Messages – Blog

I want to speak with your heart. I want to communicate at spirit level. What do we mean by spirit or soul? What do we mean by ‘spiritual’?

Our spirit or soul is our essence – not even ‘who‘ we are – it’s deeper than that. It’s WHAT we are. It’s the difference between a dead body and a living person. That’s what we are.

We are animation; we are breath…

Allaah/God breathed our souls into us and we automatically gaze back at our Origin, yearn for ‘reunification’, somehow knowing that we have been separated and longing for unity. Together we are the Love that replaces the Lover, the Mirror and the Beloved.

Iblees* would not obey Allaah and prostrate to Adam when Allaah created him because he was made from clay and the Jinn (of whom Ibless was one) were made of fire, which Iblees thought far superior.

The mistake he made was one that we repeat over and over and over. He was not asked to bow to Adams body but to his Being – his Soul – breathed into him by Allaah. This is the dilemma of the world today. We are forever mistaking ourselves and others for the body instead of the soul – for what we HAVE not what we ARE.

We judge ourselves and others for our education not our understanding; our job not our talents and what we do for others; our house not our character and personality; our clothes not our smiles; our faces and not our hearts.

We are the breath of Allaah, breathed into our bodies and animated by the ‘ruh‘, the soul.

*Iblees is the Jinn who became Shaytaan the Accursed, expelled from Heaven, and who, in return, said: “Because You have sent me astray, surely, I will lie in wait against them (human beings) on Your straight path. Then, I will come to them from before them and behind them, from their right and from their left, and You will not find most of them as thankful ones (i.e they will not be dutiful to You” (Qur’an, 7:17)

“Not only do the thirsty seek water,
The water too thirsts for the thirsty.”

Rumi

My own journey was of wandering about the world following spiritual callings, children in tow, followed by a fourteen year period of strict Islamic practice.

Now I am back out wandering having embraced and embodied the ‘orthodox.’

Simply integrating myself and presenting myself to the world as I am.

I drank and drank and drank, my thirst unabated.

But now I feel the call of the water, aching in the thirst of seekers and those who don’t know what they’re searching for – and must carry the water.

Companion section of Rumi’s “Mathnawi” – Book Two, Story VIII

“He who needs mercy finds it.

Doing kindness is the game and quarry of good men,
A good man seeks in the world only pains to cure.
Wherever there is a pain there goes the remedy,
Wherever there is poverty there goes relief.
Seek not water, only show you are thirsty,
That water may spring up all around you.
That you may hear the words, “The Lord gives them to drink,”²
Be athirst! Allah knows what is best for you.
Seek you the water of mercy? Be downcast,
And straightway drink the wine of mercy to intoxication.
Mercy is called down by mercy to the last.
Withhold not, then, mercy from any one, O son!”

2. Quran 76:21

What are we doing when we are meditating using visualization?

We are giving our minds symbols to contemplate that our souls well know. Thus the mind is busy and the soul is at contemplation.

Companion section from The “Mathnawi I Ma’nawi” of Rumi: from Book One, Story IV

Praise compared to vapour drawn upwards,
and then descending in rain.

Though water be enclosed in a reservoir,
Yet air will absorb it, for ‘tis its supporter;
It sets it free and bears it to its source,
Little by little, so that you see not the process.

In like manner this breath of ours by degrees
Steals away our souls from the prison-house of earth.
“The good word riseth up to Him,”²
Rising from us whither He knoweth.
Our breathings are lifted up in fear of God,
Offerings from us to the throne of Eternity.
Then come down to us rewards for our praises,
The double thereof, yea, mercies from the King of Glory.
Therefore are we constrained to utter these praises
That slaves may attain the height of God’s gifts.
And so this rising and descent go on evermore,
And cease not forever and aye.
To speak in plain Persian, this attraction
Comes from the same quarter whence comes this sweet
savour.³
Notes:
2. Koran, 35:10.
3. Sweet savour, i.e., the joy of heart experienced by the offerer
of prayer when his prayer is accepted of God. See Book II.
Story XVII.