Do We Need God to Do and Be Good? The Answer Is No, Up to A Certain Point
By Kabir Helminski
August 14, 2020
Excerpted from the forthcoming
In the House of Remembering, The Living Tradition of
Sufi Teaching, by Kabir Helminski
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I was talking to somebody recently who, with a good heart,
said, “I have no need for religion. I know what is right and what is wrong.” I
didn’t comment or argue, but, actually, this brings up some very important
subjects.
Do we need God? Do we need God to do and be good? The answer
is no, up to a certain point. You can do good without God. You can be kind,
generous, respectful, and sensitive to other human beings without bringing God
into it. What’s the significance of bringing God into it?
First of all, my sense is that people are led to various
religions and mystical traditions by a yearning from within. Something in them
feels unfulfilled. It’s like an inner drive or hunger. It’s not, “I want to
follow a religion so I can be a good person.” Or maybe it’s more a sense of “I
don’t want to just be at home. I want to be together with others. I feel like I
need to be in a holy place.” There is something more than just being nice,
kind, and all of that. There’s a deeper yearning operating within humans who
undertake a spiritual practice. There is something else calling us. These
things are part of a bigger whole.
The second aspect is that what we mean by “religion” is a
reality that calls to us from a higher level. It is aspirational and
transformational. Throughout history we see that people have not been very good
to each other. Something else has been needed. Muhammad said: “Verily, Allah when
He created the creation, He personally prescribed for himself, that: ‘My mercy
prevails over My wrath.’” This gives us what we need. It provides a sense of
something that is good. It is better than how we are. The soul longs for a
state of perfection. It’s an ideal that is also timeless and spaceless. It
includes the ultimate freedom to just expand, to merge with all that is. It’s a
bit like meditation. We long for something that is ideally free, beautiful,
good, and generous. This longing contrasts with our limited self. If we’re
honest and conscious, this self is not always quite like that.
We spend much of our time doing what we want to do, or doing
what we have to do to attain some desires of the self in the short or long
term. In other words, we are always at the center of our own choices, we follow
our own desires, and there is little that we feel answerable to.
Most of the time, it’s our ego, or nafs, that is pulling us
by the forelock here and there. We see ourselves sent in more directions than
we can possibly go. We ask the question, “Which of the many impulses of my own
ego will I follow? I can’t follow them all.” That’s the big struggle. The real
question is: What is to be attained by following our own nafs? To say, “I have
no need for religion,” is to say that I’m satisfied following myself, above
all. And what is attained by following a traditional teaching, especially one
like Sufism that is grounded in a lineage of enlightened and morally
exceptional human beings?
The spiritual path, the path of transformation, is about
following something other than our own whims and desires, even when these are
within a basic moral structure. With a practice like ours, you are able to
break the unconscious momentum of your self’s activities. You are able to come
into the center of your being and be there, face-to-face, with the Divine. You
learn to love that. There’s always a continual relationship between these two
elements: the limited, imperfect part of ourselves and the eternal, pure part.
The self, in a way, is blessed by that unconditioned pure being. It is nurtured
and transformed by it because that part of ourselves is intimate with the
Divine.
Spiritual practice can also be undertaken with ambition, in
a self-serving way. It can be done with an unconscious ego sense of “I want to
gain something for myself.” That’s not the best way to approach a spiritual
practice, but no one’s intentions are totally pure, free of self-interest. And
ultimately the spiritual path is more in your self-interest than unconsciously
following the demands of the ego. But the point is that we are practicing for
the sake of something that gradually frees us from many forms of psychological
tyranny—the tyranny of the ego, the tyranny of unconsciously needing to please
others, of conforming to the worldly values around us.
There’s a transformative power that exists in the nature of
Reality. There is something that can almost miraculously transform human
beings. We need that. It’s within ourselves, yes, but not as our selves. It is
not there as an object. This is a subtle, metaphysical distinction.
To invite God into a conversation is to open the door of
mystery and possibility. It is not about an exchange between two people, with
the thought of “I’ll do this for you, maybe someday you’ll do it for me.” It
has nothing to do with expectation. It’s not a quid pro quo. It’s something
entirely of a different order and unpredictable.
And so on the spiritual path we choose to give a certain
amount of time and effort to be in the company of the Divine consciously and
intentionally. It’s appropriate to have, as we have in our tradition, times of
the day dedicated to this. There are times when we make an effort to bring
ourselves into the presence of God. In our tradition there is a physical effort
involved in worship—the postures of bowing and prostration during salaat, or
the practice of turning.[1] There’s a “doing,” not just a “being” in Sufi
spiritual practice. It’s “doing” with “being.” The physical efforts in the
ritual prayer also are done in time. We undertake the ritual prayers at the
times indicated, following what we believe to be a heavenly ordained pattern,
not merely at our convenience, not just when we want to.
Yet we’re really quite free. We have much time to do what we
want to do. We also have some time we must reserve for our relationship with
the Divine. How much is “a little bit of time”? Is it five minutes or an hour?
These are small periods of time compared to the 24 hours that are in a day.
Someone says,
“I must provide for my family.
I have to work so hard to earn a
living.”
He can do without God,
but not without food;
he can do without Religion,
but not without idols.
Where is one who’ll say,
“If I eat a piece of bread
without awareness of God,
I will choke.”
[Rumi, Masnavi II, 3071–79, from The Pocket Rumi, translated
by K&C Helminski]
We fool ourselves by saying we don’t have time for spiritual
practice. Take care of ourselves, our hearts, our souls. There is a story in
Rumi’s Masnavi [2] about the relativity of our sense of time and the urgency
needed to spur us on in this work:
Once there was a man who planted a thorn bush in the middle
of the lane outside his home. Those who passed along that way complained to him
about the inconvenience it caused, but he did nothing about it. All the while
the thorn bush was growing bigger; the people’s feet were bleeding from its
pricks. People’s clothes were torn by the thorns, and the poor passers-by were
getting nasty scratches.
“Root it up!” the governor told him.
“Very well, one day I will root it up,” the man replied.
So for a long while he promised “tomorrow” and “tomorrow”;
meanwhile his thorn bush grew strong and thrived.
“Stop procrastinating,” said the governor to him one day,
“and finish the job. Remove this hazard.”
“There is still plenty of time, uncle,” the man answered.
“No, hurry up at once,” cried the governor. “Stop postponing
the work.”
Commenting on the story, Rumi says: “Blessed is he who
profits from the days of youth to settle debts, in the days when there is still
the power, the health, and strength of heart and vigor; before the days of old
age arrive, when the roots of bad habits are firmly established, and the power
to pull them up is diminished.”
Don’t put it off, don’t wait too long. When we truly commit
ourselves to a spiritual path and practice, something in reality rises up to
support us. The destiny of what we’re designed to be becomes real, and the fate
of unconscious behaviors is avoided. Or, even if not avoided, our mistakes
become learning experiences, blessed by some invisible Mercy. As Yunus Emre
said, “Ever since the glance of the mature fell upon me, nothing has been a
misfortune.”
[1] A specific Mevlevi
practice, also known as whirling.
[2] Rumi’s six volume work
of didactic poetry, also written as Mathnawi.
Original Headline: What Do We Need a Spiritual Path For?
Source: The
Patheos