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

The journey to the Real described in these aphorisms is the path of wilaya or “friendship with Allah.” To travel it, the wali or friend must realize that Allah is his wali, his all powerful patron and helping friend, who says:

Allah is the protecting friend (wali) of those who believe, bringing them out of darknesses into the light (Qur’an 2 :257).

This is “what is ensured” to the disciple in the mystic path, and is what Allah has destined for him from beginningless eternity, and what he must know and be absolutely certain of. The friend (wali) of Allah must know the favor of Allah and not place his hope in anything besides. The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said:

Allah Most High says: “I shall be to My servant as he thinks I shall be. I am with him when he makes remembrance (dhikr) of Me. If he remembers Me to himself, I remember him to Myself, and if he mentions Me to an assembly, I mention him to an assembly better than they. If he draws nearer to Me by a span, I draw nearer to him by a cubit, and if he draws nearer to Me by a cubit, I draw nearer to him by a fathom. If he comes to Me walking, I come to him running.” 4

The sign that God wants one is that one wants God; just as the sign of His drawing nearer to one is that one is drawing nearer to Him. Abu Bakr al-Warraq used to forbid his disciples to journey or travel, saying, “The key to every spiritual blessing is patience in the place where you first aspire, until you truly desire. When you truly desire, the beginnings of blessedness have appeared in you.”  To become such a person, the disciple must spend all he has, like a runner who does not catch his second wind until he has used up his first. True desire (irada) to do “what is sought” from one is the mark of the kind of person Allah calls My servant in the above hadith.

Desire means taking a serious look at oneself, turning one’s back on what Allah detests, and walking away from it. Speaking badly of someone absent, for example, which Allah has likened to “eating the flesh of one’s dead brother” (Qur’an 49 :12)—no matter how witty, chic, or entertaining in the eyes of friends—is hated by God. Imam Nawawi tells us, moreover, that “just as it is unlawful to speak of a person’s failings to someone else, so too it is unlawful (haram) to speak to oneself of them and think badly of him.”  How many of one’s thoughts are about others’ failings? If one takes a step forward in the spiritual path with dhikr and prayer , and two steps backward by slandering others, how soon will one reach the goal? Desire means adding these up.

Desire also means loving what God loves, and He loves a heart alive with His remembrance. The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) has said, “Truly, this world and all it contains are accursed, except for the remembrance (dhikr) of Allah, that which He loves, and someone who has Sacred Knowledge or someone learning it.”  For Sufis dhikr is the main stanchion of the spiritual path, its way, aim, and method. Ibn al-‘Arabi advises:

Be diligent in the remembrance of Allah, secretly and openly, to yourselves and with others, for Allah has said, “Remember Me and I will remember you” (Qur’an 2 :152), making remembrance from Allah the consequence of remembrance from the servant. 8

Dhikr has tremendous power. Those who travel to the hajj, for example, and constantly make the dhikr that is sunna in motion, at rest, and in all the rites, find their whole reality changed. Few ever forget the hajj, but for those able to continue in their certitude after they return home, it is an axial experience. In this sense the spiritual path is a permanent pilgrimage. All of these matters are sought from the traveller.

To summarize, desire means change, first by takhliya or “ridding oneself ” of the acts, motives, and states unacceptable to Allah; then tahliya or “adorning oneself ” with good traits such as sincerity (ikhlas), trust (tawakkul), remembrance of Allah, and finally the ma‘rifa or knowledge of the Divine with which Allah remembers the person of dhikr who perseveres in these. To rely on one’s own efforts to bring about what Allah has already decided is “your striving for what is ensured to you,” while not to change oneself is the “neglect of what is sought from you.” Both are blindness in the way of wilaya.

MMV © N. Keller

NOTES

1 Rasa’il Mawlay al-‘Arabi al-Darqawi. Abu Dhabi : 1420/1999 . 98.

2 Ibn ‘Ata’ Illah. Lata’if al-minan fi manaqib Abi al-‘Abbas al-Mursi wa

shaykhihi Abi al-Hasan. Cairo : 1406/1986. 101.

3 Nata’ij al-afkar, Cairo : 1290/1873, I. 61–62.

4 Sahih al-Bukhari. Cairo : 1313 /1895. 9.147–48: 7405.

5 ‘Arusi, Nata’ij al-afkar, I .166.

6 Al-Adhkar . Beirut: 1425/2005. 555.

7 A well-authenticated (hasan) hadith related in Sunan al-Tirmidhi.

Beirut : n.d. 4.561: 2322.

8 A l-Futuhat al-Makkiyya. Cairo :1329/1911. 4.446.

NUH KELLER is a writer and translator who lives in Jordan. He took the Shadhili tariqa in 1982 in Damascus from Sheikh ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Shaghouri and was authorized by him in 1996.

“Relieve yourself of planning:what Another has already done for you do not do yourself”

[Aphorism 4]. Calligraphy © Abbas Baghdadi

“Your striving for what is ensured to you and neglect of what is sought from you show the

blindness of your spiritual insight” [Aphorism 5]. Calligraphy © Abbas Baghdadi