About Guest House Awareness
A Sufi-Infused Path of Mindfulness, Presence, and Awakening in Service of All
Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, come yet again, come.
— Oft attributed to Rumi, some say the author is Abu Sa’id
The guest house is an archetypal image. The great Sufi teacher and poet, Rumi, tells us that “being human is a guest house.” He says, “whatever enters our heart is a guest.” He beckons us to “entertain it well,” reminding us that sometimes the guests “scatter the withered leaves from the bough of the heart so fresh green leaves may grow.” Discovering that life itself is a guest house, we are invited into a radically fresh relationship with the whole of existence in all its dimensionality and beauty.
Guest houses are also temporary dwelling places – way stations on our human journey. Guest House Awareness is a community of companions learning to know ourselves, remember and realize our ennobling inheritance, dive deeply into the mysteries of the heart, and engage in the building of a more harmonious and beautiful world.
Countless way stations along the road, we’ll give particular attention to inhabiting the guest houses of thankfulness, remorsefulness, needfulness, openness, and nearness. Each is an aspect of prayer, a gesture of grace bestowed, a manifestation of love embodied. All have much to reveal to us as we cultivate an increasingly attentive, intimate, and harmonious relationship with the conditions of life and the infinite abiding within us.
Thankfulness
So much has been bestowed upon us through no efforts of our own. We are recipients of the Earth and the wider environment, recipients of the love of family and friends, recipients of the source and mystery of life itself. If we look closely, even in the face of all the difficulties in our lives, there is much to be thankful for. As thankfulness dawns in our hearts, gratitude blossoms. Generosity is aroused, igniting within us a desire to give to others by willingly sacrificing our preoccupation with the conditioned self to the alchemical processes of dissolution and rebirth. Discovering that we are capable of befriending the moment-to-moment actuality of our lives, openness awakens, self-defending loosens. We come to realize that contained within us is a generosity capable of embracing the sorrow and pain, joy and beauty of life.
Remorsefulness
“Like bees making honey,” the Sufi teacher, Hazrat Inayat Khan, reminds us that conscience is “the finest thing we can make.” In the guest house of remorsefulness, honesty and humility unfold as we begin to accept responsibility for our shortcomings and cultivate a conscience that encourages virtue to spring naturally from our hearts. Seeing deeply into our thoughts, emotions, and actions is self-revealing, illuminating aspects of our lives where our intentions, values, and actions are in need of greater alignment. Acknowledging our current limitations, feeling remorse, and asking forgiveness of those we have injured is humbling and relief-giving. Rather than engendering guilt and self-condemnation, appraising our own actions instead of those of others expresses and reflects our commitment to abandon our most conditioned and cherished ideas about ourselves, affirm our love of the truth, and bow to the divinity within us and everyone we meet along the way.
Needfulness
Rumi reminds us: “You must ask for what you really need.” We may imagine “need” as weakness. And yet...have you ever noticed how tender, soft, and courageous you are when you honor your most heartfelt needs? In the guest house of needfulness, we learn to revere our deepest desires and enter an intimate conversation with the one life from which they arise. Such devotion ignites within us a firelight capable of discerning what we really need. The ardency and evolutionary force of desire becomes palpable and trustworthy. Our need for a personal relationship with our indwelling spirit becomes clear, awakening and expanding our sense of who and what we are while encouraging the self-limiting sense of separateness to gradually fade away.
Openness
Enlivened by our faithful commitment to attention and awareness, the integrated realities of thankfulness, remorsefulness, and needfulness gives rise to presence – our sense of being increasingly embodied and awake. In the guesthouse of openness, the horizon of our view widens. As we relax more deeply, surrender more fully, and willingly offer up our hearts to be broken open, over and over again into their flowering, the sheer aliveness and unrestrained openness of awareness reveals itself. The treasure in our chest shines and pours forth. Tender and open, intimate and transparent to the light and life constantly flowing through us, the heart becomes a vessel of love.
Nearness
The way station of nearness transforms and satisfies us as the reality of a Divine, ever-embracing love becomes palpably and incontrovertibly alive. Like moth to flame, whatever that has come between us and the Beloved is consumed. Intimacy with life becomes a reality and an unending revelation.
The caravan rolls on...Walking the path of love, we come to know that our hearts are wide enough and brave enough to welcome the world. Love is born. Wisdom arises. The road expands endlessly…What first seemed to be a road turns out to be life itself. Wayfarers all, awake, we learn to inhabit our lives with a greater sense of ease, trust, and freedom while laying the foundation for the flowering of a just, global community of love, harmony, and beauty.
Testimonials
"I watched and learned from a master teacher. I found myself watching your demeanor as much as I tried to remember every word. You are a gifted teacher, Saki, a bright and shining example of the possibilities of mindfulness. I am indebted to you. Because of that, so are my students." - CW
