Let Thy wish become my desire,  Let Thy will become my deed;

Let Thy word become my speech, Beloved,

and Let Thy love become my creed.

Let my plant bring forth Thy flowers,  Let my fruits produce Thy seed.

Let my heart become Thy lute, Beloved,

and My body Thy flute of reed.

A Sufi Song

Beloved Ones, the journey of the heart to God is the most significant one in the life of the soul.  For the soul yearns always to be freed of the limitations that separate it within time and space from the One whose Presence is the essence of Life and of Love.

As much as the conscious self may want to pursue its own desires and wishes, especially for material things, so, too, does the soul want to pursue the Source of all of its treasure and wealth, the love of the Beloved in which it seeks to be steeped, as an aroma is steeped in the flower in which it resides.  As such, it wants to be nothing else but this fragrance, nothing else but one with the Giver of Life.

The heart's path to the One is marked by the awareness of the beauty of the Journey, each step offering a fruit for having taken it, each step bringing it closer to that which it seeks.  The movement toward selflessness, toward the effacement of self so that the Beloved may live solely and without encumbrance within the deepest recesses of the heart, is the music that gives wings to the heart.  For this heart there is no other way than the way of love and the way of absorption in that love.  For there is no self that is real but the self that is also the Beloved.

As the path to the Source rises, and as encumbrances which hinder the soul drop away as being merely shallow extensions of a will that no longer has either force or merit, the soul begins to experience itself as one with that will which is its very Breath and the Breath of its life - that will which it cannot do without and which it seeks to direct all of its actions.  This is truly a death to the separated self and to the ego which plays such a prominent part in that manifestation.  But it is life to the self which is part of the flower; to the self which seeks to be nothing but Breath.

The beauty of surrender, the joy of surrender, the power of surrender, the peace of surrender - these are all parts of the winged heart that rises on the music of its devotion toward God.  These are the means by which it rises and the goal of its rising.

To accomplish this journey, what is needed is a heart that is pure, a heart that is not deluded by the glamour of the world nor by its own need for anything other than the desire for the Journey.  This heart can be engaged in any earthly pursuit; it can find itself in the most abject circumstances or in the most expansive; it can be immersed in poverty or in the seat of wealth.  And yet all that it seeks will lie within, and all that is without will be the outer trappings of life, not the very heart of life itself.

The mystery of what causes a heart to yearn in this way so that it develops wings is one whose answer lies in the folds of time and in the mystery of Creation.  For the heart that awakens to its own purity discovers within itself what it has never left behind, namely, an unending, infinite and abiding love for the Creator who is at one and the same time the Infinite and Eternal, and the most intimate part of oneself.  This discovery changes from within the shape of a life.  It gives to it the riches of inner seeking and inner blessing.  It manifests within the soul the wealth of the Kingdom and the peace of the Blessed.  This is not a heart that belongs to the few but to the many, for it lies within each soul, in the deepest recesses of that soul's being, waiting to be unfolded, waiting to be given wings.

Related Writings:

The Sacred and Holy Covenant

The Mystical Experience of the One

Article Section -  Individual