In Response to a Reader’s beautiful statement.

In my posting Just Some thoughts, I thought to give a voice to another aspect of the path that is not discussed much if at all out in the open outside the circle of friends. There is a great pain, great longing difficulties every step of the way, but there is a great “Love” that ..i dont know if there words for it to be honest. I still feel I am on the road of intent and not yet “nothing” as every dervish strive to be but the glimpses the occasional moments when I am lost in the moment let me leave me hopeful.

A kind reader had this to say: I’m not sure whether to find this inspiring or hopeless! To that I respond with these three quotes which I keep with me to always remind me 

“The Beloved is so sweet, so sweet,” they repeat;
I show them the scars where His polo-stick thrashed me.
“The Beloved is terrible, a maniac,” they wail;
I show them my eyes, melting in His tender passion.

- Jalal-ud-Din Rumi 

______

When does gold ore become gold? When it is put
through a process of fire. So the human being during the
training becomes as pure as gold through suffering. It is
the burning away of the dross. Suffering has a great
redeeming quality. As a drop of water falling on the desert
sand is sucked up immediately, so we must become
nothing and nowhere … we must disappear.

Bhai Sahib

______

You imagined you would accomplish this task through your own strength, activity and effort. This is the wont that I have established: expend everything you have in Our Way. Then Our bounty will come to you. In 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, in 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 

_________

[I should make a Point to say a word about the a significance of the name Allah. According to an esoteric Sufi tradition, the word Allâh is composed of the article al, and lâh, one of the interpretations of which is “nothing.” Thus the word Allâh can be understood to mean “the Nothing.” The fact that His greatest name contains the meaning “the Nothing” has great significance, because for the mystic the experience of Truth, or God, beyond all forms and attributes, is an experience of Nothingness.

- Llewellyn Vaughan Lee ]  

Related articles

• The unknown face of Rumi – Sufism and Spiritual Consumerism in the West (mycaravanofdreams.com)
• Initiatic Grace in the Masterwork of Jalal ud-din Rumi by Lynn C. Bauman (mycaravanofdreams.com)
• A Reader Prays for me to burn in Hell (mycaravanofdreams.com)

Tags: Allah, Bhai Sahib, God, Golden Sufi Center, islam, Llewellyn Vaughan Lee, muslim, sufi, Sufis of Antiquity, Sufism