Beg for Love
by Abu-Said Abil-KheirEnglish version by Vraje Abramian
Original Language Persian/Farsi
Beg for Love.
Consider this burning, and those who
burn, as gifts from the Friend.
Nothing to learn.
Too much has already been said.
When you read a single page from
the silent book of your heart,
you will laugh at all this chattering,
all this pretentious learning.
 | -- from Nobody, Son of Nobody: Poems of Shaikh Abu-Saeed Abil-Kheir, Translated by Vraje Abramian |
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All of my life I have dealt with anxiety. At times quite severe. When I was younger, I used to twist myself into convoluted states of pretense to convince myself that it wasn't there. Or I would mask it behind anger -- someone or some situation must be to blame for my tension. At a certain point I grew tired of my evasions and I simply accepted the patterns of anxiety in my life. I made friends with it. And in befriending it, I came to know it better.
While the anxiety patterns are generally reduced in my life these days, I can't say that they are entirely gone. When anxiety shows up, I sit with it and we talk. As I relax out of my reflexive resistance, I learn more about myself. The anxiety in its way is a teacher. It tears holes in the latest social facade I've begun constructing. Instead of imagining that the anxiety points to something being "wrong," which implies that something must be fixed in a state of desperation, I tend now to relate to anxiety as an accent in the awareness -- and as an intense sensation. Anxiety can seem physical at times and, as a sensation, it burns.
When anxiety appears the first thought is, What's wrong? I go through a rapid assessment of the daily elements of my life: my current projects as a computer programmer, my income, my work with the Poetry Chaikhana, recent conversations with my wife, chores that need to be done, am I meditating enough, how is my health... The list expands to be as long as my anxiety-controlled mind wants to make it. But, if nothing truly worthy of concern emerges in that first quick self-assessment, what I've learned to do is stop shredding my life up in search of the "problem" and just sit with that burning sensation of anxiety itself and let it reveal what it has to say in its own way.
Nine times out of ten I find that it is not about practical life issues and, instead, it has shown up to tease and chide me as it highlights some ego pattern I hadn't recognized in the midst of my daily busyness. It burns and stings until I remember, Oh, yes, I am not that neat, two-dimensional figure I once again had begun to imagine myself to be. When I let go of that cardboard cutout version of myself, the heat of the anxiety consumes it and, satisfied, it dissipates, leaving me somehow more fully myself.
So in my idiosyncratic reading of this poem by the great Abu-Said Abil-Kheir, when he talks about burning as being "gifts from the Friend," I relate to it in a highly personal and visceral way. I hear in his words how the intense, often painful experiences in life can be embraced as a cleansing process that in some alchemical sense refines us, ushering us into a deeper sense of self.
Nothing to learn.
Too much has already been said.
The real path is not about thinking or book learning, but about falling silent and opening ourselves to the intense transformative energies already at work in our lives. That's when we enter that most holy of places, the heart.
When you read a single page from
the silent book of your heart,
you will laugh at all this chattering,
all this pretentious learning.
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