By Ross Bishop
The author of this story is not known to us. This version is from Awad Afifi, of Tunisia, from about 1870. It was translated by Sir Farifax L. Cartwright and published in The Mystic Rose from The Garden of the King, in 1899.
As with all Sufi teachings, this allegorical story is made to illustrate some aspect of our journey towards Oneness. It speaks to the trials and struggles we all face. This particular allegory addresses clinging to the ego and hanging on to what we are familiar with and our all too human reluctance to surrender to the inevitable. If you take the time to look beneath the surface, you will find a good deal of deeper meaning.
A stream, happily tumbling down from its source in the far-off mountains, passing through every kind and description of countryside, at last reached the sands of the desert. Having crossed many barriers on its long journey from the mountain top, the stream was confident that it would be able to cross the sands without much difficulty. Yet try as it might, it could not find a way across. It found that as fast as it ran into the sand, its waters disappeared. It was in a difficult situation.
As the stream wondered what to do next, it heard a sound, which if truth be known, it found rather startling. The hidden voice, coming from the desert itself, whispered, “The wind crosses the desert, and so can the stream.”
The stream objected that it was dashing itself against the sand and only getting absorbed; that the wind could fly, and this was why it could cross a desert.
The voice continued, “By hurtling in your own accustomed way you cannot get across. You’ll disappear if you carry on dashing yourself upon the sands. Allow the wind to carry you.”
“Carry me?” thought the stream. “How can the wind carry me?”
The voice responded, “By allowing yourself to be absorbed into the wind.”
This idea was not acceptable to the stream. After all, it had never been absorbed before. “How can I know that this is true?” It did not want to lose its individuality. “I don’t know what will happen. There is no guarantee that what you are telling me is true.” And, once having lost itself, how was it to know that it could ever be regained? “Can I not remain the same stream that I am today?”
The voice said, “It is simply so. If you don’t let the wind carry you, put simply, you will be absorbed by the sands until there is not a single drop of you left. Why else is this known as the desert?”
“The voice continued, “Your problem is that you are not aware of your essential nature. If you knew that, you would happily rise up into the arms of the wind. So you have a choice, you can either take a leap of faith and believe that what I am telling you is true, or you can carry on as you are, in which case, I am sorry to say, you will cease to exist.”
“The wind,” said the sand, “performs this function. It takes up water, carries it over the desert, and then lets it fall again. Falling as rain, the water again becomes a river.”
When he heard this, certain echoes began to arise in the thoughts of the stream. Memories began to surface, accompanied by a strange yet not unfamiliar sensation and, eventually, a realization that, yes, it had indeed once before been held in the arms of the wind.
And so, the stream, slowly at first, began to stop thrashing and writhing about in its attempt to cross the sands. It became still and with a leap of faith, the stream let go and began to raise as a vapor into the welcoming arms of the wind, which gently and easily bore it upwards until it reached a mountain, at the far side of the desert, where it fell softly to the ground as rain. Then it became a stream again and ran down towards the ocean. The stream was able to remember and record more strongly in its mind the details of the experience and reflected, “Now I have learned my true identity.”
Its patience was rewarded and just as the voice had whispered:“We know, because we see it happen every day, because we, the sands, extend from the riverside all the way to the mountains.”
And that is why it is said:
“The way of the journey of the stream of life, is written in the sands.”
If you study Sufi teachings you learn very quickly that “You can’t get there from here” (my words). In Sufi belief, the struggles of this world exist to bring us to the realization that the beliefs (especially the ones we hold about ourselves) that we have been operating from our whole lives, are false – all of them.
Giving our beliefs up is called “fanaa” and is known as the “passing away” or “annihilation of the self.” Fanaa means “to die before one dies.” It is interpreted as a recognition of the will of God, or the abandonment of being conscious of one’s self, replacing this with contemplation on God alone. Having achieved that realization, we then become ready to accept (transform) to a higher truth about who we really are. And that brings us to the experiential recognition of Oneness and the simultaneous recognition of our seamless identity with Oneness.
“ . . . and thus the stream returned the great ocean.”
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