This letter opens with Moineddin’s kind response to a difficult (for me to write) letter from me written over two days, May 19 & 23, 1978. Several letters from Mansur that Moineddin cites would be interesting to read, but as this chapter is swollen large with Moineddin's offerings, I'll desist from copying them. What Moineddin demonstrates here is that when you open your heart to a great soul, they will not exploit your vulnerability but find a way to complement you. It included two pressed roses.

Garden of Inayat

June 2, 1978

Dear Mansur,

As-salaam aleikhum!

I am so happy to have received your latest letter; it shows a bravery, a depth of honesty, which is the result of keeping your heart-mirror polished.

Your perception of your strange feeling about living in the Novato Khankah certainly had roots and branches in other sectors of your life as well—roots from childhood, and branches into the experiences which have led to your maturity. I have shared through attunement the pain of this feeling of misplacement, of being a ‘square peg in a round hole.’

And yet, as Murshid showed me, you have kept a steady “Toward the One” at all times, even if it has sometimes meant sacrificing “United with All.” Whereas I have striven perhaps too much in the direction of dove-tailing and harmony, and sacrificed an independent spirit, a mastery of Yang-ness. But as life has gone along, there has been no sacrifice in reality for either of us; in your depths there is the most beautiful harmony, and in mine there is the adamantine diamond of mastery, inshallah.

You have stepped back and taken stock, gained a fine perspective. Allah surely desires to play the instrument of your genius, and if your intuition tells you to place efforts in the sphere of soler energy, OTEC, etc., Ya Fattah! And Allah mu barak!

I got a nice two-page letter from Pir Vilayat yesterday, nothing particularly earth-shaking but a clear statement of his policy, polite and sincere, but no sense of holy communion. Your response to the mureed who asked why Murshid S.A.M. isn’t ever mention in The Message: Because from the point of view of the Sufi Order he’s just another mureed,” is painfully apt. Words fail me here.

Well, as you know, I love to work here in Murshid’s office at the Garden of Inayat on Friday mornings. Now that we have virtually moved to our Petaluma abode, it is only a ten-minute drive here. Always my first step is to inhale directly from one of the myriad rose-blooms that abound here in the front yeard.

There are pink blooms, cascades of white roses, white lilacs, honeysuckle vines and lilies for perfume; and daisies, nasturtiums, honlyhocks and the rock garden for texture and color. This “Garden of Inayat” is all baraka and sweetness to me, and the external signs are but the shadows of the Light and Love and Laughter that comprise it Zat!

All love to you and yours,

Moineddin