and immediately we reject this person as someone who disrespectfully jostles and shoves. Instead we can use a different concept and take the behavior of the other person as opportunity to train our flexibility and our skill in giving way. We understand that someone can be in a hurry as we know this from our lives as well. Now we accept the other person and ourselves in our individuality and ability to learn and grow.

This way, we open our vision for the complex world of people in their different networks of relationships and ways to lead their lives and take it as enrichment rather than as restriction. When we achieve and enhance this skill we can feel an inner relief, an opening to the larger whole, beyond our limited mind which is only a tiny part of the peculiarity which we are.


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

Rule 20: Becoming the Flow

Fret not where the road will take you. Instead concentrate on the first step. That’s the hardest part and that’s what you are responsible for. Once you take that step let everything do what it naturally does and the rest will follow. Do not go with the flow. Be the flow.

Sometimes we cling to expectations, the further into the future the better till we get dizzy. We think: When we know what will happen in two, five or ten years, we can make the best decisions now. But the further we look into the future, the unsafer the ground gets. When you look at the smoke that arises from an incense stick you notice that the first range it takes, a few centimeters, goes right up, and then the smoke starts to curl in ever new patterns. This is an example from chaos theory which could prove that there is no possibility to calculate what would follow after the first phase of order, whether the smoke goes in this or another direction, the curls get smaller or bigger etc.

Similar is our experience with the future. What is more in distance gets fuzzy and uncertain and vanishes in unpredictability. But many have the unbroken urge to get to know what will happen then. So they consult fortune tellers and clairvoyants who should tell them what will be. Of course we should know that these prophecies are sometimes accurate and sometimes not. And we cannot know ahead which statements will be accurate and which fall among the error rate.

So we have to get involved with the mystery of future. The less we let our expectations take place and shape in our head, the easier we can accept what future has planned for us. The dominance of the linear time is an achievement of the latest centuries. In tribes who live in close contact with nature, a cyclical thinking prevails which is free of hierarchies of judgment. The spring is just different and not better than the summer, and the follow up of these seasons is one of the reliabilities.

Due to the small scale of the life circle the number of possible changes was limited. While we can chose among thousands of possibilities to spend our vacations in any degree of distance and while we can build up inner images and expectations with all those possibilities, the spacious radius for people from early stages of cultural evolution is defined by the strength of their feet and by the distance they can manage in one or at most several days to walk one way and back.

The more we have developed out of this form of living and of consciousness the more could happen in future, what blocks our plans and expectations. So we feel forced to invest more into the control of the future by trying to turn off all the risks which could linger there. And it seems that we succeed even less to control this future as by our very efforts to control it becomes even more complex.

When we dare the step from anxieties into wisdom, this means that we entrust ourselves with reality and its challenges. Reality does not allow control and does not follow our expectations. So it is advisable, to waive control and expectations as far as we manage to do so. In cases in which it is not possible we are controlled by an inner fear. When we accept this fear we can weaken its power and allow more of the trust into the flow of life.

For life flows whether we trust it or not. It takes us all along and carries us all the way whether we assume that the rudder is in our hands or we realize that the steering movements of our hands are also part of the flow. In realizing this, we are the flow.

The first step into the flow results from an inner decision. We may discover that in the deepest sense all decisions are not directed by our consciously experience of wanting but by sources beyond our recognition. Yet we can keep the “illusion” of conscious self aware decisions in order to keep up the social responsibility which is connected to the outcomes of any decision.

Sometimes we regret decisions and would prefer to reverse them as soon as we notice what went wrong. We feel overstrained with these decisions and want to avoid the consequences. But what has happened, has happened, history cannot be reversed. We should translate quarreling about the past which does not exist anymore into learning about how we can act differently now and in the future. When we trust the flow we know that we have the power to master all challenges which will come up during the journey, as every river masters the way to the ocean whatever obstacles it encounters.

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

Rule 19: Self Love Turns Thorns into Roses

If you want to change the way others treat you, you should first change the way you treat yourself. Unless you learn to fully love yourself, fully and sincerely, there is no way you can be loved. Once you achieve that stage, however be thankful for every thorn that others might throw at you. It is a sign that you will soon be showered in roses.

To the degree we learn to love ourselves our dependency from what we get is diminished. We become less needy and demanding in respect to our environment. Instead, we become open for unconditional giving and being present with other people. So it is a noble task to enforce the love to ourselves.

How should this work? There are so many things which are not okay with us, how should we love us with these shortcomings? Again we have forgotten someone’s birthday – should we love us for this carelessness? Again our temperament has overridden us and we have hurt someone. Again we have wasted our time uselessly. Again we have forgotten to turn off the stove, and the whole meal, the pots included have turned to coal. And so on and on. An endless list of errors, weaknesses, failures heap up day by day and shows us our imperfection. And even more, the lists of our daily lists, way back all the days and years and decades…

In the presence of these conclusive proofs brought to court against us – where it there a place for self love? Exactly these misfortunes and failures which happen to us are special occasions to accept ourselves instead of beating ourselves up. When we think back to our childhood in which we made so many errors: Of course we were blamed in order to improve. But had we not wished to be loved anyway and despite our wrongdoings? Only slowly we have learned that there are situations in which we will not get love and that this is our own fault caused by our imperfection. Only slowly we have learned that love depends on conditions. And for a long time we could not believe this because we entered this world full of unconditional love for these parents who have brought us into existence.

And of course we also did not have any guilt feelings when we spat the meal we did not like back to the table or when we tore the table cloth together with the porcelain dishes and the full soup terrine from the table. By the reactions of the grownups we learned that we lose their love when we do not act according to their ideas. It might return, but not for sure. We start a new phase of learning: Not a learning of how to direct the spaghettis into our mouths or how to deconstruct an alarm clock but another kind of learning. What do I have to do or what do I have to omit for love to stay? How are the conditions by which we are loved and how when we lose love? Thus we learn to adapt to expectations and needs of others, a kind of learning which is fueled by evaluations and judgments from others.

For love is life, and lovelessness threatens life. We secure our lives by adaptation. This is a skill we have taken on during our childhood. In as much as we have taken it on, we have lost our ability to love ourselves. Self love has been replaced by self criticism and self devaluation. We have erected a ruthless inner critic who punches us as soon as we have committed the slightest mistake. We start to scold ourselves when something went wrong before others could do so and hurt us even more. As soon as we act inadequately, we shrink and tense up and reduce our breathing volume and thus the life energy available to us.

In this manner, we meet the world and the other people, more or less crooked and diminished. Then they should love us, from their own crooks and distortions? This seems a quite implausible undertaking similar to blind people who intend to explain colours among themselves. Again we get the assertion that we are not loveable because we are so inaccurate. The scenery is complete: The love we would need does not exist and we have to be content with the bits and pieces we get at times from here and there. And at least it causes some relieve when we can lament or blame others for our misery.

We can escape from this corset only when we turn the tables and start with ourselves. We have to heal the wounds from our childhood for we only can recover physically when all roots of inflammation have been healed in our bodies. Healing means that we have to replace all the acts of unkindness then by love in the now. Then self love can grow and we regain our childlike innocence.

This does not mean to shut our eyes to our own shortcomings. Self love is not equaled with arrogance and smugness. In the same way that true love from parents does not make the children self centered and vain, true self love also heals the blindness towards one’s own mistakes. Good parents point out the failures of their children in a loving way. Thus we can learn to treat ourselves understandingly and lovingly. Then we take our mistakes seriously, do not devaluate ourselves but learn from what went wrong.

Sometimes we hear someone complaining that he or she has already learned so much on the way of self love and still the love to receive from others is so little. Isn’t this unfair, does it not contradict all teachings which state that you get everything back you give to others?

Such an attitude shows that the love to oneself is not fully developed but still attached to a part of the ego instead of unfolding towards the world. The fully developed “pure” self love would say: Take everything in life just the way it comes, and feel the power of love behind it. Even if you encounter bad experiences, accept them with tranquility; one day you will realize that there is something hidden inside these experiences which will further your growth one day.


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

Rule 18: The Whole Universe is Contained in Us

The whole universe is contained within a single human being – You. Everything that you see around, including the things you might not be fond of and even the people you despise or abhor, is present within you in varying degrees. Therefore do not look for Satan outside of yourself either. The devil is not an extraordinary force that attacks from without. It is an ordinary voice within. If you get to know yourself fully, facing with honesty and hardness both your dark and light sides, you will arrive at a supreme form of consciousness. When a person knows himself or herself, he or she knows God.

The holographic secret which was announced by mystics of all time could create fear. All, which is, this vast universe, this endless amount of information, this huge range of feelings, motivations, ideas and attitudes, should be inside of me? How should I ever deal with that universe and find myself in it? There are so many things I would like to get rid of and forget about, there is so much as burden on my shoulders from my soul and my mind, all I finally want is rest and nothing more than my own affairs to take care of.

The mystic is not interested in theories about the world and humankind. She wants to influence the practical life of people: How to free them from suffering and how to create a better way of shared living among people.

For us, as we went through the age of enlightenment and post-enlightenment, it is easier to cope with mystical statements when we see them as working hypothesis: We adopt the concept experimentally as if it were true and keep the possibility in the back of our heads to revise it when it does not work. What would it mean for our social interactions and for our social perception if the whole social universe would be contained inside of us?

So when all phenomena and variations of interactive behavior can be found in us, when according to Cicero “nothing human is foreign to me”, we can see that the others are presenting us a mirror by behaving in a disturbing way. What annoys us about others demonstrates to us, what our problems with the world are and with what we cannot cope. We see our own imperfections when we get angry about someone. When we despise the avarice in someone else, it means that we know about avarice, and we only know about things which are represented inside ourselves. As something inside of us causes our chagrin, shows that we cannot cope with this experience productively or creatively but only with rejection and damnation. Without noticing, we direct this defense against ourselves.

Again, our opportunity to grow is in creating awareness. We use the working hypothesis that others present a mirror to us as soon as we get angry at them or decline their behavior. Thus we can redirect our perception from the outside to the inside and find still undiscovered aspects of ourselves there. And at this point, the devil comes in as a help.

All too long, the devil has been demonized: As a power hidden somewhere in the dark and bringing misery to the life of people from an ambush. All evil must have its root in an ultimate evildoer. This is how we create an excuse and a scapegoat: The goat legged horned satan. Almighty as he is, no wonder that we get weak over and over again.

The mystic is not interested in theological questions about the origin or the source of evil. He points at people and their inclination to act in an evil way and to forget about doing good things. For this, a devil as origin is of no use. As soon as bad actions happen, the genuine devil is at work, our imperfection, our daily voice of self entanglement, not more and not less.

This means that the true power lies in us. Is it up to us, to decide in any moment whether we follow love or the devil? When we look closer into ourselves, we might realize that we never intentionally and consciously chose for the devil. More so, that there is something inside ourselves which is seemingly not under our control, directing our actions. Afterwards, we wake up and tell ourselves that we should have reacted differently. For instance, we get an attack of rage because we were treated unfairly and become even more unjust as we were treated before. Looking back later, we might think that we overreacted and hurt the other person even more as they had hurt us. And we realize that there was no conscious intention to do so.

The part of us which we cannot control and which possesses us in certain dark moments and causes evil actions then is no entity outside of us but a pattern which has taken root inside of us as a fear directed mechanism of reaction which can be activated at the push of a button from outside and can change us from a loving to an abhorrent being in the next moment.

Again, we are challenged to look inside, into the depth of our heart, to explore the den of darkness. Eventually, we are encountering no one less than the devil there, and he is not one to joke with easily. But this inner devil just lives by his skill to hide and camouflage. As soon as we are able to fearlessly meet him and confront him, he and his dark power fade. With every victory we decide for is in this struggle, we win in terms of consciousness and expand the free land inside of us where milk and honey flow.

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

Rule 17: Outer and Inner Filth

Real Filth is the one inside. The rest simply washes off. There is only one type of dirt that cannot be cleansed with pure waters, and that is the stain of hatred and bigotry contaminating the soul. You can purify your body through abstinence and fasting, but only love will purify your heart.

We live in a culture which is strongly shaped by cleanliness and this has doubtlessly beneficial aspects. What is difficult to bear in less developed countries is the disorder, the garbage on the streets, the smell and the dirt. Sometimes we overlook the radiance of people in these countries which shows a way of relaxation and daily humor which is rare in our regions. This indicates that the outer filth is just one side and not the most important. Behind the cleanest outside there can easily hide a filthy personality.

Sometimes we hear, the inside is like the outside. To tidy up on the outside is not a big thing, not more than overcoming our laziness. Outside cleansing includes our own bodies, e.g. by fasting. In this case, discipline helps to limit the ego. In any form of consistent training, inner resistances have to be surmounted. The ego has to step back, and its neediness is no longer the only guidance for action.

The cleansing of the heart is enhanced by practices like that, but not completed. Mere self discipline and self mastering do not automatically create more consciousness. The opposite can happen, when discipline and mortification start to serve a part of our ego which feels better and superior with the successes of self control and adds to one’s pride and arrogance. An further aspect of self control can be found in the rejection of anything which is dirty or unpleasant which leads to stick to cleanliness in any aspect of life in a compulsory way. By despising anything which is not clean we reject a dimension of reality and condemn it even if it belongs to it like the shadow to the light. Looking at nature can teach us how relative our ideas of cleanliness are. Pigs enjoy different forms of tidiness than cats.   

The inner cleansing is so difficult because we usually do not realize what has to be cleaned. We are so attached to our peculiarities and quirks that it hardly occurs to us that they should be changed. We nourish our common self image and justify our action with great skill in front of ourselves even if they neither serve ourselves nor the others. In the same way we cultivate the images of other persons, especially those who have disappointed, deceived or hurt us. So we predominantly circle around inside ourselves and assume that this is the only possible reality.

The rule draws our attention to two forms of inner contamination: Hatred and bigotry. They represent all aspects of unkindness which we inflict on others (hatred) and for self arrogance which lead to blindness towards ourselves (bigotry).  In both cases we refuse to look: at the other how he/she really is – instead we gaze at our projections – and at ourselves how we really are – instead we indulge in our cantankerousness and self glorification.

In the case of hatred we are caught in a narrowed view of the other by which we constrict ourselves – is it possible to breathe freely when we hate? Seemingly hatred makes us stronger because it bears a deathly power. Hatred wants to destroy the other person in the ultimate consequence. But it is a power which we direct upon ourselves. In reality, we extinguish the flame of love in us and cut ourselves off the energy which nurtures our growth.

When we bathe in self-approval we stretch out above ourselves. And in this pose, we cannot breathe freely either. We somehow hold the air inside of us in order to be able to float above the others. The power we can feel then is loaned from our reserves and can only last for a limited amount of time. In our egomania we tend to collapse quickly when the turns of life provide unpleasant challenges for us. The bigot likes to flee from real and authentic contact with people who could show him his weaknesses.

We act as the characters in Stanislaw Lem’s novel “The Futurological Congress”. Lem describes a world in which everything is rotten and decayed but the government has spread a drug with a fragrance which causes a shift in perception so that all the degenerated objects look wonderful and beautiful. In regard to ourselves, we tend to whitewash our distorted character traits, and in regard to other we do the opposite and oversubscribe their distorted character traits and ignore their real inner being. The drug which constantly defeats us is our pathological tendency of self relatedness and self deception as well as our deception about others, either in hatred or in idealization.

To purify our hearts requires the consistency of the inward search: To accept our weaknesses and to take them to our hearts, where they transform into strengths by the use of the power of love. The inward search never reaches an end because every new challenge of life activates our shadow aspects. But it can be improved and enhanced by exercise. The pleasure of a successful step of healing lies in the deepening of the power of our hearts when we experience it.

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