The Western Sufi Ahmed Murad Chishti (Lewis, 1971) once mentioned as the reason why we don’t solve problems the fact that the answers often interfere with our concepts. In other words, we tend to look with and through our conscious mind, rather than going into the shadow side of our subconscious where the answers may lie. On another level, we can see all of the characters and elements of the story as occurring within one psyche.
Seven hundred years earlier, the Persian Sufi Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi said(Barks translation, 1990, p. 113):
"The inner being of a human being is a jungle. Sometimes wolves dominate, sometimes wild hogs. Be wary when you breathe! At one moment gentle, generous qualities, like Joseph's pass from one nature to another. The next moment vicious qualities move in hidden ways. A bear begins to dance. A goat kneels!"
As we go beyond these beyond the emotional boundaries and mental concepts related to who we are, we discover an inner landscape that is both richer and less controlled than the safety of fixed ideas and rules. Gregory Bateson (1974) called this type of approach “ecology of mind,” recognizing that consciousness operates much more like an eco-system than anything else, and that “mind” is embedded in an ecological reality, within and without.
As we recover a sense of the wild within, we may also come into a new relationship with nature outside us. Each being in the natural world is beautiful and of value in itself: each is a unique face of the inexpressible, the divine Beloved. Between these two extremes--personal limitation and boundless Unity-- lie all the movement and personality training that needs to be done. As one narrows the gulf felt between personal limitation and divine freedom, one perfects one's movement, so to speak, in all areas of life.
