The Light in Our Sky Series #1
A quote from Hazrat Inayat Khan
The Light in Our Sky
Volume #1
November 17th, 2024
Dear Readers,
As promised, to mark Hi Zan, Hi Pa’s second year we’re replacing the monthly Star in Our Sky slot with a new series in which we’ll take turns picking a quote and offering a brief interpretation. We hope you enjoy! Here’s our first quote:
“One thing leads to another, and so we go on in life from one initiation to the next; and each step on the ladder that seems to be standing before us, for us to climb, becomes an initiation. And each step on that ladder changes our point of view if only we hold on to the ladder and do not drop down; for there is always the possibility of going either forward or backward. Nevertheless, the one anxious to go forward will never go backward. Even if the whole world pulled him back by a chain attached to his feet, he would still go forward, because his desire to go forward is more powerful than all the forces in the world.”
Hazrat Inayat Khan (Sufi mystic 1882-1927), The Inner Life, p. 136
PA: What I love about this quote—and this book—is the idea that a human life, with all its terrible struggles and glorious pleasures, serves as an unbelievably complicated and mysterious series of lessons in ‘going forward’. Going forward to what is the big question. We all answer it differently. For some people the answer is simply old age, death, and nonexistence. For others it’s rest, heaven, eternal life, enlightenment, self-actualization, immersion in love, or a profound understanding of some cosmic Truth. I would never attempt to answer the question for anyone else. My own belief is that we are all here to learn something, painful as that learning can be, and I believe that something is not taught in even the best universities.
ZAN: When I read this quote, I imagine the ladder as one of self-evolution, with each rung symbolizing a new level of understanding. Some “initiations” each person reaches along the climb are natural turning points in life (becoming an adult, going through hardship, falling in love, etc.) that come with lessons that can’t be ignored, while others have to be sought out by that “desire to go forward.” So you and I interpret this quote in much the same way except for one big thing—rather than wondering where the forward motion is taking us, I find myself wondering why some people have more of a desire and ability to move forward than others. In my life, I’ve certainly met people who are determined to keep climbing no matter what life circumstances they face, and I’ve met those who keep falling backward without believing they have any power over which way they go. What causes that, can it be changed, and will people of both kinds reach the same destination anyway?
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I too like this new set of discussions. Personally I am not fond of the ladder image which insinuates a top and a bottom. This maybe a personal problem coming from being told I was always supposed to be at the top of the ladder. I like the image of a path and a path that only leads one back to oneself. I also like the idea of Buddha Nature (or any other term for the divine) which is always present in all of us and only are own ignorance keeps us from knowing it and acting from it.
Zanny and Roland,
What I'm drawn to in this quotation is the brightness of the word initiation, characterizing the stages of life we enter, one after another, like the rungs of ladders we climb. Because initiation can only occur with what's new in our lives, there's brightness in the simple suggestion of the stages being new, lands as yet uncharted, lands of promise. We're initiated into the new, not the old; into the unknown, not the known; into light, not dark. Initiation further suggests brightness through the metaphor of climbing ladders, a metaphor of ascendancy, of rising from below. We ascend into light, not dark.
Were the stages to which we transition old and dark, initiation wouldn't work as the word to characterize the transitions. Nor would the metaphor of climbing ladders. Another word would be needed, a word with bleaker connotations, something like descent. And another metaphor would be needed, again with bleaker connotations, something like sinking in the sea. (I grew up on Long Island Sound, as you know, and so I'm prone to saltwater metaphors.)
I remember an especially dark moment in my life, having suffered a major loss. A friend said to me I was now beginning my life beyond that loss, a perspective I found helpful in its brightness, countering the dark; or, more precisely, brightness reconceptualizing the emotional landscape of what was dark, envisioning it as a place from which to depart, rather than a place to which to return. Of course, the reconceptualization requires the strength to constantly live on that landscape, when it's easier to return. We can never forget. Nor should we. Still, my friend's perspective was one of initiation.
A curious quotation, and an engaging addition to Hi Zan, Hi Pa, this series of quotations.
Thanks, Bob