Nafs (Ammara)
Writing on Gold Paper
byDDMcPherson
I exhale and cast forward, over a brink.
My body hurtling down and down,
but the inner world halts,
curling its tongue over the desert of Earth.
Eyesight travels in straight lines; insight curves without ever traveling,
a globe swallowed into the heart.
Inhaling, exhaling stretches the canvas of air
where a painting appears and dissolves continuously,
as breath fogs then absorbs itself from glass.
And now I bend over my leg, lips nearing, nearing my knee.
They touch the silky pants. Like a kiss.
But the effort of a kiss,
a mouth pressing, making a devotion
of what is already a devotion,
that effort strips down.
The bend alone is pure.
All this bending and rising is a purge.
It rips the face off simplicity.
Sometimes purity is convolute, thick with twining vines.
Again and again into the bend, into the rise
I turn and turn and, not finding
one genuine thread of motion, flail.
Pious, saccharine, sterile, bleak.
Day after day of reaching in
leaves only the walking of a fine line:
some days the slide into contentment,
but missing that gate of grace,
stubbing toes in the barrens outside a winter palace.
Maybe I’ve forgotten something,
Forgotten to drink a round rich breath.
Forgotten to drown.
Forgotten the emptiness full of ocean swells
and curved bones floating in light.
*****************
This poem is for Annabelle, after she shared the inner question that had plagued her at the beginning of the workshop: “What am I doing here?”
Her inflection was, “What the hell am I doing here?” I felt it too. But I knew what it was. In spiritual work, that question and the way it was asked is the nafs speaking. The nafs are the ego not wanting to dissolve. They are the tricksters of self that turn gold to dust. Nafs turn up when the seeker is progressing, so they are a good sign, but they are not as pleasant the Unified state waltzing easily towards us, making our day all shiny.
The ability to persevere with our spiritual practice when we encounter our nafs is an act of maturing, of patient but firm handling of our childish inner self that only wants wants wants. The endlessness of our wants, which are mostly fantasies to pull us away from feeling pain and emptiness, must be kindly mastered. Soothed into quietude. Perhaps we have to finally feel pain a bit, fear, or boredom. Acknowledge these emotions, weather them, but not get too involved. Once we stop running and look around, we discover a great deal. Precious things. Perhaps we learn that getting every little want met is not necessary to peace. Whatever the learning, this process leads to an integration of the self.
Spiritual progress is made of leaps into the Unknowable. Beautiful as this is — to be free; to enter a new world of Self, and the Ever-New world of Beyond Self –- it is rarely a straight shot. Our human being-ness requires a two-step-forward-one-back trek. We are cautious. We must not lose our bearings. We still live on the Earth even while we focus on the Eternal. The nafs always sit at the door of deeper development. They are the self’s retrogression into the familiar, and no Path is free of this labor.
