Promise from the past

By following this link you can get the back drop to this conclusion (well I think it is a conclusion, it could also be seen as the beginning). But before I go on to that, I have to ask myself, what is the relevance of this tale to this blog? It is a good question to ask since the experience herein is one of a personal nature. To answer this question I sought refuge in our “About” page. Therein a few chapters down you will find the statement…

“we follow a spiritual journey along the intuited pathways that we conjure up through our interactions with Nature and the energy forms that Nature creates around us”

Since this tale began by standing on a Root of the Earth I feel that its beginnings are spiritual and energetic in nature. Therefore bringing it under the remit of this blog. I will let you decide via the comments below. Let’s get on then.

Here is where I stand. I had received the following messages…

• You are on this path because you made a promise to yourself when you were a child
• The promise was then compounded by a powerful prayer
• The payer was one said by my mother
• The promise was one of being like a person in a story told by my mum
• The story had something to do with a valley
• I had just called my sister up to see if she could shed some light on it and she had said yes.

The conversation with my sister had gone like this…

• “Do you recall any of the stories our mum used to tell?”
• “Yes, lots”
• “Do you recall one that has a valley in it?”
• “A valley?”
• “Yes”
• “Yes I recall it”

  

She then went on to tell me a few stories and it all became clear. I should have known. After all if it was my mum who was telling the story the word would have been in her native language not in English. I guess the fact that I was sat looking down into a valley made me think it was that which had been the clue. It hadn’t. It was the phonetic valley and not the word. Thus the clue had been Wali.

Friend of God

My parents were of the Islamic persuasion. Both of them in their separate ways were more of a practical follow the rules kind when it came to observance of the religion and very much spiritual when it came to the mystery of it. By spiritual I mean they liked the Sufi way.

Wiki makes a definition pretty much in line with how i and my parents take the word Sufism to mean… “a science through which one can know how to travel into the presence of the Divine, purify one’s inner self from filth, and beautify it with a variety of praiseworthy traits“

Although, I am not too sure about the filth part, come on, I am after all an Edge Wizard. Anyway the description is a good one. So, my mum (and dad as it happens, but I never listened to him much – long story) told many a story (of the fable kind) from the ancient Sufi mystics. A few of these had talked about mystics that had reached a certain level of hmmm let me rephrase that, Sufi’s that had achieved a certain level (that’s better).

The word used to describe these mystics was Wali Allah. My mum had defined this word to me, to mean Friend of God. In the tales that she told. This was a man (usually) who was capable of many feats…

• Seeing the world as it truly is
• Being able to perform miracles
• Ability to inspire others
• Being able to be deeply a part of society and extremely apart from society
• A follower of a path laid out by God

As a child I had been enamoured by these tales, they touched my heart and my imagination equally and are quite possibly the reason why I have been interested in the Edge for pretty much most of my life. let’s hold that thought for a moment.

In the Islamic faith there is a hierarchy of Sufi masters (Isn’t there in anything? The constant need of upmanship in any group amazes me no end!) The Wiki page on this matter gets a bit lost in obscurity and religious adherence so let me cobble together a more evolved definition of the word Wali.

Definition of Wali: A person who is capable of reading and directing the flow of energy. Who holds mastery over their Self-Importance, being able to deal with its coinage without becoming attached to it. A person who is centred on their heart and lets actions flow from the dictates of such.

I think that is a good start don’t you? I know some of it might need further clarification (like Self-Importance coinage) but I’ll leave that for my other blog (Original Purity to clarify). Yes, I think it is a good start and it deals with the criteria from the stories and fables quite admirably, don’t you think?

Let’s see, could such a definition of the word apply also to the phrase, friend of God? An interesting challenge. Of course our immediate sticking point is, What is God? Gosh let’s not go there. At least not in the religious sense. I think that the statement “A person who is centred on their heart and lets actions flow from the dictates of such.” would cover the Friend of God, don’t you?

Overall I am pretty happy with the definition as one that fits the kind of person my mum used to talk about in her legend-filled tales. So, lets put it to the test of the message I was given…

“You follow the path you are on because you promised yourself that you would become a Wali when you were older.”

Given the definition we have reached, I can say, hand on heart, that I am on that path absolutely. For proof see most of the content on this blog. What a revelation and a discovery from the depths of my past.

Kal Malik