Secret Friends: The Ramblings of a Madman in Search of a Soul
H.M. Forester
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Only later – much, much later, and after losing all hope and undergoing a seemingly interminable Dark Night of the Soul – would Louie begin to see how Shah’s own work tied in with others. Not only among Sufis, nor in the general fields of spirituality and mysticism, nor in the work of Shah’s own family, friends of Shah, and friends of friends of Shah, and people who quoted people quoting Shah, but in diverse fields and in the town’s marketplace, mucky alleyways and smoke-clouded taverns of everyday life. That was a whole new vista, a continent beyond Shah’s own island – vast, exotic, and apparently self-contained as it had been, and yet not all and everything. Looking back, this wonderful caravanserai had been a very necessary, and much loved, step or two along the way.”
“More recently, we’ve reached the lowest common denominator, and populism, politics and media have dispensed with old-fashioned values such as truth, honour and chivalry, to the point of arguing, in an Orwellian way, that “up is down”, “wrong is right”, and “truth is fake news”.”
“It’s not simply a matter of accumulating data points, though in the early stages there is a necessity to take the raw material on-board. If anything, rather than carrying a large inventory, knowledge arrives “just in time”, without the expensive overhead of warehousing, in response to the needs of time, place, people and circumstances.”
“As well as this, there were of course many sceptics and detractors, not only of Shah but of his students and his would-be or wanna-be students. They’d say things like “You’ve been studying for – what? – 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. And where has it got got you, eh? Eh? Nowhere.” And there really was no answer to that, other than to simply try to show a good example, and hope that some might sense subtle signs of progress having been made. But no: they wanted to see Gandalf with his whizz-bangs. Unlike Rabia, we couldn’t magically produce an onion out of thin air – an incontrovertible act – and later retort: “What? Do you think that God is a greengrocer, or something?”
“°I quite distinctly heard you mulling it over, and my own ears seldom deceive me. But anyway, that’s beside the point. The reason that you are kept waiting – and this is just one “for instance” out of many other possible examples – is that what you see and experience is a reflection in the outer world of you keeping yourself and others waiting. It’s as if a mirror had been held up to your own face. Please excuse the vernacular, but if you really had your shit together as you think you have, Louie, then you wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. It’s as simple – and yet currently difficult – as that.°”
“°Fake it till you make it,° the inner voice advised. °I mean it. As long as you remember that you are consciously acting, you can play the As If experiment. Act “as if ...” you are relaxed and confident in social positions. Act “as if ...” you really know . I don’t mean acting in a superior manner or bragging; just that you adopt a more positive attitude to life and to your newfound studies.°”
“This, then, was Night School. And, other than [Idries] Shah and his work colleague, the only other person Louie knew by name at that time, since she had made a special point of him seeing her name neatly embroidered across the neckline of her clothes, and spelling it out in a dream, was Eugenie. It was, perhaps, a play on the words “You Genie”. And for the first time, Louie did wonder whether or not this might be the lady behind his inner voice, whom he’d previously pencilled in as “X” for want of a better name.”
“This is the Moment of Truth right here and now and there is no room for ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ and ‘maybes’. Unless you are with us, we cannot help you, so get on board while we still have a chance.”
“I think that this idea, that the materials and self work can take you far enough for other things to kick in, was [Idries] Shah’s innovation, his “big gamble”, to fit a 21st century community of which very few would actually have physical contact with a living teacher.”
“Have you come across a phenomenon which we might call “parallel conversations” before? What do I mean by that? I mean where one thing can be said at a rational and everyday level, and yet something else, some other message or signal, modulates that basic carrier wave. ... [S]omeone might use a metaphor or a common saying (either knowingly or unconsciously) such as “There's no point in mending fences while the wind s up”, which might rationally fit in with a physical task that they were carrying out at home over the weekend, and yet might convey other meanings to whomever they were talking to.”
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Book Keywords:
reflections-and-wisdom, hidden-meaning, dreams, post-truth, rabia, fake-news, self-work, orwellian, sufism, idries-shah, esp, psyche, genius, learning, depth-psychology, moment-of-truth, secret-friends, psi-fi, sufi-way, fake-it-till-you-make-it, sufis, truth, metaphor, positive-thinking, as-if-experiment, knowledge
