Some years ago, I caught Benny Hinn on the TV. I don’t know why I stopped there when I was flipping around the channels, but I did stop, and Benny was talking about the Flood and what God commanded to Noah—using the same words that He did Adam—“to replenish the earth.” This was the first I had heard of this, so I sat there listening. Hinn was talking about, in Isaiah, where it mentions God turning the world on its side because those who populated it had angered Him, and Hinn, understandably, made the assumption that this must have happened before Adam, since there was no record of it in the interim. At which point, Hinn said: “And do you know who those people were, who were cast into darkness? DEMONS!”
At which point my engagement in Hinn’s story sort of faded.
I did stop to think, though, what it would be like, to be in Benny Hinn’s head. “Hmm. I think I’ll stop on the way home from work at Baskin-Robbin’s. I really like their chocolate—DEMONS! DEMONS TEMPTING ME WITH DELICIOUS ICE CREAM!!”
Hinn makes a demon of everything. And fights with them. It is, in fact, common to fight with demons, turning our temptations into them, struggling around. One does not get very far that way. It is, in fact, very close to idolatry. By making our temptations something to be wrestled with we turn away from God. Simply that. Most temptations come and go. There is nothing really wrong with them, per se. They just are. They come, they go. If one simply lets them come and go, and with that much of an attachment to them, then they press with considerably less weight than any other way. But blowing them out of proportion, it is no wonder we find ourselves so hard pressed to overcome them; we give them their strength.
The late Suleyman Loras, dede of the Mevlevi Order, said once: “There is no reason a relationship with God should be some trying task.” And he was right. There is no reason. The only obstacles in the way are of our own making, the only gauntlet is the one we erect between ourselves and the goal. I trusted God and I trusted my spirit and between the two of them, I felt the one could find its way back to the other if I just let it do so. I found that the more I allowed my spirit control, the easier things went, and the stronger it got. It was a process. Everything is a process. And it is a process that begins with prayer. Being prayerful.
One of the things I came to the hard way was understanding just what prayer was. It wasn’t an act or moment or spoken thing, but the nature of the moment. Various people all across the religious spectrum have, at one time or another, exhorted us, as Paul does, to “Pray unceasingly,” something that, when we hear it, we know is right, even if the concept strikes us as untenable. “Pray at such and such a time and so many times a day” is always a more laudable model, from our perspective, since we can be sure to do so and then go on with our lives without having impinged too greatly on them. Praying “unceasingly,” from our generally narrow and selfish point of view, would be an act that would devour our lives. And practiced as most people practice prayer, speaking and gesticulating a certain set of words and motions, that is true. It is entirely unworkable in that way. Which left me with something of a problem, since this was exactly what the Nimatullahi Order was expecting me to do.
One of the things that I found so interesting, when I began to look into the nature of Sufism and to practice it, was how much it seemed to me to resemble the act of creation (and in particular, the inspirational nature of it) that I had been practicing for a number of years prior to all of this. At that time, I didn’t realize that these things resembled one another because they were the same, but the model of what I did understand about the one was awfully helpful in understanding the other. What I found was that to create, it was best to empty myself in that moment, when I set down to work.
Keep in mind, I had no way of realizing why this worked; it just did work and that was good enough for me. But what I was doing, in those years of practice, practice both writing and impelling that inspiration (and here I would like to interject that that practice was a constant, difficult work. Fulfilling, in its way, but very very difficult. People always seem to want some sort of shortcut, which is impossible. Practicing writing or practicing Sufism, both were enormously demanding,) was becoming a good instrument. By that, I guess a good comparison would be when you are just playing the guitar, freely, and the compulsion of a tune comes on and you follow it along, but suddenly, the note you want to play next is one you don’t know how to perform; knowing how to play every note, every intonation, and that automatically, makes you a good instrument. It allows the inspiration to work its way through you and through the guitar, allowing that inspiration to play you. This was how I approached writing, even though there were added layers of work involved that could not (at least not by me) be handled the same way; as much of the work as I could perform in that way, the better everything seemed to be and the farther along I progressed. All art can be handled in this way—there are particular logistical problems to each discipline, and how each artist handles those problems—but, at the core of it, it is all the same. For me, however, this was art, though, not Everything Else. And how, at the time, it connected with prayer, was still a long way distant.
I clung to that common definition of prayer for a long time. I was engaging in other things at that point, and they seemed to have great and immediate benefits, which, compared to prayer (as I defined it at the time,) prayer was looking to be a bad investment. I took a long look at it, especially the question of its function and utility. It was in that that I realized that everything I was doing was prayer.
Everything has its ground, its aspect, and, as I was moving along, the more I began to realize that the important part of those things is that nature, that aspect, because those are the Names of those things through which we impel their appearance. Prayer is a sacred moment, and the sacred has an aspect: this is what we are called to do, in prayer, to impel the sacred and in that moment, on our knees, surrender to it. The words and the gestures are part of an act to begin that process, but those words and motions have no meaning but what we impart to them ourselves, towards the sacred. Because of this, they can be utilized or dispensed with entirely. To be “prayerful” is to be in that state of surrender, before the sacred. One can induce that surrender, through a “moment of prayer,” but from there, one can maintain that surrender, all through the day. Stopping, throughout the day, to pray again is very helpful to support that state of surrender but not absolutely necessary. Practice makes it possible to maintain it, unceasingly.
What that surrender is is the same as “being a good instrument,” an empty place in which the sacred can manifest itself within you, but only through that surrender. The method and means are very much the same as the “inspirational approach” to creating, and it is easy to see, at that point, how one can approach everything one does, in their entire life, in that way. Praying unceasingly.
At which point my engagement in Hinn’s story sort of faded.
I did stop to think, though, what it would be like, to be in Benny Hinn’s head. “Hmm. I think I’ll stop on the way home from work at Baskin-Robbin’s. I really like their chocolate—DEMONS! DEMONS TEMPTING ME WITH DELICIOUS ICE CREAM!!”
Hinn makes a demon of everything. And fights with them. It is, in fact, common to fight with demons, turning our temptations into them, struggling around. One does not get very far that way. It is, in fact, very close to idolatry. By making our temptations something to be wrestled with we turn away from God. Simply that. Most temptations come and go. There is nothing really wrong with them, per se. They just are. They come, they go. If one simply lets them come and go, and with that much of an attachment to them, then they press with considerably less weight than any other way. But blowing them out of proportion, it is no wonder we find ourselves so hard pressed to overcome them; we give them their strength.
The late Suleyman Loras, dede of the Mevlevi Order, said once: “There is no reason a relationship with God should be some trying task.” And he was right. There is no reason. The only obstacles in the way are of our own making, the only gauntlet is the one we erect between ourselves and the goal. I trusted God and I trusted my spirit and between the two of them, I felt the one could find its way back to the other if I just let it do so. I found that the more I allowed my spirit control, the easier things went, and the stronger it got. It was a process. Everything is a process. And it is a process that begins with prayer. Being prayerful.
One of the things I came to the hard way was understanding just what prayer was. It wasn’t an act or moment or spoken thing, but the nature of the moment. Various people all across the religious spectrum have, at one time or another, exhorted us, as Paul does, to “Pray unceasingly,” something that, when we hear it, we know is right, even if the concept strikes us as untenable. “Pray at such and such a time and so many times a day” is always a more laudable model, from our perspective, since we can be sure to do so and then go on with our lives without having impinged too greatly on them. Praying “unceasingly,” from our generally narrow and selfish point of view, would be an act that would devour our lives. And practiced as most people practice prayer, speaking and gesticulating a certain set of words and motions, that is true. It is entirely unworkable in that way. Which left me with something of a problem, since this was exactly what the Nimatullahi Order was expecting me to do.
One of the things that I found so interesting, when I began to look into the nature of Sufism and to practice it, was how much it seemed to me to resemble the act of creation (and in particular, the inspirational nature of it) that I had been practicing for a number of years prior to all of this. At that time, I didn’t realize that these things resembled one another because they were the same, but the model of what I did understand about the one was awfully helpful in understanding the other. What I found was that to create, it was best to empty myself in that moment, when I set down to work.
Keep in mind, I had no way of realizing why this worked; it just did work and that was good enough for me. But what I was doing, in those years of practice, practice both writing and impelling that inspiration (and here I would like to interject that that practice was a constant, difficult work. Fulfilling, in its way, but very very difficult. People always seem to want some sort of shortcut, which is impossible. Practicing writing or practicing Sufism, both were enormously demanding,) was becoming a good instrument. By that, I guess a good comparison would be when you are just playing the guitar, freely, and the compulsion of a tune comes on and you follow it along, but suddenly, the note you want to play next is one you don’t know how to perform; knowing how to play every note, every intonation, and that automatically, makes you a good instrument. It allows the inspiration to work its way through you and through the guitar, allowing that inspiration to play you. This was how I approached writing, even though there were added layers of work involved that could not (at least not by me) be handled the same way; as much of the work as I could perform in that way, the better everything seemed to be and the farther along I progressed. All art can be handled in this way—there are particular logistical problems to each discipline, and how each artist handles those problems—but, at the core of it, it is all the same. For me, however, this was art, though, not Everything Else. And how, at the time, it connected with prayer, was still a long way distant.
I clung to that common definition of prayer for a long time. I was engaging in other things at that point, and they seemed to have great and immediate benefits, which, compared to prayer (as I defined it at the time,) prayer was looking to be a bad investment. I took a long look at it, especially the question of its function and utility. It was in that that I realized that everything I was doing was prayer.
Everything has its ground, its aspect, and, as I was moving along, the more I began to realize that the important part of those things is that nature, that aspect, because those are the Names of those things through which we impel their appearance. Prayer is a sacred moment, and the sacred has an aspect: this is what we are called to do, in prayer, to impel the sacred and in that moment, on our knees, surrender to it. The words and the gestures are part of an act to begin that process, but those words and motions have no meaning but what we impart to them ourselves, towards the sacred. Because of this, they can be utilized or dispensed with entirely. To be “prayerful” is to be in that state of surrender, before the sacred. One can induce that surrender, through a “moment of prayer,” but from there, one can maintain that surrender, all through the day. Stopping, throughout the day, to pray again is very helpful to support that state of surrender but not absolutely necessary. Practice makes it possible to maintain it, unceasingly.
What that surrender is is the same as “being a good instrument,” an empty place in which the sacred can manifest itself within you, but only through that surrender. The method and means are very much the same as the “inspirational approach” to creating, and it is easy to see, at that point, how one can approach everything one does, in their entire life, in that way. Praying unceasingly.
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