Breezes of Intimacy 16-20
BREEZES OF INTIMACY- 16
GUARANTEED ACCEPTANCE
Allah the Most Gracious says "Qala rabbukum 'ud'oonee astajib lakum" (Al Ghafir 60):
" Said your Lord: Call Me and I come to your help".
He All-Gracious also said: "When My servants ask thee about ME let them know that I am indeed near. I come to the call of the caller when he calls Me. Therefore let them come to My call and show faith in Me in order that they may be guided on to their maturity" (al Baqarah 189).
So why do we sometimes find that Allah seems to not come to our help and grant our wish? The explanation is implicit in the words of Allah:
" Let them come to My call and show faith in Me in order that they may be guided to their maturity.”
You see, it is reciprocal and although Allah mentioned His rights last they in fact come first. To be heard and be attended to by Allah we must first hear and obey His call. What He basically promises us then is guiding us to our maturity which is realizing our godliest potentialities- being men and women of truthfulness, honesty, decency, charity, loving compassion, moral heroism and spiritual valour. Becoming in fact the saintliest possible servants nearest to prophets in qualities. This is RUSHD (attained maturity). Now the more rushd we attain the more acceptable prayers (duas) we are inspired to make. Before then we pop out duas like popcorns we because we are like silly clever popcorn machines and in our ignorance and selfishness we fire heavenward duas like "give me that hairstyle, kill that bastard who crossed me or let me marry that lad or lass or help me cheat the system..."
The Divine Law is that duas are accepted when they are good for us in a final and ultimate sense. Which parent will give everything to a baby it wants? Giving everything can only bring disaster.
One of the greatest awliya of the holy Shazali tariqa was Tajuddin Ataullah al Iskenderani Q.S). In his famous sufi classic "al Hikam al Ataiyyya" he records one of the many inspirations he received during his seclusions for Allah. This piece of wisdom explains all
: "A prayer you make for the benefit of your ego shall never be granted; the acceptance of a prayer you make for Allah's pleasure and nearness will not delay".
When can we make such infallible prayers? When we attend to Allah's call and begin to be guided by Him towards our rushd. Because that guidance includes also the inspiration of right prayers whose acceptance is sooner than their utterance.
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BREEZES OF INTIMACY- 17
SIGNS AND PORTENTS
Fresh from the heart's mint are the following signs and portents for your salvation.
Why do we say "I take refuge in Allah from the accursed Satan"?
Because without eliminating the Satan from our psychic house we cannot be safe from his ruinous traps from any corner and at every turn. The sign that Allah helped you and you have banished the Satan is that you are no longer able to be envious of anybody or wish evil for anybody. The portent that you all are not doing well for your spiritually is this:
You are becoming argumentative, suspicious, brooding, resentful of others and self pitying. From people around you, you suspect and enjoy suspecting the worst and you itch for hitting out at or pre-empting others.
To rescue yourself, try to find and devise ways of blaming yourself for your impure unhappiness. An impurely unhappy does not even spare Allah from criticism. Please promote yourself to self-criticism and see the life-saving difference. "Muraqaba" (monitoring your heart from the highest and noblest point in your soul) is the chief tool of the Sufi. The more rats and snakes you catch in your heart-house and chase out the more successful your muraqaba. Fools waste 'muraqaba' on others, monitoring them from outside for their rats and snakes.
The wise do not waste their efforts on others but keeping their eyes inside their psychic house, confining themselves to themselves, minding their own house cleaning.
Stop being bogged down in first and reverse gears motoring in the field of Sufi tales and dreams. You may end up burning your motor and wrecking your gearbox and die stranded in the wilderness like some Australian motorists. Instead exit to the motorway of wise practical self-insight and almost fly along in fifth gear towards your genuine salvation.
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BREEZES OF INTIMACY- 18
GREATEST VICTORY (al Fawd al Azim)
How sweet is winning! Darwin explained the natural order as the 'Survival of the Fittest". Living creatures compete for food, space and self-reproduction without pity or principle so that they win survival for themselves and their genes in their offspring. Although Darwin has been accused with a thousand mistakes and impieties and many of them are certainly so the basic idea of a fight for survival among egos must be true to the degree that we are ruled by our egos. So should we go ahead and fight for our egos?
The answer is:
To the degree that you live from your ego and not from God you have no choice but fight for the victory of your ego like every other animal. Even when you are a great alim (accomplished Islamic scholar) so long you are ignorant of your self you are as self seeking and as dangerous as the rest. That is why Muslim’s are fighting Muslim’s for position, prestige and privilege and plain wealth even within Sufi tariqats- except a few! Who are they? Are they after something nobody but only the true adepts know?
Let me tell you:
They are after Allah, the Greatest Prize of all. You win Allah only when you begin to appreciate His worth and not before. He is the only un-shareable prize in the sense that each winner gets the Whole without deducting anything from other winners or at anybody else's expense. It is like this:
Does it matter if a glorious sunset is pleasurably enjoyed by one person or a thousand? All get the whole picture and the whole joy. Do they need to fight each other for a bigger share? No. All are equal winners. All are victorious and theirs is a struggle-less victory. Their respective victories run peacefully parallel to each other and their paths do not cross and their efforts do not clash. Winning Allah is the safest, most peaceful and greatest victory and about such victors Allah says in His Qur'an:
" Beware of the Friends of Allah- for them there is neither fear nor shall they be aggrieved (how can a man without an ego fear or hurt?). They are those who have had faith (been appreciating Allah) and have been observing Allah's Law. For them are good news in this world and the next. There can be no change in Allah's words. This, indeed this is the Greatest Victory" (Surat al Yunus 62-64). Please work with these ideas if you mean business in spiritual fulfilment. There are no other ideas as workable.
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BREEZES OF INTIMACY- 19
WORKING FOR ALLAH
We can work for Allah only when our minds work for Allah. Mind means both thought and emotion. A man of God is a man of God because his mind combs like a radar both his inner and outer space for reasons to praise Allah and opportunities to please Him Almighty. This man simply has no other real concern in life although his same mind and then body is quite informed about and capable of looking after the affairs of his world. Within the limits of halal he takes care of this world and can produce far more results than any so-called man of the world. Look if you wish at the Messenger of Allah who worked mind and body full time for Allah while at the same time demolished idolatry and impiety, conquered armed enemies, perfectly ruled a fast growing community full of problems and laid the foundations of a both physical and spiritual conquest of the world. That is because when we work for Allah by working for Him constantly from our minds He puts His countless and invincible angels to work for us.
That is the meaning of "Indeed Allah and His angels shower salawat on the Messenger"
(al Ahzab, 56). The other part of the verse "O believers you then also shower
salawat on him and submit to him with full submission" means "you also help him
in his mission by submitting yourselves to his person and mission".
The least of it is saying "allahumma salli ala Muhammad..." which is blessing enough.
The best of it is occupying our minds more and more with Allah without worrying about our worldly interests and so becoming fuller believers and help Allah's cause by following His incomparable champion the Prophet (sws.) Once our minds begin to tick constantly this way, then by Allah our worldly affairs take care of themselves better than before. Maulana is a very good example of such a man of God.
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MERCY OCEANS (A Poem)
Heavens and earth swim in Mercy Oceans
Drunk yet sane with a thousand potions
Of all flavours and colours and tints and tinctures
Sourced from the same River from many junctures
Flowing mightily from over many Niagara’s
Each grander than heavens wearing starry tiaras
From the highest angels to humblest fish
Obtain from but one ocean everything they wish
The rest play their infinite waves unseen
With no mortal swimming anywhere to be seen
Or perhaps they are drowned without trace
I'm not sure; let us God praise
Where are all these unseen oceans?
" Looking the wrong way" somebody cautions
" In the heart of true believer are all the clues
In his love-stricken eyes you read ocean blues"
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BREEZES OF INTIMACY- 20
BIAS
A true believer is a true friend of Allah and a true friend only suspects good from his Friend. True friendship is love under another name. "Astounded and overwhelmed admiration" is another name for true love. How can a lover so besotted with his beloved suspect anything but good from the beloved?
A believer's love for Allah is also unlimited admiration and hence his praises for Him come hell or high water.
For His part the Beloved is so True and so Deserving that He will not disappoint His lover but for maximum effect and benefit try him or her every now and then to elicit from His lover more good suspicions and more praises.
We sometimes meet some too doting parents or young children too much admiring their dads. We call such partiality a bias. Is it possible to make the doting parent admit to any wrong on the part of his or her child? Is it possible to shake the absolute high opinion of dad-worshipping boy’s or girl's by making him or her to see dad's faults? If such love, trust and devotion can exist between falllible people what about the love, trust and devotion between a sincere believer and his or her Infallible God? Will the lover not 'tear to pieces' anyone who challenges his or her constant good opinion about God? Good opinion about the Infallible God must itself be infallible.
But it’s not finished yet. True lovers of God automatically love other true lovers of God or else he is not a true lover but someone pretending true love for worldly gain and recognition- let people admire and flock to him and pay tributes to him taking him for a saint. In this case how can he entertain any rivals? If someone is seen as more than a lover than him he seethes with jealousy and rage.
So how can sincere lovers of God suspect other than good from their fellow lovers of God, let alone hate them and look for opportunities to knock them out or down?
Please work with these ideas and insights and see more light- both inside yourself and everywhere else. You will develop the holy bias towards everything godly. You are then living in Allah's Light.