When you are down in the
dumps or your soul is knotted or when the chips are down or things are going
pear-shaped or when you just want a legal and instantaneous pick me up...Well
wash your face with cold water and recite the following, Quranic verse, from
the depths of your heart...
Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un
'Surely
we belong to Allah and to Him shall we return'. (Surah 2: Verse156)
Since,
Allah promises:
So
remember Me; I will remember you. And be grateful to Me and do not deny Me.
(Surah 2: Verse 152)
Dear Friends Are you ready to be killed by the sword of an authentic Sufi? The lover wields the sword of Nothingness in order to dispatch all but God: consider what remains after Nothing. There remains but God: all the rest is gone (Rumi) If not then either you are weekend Sufi or wanna-be Sufi or an arm chair Sufi...Harsh...Yes...but that's the way the Sufi cookie crumbles...
The following quote from Rumi
signposts authentic leadership for the temporal and spiritual spheres:
’Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder.
Help someone`s soul heal.
Walk out of your house like a
shepherd.
The beautiful imagery of the lamp, lifeboat, and ladder highlight the
servant dimension of leadership. The shepherd is an exquisite reference to the
Prophets and friends of Allah who heal and lead souls.
We are all leaders...Therefore,
seize the moment...
I am the exquisite product
of an Eastern tradition (my forefathers were Ksatriya Hindu’s converted by Chistiyah
Sufi saints) and the post modern West (British born and blessed with a Liberal
Arts education).
For
a long time I cursed my identity – Who am I?
Pakistani?
British Pakistani?
British Muslim?
European Muslim?
Muslim
British Sufi?
Sufi?
Sufi Muslim?
Etctctctctctctctct.......
I will never forget the day
I met a Pakistani atheist in Islamabad in 2002 – it blew my mind...I thought I
had left that stuff behind!!!!
Hahahahahahaha...Now I
appreciate with the benefit of hindsight my extensive travel and spiritual /
worldly experiences to date are in a reality a search for identity.
The
painful truth is that we are all mongrels!
Now
I wholeheartedly embrace my past, future and now...
I
am an urban and thoroughly post modern salik where stress, depression,
meaninglessness, consumerism and the bizarre fuel my imagination and inner
journey...Yaa Haq!
As
Rumi reminds us:
What is to be done, O
Moslems? For I do not recognize myself.
I am neither Christian, nor Jew, nor Gabr, nor Moslem.
I am not of the East, nor of the West, nor of the land, nor of the sea;
I am not of Nature’s mint, nor of the circling heavens.
I am not of earth, nor of water, nor of air, nor of fire;
I am not of the empyrean, nor of the dust, nor of existence, nor of entity.
I am not of India, nor of China, nor of Bulgaria, nor of Saqsín;
I am not of the kingdom of Irãqain, nor of the country of Khorãsãn.
I am not of this world, nor of the next, nor of Paradise, nor of Hell;
I am not of Adam, nor of Eve, nor of Eden and Rizwãn.
My place is the Placeless, my trace is the Traceless;
‘Tis neither body nor soul, for I belong to the soul of the Beloved.
I have put duality away, I have seen that the two worlds are one;
One I seek, One I know, One I see, One I call.
He is the first, He is the last, He is the outward, He is the inward;
I know none other except ‘Yã Hú’ and ‘Yã man Hú.’
I am intoxicated with Love’s cup, the two worlds have passed out of my ken;
I have no business save carouse and revelry.
If once in my life I spent a moment without thee,
From that time and from that hour I repent of my life.
If once in this world I win a moment with thee,
I will trample on both worlds, I will dance in triumph for ever.
O Shamsi Tabríz, I am so drunken in this world,
That except of drunkenness and revelry I have no tale to tell
Rebellion begins against the
false Gods of pride, hypocrisy, sloth,
greed and ignorance because they inflict severe internal damage and are the
major causes of spiritual obesity.
Only when the latter have been transformed into humility, sincerity,
discipline, charity and knowledge can we begin to contemplate victory akin to a
spiritual Fatah Makkah and beyond...
This rebellion will takes
years if not a whole life time however as the salikah transforms so does her
external environment and if enough people are engaged in this noble yet
essential task a critical mass will
emerge so that society in general improves. In Sha Allah.
It is important to realise
that only the elite rebels will experience
non-duality...as Mevlana Rumi reminds us:
I died to the inorganic state and became endowed with growth,
and (then) I died
to (vegetable) growth and attainted to the animal.
I died from animality and became Adam (man), why then I should
fear,
When have I become less
by dying?
At next remove I shall die to man, that I may soar and lift up
my head amongst
the angels;
And I must escape even from (the state of) the angels:
“Everything is perishing except His face.”
Once more I shall be sacrificed and died to angel: I shall
become that which enter not to imagination.
Then I shall become non-existence: non-existent saith to me, (in
tone loud) as an organ:
