Shadhili Tariqa - Sufism / Spirituality (Ihsan)

Sufism / Spirituality (Ihsan)

The touchstone of the spiritual way is a heart occupied with nothing besides Allah, and its sign, in the words of al-Junayd, is “that Allah (al-Haqq) slay you from yourself and give you life through Him”; that Allah, in the fullness of one’s destiny, free one of all low traits and adorn one with high ones. The tariqa is not concerned with the possibility of this happening as a miraculous gift, all at once, but rather with the means that normally bring it about. Sheikh ‘Abd al-Rahman emphasizes that the two strongest ones are dhikr, making remembrance of Allah, and mudhakara, learning traditional spiritual knowledge of the din in its three pillars: Islam (shari‘a), Iman (‘aqida), and Ihsan (tariqa).

Manners with the Devil

In order to see who is paying for an advertisement, one has to look at the bottom line. To see who is behind one’s doubts, one follows the thought out to its logical conclusion and sees what it leads to. If the conclusion is “Things are so bad, there is nothing to be grateful to Allah for,” or “You’ve gone this far, you might as well go all the way,” or “You can’t do everything, so you might as well do nothing”—one can guess who’s paying for it.

On Planning and Striving

Hikma #4: Relieve yourself of planning: What Another has already done for you do not do yourself.

Hikma #5: Your striving for what is ensured to you and neglect of what is sought from you show the blindness of your spiritual insight.

On Planning

Hikma #4: Relieve yourself of planning: what Another has already done for you do not do yourself.

The universe and all it contains are the deed of a single Doer. If planning is not to veil the spiritual traveller, he must be aware of this tawhid, the Divine Reality behind the world of forms. To know it is to walk in light and not to is to walk in darkness; as a Sufi once told me: “Sit with those of this world, and you become a speck in its sea. Sit with those of Allah, and the world becomes a speck in your sea.”

Ambition and Destiny

Hikma #3: The mightiest ambitions cannot breach the walls of destiny

The Sufi way exists to know the incommensurability of the Divine. To do so the self must relinquish its position as the greatest thing in existence. Belief in the inevitability of destiny anticipates this in principle before one realizes it in the fullness of one’s path.

Being in or Apart from the World

Hikma #2: Your wish to be apart from the world when Allah keeps you in it is but from hidden desire, while your wish to be in it when Allah keeps you apart from it is a fall from high purpose.

When one sets out on a journey, it is natural to look for the shortest way, and this aphorism warns the mystic traveller from taking a wrong turn, as many disciples do, by wishful thinking.

Relying on One's Deeds

Hikma #1: One of the signs of relying on deeds is loss of hope when there are missteps.

Infinitude is the native land from whence Allah has brought the soul, then summoned it again upon the tongue of His messengers (Allah bless them and give them peace) from its exile. Traditional Islamic spirituality deals with answering this summons, lifting the heart from the narrowness of the self to the limitlessness of the knowledge and love of the Divine.

Literature About Sufism

The best book on Sufi metaphysics is the Koran, for as mentioned above, it is, in its own words, a “detailing of everything” (Koran 12:111) meaning not physical details that human beings can find out for themselves, but rather those things that no one can know, except by being informed of them by the Divine, matters that are precisely meta– or ‘beyond’ the physical. The Koran is higher reality itself, a single atom of which is worth a cosmos of human literature. The books of the Sufis but point up the proper manners of the spiritual traveller vis-à-vis this reality.