Soma
Tools of the Path => Other Paths [Public] => Topic started by: Firestarter on July 12, 2009, 11:01:05 AM
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Sufism means that God causes you to die to yourself and give you life in Him. ~ Al Junayd
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GOD raises him who lowers himself.
Quran
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He who does not have a pure intention (niya) will not evolve in the way, even if he spends all of his life in the company of the Prophet.
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Real knowledge is obtained only with a humble heart. The way to acquire real knowledge is similar to the way in which a person desiring to drink from the water from a stream. He must lower himself and bend down in order to drink. Water is always to be found in the lowest place. We must become like the water.
Every stage of the voyage is more beautiful than the previous stage.
Everyone issues from the same light. There is no distinction.
We see only exteriors but the inner realities are hidden from our perception. Our bodies live in this world, but our inner beings live in another dimension, another realm. Access to this inner being is the entire function of the way.
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Beware of mere intellectual perception and understanding. There exists a perception of the senses and a perception derived from luminosity and intuition. Perception of the senses has its limits. In order to transcend it one must work on oneself and cultivate the company of the people in the way of GOD. Only GOD can transform perception of the senses into a perception derived from luminosity and intuition: This is a perception lit by the light of the heart.
The world is like an passing shadow. Thus when the sun rises over an object, a shadow appears for a moment then is dissipated. It is the same thing for this world in relation to its reality.
Those that have knowledge of GOD have no shadow. Truly it is only those who lack perception sees them as having shadows. It is in this way that one can understand the attribute of the Prophet (...) : that he cast no shadow.
He who can see the unity of GOD sees only that. Such a person perceives that all normal shapes and forms even those of other human beings are only illusions.
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The Opening (fath) is the sudden opening of Divine Reality and thus the end of illusion. It is like a snow ball thrown into the ocean, the snowball symbolising the nafs or ego and the ocean being Divine Reality. The snow ball is nothing else than frozen water and when thrown into the ocean it becomes water again, like a small drop in the ocean. The ego has only an transitory existence which is mere illusion if it is taken on its own separated from its origin. In like manner to the snow ball if one is sure of one’s own present state, and one’s consistence of the moment, it appears very different from water as if it were made of a different substance and has a quite different nature, in reality it consists only of a few drops of water similar to all the other drops in the ocean. There is only one water but it exists in different forms and states.
There is no reality but Divine Reality.' La ilaha IL L'ALLAH ' (There is no Deity except Allah)
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Spiritual need is a living and luminous fire placed by God in the breast of His servants that their "self" (nafts, or ego) may be burned; and when it has been burned this fire becomes the fire of "longing" (shawq) which never dies, neither in this world nor in the next.
~Abu Sa'id Ibn Abi-l-Khayr
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One must have "spiritual need," for there is no shorter way to God for the devotee; if it passes through solid rock, water springs forth. "Spiritual need" is fundamental for the Sufis; it is the bestowal of God's mercy upon them.
~Abu Sa'id Ibn Abi-l-Khayr
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You'll be free from the trap of your being,
when, through spiritual need,
You're trodden underfoot, like a mat
in the mosque and the winehouse.
Sana'i
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Know that you are the veil which conceals yourself from you. Know also that you cannot reach God through yourself, but that you reach Him through Him. The reason is that when God vouchsafes the vision of reaching Him, He calls upon you to seek after Him and you do.
Al-Junayd
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It is he who suffers his absence in me
Who through me cries out to himself.
Love's most strange, most holy mystery-
We are intimate beyond belief.
~Rumi
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When God wishes to befriend one of His servants, He
opens for him the gate of His rememberance. When he experiences the sweetness of rememberance, He opens for him the gate of nearness. Then He raises him into the gatherings of His intimacy. Then He settles him upon the throne of unity. Then He lifts the veil from him and leads him into the abode of unicity and reveals for him the divine splendor and majesty. When his eyes fall upon the divine splendor and majesty, naught of himself remains. Thereupon His servant is entirely extinguished for a time. after this he comes under God's exhalted protection, free from any pretensions of his self.
~Abu Sa'id Al-Kharraz
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You imagined that you would accomplish this task through your own strength, activity, and effort. This is the wont I have established: expend everything you have in Our way. Then Our bounty will come to you. On this endless road, We command you to travel with your own feeble hands and feet. We know that you cannot traverse this way with feet so feeble. Indeed, a hundred thousand years you will not arrive at the first way station. However, when you travel this road until your legs are exhausted and you fall down flat, until you have no more strength to move forward, then God's grace will take you in its arms.
~Rumi
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Whether your lot be glory or disgrace, be pure of both hatred and love of self. Polish your mirror, and perhaps that sublime beauty from the regions of mystery will shine in your breast - just as it did for the prophets. And then, with your heart illuminated by that splendor, the secret of the Beloved will no longer be concealed from you.
~Jami
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Someone who seeks God through logical proof is like someone who looks for the sun with a lamp. ~Traditional Sufi Saying
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Sleep with the remembrence of death and rise with the awareness that you will not live long. ~Uwais El-Qarni
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The Ways of God are as many as the breaths of Human beings. ~Traditional Sufi Saying
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Do you want to be a pilgrim on the path to love? The first step is making yourself humble as ashes. ~Ansari of Herat
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Love is to stand before your Beloved, striped naked of all attributes, so that His qualities become your qualities. ~Al-Haiiaj
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"You've no idea how hard I've looked for a gift to bring You. Nothing seemed right. What's the point of bringing gold to the gold mine, or water to the Ocean. Everything I came up with was like taking spices to the Orient. It's no good giving my heart and my soul because you already have these. So- I've brought you a mirror. Look at yourself and remember me."
Jalaluddin Rumi
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You yourself are your own obstacle - rise above yourself. ~Hafiz
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The true mystic is not a devotee lost in ecstatic communion with the One, or a reclusive saint who avoids others. The true mystic lives alongside other people - coming and going, eating and sleeping, buying and selling, marrying and chatting - but not for a moment does he forget God."
Abu Sa'id Lbn Abi-L-Khayr
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When you lose yourself, you find the Beloved." There is no other secret. I don't know any more than this. ~Ansari of Herat
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The Special Love
As the full moon appears from the night, so appears
her face amid the tresses.
From sorrow comes the perception of her: the eyes
crying on the cheek; like the black narcissus
shedding tears upon a rose.
More beauties are silenced: her fair quality is
overwhelming.
Even to think of her harms her subtlety (thought is
too coarse a thing to perceive her). If this be
so, how can she correctly be seen by such a clumsy
organ as the eye?
Her fleeting wonder eludes thought.
She is beyond the spectrum of sight.
When description tried to explain her, she overcame it.
Whenever such an attempt is made, description is
put to flight.
Because it is trying to circumscribe.
If someone seeking her lowers his aspirations (to
feel in terms of ordinary love),
there are always others who will not do so.
~Ibn El-Arabi (Shah 86)
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Love makes bitter things sweet.
Love turns copper to gold.
With love dregs settle into clarity.
With love suffering ceases.
Love brings the dead back to life.
Love transforms the King into a slave.
Love is the consummation of Gnosis.
How could a fool sit on such a throne?
~Rumi
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One of the marvels of the world is
the sight of a soul sitting in prison with the key in its hand! Covered with dust,
with a cleansing waterfall inches away! A young man
who rolls from side to side,
though the bed is comfortable and a pillow holds his head.
He has a living master, yet
he wants more, and there is more. If a prisoner hadn't
lived outside, he would not
detest the dungeon. Desiring knows there's satisfaction beyond this. Straying maps
the path. A secret freedom opens through a crevice you
can barely see. Your love
of many things proves they're one. Every separate stiff
trunk and stem in the garden
connects with nimble root hairs underground. The awareness
a wine drinker wants cannot
be tasted in wine, but the failure brings deep thirst
closer. So the heart keeps ignoring
the waterfall and the key, but there is one guiding through
all the desiring restlessness.
The old captains are blind to the young man's qualities.
They keep arguing their tired
arguments: how spiritual maturity arrives like leaflessness,
the lightness of winter trees
that comes with age. Such predictable phrases breeze out of the old soldiers
who presume to advise Muhammad! Don't use words in the
presence of the Friend. When
you sit down with your beloved, tell the chaperone, the
word-woman who brought you
together, to leave. Silence is better.
~Rumi
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The Real Work
There is one thing in this world that you must never forget to do. If you forget everything else and not this, there's nothing to
worry about; but if you remember everything else and forget this, then you will have done nothing in your life.
It's as if a king has sent you to some country to do a task, and you perform a hundred other services, but not the one he sent you to do. So human beings come to this world to do particular work. That work is the purpose, and each is specific to the person. If you don't do it, it's as though a priceless Indian sword were used to slice rotten meat. It's a golden bowl being used to cook turnips, when one filing from the bowl could buy a hundred suitable pots. It's a knife of the finest tempering nailed into a wall to hang things on.
You say, "But look, I'm using the dagger. It's not lying idle." Do you hear how ludicrous that sounds? For a penny, an iron nail could be bought to serve the purpose. You say, "But I spend my energies on lofty enterprises. I study jurisprudence and philosophy and logic and astronomy and medicine and all the rest."
But consider why you do those things. They are all branches of yourself.
Remember the deep root of your being, the presence of your lord. Give your life to the one who already owns your breath and your moments. If you don't, you will be exactly like the man who takes a precious dagger and hammers it into his kitchen wall for a peg to hold his dipper gourd. You'll be wasting valuable keenness and foolishly ignoring your dignity and your purpose.
~Rumi
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Whoever is loved is beautiful, but the opposite is not true, that whoever is beautiful is loved. Real beauty is part of loved-ness, and that loved-ness is primary. If a being is loved, he or she has beauty, because a part cannot be separate from the whole. Many girls were more beautiful than Laila, but Majnun did not love them. "Let us bring some of these to meet you," they used to say to Majnun, and he would reply, "It's not the form of Laila that I love. Laila is not the form. You're looking at the cup, whereas I think only of the wine I drink from that cup. If you gave me a chalice studded with gemstones, but filled with vinegar or something other than wine, what use would that be? An old broken dipper-gourd with Laila-wine in it is better than a hundred precious goblets full of other liquid."
Passion is present when a man can distinguish between the wine and the container. Two men see a loaf of bread. One hasn't eaten anything for ten days. The other has eaten five times a day, every day. He sees the shape of the loaf. The other man with his urgent need sees inside into the taste, and into the nourishment the bread could give. Be that hungry, to see within all beings the Friend.
Creatures are cups. The sciences and the arts and all branches of knowledge are inscriptions around the outside of the cups. When a cup shatters, the writing can no longer be read. The wine's the thing! The wine that's held in the mold of these physical cups. Drink the wine and know what lasts and what to love. The man who truly asks must be sure of two things: One, that he's mistaken in what he's doing or thinking now. And two, that there is a wisdom he doesn't know yet. Asking is half of knowing.
Everyone turns toward someone. Look for one scarred by the King's polo stick.
A man or a woman is said to be absorbed when the water has total control of him, and he no control of the water. A swimmer moves around willfully. An absorbed being has no will but the water's going. Any word or act is not really personal, but the way the water has of speaking or doing. As when you hear a voice coming out of a wall, and you know that it's not the wall talking, but someone inside, or perhaps someone outside echoing off the wall. Saints are like that. They've achieved the condition of a wall, or a door.
~Rumi
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In truth everything and everyone
Is a shadow of the Beloved,
And our seeking is His seeking
And our words are His words...
We search for Him here and there,
while looking right at Him.
Sitting by His side, we ask:
'O Beloved, where is the Beloved?'
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God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches you by means of opposites, so that you will have two wings to fly - not one.
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I come to you, aching for you. You say, 'You're drunk. Go away.' I say 'No. I'm not drunk. Please open the door.' You say, 'You are, you are.. Go away'.
~Rumi
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Load the ship and set out. No one knows for certain whether the vessel will sink or reach the harbor. Cautious people say, "I'll do nothing until I can be sure". Merchants know better. If you do nothing, you lose. Don't be one of those merchants who wont risk the ocean. ~Rumi
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Travelers, it is late.
Life's sun is going to set.
During these brief days that you have strength,
be quick and spare no effort of your wings.
~Rumi
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Our death is our wedding with eternity.
What is the secret? "God is One."
The sunlight splits when entering the windows of the house.
This multiplicity exists in the cluster of grapes;
It is not in the juice made from the grapes.
For he who is living in the Light of God,
The death of the carnal soul is a blessing.
Regarding him, say neither bad nor good,
For he is gone beyond the good and the bad.
Fix your eyes on God and do not talk about what is invisible,
So that he may place another look in your eyes.
It is in the vision of the physical eyes
That no invisible or secret thing exists.
But when the eye is turned toward the Light of God
What thing could remain hidden under such a Light?
Although all lights emanate from the Divine Light
Don't call all these lights "the Light of God";
It is the eternal light which is the Light of God,
The ephemeral light is an attribute of the body and the flesh.
...Oh God who gives the grace of vision!
The bird of vision is flying towards You with the wings of desire.
~Rumi
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We see only exteriors but the inner realities are hidden from our perception. Our bodies live in this world, but our inner beings live in another dimension, another realm. Access to this inner being is the entire function of the way.
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Imperfection and ugliness are not part of the nature of things but only in the impurity of our regard of them. The more the soul is at peace, perfect and pure, the more it is disposed to see in everything a manifestation of divine Light. Everything then becomes beautiful. Only the unpolished heart of the disciple makes things appear ugly.
Divine Light gyrates around the disciple’s heart. The runway must be entirely clear in order that the plane may land. In similar fashion if our heart is full of desires and passions, divine light cannot find a place to seat itself.
Wisdom is in the heart. He who wishes to find water in his well must dig for it. The more he digs, the more the water is abundant. If he ceases to dig, water will always remain at its minimal level. He who digs should never think that the water has reached its maximal level. He should continue digging, as the well has no limits.
Everyone should watch over his heart. All suggestions should be rejected. Also one should reject everything that is unhealthy and try to remain open to all of the divine graces, and to everything that is positive and that which favours his spiritual progress. But how to reject negative suggestions? When you feel their presence, you must tell your ego that it is wrong and that it is you yourself who harbours faults and not others. “It is I who is wrong. If I see a fault in another it is because it is in me. Otherwise I would not have seen it”.
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Bahauddin Naq'shbandi said:
"Our way is that of group discussion. In solitude, there is renown and in renown there is peril. Welfare is to be found in a group. Those who follow this way find great benefit and blessing in group-meetings."
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Khawaja Azizan said:
"The secret of effective zikr is to repeat each phrase as if it were your last breath, this is why it is called 'wounded' zikr."
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Abdulhalik Gujduvani's Sufi spiritual techniques, as preserved in the Essence of the Teaching of the Masters, can be reduced to the following:
1. Be present at every breath. Remember yourself always and in all situations.
2. Keep your intention before you at every step you take. You wish for freedom and you must never forget it.
3. Your journey is toward your homeland. You are travelling from the world of appearances to the World of Reality.
4. Solitude in the crowd. In all your outward activity remain inwardly free. Learn not to identify yourself with anything whatsoever.
5. Remember your Friend. Let the prayer of your tongue be the prayer of your heart.
6. Struggle against alien thoughts.
7. Be constantly aware of the quality of Diving Presence in your heart.
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These are good, and easier said than done too ;)
Abdulhalik Gujduvani's Sufi spiritual techniques, as preserved in the Essence of the Teaching of the Masters, can be reduced to the following:
1. Be present at every breath. Remember yourself always and in all situations.
2. Keep your intention before you at every step you take. You wish for freedom and you must never forget it.
3. Your journey is toward your homeland. You are travelling from the world of appearances to the World of Reality.
4. Solitude in the crowd. In all your outward activity remain inwardly free. Learn not to identify yourself with anything whatsoever.
5. Remember your Friend. Let the prayer of your tongue be the prayer of your heart.
6. Struggle against alien thoughts.
7. Be constantly aware of the quality of Diving Presence in your heart.
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These are the Northern Sufis - they are not romantic like the Southern Sufis. They are pragmatic and dedicated to freedom - highly influenced by Buddhism.
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6. Struggle against alien thoughts.
That is very Toltec as well.
http://restlesssoma.com.au/soma/index.php?topic=19.msg31408#msg31408
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A self-sacrificing way,
but also a warrior's way, and not
for brittle, easily broken, glass-bottle people.
The soul is tested here by sheer terror
as a sieve sifts and separates
genuine from fake.
And this road is full of footprints!
Companions have come before.
They are your ladder.
Use them!
~Rumi
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If words come out of the heart, they will enter the heart, but if they
come from the tongue, they will not pass beyond the ears.
al-Suhrawardi
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You will not be a mystic until you are like the earth -- both the righteous and the sinner tread upon it -- and until you are like the clouds -- they shade all things -- and until you are like the rain -- it waters all things, whether it loves them or not.
Bayzid Bistami
as collected by James Fadiman & Robert Frager
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If words come out of the heart, they will enter the heart, but if they
come from the tongue, they will not pass beyond the ears.
al-Suhrawardi
:-*
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:-*
:-* :)
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"One shall always tell the truth, but there are truths one never should tell."
Queen Christina
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The lower self is like a thief who sneaks into your house at night to steal whatever is valuable and worthwhile. You cannot fight this thief directly, because it will mirror whatever force you bring against it. If you have a gun, the thief will also have a gun. If you have a knife, the thief will have a knife as well. To struggle with the thief is to invite disaster. So, what can you do?
The only practical solution is to turn on the light. The thief, who is a coward at heart, will then run out. How do we turn on the light? Through the practice of remembrance, awareness, and heedfulness.
Sheikh Tosun Bayrak
as collected by James Fadiman & Roger Frager
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"One shall always tell the truth, but there are truths one never should tell."
Queen Christina
Very true, this one.
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"Learn the truth my friend but be careful not to make a fetish out of your truth."
~ Shams e Tabrizi
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Old saying:
If you want to be Happy for a Day - get yourself a bottle of Wine
If you want to be Happy for a couple of Months - get yourself a Lover
If you want to be Happy for the rest of your life - get yourself a Garden.