Dying to One's Self

"In the outer world we are so caught in duality, in separation from God, that we don't even know how we hunger for oneness," writes Sufi teacher, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee. "We have forgotten that we belong to God and that He is our own essential nature, the core of our being."

"But there are those in whom this memory is awakened," he points out, "and, like the moth attracted by the candle, they are drawn into the fire of love, the fire that will burn away their own separate self, until all that remains is love."

"Judge the moth by the quality of its candle," Rumi advises.

"The Sufis," Vaughan-Lee tells us, "have been known as the people of the secret because they carry this secret of love, the oneness of lover and Beloved."

"Jesus was lost in his love for God," Rumi points out, "while his donkey was drunk with barley."

"Inwardly," Vaughan-Lee warns, "the cost of realizing oneness is always oneself."

"In the fire of love we are burnt, and through this burning the ego learns to surrender, to die to its own nature of supremacy. . . . In this ultimate love affair we die to ourself, and this death is a painful process, because the ego, the "I," does not easily give up its notion of supremacy."

[Llewelllyn Vaughan Lee, "Love Is a Fire: The Sufi's Mystical Journey Home," pp. 8-9.]