No matter what is being played out on the world stage, it is no excuse for losing hold on the primary reality of inner life. Yes, we have to live in the world, but while living in it, we need to remember what we are – spiritual beings. Every moment, if we allow it, is an opportunity to be in the Divine Presence. There is no higher road of inner development. No moment in life need be void of this Presence.

Hafiz, the famous Persian Sufi poet (1320-1389) wrote that if you want the presence of the Master, don’t make yourself absent. But when we get caught up in the affairs of the world, we are making ourselves absent.

So what does it mean to be caught up in the affairs of the world? In my life, there have been many times when I got so caught up in the excitement of an event, like a basketball game, or an election, or winning a lot of money in a poker game, that contrary to Hafiz’s advice, I did indeed make myself absent. The event or external situation, took priority over the inner happening – the flow of love from the Divine Beloved.

This constant presence of the Divine is not just an ideal to strive for, it is in fact a state of consciousness that we all are destined to attain. I was reminded of this today by the words of the late Darwin Shaw, a Western disciple of Meher Baba, who wrote in his book Effort and Grace (unpublished at this time)

“We will be funneled into that position where we will love God completely with all our heart, and the sooner we can get to that point, the sooner we will be free from the unnecessary suffering of all the opposites.”

I like the use of his word, funneled. But if we resist going into that position, I think we end up not so much being funneled, but pummeled. It’s like a lifeguard sometimes has to knock unconscious the person he is trying to save from drowning.

Rumi, another great Sufi mystical poet who was born 800 years ago, expressed it this way (translation by Coleman Barks):

Muhammad says: I come before sunrise
to chain you and drag you off.
It is amazing and funny that you have
to be pulled away from being tortured,
pulled out into the Spring garden.
But that’s the way it is
Almost everyone
must be bound and dragged here. Only a
few come on their own.

That’s how powerful the addiction to the world is, that almost everyone has to be chained and dragged off.

This does not literally mean to be dragged off the world stage with a hook, like a bad act on a vaudeville play, but simply replacing our addictive attachment to the world with an inner embrace of the truth, love, and compassion that flows from the Divine.

As human beings, we are much more effective on the world stage when we move as expressions of awareness and love, rather than as expressions of addictive demands. It brings about oneness and peace instead of divisiveness and discord.

I have no doubt that the world will evolve to this higher level of oneness and peace. But it might require some chain dragging and a little bit of pummeling to get there.