Few days back a very nice friend of mine shared her feelings with me. She belongs to a well off family with no financial problems but she started feeling that something was missing. This something is in general related to soul search. Being living in Konya the city of Rumi there were many places to fill this gap. She asked for my opinion about joining some soul search gatherings.
Believing that true knowledge comes from only two resources, one from the person who is very near to the one who has all the knowledge and other from the person who has developed himself/herself through gaining knowledge from those who knew or who wrote. Books are important but teacher is more important. Like prescription is important but the doctor writing that prescription is more important.
I took her to one of the best teachers on the subject, Prof. Erkan Turkmen who wrote his famous book, Essence of Rumi's Masnevi. We talked for some time and then he said that there are two choices available, one to learn Persian and read Masnevi and the other is to attend bi-weekly gatherings to discuss Masnevi. But both have costs related to them.
My friend like most of people said to me later that soul search should not have costs attached to it. I in fact agreed because it is something like guiding someone to the creator with the knowledge given by the creator. Later that evening I had to change my mind and I came to the conclusion that its all about Preferences & Effort.
We who study science, engineering or medical put all our efforts in terms of time, money and potential to excel. The reason is, we consider such achievements good for our life. But when it comes to soul search we don't want to put any effort.. because that is some thing down in our preferences list. Similarly when we need to consult a psychologist we are ready to pay her a good amount just for listening to us most of time but in cases where someone is going to tell us and may guide us to the right ways towards happiness and soul search we hesitate!
Once again I say, life is all about Preference & Efforts just as a good teacher of mine Prof. Coskun Yurteri says, America is all about Exposure (topic of next blog hopefully).
