The Path of Attainment And The Interpretation of Desire

I was recently introduced to a phrase donned the Path of Attainment, which comes up in the work of Hazrat Inayat Kahn. The Path of Attainment has cadence with the law of attraction, but is, in my reading of it, more philosophically nuanced and developed, while cutting down on much of the magical thinking ruts intrinsic to the Law of Attraction (LOA). While the Law of Attraction is often captured by a desire for gainful possession of some kind, the Path of Attainment emphasizes the pursuit of a fundamental attitude towards life conducive to personal fulfillment and self-realization. In doing such, it opens up a path for the attainment of that which endures, versus that which is merely reflective of genuine happiness and which is transient. But, this isn’t to say that the Path of Attainment discourages the range of transient pursuits — but that these pursuits righty guided can be the catalyst towards that which does endure. Its methodology might be stated through the dictum “the apparent is the bridge to the real”. The lack of a condescending attitude towards materialism feels welcome to me. The law of attraction on its own feels like a bastardized version of this.

The following quote is starting to feel particularly alive to me in this respect: “You can have anything in this world — anything at all. But there is always a price, and the price is always the same: You must become the kind of person who has that thing.”

That feels cozy to me right now. The sense conveyed to me is that the attainment of the object is secondary to the process itself, what that process draws out for you. As far as education is concerned, that’s the real deal, since the intrinsic meaning of education etymologically translates to “drawing out”.

I have been considering what attainments are worth “drawing out” for me. The trick is you have to really want it. It has to matter. There’s the sense of a desire for the attainment of material wealth, sure, but I think that is not “the desire” per se, but merely a projection towards an unfulfilled need. How a choice surrounding what desires are worth cultivating, instead, is based on the movements of the spiritual heart. This is emphasized within the teaching under question since it is the spiritual heart is also the organ of fulfillment.

At this moment, my heart sings to the notion of Belonging. There’s a meaning-field within this question of belonging that discloses itself to me, which I have described in a previous entry. This belonging-sense conjures up thought-forms associated with memories and dreams. These are practical reference points but are regarded as secondary.

To orient one’s inner compass towards the care of what matters most is at the heart of this exercise. To go a little deeper, it is to hold that which makes those moments precious without adhering foremost to form. The form is the bridge that crosses you to the Essence.

What is asked for in the interpretation of desire is the surrender of any particular form of manifestation that emerges, without forcing a particular projection onto reality. Ultimately that won’t work, or merely produce short-term gains. The casual implications are worth nothing here as well: anything that is produced from hope or fear alone is going to bite back, karmically speaking. What is asked for, I believe, is a flow-faith that is distinct from hope. As I have mentioned elsewhere, the concept of hope is not very liked by me, as it feels like a narcotic, its lifeforce often being fueled by fear. Flow-fatih, however, as distinct from the hope drug, and from dogmatic belief, feels to be more akin to the retrieval of a gainful aspiration acted out in the excellency of one’s character. That is, it sculpts your personhood without regard for the material attachment to the object itself. To “become the kind of person who has that thing”.

For myself, the object of concentration on this path is the kind of Belonging-sense that resonates into and gains feedback from singing heart. The invocation of the Imangianl may very well amplify this harmonic, so imagery is actually kind of important — but what is crucial is the harmonic, and that its essence is sustained. This is, in a very real sense, a magical practice, but in a different kind of way.

I’m noticing a downstream effect from starting with my desire as “belonging”. How does one “be” the kind of person who has belonging? To BE longing? What kind of choices does this person blossom out in their lives? What do they express? I’m noticing that this sequential kind of thinking is only faintly useful. I’m considering what it means to be-long within myself. I know that when the harmonic is ringing, I can know directly and intuitively what expressions to blossom out in my life. But If I am merely stating a proposition while the harmonic is absent, I would be merely propagating habits forcefully without the pathos, having lost before beginning.

I feel like this trap looms large in the Law-Of-Attraction space. The remedy, as I see it, to this is dilemma is broken down and made simple in the Path of Attainment. In the Path of Attainment (which is really just a shorthand for an analogy of transmutation —nothing more — there is no “path”) one works with what is already there, in the basis of one’s own heart. It is rooting up from within, in contra-distinction to the Law of Attraction, which emphasizes outward cause-and-effect feedback.

This isn’t to preclude the centrality of set and setting, of the environment of one’s immediate surroundings on this path. In the language of Attainment, it is crucial to harmonize oneself and one’s desired object of attainment with one’s immediate external and internal environment.

The environment has an undeniable effect on the psyche, and the unconscious. In polyvagal theory, the subtle cues of the environment on our nervous system is a process called neuroception. It is through manipulating our environment and what and who we expose ourselves to in a way that grounds the psyche and its contents in the conscious desire that is requisite here. This manipulation of the environment to raise a “pitch” is intentionally used in magical systems, the Law of Attraction notwithstanding. In deteriorated systems, this knowledge has been reduced to mistaking the ritual itself as the end instead of the means. I believe it is through the creation of a particular atmosphere with the right set of intentions and the right people involved that the amplitude of the singing heart will resonate out, ultimately towards that which is also seeking it and singing to it. But that is just a magical guess.