The Opening of Consciousness By DANIEL ABDAL-HAYY MOORE

The end of knowledge is that man comes to the point where he was at the origin.
— Sheikh Abu Yazid al-Bistami (d. 875)

It’s 2006, I’m 65, and I’m nostalgic for the old days. Now I don’t mean for a child’s leather jacket with hood and strap (I can still taste the strap!), silvery tricycles or my first yellow Oldsmobile, or the heady days of Berkeley in the 60s with the newest Bob Dylan album or a new book of poems by Ginsberg or McClure. No. It’s not that. I’m nostalgic for my first days as a Muslim, knowing nothing, learning and eager to soak in everything I could, open-heartedly embracing the divine revelation and its adherents with a high sense of adventure and joy, and I mean that without any trace of romanticism whatsoever.