Spiritual Insight 02
“The Gift of Understanding”
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Written by: Shaikh Muhaiyaddeen (Louie Beutler)
on January 28, 2000
Wisdom Point: "Nothing Will Every Leave You Until It Is Understood,
Because Its Purpose For Being There In The First Place Is Understanding"
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Bismillahir-Rahmanir-Rahim. In the Name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate. Al-salam 'alaykum. May all the peace, the beneficence, and the blessings of God be upon all of us.
My love you (anbu), my dearest brothers and sisters - Shaikh Muhaiyaddeen
(Louie Beutler).
When I first came to Bawa in 1975 I was 36 years old, had just been laid off from my job, had recently gotten divorced from my first wife, and had a history of kidney stones.
About 1 years prior to meeting Bawa I had my first kidney stone attack, which is the closest they say a man ever comes to experiencing the pain of child birth. After being with Bawa for a few weeks I moved into the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship where Bawa was living, took on the job of Maintenance Man for the building, becoming Maintenance Louie, and started my spiritual journey with Bawa.
Then I had a second kidney stone attack and Bawa sent me to the hospital, where I proceeded to tell the hospital administrator that I knew what I had, which was a kidney stone, and that all I needed from them was some morphine to kill the pain. I told them that I did not need to be checked into the hospital since all they were going to do was give me morphine until the kidney stone passed.
Naturally, they told me they couldn't do that and if I didn't check in they could not help me. Remembering my last experience at the hospital with a kidney stone, and not wanting to ever go through that again, I opted to leave and return to the Fellowship and my Bawa.
When I got back to the Fellowship and entered the room everyone was laughing. Later I was told that Bawa had told the children in the room exactly what I had told the hospital administrator, though Bawa was not physically with me at the hospital, and this started my mystical journey with Bawa.
Bawa then gave me something to drink, which is made from a certain bush that grows in Ceylon called Nearmooli, and my kidney stone attack ended. Then several months later I had another kidney stone attack and Bawa told me to go to the hospital again. However, this time I told Bawa I didn't what to go to the hospital. He said, "Sharee" (ok), and called for his stool. Then He sat next to me, while I was laying face down on the floor, and proceeded to pray over me, periodically stopping to blow into my back.
What happened next was really amazing, because nothing like it is usually experienced in the West. Something left me, some presence literally left my body, along with any pain that was being experience, and I was cured of my kidney stone problem, of at least what the West was calling a kidney stone attack. But what was it, what left? Can a kidney stone attack leave like a thief in the night? Certainly not according to Western beliefs. But in the East they call it something else, they call it a demonic possession, and what I had experienced was an exorcism, and this started my journey of truth with Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (Ral.), the truth about who we are, who God is, and our relationship with God.
For the next 6 months I was living in an angelic state of purity, for as I gradually learned not only had the kidney stone monster left me but lust had also gone, and I was experiencing a life without lust, which for a man is a very different form of life. And I had learned a very important lesson, I wasn't lust, which for a man is a major revelation, since from the age of 12 man experiences himself as lust.
But if lust can leave me then it is not "who I am", it is just something that has come, something that has come and had its way with you. And if it can come then it can leave. And what about the rest of me? Can the rest of me also leave? Can the rest of me, the rest of what I am currently experiencing as "who I am", also leave? Did it also just come, like the lust, like a thief in the night, and have its way with me? If that is so, then what defines me? If all that I am currently experiencing as "who I am" has just come to me, and does not in truth define me, then "who am I"?
In this way, one begins to see the journey of truth that Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (Ral.)
enfolds before us, if we but join with Him on the journey of truth, join with Him as the guide for our journey, join with Him in truth as "who we are".
But why had the lust come to me in the first place? That was my next learning with Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, and to learn this lesson I needed a partner.
After being with Bawa for almost a year, Bawa married me to Crisi, a beautiful woman who was one of Bawa's translators. Bawa required translators since He did not speak English. Bawa spoke in Tamil, a very old language spoken in Ceylon and in southern India.
When Crisi and I were first married I quickly realized that I was now sexually inadequate, in Western terms, because I no longer had any lust. But being an all American boy I quickly realized what I had to do to correct this problem. I had to call it back. It left and now I needed it. So the solution was simple. Just call it back. Since it left it can come back. So I called it back. And it came back. Not only did it come back but it came back even stronger than when it left, and I was no longer sexually inadequate.
For As Bawa Teaches Us,
“When I trusted the earth, I was deceived,
When I desired women, I was a demon”.
But now I became sad. Bawa blows the lust away and I call it back. What am I to do? The answer is simple. Trust in God. Have faith in what God has given you, and what God had given me was lust and Bawa. So, I handed the problem to Bawa, I handed the lust to Bawa, and my relationship to Bawa grew even stronger. Now the lust was stronger but my relationship with Bawa was also stronger. Now I was ready to learn the second major lesson on the path of God. Click HERE to read my first major lesson, “The Justice of God”.
On day, in the middle of a formal discourse Bawa looked right at me and said,
"Nothing will every leave you until it is understood, because its purpose for being
there in the first place is understanding".
Now I understood why Bawa had hesitated when I told Him that I wanted His help, when I told Him that I didn't what to go to the hospital with my kidney stone attack. He knew that if He removed the problem that I had that I would call it back. He knew that if He removed the problem, which wasn't a kidney stone, but was a demon, a demon called lust that entered me as a boy of 12 when I was swallowed by the black snake of puberty, He knew that since I did not understand that demon, I would end up calling it back, and it would come back even stronger.
Such is the hell of our lives, my dearest loving brothers and sisters.
But Bawa also knew that I could endure the cure, that even though He would blow it out and I would call it back, that I would hold onto Him throughout the process, allowing Him to give me the understanding that would ultimately allow me to see, understand, and remove that demon of lust forever through my relationship with God. And that process is still underway.
Please think about this my dearest loving brothers and sisters. Please realize that the hell of our life is ignorance, is our lack of understanding of who we already are, that the hell of our life is seeing and experiencing everything through that ignorance, through the eyes of separation and differences, through the life of arrogance, karma, and illusion.
Please realize that the grace of our life is the Gift of Understanding, which only comes when we start to see through the eyes of our Shaikh, our Teacher, through the eyes of our Father, Shaikh Muhammad Rahim Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (may God be pleased with Him). And we will only see through Him when we become one with Him.
May God grant us the grace to do this.
Amen. Amen, Ya Rabil Alameeen -
So be it, So be it, Oh Ruler of all the Universes.
Amen, Amen, Ya Rahman Alameen -
So be it, So be it, Oh Mercy of all the Universes.
Amen, Amen, Ya Rahim Alameen -
So be it, So be it, Oh Compassion of all the Universes.
Al-hamdu lillah - all praise and praising belong to God alone.
Allahu Akbar - only God is great.
Al-salam 'alaykum wa-rahmat Allah wa-barakatuhu kulluh -
May all the peace, the beneficence, and the blessings of God be upon all of us.
My love you (anbu) - Shaikh Muhaiyaddeen (Louie Beutler)
“The End”
of “Page 05” - Spiritual Insight 02,
of “The Gift of Understanding”
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