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.

Need

In Sufi literature one of the most often quoted extra-Qur'anic traditions revealed by Allah, a hadith qudsi, states the purpose of creation in a boldness rarely encountered in religious traditions. God says: "I was a hidden treasure, and I desired to be known; therefore I created creation." Why did God, who is utter fullness, create the world? Because of a desire, a need to be known. In the hidden unknownness of God, there was one thing missing: there was no one to know Him. Thus, the raison d'etre of creation is God's need to be known. Need is, then, the foundation upon which creation exists. 

Sara Sviri, The Taste of Hidden Things, pg 193

without need...God does not give anything to anyone...Need, then, is the noose for (all) things that exist: Man has instruments in proportion to his need. Therefore quickly augment thy need, O needy one, in order that the Sea of Bounty may surge you up in lovingkindness.

(Nicholson's translation of Mathnawi, II, 3274-3280)

Rumi sings the praises of the alchemical, transformative power of love. But what is love? in essence it is a state of need. The lover is in need of the beloved, since the beloved reflects something which the lover senses is missing in himself. The experience of love exposes a veiled, unconscious desire to unite with an idealized partner who will supply the bits missing in oneself. But Rumi stresses that when this need awakens, rather than fulfilled it has to be sustained. Need, he argues, creates the primary vehicle of change, evolution, and growth. Without need there is no desire; without desire there is no movement. Therefore to perpetuate the state of need is more conducive to change than to satisfy it.
Sara Sviri, The Taste of Hidden Things, pg 206

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They say in the end, love is the want and need for something. Hence need is the root, and the needed thing is the branch. I say: After all, when you speak, you speak out of need. Your need brings your words into existence...So need is prior, and the words came into being from it....The branch is always the goal--the tree's roots exist for the sake of the branches.

Rumi, Discourses, quoted in Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love, pg. 207

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In order for an evolutionary change to occur, the need has to be immense and conscious. Sometimes there is a need, but it's not strong enough; the longing for fullness has not yet reached sufficient intensity. The seeker can somehow survive, can learn to hide behind psychological defenses, so that the sense of emptiness is less painful. He suffers, but not enough; he is thirsty, but not yet dying of thirst. He is afraid of losing the relative comfort of a lukewarm, chronic state of frustration. But in this process, the Sufi teaching reiterates, only when the seeker reaches a state of despair beyond comfort or consolation will he be able to let go of his painful--yet familiar--patterns of survival. It is not easy to relinquish the familiar for a change whose consequences are unknown, unforeseeable  Therefore the need for change has to become great as the need for air of a drowning man.

In the pursuit of this creative need, Rumi...turns the logic of conventional pragmatism upside down. (I like that) We need comfort, therefore we create comfortable things; we need warmth, so we create shelters, clothes, fire, heaters, air-conditioning; we become self-sufficient in order to alleviate the pain of want. Rumi says: No, don't create anything to fill your emptiness; don't run away from the innate need of your soul.

Don't rush to find a solution to your neediness, continues Rumi; stay with it, acknowledge it, live with it, live it, become more and more needy, more and more thirsty, colder, poorer, more helpless: "I shall cry and cry until the milk of compassion will boil up on Your lips." This wisdom, according to Rumi is known to every infant:

I wonder at this tiny infant who cries, and its mother gives it milk. 

If it should think, 

"What profit is there in crying? What is it that causes the milk to come?"

--then it would not receive any milk. 

But we see that it receives milk because of its crying.

Rumi, Discourses, quoted in Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love, pg. 211

Growth comes out of need. When neediness becomes intolerable, then a new organ is created out of the needy one's own potentiality. This is the as-yet-unlived potentiality which the soul has planted in the heart. The inner organs of perception, the eyes and the ears of the heart, are given a new intelligence, a new outlook, a new direction, new possibilities. This is what Rumi expresses in his direct, passionate, provocative language.
Sara Sviri, The Taste of Hidden Things, pg 206-209

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If you wish what you need to be given to you without your having to search for it, turn away from it and concentrate on your Lord; you will receive it if God wills.  And if you gave up your needs entirely and were occupied only with God, He would give you all the good things you wish for in this world and in the other; you would walk in Heaven as well as on earth; and more than that, since the Prophet (on him be blessings and peace) has said, in the very words of his Lord : "He who by remembering Me (dhikr) is distracted from his petition will receive more than those who ask."

Hear, faqir, what I said to one of our brothers (may God be well pleased with them): every time I was lacking something, great or small, and turned away from it in turning to my Lord, I found it there in front of me, thanks to the power of Him who hears and knows. We see that the needs of ordinary people are filled by paying attention to them, whereas the the needs of the elect are filled by the very fact that they turn away from them and concentrate upon God.

An excerpt from Letters of a Sufi Master by Shaykh ad-Darqawi, translated by Titus Burckhardt

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O, Sovereign Possessor, I call out to You and entreat You, secretly confiding [in You] as a broken servant, who knows that You are listening and who firmly believes that You will respond, one who stands at Your door, constrained in utter need, finding no-one to put trust in, other than You.

Ibn 'Arabi, The Seven Days of the Heart, pg. 45

Jesus on the lean donkey

Jesus on the lean donkey,
this is an emblem of how the rational intellect
should control the animal soul.
                                                Let your spirit 
be strong like Jesus.
                               If that part of you becomes weak,
then the worn-out donkey grows into a dragon.

Be grateful when what seems unkind
comes from a wise person.
                                         Once a holy man,
riding his donkey, saw a snake crawling into
a sleep man's mouth! He hurried, but he couldn't
prevent it. He hit the man several blows with his club.

The man woke terrified and ran beneath an apple tree
with many rotten apples on the ground.
                                                              "Eat!
You miserable wretch! Eat."
                                           "Why are you doing this to me?"
"Eat more, you fool."
                                "I've never seen you before!
Who are you? Do you have some inner quarrel with my soul?"

The wise man kept forcing him to eat, and then he ran him.
For hours he whipped the poor man and made him run.
Finally, at nightfall, full of rotten apples,
fatigued, bleeding, he fell
                                         and vomited everything,
the good and the bad, the apples and the snake.

When he saw the snake
come out of himself, he fell on his knees
before the assailant.
                                "Are you Gabriel? Are you God?
I bless the moment you first noticed me. I was dead
and didn't know it. You've given me new life.
Everything I've said to you was stupid!
I didn't know."
                      "If I had explained what I was doing, you might have panicked and died of fear.
Muhammad said,
                         "If I described the enemy that lives 
inside men, even the most courageous of you would be paralyzed. 
No one would go out, or do any work. No one would pray or fast,
and all power to change would fade
from human beings."
                               so I kept quiet
while I was beating you, that like David
I might shape iron, so that, impossibly
I might put feathers back into a bird's wing.

God's silence is necessary, because of humankind's
faintheartedness. If I had told you about the snake,
you wouldn't have been able to eat, and if
you hadn't eaten, you wouldn't have vomited.

I saw your condition and drove my donkey hard
into the middle of it, saying always under my breath,
"Lord, make it easy on him." I wasn't permitted
to tell you, and I wasn't permitted to stop
beating you!"
                     The healed man, still kneeling,
"I have no way to thank you for the quickness
of your wisdom and the strength
of your guidance.
                          God will thank you."

~Rumi~

From one hand, one could view this cruel and unnecessary; but think again, had the wise man not done what he had done, would the man have eaten the rotten apples so that he would vomit? Cruel to be kind. "God's silence is necessary."                  

Excerpt from The Essential Rumi translated by Coleman Barks

I need your grace to remind me of His Grace

Meeting a spiritual superior is unmistakable. It has a very distinct taste. It also has a most dramatic effect upon one's psyche. It is intense although not always outward. Intangible, elusive and at times inexplicable... that is the experience of a seeker.  It awakens something within and one is confronted with the inevitability of letting go of who you think you are.

Nothing makes sense in the way that one used to know, but one perseveres guided by an inner rudder that seems to know exactly where to go and what to do. One then gives into this "flow."

I met such a spiritual superior and the moment we met, it was like we had known each other all our lives, longer than that it even seemed. In his own words, he prepares people by "reorienting" them towards God. Subhana'Llah. 

I began learning how to be a murid, an aspirant, for me that was the beginning of an inner life...without wishing to scare or frighten people, but in all sincerity in order to love God, one needs to be ready for one's love to be tested...in every inconceivable way. It appeared outwardly so chaotic at first, my life gone out of control, everything seemed to be against me and all the answers I sought were wrong. It made no sense, but something was happening inwardly...as if all the muck of my life had been brought to the surface. And for the first time in my life, I was completely...and utterly...alone. Constricted and alone, quite honestly, entertaining thoughts of suicide. This I kid you not. 

As with everything, it passes. One becomes attuned to God in all forms. All things that happen to you, will you recognize Him when he comes to you? It is perhaps easier to see God in all the beautiful things around us, but what if He came to you in the form of something you do not like. Would you still recognize Him? Welcome Him? This is basically where I stand now. Learning to see Him in every form, however way He comes to me. In the events that I face and in the people interact with.

Life is but a succession of moments...to live (truly live) each one is to succeed.

This has been my life for the last four years. And I couldn't have done it without a guide. They say that if you do not have a guide on this journey, your guide will be shaytan. This guide continues to be a brother to me as well as a guide on my wanderings and I am full of love and gratitude for God's Grace that flows through him to shine a light upon my darkness. Like siblings we will always be, not always agreeing but accepting each other's differences; but more importantly, being there for each other.


God often gives in our earthly life a brother-soul, who embellishes the Path. And who, in this or that respect, reconciles us with the ups and downs of life. ~Frithjof Schuon~

This blog is dedicated to my brother and my guide :)

Love ya, bro!

Being in His Presence is the best gift all

After almost 4 years of intense study of Islamic Mysticism and Philosophy, I honestly didn't know what I was going to do. What in the world was I thinking? At the pinnacle of my career, I graciously made my exit, before I expired. Inspired by one who turned my life around. He was both a teacher and  abrother, and I never looked back after that.


With no formal training in this field, I endeavored and worked harder than most at what felt like constantly swimming upstream. I had to learn technical terms, and studied Arabic (I still am, by the way), studying texts and manuscripts guiding people to rid themselves of themselves.
Most people move towards the world and away from God, where would I fit in? How could I come back to the working world with everything that I knew. The whole idea of Sufism is the death of the false self (nafs) and yet the world I was returning to, seemed to be lived in order to fulfill desires. The very desires I was trained to extinguish.
There were some really grim moments when I didn't want to talk to people and experienced such despair, such misery. But I was surrounded by many who had tread the path before me, I began, little by little, to understand and to live in this world, but not of it. (to borrow the words of Isa, (as).

And as it turns out, I really didn't have to do anything. The way just made itself apparent. No longer driven by the superficial desires of the world, I pursued God. Al-hamdu li'Llah :)

To every question that arises in the heart of the mystic, the answers unfold in the life before him.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

I should've had more faith in Him. Astaghfirullah.
Today, I continue to counsel and motivate my fellow man, education is still a passion, but less of myself is present.
Being in His Presence is the best gift all...everything else just "falls into place." 

The Pursuit of Happiness: Do we really know what we are looking for?

The Pursuit of Happiness

Do we really know what we are looking for?

Bismi’Llahir-Rahimir-Rahim

As-Salaamu ‘Alaykum wr wb

Whether you reading this for the first time or you happened to be present at my recent talk with Talisman Energy on August 9^th, I hope you may find this article useful, both professionally and personally.

What is happiness?

The most useful definition—and it's one agreed upon by neuroscientists, psychiatrists, behavioral economists, positive psychologists, Philosophers as well as religion—is more like satisfied or content than "happy" in its strict bursting-with-glee sense. It has depth and deliberation to it. It encompasses living a meaningful life, utilizing your gifts and your time, living with thought and purpose.

Most often happiness is a concept or word that we attach to “things,” things we desire, things we wish for. This ensures the road to unhappiness.

All things in the world perish, save His Face, Magnificent and Glorified. Thus says the Holy Quran. [1]

As Muslims, we profess to believe that the Vision of God is the summit of human felicity, because it is so stated in the Law; but with many this is just lip-service which arouses no emotion in their hearts.

Conventionally, the pursuit of happiness means no more than the pursuit of wealth and status as embodied in a mansion, a Lexus, and membership in a country club.  All of these things are wonderful to have, but happiness brought about by things, are temporary. They do not last. Do they?

I invite all of you to search inside yourselves and ask do you really know what you are looking for? It is most important that you differentiate the things you desire such wealth, health etc, and true, ultimate happiness. So, where do we go for answers?

The answers that I have brought with me today, are from the past. A rich  history of Islamic Philosophy and Mysticism (Tasawwuuf) that I have been privileged to study.  As a professor of Islamic jurisprudence in Baghdad 's Nizamiyyah College, Al-Ghazzali was considered one of the leading minds of his day. All his life he had aimed to know 'the deep reality of things', and his mental powers had led him to eminence. He was bestowed with the title of the “Proof of Islam.”

Imam Ghazzali was asked, “Does money upset the hearts of learned men?”
He answered, "…men whose hearts are changed by money are not learned''

The Alchemy of Happiness – Al-Kimia al- Sa'āda[2]

Sa'āda (happiness) is a central concept in Islamic philosophy used to describe the highest aim of human striving.

• Sa'āda is considered to be part of the "ultimate happiness", namely that of the hereafter.
• Only when a human being has liberated his/her soul completely form its corporal existence, and arrives at what is called "active intellect".
• Al-Ghazali believed in practical-ethical perfection and that by exercising his God-given capacity for reason man must be drawn to the spiritual alchemy that transforms the soul from worldliness to complete devotion to God.
• This alone, he believed could produce ultimate happiness.
• Ghazālī's teachings were to help man to live a life in accordance with the sacred law, and by doing so gain a deeper understanding of its meaning on the day of Judgement

Kimiā (Alchemy) is an applied and mystical science that has been studied for centuries.

• In its essence, Kimiā represents a complete conception of the universe and relations between earthly beings and the cosmos. 
• Religious philosophers emphasized its importance as a religious discipline.
• Due to its spiritual dimensions Kimiā is considered the noblest of all occult sciences (i.e. astrology and various kinds of magic).
• Ghazali was himself a believer that everything on Earth is a manifestation of God’s spirit, thus everything belongs to kimiā.

The first four chapters follow the hadiths, or sayings of Muhammad, in making a case for the impossibility of true happiness without a close relationship to God.

It has for nine centuries remained one of the great inspirational tracts of Islam.

Ghazzali begins the book by stating the four elements in the metamorphosis that turns an average person 'from an animal into an angel'. They include:

•         Knowledge of self

•         Knowledge of God

•         Knowledge of the world as it really is

•         Knowledge of the next world as it really is

I have included 2 of these chapters here for this discussion.

Knowledge of self

• Ghazzali draws attention to the simple fact that until we know something about ourselves we cannot fulfill our potential.
• The key to knowledge of the self is the heart - not the physical heart but the one given us by God, which 'has come into this world as a traveler visits a foreign country.and will presently return to its native land'.
• To lose our heart in the things and concerns of this world is to forget our real cosmic origins, whereas knowledge of the heart as given by God provides a true awareness of who we are as God created us.

Knowledge of God

• Ghazzali refers to a line in the Koran: "Does it not occur to man that there was a time when he was nothing?" Yet he notes that many refuse to look for the real cause that brought them into creation.
• He likens a physicist to an ant crawling across a piece of paper which, seeing letters being written on to it, believes they are the work of a pen alone.
• A person suffering from depression will be told a different cause for his ailment, depending on who he sees; the physician and the astrologer will find different causes. It does not occur to them that God may have given the man the illness for a reason, and caused the conditions that led to his dissatisfaction with the normal pleasures with life, in the hope that it would draw him closer to God. There is always a real cause behind the apparent ones, and that real cause is God's.

But the larger message of The Alchemy of Happiness, whether you are Muslim or not, is that genuine happiness comes from the knowledge that we are creations of God, and have therefore been made for a purpose. Peace comes from knowing that we are merely 'travelers in a foreign land', and will before long return to an eternal paradise.

Such is the “Alchemy of Happiness" that Al-Ghazzali brewed up for us and served it in a small teacup, hot, steaming, and refreshing of our souls, if we but take the cup into our hands and drink deeply.

I would like to take this opportunity to share with you some lessons from my own beloved teacher.  May Allah be pleased with him.

• God has opened a gate in the middle of creation, and this gate of the world towards God is man.
• This opening is God’s invitation to look towards Him, to tend towards Him, to persevere with regard to Him and to return to Him. (ilayhi raji’un)
• And this enables us to understand why the gate shuts at death when it has been scorned during life;
• for to be man (insan) means nothing other than looking by looking beyond (this world) and to pass through the gate.
• The notion of Hell becomes perfectly clear when we think how senseless it is—and what a waste and a suicide—to slip through the human state without being truly man.

Subhana Rabbika Rabbi’l-izzati ‘amma yasifuna wa salamun ‘ala’l-mursalin wa’l-hamdu li’Llahi Rabbi’l-alamin.

Was-Salaam and Thank you.

---

[1] Surah Ar-Rahman, The Quran Translated, Marmaduke Pickthall

[2] The Alchemy of Happiness by Imam Ghazzali, translated into English by CLAUD FIELD, [1909]

Sohbet

Spiritual conversation is divine light. It brings us close together and melts us in unity. 

~Sufi Aphorism~ 

Sohbet is the connecting point of all other activities: individual practice, group remembrance, music, study, social life, ethics. 

~Kabir Helminski~

Sohbet is the primary practice of certain Sufi groups, where conversation with "a mature one" becomes the means of sharing the state of attainment.

But more importantly, it is an exchange between people like no other way of communicating. Exchange is more than just words, something happens among the participants that is "felt" rather heard, inviting us to listen deeply to each other.  A practice that will greatly enhance our ability to "hear" the Beloved.

Subhana'Llah

Moments of Silence

It is only in this silence that we can listen for God.

"Surely there is a Reminder in that for whoever has a heart, or listens attentively, while he is witnessing.."

Sura Qaf, 50:37

Ibn al-'Arabi prescribes moments of silence during ritual prayer precisely for "listening for God."

He says: So it is obligatory for the servant, when he has finished reciting the verse (in prayer), to listen attentively, while he is witnessing. Therefore the person praying becomes silent, so that he can see what God is saying to him concerning that, as is only the spiritually appropriate behavior (adab) with God. 

That is how this matter remains between the listener and the One speaking to him, so that the listener might gain benefit (from that silent pure receiving in prayer). For you must know that kings do not take a person without proper adab to sit with them, nor to converse with them at night, not to be their intimate companion.

Excerpt from the Futuhat al-Makkiyyah Chapter VI, 217-219, 

as translated by James Winston Morris, Reflective Heart.

Technology of the Heart: Stay close to any sounds | sohbet is deep listenin...: 1. Stay close to any sounds that make you glad you are alive. Everything in this world is helplessly reeling. An invisible wake was created ...