' Vanity is a barrier '...

One day a man reproached Bayazid, the great mystic of the ninth
century, saying that he had fasted and prayed and so on for thirty
years and not found the joy which Bayazid described. Bayazid told
him that he might continue for three hundred years and still not find
it.

"How is that?" asled the would-be illuminate.
"Because your vanity is a barrier to you."
"Tell me the remedy."
"The remedy is one which you cannot take."
"Tell me, nevertheless."

Bayazid said: "You must go to the barber and have your
(respectable) beard shaved. Remove all your clothes and put a girdle
around yourself. Fill a nosebag with walnuts and suspend it from
your neck. Go to the market-place and call out: "A walnut will I
give to any boy who will strike me on the back of the neck." Then
continue on to the justices' session so that they may see you."

"But I cannot do that; please tell me something else that would
do as well."

"This is the first move, and the only one," said Bayazid, "but I
had already told you that you would not do it; so you cannot be
cured."

-as collected by Idries Shah