Completion

In a particular sea, I have heard,
pearl shells rise from the depths in April,
opening their mouths to the sky.
Mist also rises, then falls as rain.
A few drops fall into each open mouth.
The shells close and fall again,
their hearts full with a pearl-to-be.
Much later, the diver descends and brings
up a gem of great price.
Eons ago, the divine breath dived into us,
and now it dives again and again,
a thousand pearls wrapped in a blanket.

~Mahmoud Shabistari~

The completion of each stage of the pearl's development was necessary at a particular moment to prepare the way for something else. As Shabistari says a thousand potential pearls lie wrapped within us. To grasp another, we may need to let go of the the one already in our hand.

A traditional translation of this quality is "the Last." It shows us that it is really time to let go. The One Being is there at the moment of ripeness, when the fruit is eaten. Imagine the whole universe as fruit. When it is eaten, Allah is still there, so you can't lose by letting go.

I was at a particular stage in my life, where I longed for completion. After a few "right-back-where-I-started" moments, this Name appeared to me. Enabling me to see clearly and ever so painfully what I was unwilling to let go of after all these years. Breathing this pathway illuminated what I needed to do...in the light of the One.

Subhana'Llah. In all things, God be praised.


Sources:
~ The Sufi Book of Life by Neil Douglas-Klotz
~ Mahmoud Shabistari's Gulshan-i raz

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.