Arif-Path
“Bismillahir Rahmannir Raheem”Al-Hamdu Lillaahi Rabbil ‘Aalameen was Salaatu was- Salaamu ‘Alaa Sayidinaa Muhammadin wa Aalihi wa Asabihi Ajma ‘een (tauheed- risalat- ahkirat and islam-iman-ihsan)
Sufi secrets 1
The Sufi who sets out to seek God calls himself a ‘traveller’ (salik); he advances by slow ‘stages’ (maqamat) along a ‘path’ (tariqat) to the goal of union with Reality (fana fi ’l-Haqq).
Consists of the following seven ‘stages’ (l) Repentance, (2) abstinence, (3) renunciation, (4) poverty, (5) patience, (6) trust in God, (7) satisfaction. The ‘stages’ constitute the ascetic and ethical discipline of the Sufi.
The ‘states'(ahwal/hal) (ten ‘states’/hal–Meditation, nearness to God, love, fear, hope, longing, intimacy, tranquillity, contemplation, and certainty) are spiritual feelings and dispositions over which a man has no control.”They descend from God into his heart, without his being able to repel them when they come or to retain them when they go.”
The Sufi’s ‘path’ is not finished until he has traversed all the ‘stages,’ making himself perfect in every one of them before advancing to the next, and has also experienced whatever ‘states’ it pleases God to bestow upon him. Then, and only then, is he permanently raised to the higher planes of consciousness which Sufis call ‘the Gnosis’ (ma‘rifat) and ‘the Truth’ (haqiqat), where the ‘seeker’ (talib) becomes the ‘knower’ or ‘gnostic’ (‘arif), and realises that knowledge, knower, and known are One.
Threefold journey–the Path, the Gnosis, and the Truth–by which the quest of Reality is often symbolised.
Repentance (tawbat)- first stage/step .
Repentance is described as the awakening of the soul from the slumber of heedlessness, so that the sinner becomes aware of his evil ways and feels contrition for past disobedience.
He is not truly penitent, however, unless (1) he at once abandons the sin or sins of which he is conscious, and (2) firmly resolves that he will never return to these sins in the future.
It he should fail to keep his vow, he must again turn to God, whose mercy is infinite.
The sufi must also, as far as lies in his power, satisfy all those whom he has injured.
Repentance is purely an act of divine grace, coming from God to man, not from man to God.
The question whether sins ought to be remembered after repentance or forgotten —Think humbly and remorsefully of one’s sins is a sovereign remedy against spiritual pride, Real repentance consists in forgetting everything except God.
The lover of God is in contemplation of God: in contemplation it is wrong to remember sin, for recollection of sin is a veil between God and the contemplative.”
Sin appertains to self-existence, which itself is the greatest of all sins. To forget sin is to forget self.
Take a murshid/guide (follows shariah and tariqat) for guidance . People without murshid are guided by shaitan.
Murshid helps the student in spiritual discipline (for a certain period -3 years) .
The first year is devoted to service of the people(he must regard all, without exception, as being better than himself, and must deem it his duty to serve all alike)
The second year to service of God(cuts off all his selfish interests relating either to the present or to the future life, and worships God for God’s sake alone, inasmuch as whoever worships God for any thing’s sake worships himself, not God)
The third year to watching over his own heart(when his thoughts are collected and every care is dismissed, so that in communion with God he guards his heart from the assaults of heedlessness)
Training include –the fasts and vigils, the vows of silence, the long days and nights of solitary meditation, Poverty, Mortification, Trust in God, and Recollection.
Then he is a truly spiritually disciplined.
When I want to talk to Allah I say prayers and when I want that he talk to me I recite quran- Hazrath Ali(ra)
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