All things love God by their very nature

The words of God are in and around us, since we and the cosmos are the articulations of the Breath of the All Merciful...we love God in everything that we love. Love of God is a fact of existence. So by our very nature we love God...realizing that it is Him that we love in all that we love is life's quest. At least in this seeker's heart...

and God knows best, indeed He knows all.

Those who love God are those whom God loves.

~a Sufi saying~

There are those among us who see God but are ignorant of Him. But just as no one is poor toward anyone else, so also—by God—none but God is loved in the existent things. It is He who is manifest within every beloved to the eye of every lover—and there is nothing which is not a lover. So the cosmos is all lover and beloved, all of it goes back to Him…

Though no one loves any but his own Creator, he is veiled from Him by the love for Zaynab, Su’ad, Hind, Layla, this world, money, position, and everything loved in the world. Poets exhaust their words writing about all these existent things without knowing, but the gnostics never hear a verse, a riddle, a panegyric, or a love poem that is not about Him, hidden beyond the veils of forms.

~Ibn al-`Arabi~

From his Futuhat al-Makkiyyah II.326.18

Translated by William Chittick

Quoted in the Sufi Path of Knowledge, p 181

The Sublime Spirits, Where are they?

The loved ones1 of my heart--where are they? Say, by God, where are they?

As thou sawest their apparition2, wilt thou show to me their reality?

How long, how long was I seeking them! and how often did I beg to be united with them,

Until I had no fear of being parted from them, and yet I feared to be amongst them3,

Perchance my happy star4 will hinder their going afar from me,

That mine eye may be blest with them, and that I may not ask, 'Where are they?'

~Ibn al-`Arabi~
The Tarujman al-Ashwaq, XLV

 Mount Fuji’s Sea of Trees

Aokigahra Forest

Mount Fuji

Japan

NOTES on the Text:
1. the sublime spirits
2. their manifestation in the world of similitude
3. lest their radiance should consume me
4. the Divine favor predestined to me

This World is midwinter

There is no doubt that this world is midwinter. Why are inanimate objects called "solid"? Because they are all "frozen."*  These rocks, mountains, and other coverings that garb this world are all "frozen."  If the world is not midwinter, why is it frozen? The concept of the world is simple and cannot be seen, but through the effect one can know that there are such things as wind and cold.  This world is like the season of midwinter when everything is frozen and solidified.  What sort of midwinter?  A mental midwinter, not a tangible one.  When that "divine" breeze comes, the mountains of this world will begin to melt and turn to water. Just as the heat of midsummer causes all frozen things to melt, so on the Day of Resurrection, when that breeze comes, all things will melt.

~Rumi~ 


*This line of reasoning is based on an etymological similarity between jamad (solid, inanimate) and munjamid (frozen).

SOURCE: Signs of the Unseen, Discourses of Rumi, Discourse Twelve

Ladder Rungs

In a human being is such a love, a pain, an itch, a desire that, even if he were to possess a hundred thousand worlds, he would not rest or find peace. People work variously at all sorts of callings, crafts, and professions, and they learn astrology and medicine, and so forth, but they are not at peace because what they are seeking cannot be found. The Beloved is called dil-aram because the heart finds peace through anything else? All these other joys and objects of search are like a ladder. 

The rungs on the ladder are not place to stay 

but to pass through.

The sooner one wakes up and becomes aware, the shorter the long road becomes and the less one's life is wasted on these "ladder rungs."

Source: W.M. Thackston, Jr., Signs of the Unseen, The Discourses of Jalaluddin Rumi, Discourse Fifteen, Part 1.

I know you're tired but come, this is the way...

The angel is free because of his knowledge,

the beast because of his ignorance.

Between the two remains the son of man to struggle.

Now some men have so followed their intellects that they have become totally angelic and pure light. These are prophets and saints who are free of fear and hope, the persons on whom no fear shall come, and who shall not be grieved [10:62]. There are others whose intellects have been so overcome by their lust that they have become totally bestial. Still others remain in the struggle. They are the group within whom a certain agony or anguish is manifested and who are not content with their lives. They are believers. The saints stand waiting to bring them to their own station and make them like themselves. The devils lie in wait to pull them down to their level at the lowest depth.

We want them, and others want them.

Who will win? Whom shall they prefer?

When the assistance of God shall come, and the victory... [110:1]. The exoteric interpreters have interpreted this passage to mean that the Prophet's ambition was to make the world Muslim and to bring all men to God's way. When he perceived his own death approaching, he said,"Alas! I have not lived long enough to call the people." "Grieve not," said God, "for at the hour whereon you pass, I shall cause countries and cities, which you would conquer by armies and the sword, all of them I shall cause to become obedient and faithful. And the sign shall be that at the end of your allotted time you shall see people coming in flocks to become Muslim. When you see that, know that your time for departure has come. Now extol and ask for forgiveness, for you will come to that pass."

The mystics, on the other hand, say that the meaning is as follows: man imagines that he can rid himself of his base characteristics by means of his own action and endeavor. When he strives and expends much energy only to be disappointed, God says to him, "You thought it would come about through your own energy and action and deeds. That is indeed a custom I have established, that is, that what you have you should expend on Our behalf. Only then does Our mercy come. We say to you, 'Travel this endless road on your own weak legs.' We know that with your weak legs you will never be able to finish the way--in a hundred thousand years you would not finish even one stage of the way. Only when you make the effort and come onto the road to fall down at last, unable to go another step, only then will you be uplifted by God's favor. A child is picked up and carried while it is nursing, but when it grows older it is left to go on its own; so now when you have no strength left you are carried by God's favor. When you had the strength and could expend your energy, from time to time in a state between sleep and wakefulness, We bestowed upon you grace for you to gain strength in your quest and to encourage you. Now that you no longer have the means to continue, look upon Our grace and favor and see how they swarm down upon you. For a hundred thousand endeavors you would not have seen so much as an iota of this. Now celebrate the praise of the Lord, and ask pardon of Him [110:3]. Seek forgiveness for your thoughts and realize that you were only imagining that all this could come from your own initiative. You did not see that it all comes from Us. Now that you have seen that it is from Us, seek forgiveness." He is inclined to forgive [110:3].

Quoted from Signs of the Unseen (Fihi ma fihi), translated by W.M. Thackson, Jr. It is a collection of Rumi's lectures, discourses, conversations and comments on various topics. There are seventy-one sections, of which this is discourse number seventeen. (pages 82-83).

mata nasru Allahi alainna nasra Allahi qareeb

When cometh Allah's help? Now surely Allah's help is nigh.

[2:214]

A Mystery: The long interval impedes

When the Men who have no impediment

  reach the long interval,

you will see among their warriors

  a servant whose state brings

the pain of distance,

  this cutting him off from them.

He says: Since God created human beings hasty [17:11] and He created in them seeking, but they do not gain the object of their search in the first step, the interval draws out for them because of their hastiness. They halt because of the length of the interval, and they are held back from gaining benefit.

After all, God is not reached through seeking. Hence the gnostic seeks his own felicity, not God. One does not aspire for what one already has. God is greater than that He should be sought through the distance of steps, hardship of deeds, and reflective thoughts. Just as He does not become spatially confined, so also He does not become distinct. He is known to us in the sense that in each thing He is identical with each thing, but unknown in the distinction, because of the diversity of the forms that we witness.

As soon as you say concerning a form, "He is this," another form with which He is identical will veil you from that form. Concerning it you will say, "He is this," and His He-ness will absent itself from you through the form that goes. Then you will not know what you depend upon, exactly like the person who is bewildered by reflective consideration and does not know what he believes. As often as a proof shines forth to him, an obfuscation also shines forth.

No proof of Him can ever be safe from obfuscation, because He is the Greatest Proof, and we are His obfuscation.

SOURCE: 
Ibn al-`Arabi, Futuhat al-Makkiyah, VI 442.31
translated by William C. Chittick in The Self-Disclosure of God, Principles of Ibn al-`Arabi's Cosmology, pgs 14-15

In our efforts to understand wujud, either in itself or in its relation to the cosmos, at some point we become bewildered, a state, according to Ibn al-`Arabi, that can be considered one of the highest stations of knowledge. 

Shaykh al-Akbar says: "Through the knowledge which arises in contemplation, [the attainer] turns to face what is beyond each appearance: the Truth beyond appearances. For the Apparent One, though He is one in essence, is infinite in aspects. They are His traces in us."  The words echo: "There is no God but He, everything perishes except His Face. Glorious and Magnificent"

In all praise, it is only He that is worshiped.

In a relationship...with God

an excerpt from
Mystical Love
by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

A relationship with God is in many ways is simpler and yet more confusing than a human relationship. It is simpler because there are not the drama and psychological dynamics that happen between two people. Human love evokes a complex mesh of projections as deep psychological patterns are activated within each person. We project onto our lover ...images, shadow-dynamics and other patterns that all become bonded together.  

Loving God has a purity and simplicity that are sadly denied in the complexity of a human relationship.

Loving God, we can give ourself entirely without the danger of being caught in projections or the drama of another's unresolved problems. We are free of the entanglements that belong to two people. And yet there is the primal difficulty of having an invisible, intangible beloved. Where are the arms to hold us, the kiss to intoxicate us? Without any physical presence, how do we know it is real, and not just a fantasy? We live in a culture that only values the tangible, external world. We are bombarded by images that associate a love affair with physical sex. Sufi poetry may use images of physical beauty...but these are metaphors, and we long to touch with our own hands, to taste with our own lips. We long to run our fingers through our lover's hair, to smell a fragrance that is not ethereal.

Yet an inner love affair has a potency that is denied any human lover. We are awakened to this love by a kiss that is on the inside of our heart. A kiss on the lips may taste like wine and draw us into our lover's arms, but He kisses us in the most intimate part of our own being, a place so secret that no human lover has access. He kisses us without the limitations of duality and with a touch that is love itself. From within our own heart He comes to us, opens us, embraces us. Here there are no barriers of protection, but a vulnerability and softness that belong to the inwardness of our own heart. With tenderness and intoxicating sweetness He is present, unexpected and yet longed for, and His kiss is more than one could believe is possible. 

Yet there are days, even months, when the Beloved withdraws and does not show His face, when you are left with the desolation of your own aloneness. It seems that there is not even a trace of this sweetest fragrance. Then it is easy to doubt this inner love affair and project our longing onto another. With a human lover there is a moment's taste of bliss, a physical knowledge of union. We want what we can hold with our own hands, feel with our body. With the heart's Beloved there is a promise of so much more, and yet it is so intangible, and we are always the victim, always the one who's waiting.

In this love affair all of our patterns of seduction, the games we play to keep our lover, are useless. We become so vulnerable. We are love's prey.

In human relationships we have been taught to look after ourself, to draw boundaries and not to be victimized. We know that we shouldn't be taken advantage of, that we shouldn't be violated. This is very important, learning to keep our human integrity and sense of self, not to sell ourself for what appears as love or the promise of security. But the ways of mystical love are very different. In the relationship with our soul's Beloved we have to give ourself without restrictions, and we are violated, abused, and loved beyond compare. We are taken by force, abducted and transformed, and we give ourself willingly to this self-destruction through love.

Take me to you, imprison me, for I 

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

~John Donne~

We are purified through love's violation, we taste our own union through love's destruction.

Love takes us by force beyond every limit, beyond what we think is possible; we are tortured and made whole by love--time and time again we lose and resdiscover ourself, only to fall deeper and deeper into love's endless abyss. Rumi, who through Shams came to know the intoxicating intensity of this real love, describes how it is given freely and yet takes us into a vastness that can seem like death:

Subtle degrees of domination and servitude

are what you know as love.

But love is different it arrives complete

just there like the moon in the window.

Desire only that of which you have no hope

seek only that of which you have no clue.

Love is the sea of not-being 

and there intellect drowns.

This is not the Oxus river

or some little creek.

This is the shoreless sea; here swimming ends always in drowning.

A million galaxies are a little scum on that shoreless sea.

 Love's ocean is real and endless, a place not for the fainthearted, not for those who like security and safety. The mystic is seduced and dragged into this love, seduced by its softness, dragged by its power. This love abuses our sense of self, destroys our patterns of control, violates our deepest beliefs, and takes us back to God. In this love there is neither form nor limit, only a completedness beyond even our dreaming, a sweetness beyond imagining, and a terror that belongs to the Absolute. Love takes us into the infinite emptiness of His Presence, into the vastness that is hidden within our own heart.

The mystic is someone who gambles on this love, who gives his/her life to love's longing. There is no safety net for disappointed lovers, no self-help group for those caught in this fire. The path of love is described by Saint Gregory of Nyssa as "a bridge of hair across a chasm of fire," and what happens when you come to the middle of this bridge? The fire burns the bridge and you fall into the depths, into the flames. This is why the Sufis call the lane of love a one-way street. Once this primal passion has been awakened the lover cannot return to the rational world, to the world of the ego. You can only give yourself, and give yourself, and give yourself.

The sensible man never goes near this fire, but remains within the safety of the known.

This love is an addiction as potent as poison. It destroys everything we once held precious; everything that seemed important is burnt in its flames; we hunger for just another taste of this love which is destructive and so sweet--nothing else matters. The values of the world fall away as this inner love affair takes hold of us, a passion a thousand times more powerful than any human love. In a human love affair there is always the safety of our self: we are separate from our lover and can withdraw. But our soul's Beloved does not belong to duality, as Rumi writes: "He is closer to you than yourself to yourself." Can we hide from our own heart, can run away from our own life's blood? We can try, but if we just turn inward He is waiting for us, offering us the sweetest torture, the softest death.

Love's death is real, and yet we remain alive, sometimes limping through the days. We are addicted to an inner lover who demands everything and yet so often leaves us devastated and alone. He awakens in us a hunger that is real, and then seemingly abandons us. The inner deserts through which lovers travel are desolate beyond belief, just as the moments of intoxication are bliss upon bliss. Once you give yourself to this poison there is no going back, because the world has lost its attraction. You are like Majnun, the madman, the lover.

Sometimes an external relationship can open our heart--maybe a hopeless love affair pierces through our defenses. But once we are gripped by the heart's true passion then the real sorrow of the soul comes to the surface, the soul's longing for its only Beloved.