Nurturing Nobility & Dignity

Supporting commitment to truth and transformation

Profane – “outside the temple” – not sacred.

When the profane enters the temple, what is the impact – on the teaching, the students, and transmission?

The journey from the profane (debased and indignity) to the sacred (nobility & dignity) is challenging, paradoxical, and often a dance – two steps forward and one step back. This journey is mostly a process of refinement, distillation, and clarification – a purification.

Rending the veils of obscuration can quickly take us two steps forward. At the same time, the transformation into real action may feel like one step back as we engage the work to embody realization (this is discussed in Hameed’s book – The Alchemy of Freedom – as the dialectic between awakening and transformation).

Whether it’s the cha-cha, a waltz, or the tango, there is something elegant and fluid in ‘Masters of the Dance.’ So it is with transforming life from the profane to the sacred. Nobility & dignity reveal themselves in a clarified soul.

Nobility and dignity aren’t based on following codes of behavior or morality. True nobility and the deep dignity of the transformed and transparent ego/soul present themselves as love of truth in action.

Life is to be lived with the integrity, dignity, and self-respect of a person who knows that the point is not whether something feels good or bad. The point is not to lose your self-respect, not to abandon your true reality, the highest and purest elements within you. Regardless of how wonderful things are and regardless of how painful things are, your self-respect is strong enough to maintain your sense of integrity. That integrity does not mean having your way, or winning or succeeding or anything like that. It means being sincere about who you are and acting in ways that reflect your essential human values.

Having self-respect, self-consideration, and self-love means doing and learning whatever is needed to maintain that integrity and self-respect. It means that if something needs to be learned, you go ahead and learn it; if something needs to be done, you go ahead and do it; and if something needs to be said, you go ahead and say it. To have self-respect and integrity means not complaining about how things are. It means acting towards others with respect and consideration regardless of what you feel. Having self-respect means that even if you are dying, you are still considerate and respectful towards yourself and other people, because who you are is much more important than whether you are going to die. It is much more important than whether you’ are losing your business or losing your boyfriend or girlfriend. Human dignity is much more precious than any of these things.   Diamond Heart Book Four: Indestructible Innocence

• How can we help nurture nobility and dignity in ourselves and others?
• What can we ‘do’ to support the transformation from the profane to the sacred?

Adab is a Support fo Nobility & Dignity

Adab (mannerliness – spiritual courtesy; respect; appropriate behavior) is used in the terminology of Sufism to defend against errors and to distinguish the factors leading to errors. The practice of right living, both in relation to the task at hand and in relation to others and relation to the environment, is adab.

“Adab is a way to walk the path with the correct attitude and true courtesy. On the deepest level, adab is the attitude of the soul before God, the way the soul bows down before its Lord with the utmost respect and then lives that respect in the outer and inner worlds. It is a way of being with God in one’s actions and behavior” – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee.

Adab is not a formal or imposed pattern of behavior like manners, which may differ according to different social or cultural standards. Still, it comes from an inner attitude, which expresses itself naturally in outer behavior. It is an expression of the real nobility of the human spirit.

Many values of this era cultivate self-interest instead of real nobility of character and appear to foster disrespect rather than ways of developing and practicing respect.

Aadab refers to how our realization is expressed in our conduct in our life, how true nature appears in our behavior – the effect of this is right living, conduct according to the truth. Adab is a way to work on ourselves to exercise our capacity to express and embody true nature – conducting ourselves in a way that supports the growing realization of true nature even when it is not yet realized –  ways of behaving that help us remember who and what we are.

The Adab is a subset of the Citadel teaching. The citadel has to do with the way of life that supports the path and the truth. It is also the teaching about the environment, time and space, and how to conduct oneself in relation to others. So of course, since the meeting place, center or temple, is the primary place where the path is practiced it is most important that we put this teaching into practice.

 Adab literally means right conduct. And of course, this depends on the situation and people. But it includes how you arrange your environment and surrounding, and whatever else needed for supporting the truth and the practices of the path that expresses the truth.

It is an expression of putting our realization into action. – A. H. Almaas

Adab makes us aware of the importance of everything we do. We are aware and thus responsible for our every movement.

It is important to review our thinking to see if we respect, honor, and value ourselves. Does how we portray ourselves match the origin of what we really are? Some conduct supports us being more open and aligned with true nature, and other behavior tends to close us, or others, up.

To journey toward True Nature, we need to reclaim what it really means to be a human being: our nobility of spirit. This is a journey from the world of the profane, and our lower nature to a life lived from the deeper qualities of the soul, the sacred. It is a way to behave that embodies the inner nobility of the path.

We live in a culture that mostly does not support these values and seeks to pull us further into forgetfulness. That is why we need the company of friends, those who share these qualities of heart, whose adab assists us on our journey, just as our good nature brings light to all around us.

Inner adab is an affirmation of the qualities of our own soul and the real dignity within us. It has to do with a deep respect for the divine that is within our own hearts as well as within all of life. If we can live this respect for the divine, we will find a natural way of being that nourishes our souls and the souls of those with whom we interact.

My interest in compiling these thoughts on adab came from discussing the responsibility for the care and maintenance of our meeting space. I found myself reflecting on the many, many occasions of “lack of adab” I witness and commit at the weekends and retreats I attend.

Can we, as a community, find a means for a more proactive, participatory adab practice? When we call to attention in ourselves and others’ behavior that does not align with our code of conduct (silence in the sanctuary, being mindful of caring for our physical space, etc.), does it not serve all of us and the teaching?

John Harper is a teacher of the Diamond Approach living in Folsom, CA.