Many years ago, sitting on a small hill in Central Australia I watched as a distant dust trail inched its way across the vast red expanse, stretching towards the horizon and low mountain ranges. Perhaps half an hour passed as it gradually became clear that what I was watching was the steady progress of a motor vehicle and then it occurred to me that what I was also watching was someone’s ‘timeline’, etched in the rising cloud of dust, hanging in the still air. Ahead, through the windscreen, their future as yet untravelled; behind, the billowing clouds of dust, their past, still clinging, visible, in the still morning air and where they sat, behind the wheel, their present moment. For a brief time, their lives were exposed, should they care to look in the rear view mirror. I wondered if they looked.
My place of viewing a kind of bird’s eye view of someone’s personal history unfurling before me, was a kind of mini-god’s eye view of a life, out there, on the red plains of Central Australia. For a brief time I was Janus, the ancient two faced god of doorways, presiding over past and future; one face turned to the past, one toward the future, with where I sat the present. But who watches over the watcher? Our history, personal and otherwise, tells us something; it contributes not only to our story, but to the life we may live, in the future. It is something, perhaps not everything, but of value none-the-less, and Janus, that two faced god of the Romans reminds us of this fact. But Janus has two faces; one looks backwards, one forward. Did it occur to the Romans that where he sat in relation to these two directions was also important – perhaps the most important feature of all – the present moment? As the deity of doorways, he was also invoked at the beginning of things, so perhaps they did!
In Australian Aboriginal culture ‘Songlines’ form the backbone that is invoked during Initiation ceremonies, giving voice to the knowledge of where the participants fit into the tapestry of events as they unfold. I remember once sitting with a group of old men ‘singing’ during an important ceremony, part of the transition of boys into men. I sat in the dark on the red sand under a carpet of stars, listening as events unfolded around me, meditating. At a certain point my reverie was interrupted by the ceremonial leader of the ‘Business Men’, who whispered to me that I should “sing” too! My presence could not be that of merely an observer! But what was I to sing? I couldn’t sing in their language even if I knew it, which I certainly didn’t, much less could I ‘tell’ any part of their ‘story’ which was unfolding before me. Anyone who has heard traditional voices raised in singing their country would immediately be aware of its hypnotic, rhythmic nature, how much more so in this setting, sitting on the red sand in the warm late night air of the Tanami Desert with a group of men who were reproducing a culture that had existed – for the most part uninterrupted – for tens of thousands of years. What was I to sing? Why – the sounds of the rhythm of their own voices echoing back to them. So I did (however appalling it may have been!). As a ‘Jakamarra’ – a “skin name” I had been given on arrival in the Northern Territory desert country to the West of Alice Springs (Pintupi) – they knew who I was and where I fitted in, only I remained in the dark, so-to-speak!
We carry lots of baggage that we are unaware of on our journey through life. Sometimes this baggage serves us, at other times it weighs us down slowing our progress. What to take with us? What to leave behind? It is not every day that we are put on the spot as it were; asked to make such a decision: what to leave, what to keep. According to Hazrat Inayat Khan, the aspirant wishing to step out on the Sufi path needs to be clear on this point. Unfinished business needs to be attended to; ‘debts’ paid; obligations met; supplies for the journey laid-up. Understanding that the ‘Path of Return’ is a long and arduous one and that having to keep starting again, were we to be called back to attend to stuff overlooked, can only make the journey even harder than is necessary, and is an important part of this preparation.
We cannot always know our endings from our beginnings. Indeed, we are often lucky if we are blessed to know the first few steps ahead. Inayat Khan’s words are therefore ‘patterns’ not ‘templates’ to be rigidly followed. Few indeed are those who can place their hands over their hearts and claim to have fully complied with his dictum, to be fully free before one starts on this journey. Much of what we need to know, we must discover on the road as we journey on. Somehow we begin to understand – often enough through our own hubris – that someone ‘watches over the watcher’. And then we can learn the lesson of trust, not in ourselves initially, but in those that went before.
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Ibn ‘Arabi, during his ascension stopped at the ‘station of Aaron,’ the brother of Moses, and there he found Yahya [John the Baptist], who had already reached this station before him.
‘So I said to [Yahya]: “I didn’t see you on my path: is there some other path there?”
And he replied: “Each person has a path, that no one else but he travels.”
I said: “then where are they, these [different] paths?” Then he answered: “They come to be through the travelling itself.”
(The Meccan Revelations: Ibn al ‘Arabi, Vol 1 Ed Chodkiewicz, M. Trans. Chittick, W.C. & Morris, J.W. Pir Press, New York, 2005, Ibn ‘Arabi’s Spiritual Ascension James W. Morris, p223) u>��Mo
Tracks in a Pathless Land 