Almustafa, the chosen and the beloved, who was a dawn unto his own day, had waited twelve years in the city of Orphalese for his ship that was to return and bear him back to the isle of his birth…

Great truths can only be said in parables.

Almustafa is just a fictitious name. Why is he called the chosen and the beloved? Why is he said to be a dawn unto his own day? – because he waited for twelve years.

The whole secret of Almustafa is in the waiting.

He was not in a hurry, he was not demanding, he was not asking, he was simply waiting. To wait, one needs immense trust that whatsoever happens, it doesn’t matter. If your waiting is total, your ship one day is going to come to take you back to your origins, to the sources of life, love, laughter.

Each seed has to learn only one thing: to wait for the right season for the spring to come. There is nothing that the seed can do. It cannot bring the spring; spring will come on its own accord.

And if the seed tries too much, in its very doing it may become non-receptive, closed. A seed has simply to be open, receptive, waiting: whenever the spring comes… One thing is certain in the heart of hearts of the seed: spring comes, because the seed has seen the flowers all around, the whole garden.

You have seen the flowering of a Gautam Buddha but the trust has not arisen. You have looked into my eyes, but the trust has not arisen – still there are questions, still there are doubts, still there is mistrust.

And, ordinarily, flowers don’t speak to the seeds. But I’m trying… Who knows? Somebody may hear, somebody may see, somebody may learn the art of awakening. That is the only religion I know of.

And in the twelfth year, on the seventh day of Ielool, the month of reaping…

There are times when you have to sow the seeds and there are times when you have to reap the crop. And when Almustafa saw that the time of the year, of Ielool, had come, the time of reaping, he climbed the hill without the city walls and looked seaward; and he beheld his ship coming with the mist.

It almost literally happens in this way. If you wait and wait, your trust goes on growing, and when the trust matures in you then you can be certain that the time has come to return to your origins. The search for godliness is not the search for a goal ahead. It is the search for the origins, it is the search for the space from where you have come.