Idries Shah tells a dervish tale:
There was once a wise and very rich man who had a son.
He said to him: My son, here is a jeweled ring. Keep it is a sign that you are a successor of mine and pass it down to your posterity. It is of value, of fine appearance, and it has the added capacity of opening a certain door to wealth.
Some years later he had another son. When he was old enough the wise man gave him another ring with the same advice.
The same thing happened in the case of his third and last son.
When the Ancient had died and the sons grew up one after the other each claimed primacy for himself because of his possession of one of the rings. Nobody could tell for certain which was the most valuable.
Each son gained his adherents, all claiming a greater value and beauty for his own ring. But the curious thing was that the door to wealth remained shut for the possessors of the keys and even their closest supporters. They were all too preoccupied with the problem of precedence, the possession of the ring, its value and appearance.
Only a few looked for the door to the treasury of the Ancient. The rings had a magical quality too.
Although they were keys they were not used directly in opening the door to the treasury. It was sufficient to look upon them without contention or too much attachment to one or other of their qualities. When this had been done the people who had looked were able to tell where the treasury was and could open it merely by producing the outline of the ring.
The treasuries had another quality too: they were inexhaustible. Meanwhile the partisans of the three rings repeated the tales of their ancestors about the merits of the rings, each in a slightly different way.
The first community thought they had already found the treasure because they had the key. The second thought that it was allegorical and thereby consoled themselves. And the third transferred the possibility of opening the door to a distant and remotely imagined future time and therefore for them there was nothing to do at present.
There is every possibility for you also to belong to one of these three communities because anyone who begins to search s always prone to fall into the trap of any one of the three. Really, these are the three basic tricks the mind can play to save itself from meditation
So beware of these old tricks.
Meditation is the master key. It can open the doors of the infinite and it can unlock the mystery of the unknown. But just by possessing the key nothing is attained, unless one uses it.
There was once a wise and very rich man who had a son.
He said to him: My son, here is a jeweled ring. Keep it is a sign that you are a successor of mine and pass it down to your posterity. It is of value, of fine appearance, and it has the added capacity of opening a certain door to wealth.
Some years later he had another son. When he was old enough the wise man gave him another ring with the same advice.
The same thing happened in the case of his third and last son.
When the Ancient had died and the sons grew up one after the other each claimed primacy for himself because of his possession of one of the rings. Nobody could tell for certain which was the most valuable.
Each son gained his adherents, all claiming a greater value and beauty for his own ring. But the curious thing was that the door to wealth remained shut for the possessors of the keys and even their closest supporters. They were all too preoccupied with the problem of precedence, the possession of the ring, its value and appearance.
Only a few looked for the door to the treasury of the Ancient. The rings had a magical quality too.
Although they were keys they were not used directly in opening the door to the treasury. It was sufficient to look upon them without contention or too much attachment to one or other of their qualities. When this had been done the people who had looked were able to tell where the treasury was and could open it merely by producing the outline of the ring.
The treasuries had another quality too: they were inexhaustible. Meanwhile the partisans of the three rings repeated the tales of their ancestors about the merits of the rings, each in a slightly different way.
The first community thought they had already found the treasure because they had the key. The second thought that it was allegorical and thereby consoled themselves. And the third transferred the possibility of opening the door to a distant and remotely imagined future time and therefore for them there was nothing to do at present.
There is every possibility for you also to belong to one of these three communities because anyone who begins to search s always prone to fall into the trap of any one of the three. Really, these are the three basic tricks the mind can play to save itself from meditation
So beware of these old tricks.
Meditation is the master key. It can open the doors of the infinite and it can unlock the mystery of the unknown. But just by possessing the key nothing is attained, unless one uses it.
