No Form

I don't see the relationship between the inner and the outer very clearly.

Consequently, I have these ideas of form, and not having form. I adopt a form; then I question it. I'm told by teachers and masters that there is no form. Yet obviously, there is a form; I'm in it, or there wouldn't be any teachers or Masters.

The whole situation is just plain confusing.

 My attachment to form comes from my outer self. Not only is the outer self naturally attached to form, it must be. It is the inner self that must come to a place where there is no form. Over the course of a lifetime, what happens is that the outer self dominates everything, creating a form which it then artificially imposes on essence. Essence is pure, and free; it is the secret of secrets, an uncontaminated truth about life. As Ibn al 'Arabi says, There is a whole treasure of secrets in the pure center of the human being.

This secret of secrets is buried; instead of informing my life (inwardly forming my life, which then meets outward life) it is suffocating under the weight of this artificially imposed form. The whole of my essence, all of what could bring vitality and a higher level of vibration to my life, has been stuck — well, crammed — into a little box defined by the constraints of my practice and the limitations of my imagination. Even my wish to attain something spiritual becomes a crippling factor.

This is why a man's inner work must remain a secret even to himself; everything that I touch, I may damage. The inner work must remain intact, untouched. The heart of hearts and the secret of secrets know what is needed; and as to the abandonment of form, this abandonment must take place in the inner work, not the outer.

Paradoxically, while this takes place, the outer work may have a form more rigid than any one would imagine; great disciplines can be imposed. It doesn't make any difference. In fact, in some cases, it helps. But it only helps to the extent that I recognize that the inner is what creates the outer; and the outer never creates the inner.

 And this is what men, organizations, and societies often forget:

Only inner freedom matters.

This essential and transcendental quality of the no-form is the inner quality of all material things, which become manifest only because of the Essence. This is true on every level, so it's as true of a grain of sand as it is of a man's being. The grain of sand only exists because the essence that expresses it has come before it; then the intelligent properties of the energy organize themselves, emerge, and express what we call a grain of sand. Each thing is expressed first through essence; only then does it exist.

 A change in the center of gravity is possible. If the inner truly begins to influence the outer, my impressions change. My body changes. My understanding changes. But this is only through an inversion of everything I generally understand; and that inversion begins with an energy that clearly informs me, at the expense of my ordinary mind, that I don't understand anything.

 I respectfully hope you will take good care.