Fragments of a Love Story

The mystical path is the most intoxicating and paradoxical, difficult, and even dangerous journey one can ever take. Fragments of a Love Story is a series of personal writings describing the passionate love, heartache, and confusion that belong to this journey. In particular Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee explores what for him is a central paradox: what belongs to the individual, the "I" who makes the journey, and what belongs to God. Whose journey really is it?

He discusses this primary mystical question from his own experiences of 40 years travelling the mystical path within the context of the Sufi tradition. Some of these passages are very personal, heartfelt, full of contradictions and difficulties he has experienced. Other passages are more objective, more detached, placing his experiences and questions clearly within this ancient mystical tradition. In this way he shows how the Sufi path is lived today by a contemporary mystic.

Fragments of a Love Story takes the reader beneath the surface into the heart of the mystical relationship with the Divine, which for the Sufi is the relationship of lover and Beloved. He describes how this secret love affair is within the heart of each of us, waiting to come alive, unique to each of us, and yet how confusing it can be, especially for our rational Western consciousness.This book is about the story of the soul and the passion that exists within the core of our being, and how demanding and difficult it is to live this love affair. But it also describes the beauty, wonder, and power of the divine love that awakens within the heart -- a love that is within each of us.

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee is a Sufi teacher and author, and these writings come from his own experience of the Sufi path.