The dhikr is a simple but very powerful practice. Of course at the beginning you cannot repeat it continually. When the mind is occupied, talking reading, or otherwise engaged, His name is not present. But whenever there is an opportunity, particularly when waling or performing physical tasks, then continue this practice. If while cooking you repeat dhikr the food has a special taste. The love in the food my teacher cooked was sometimes astonishing. I never knew that you could taste love until then. The dhikr makes simple tasks holy. Everything is an opportunity to remember Him. And the dhikr has magic; it is said, “First you do the dhikr and then it does you.’ It gos into the unconscious and repeated itself within your heart.Then , even when your mind is busy with other, if you look into your heart you will find His name is being repeated. You wake up and you are inwardly His name. You may discover that even in your are practicing the dhikr.
How the Dhikr Works
The dhikr works in a number of ways. It helps to train the mind, so that we an become masters of our own mind. Normally the mind thinks us and not the other way around. Watch your own thoughts and you will see how your minds leads you, even creating desires for your. Spiritual life is a process of becoming one-pointed, of focusing yourself on the Beloved. Repeating His name is a simple and highly effective way to control your mind and turn your attention back to God. It is said, “What you think you become.” for centuries lover have used the name of their Beloved to help them realize their true nature, to make the journey from separation to union. By turning us away from the world and turning us back to God, His name holds us and aligns us with His grace and power.
The dhikr also works in the unconscious, purifying th psyche. This is a very mysterious process, but the power of His name works within the psyche, transforming us, as expressed in the hadith, “There is a polish for everything that takes away rust, and the polis for the heart is the invocation of Allah.” Polishing the heart is a Sufi term for ”inner work,” for it is said that when the heart is free of blemishes then it reflects the pure light of the Beloved. Inner work is a very important stage on the path.
Is this from “Love is a Fire”? The title looks strange in your blog post.
Warmly,
Michelle
Prayer of the Heart
Hello Michelle,
There was a mistake in my typing the full title didnt come out . I am going to update this. Thanks for your comment
Dave
“Inner work is a very important stage on the path” – it seems to me that inner work is not only a stage, but the entire production as ‘outer’ is shaped by ‘inner’ (when inner ceases to be shaped by outer).
Rula
I ma not sure what you mean. Could you elaborate on the inner work being the whole production. Meanwhile here is a poem your comment reminded me of :
SITTING IN THE ORCHARD
A man sits in an orchard, fruit trees full
and the vines plump. He has his head
on his knee; his eyes are closed.
His friend says, “Why stay sunk in mystical
meditation when the world is like this?
Such visible grace.”
He replies, “This outer is an elaboration of the inner. I prefer the origin.”
Natural beauty is a tree limb reflected
in the water of a creek, quivering there, not
there. The growing that moves in the soul
is more real than tree limbs and reflections.
We laugh and feel happy or sad over all this.
Try instead to get a scent
of the true orchard. Taste the vineyard
within the vineyard.
Hi Dave. What I mean is “This outer is an elaboration of the inner.”
What “outer work” is there to do? Has man not spent 40,000 or more years doing ‘outer work’? Where has this gotten him inwardly? Psychologically? It seems to me that his “inner” remains very much the same as it was all those years ago.
If outer is projection of inner (when inner ceases to become a reflection of outer…when one ceases to be affected by the outer), then there is only inner work.