In sufi teaching, the masters talk about stations, the stations to reach God. In Shadhiliyya sufi path, the teacher Sidi al-Jamal in his book, Music of the Soul, talks about different stations, such as seven stations of the self (nafs), heart (qalb), soul (ruh) and the secret (sirr). Here is an excerpts from one of the station of heart, al-haqiqat: the station of truth / true reality.You are the secret. If you know the deep secret, you can reach Him and sit in the holy garden. In the garden you will find the wine of the truth. Every heart needs this wine because the heart is the tree of God and tree needs to drink His wine. You cannot drink this wine if you do not know its meaning. How would you know the way of the wine if you did not clean your house? Because He is the Holy House.
There are two things that make war in the heart – the family of light and the family of darkness. Clean your heart of the family of darkness, because many things come from the darkness. Leave everything, and open you heart only to God to know the secret inside your heart. If you change your heart, then you are the qiblah (the direction of payer). Your heart is the qiblah, and you are the qiblah.
When you are in this station, you can pray from your heart. You face yourself when you pray because He wants you to know yourself. When you know yourself, you know God and you reach His place, which is no place because He is the beginning and the end. You can pray inside your heart when you live in this station. You are the truth, and your ear is the ear of God, and your eye is the eye of God. Your picture is the picture of God, and there is no picture now because you are a deep secret. Now you can reach and you can know yourself.
Always remember that you will not reach if He does not love you. First He loves you and then you love Him, yet there is no first. He can see everything in your face and He can hear every voice. When you speak, you should know how to speak with yourself. When you are in this station, there is no body because you have lost your body. It has become completely light. Where can another sit inside you? There is no room for another, there is room only for God. You can live in this station because it is the real life. The guide wants you to spend all your time with Him. Do not lose any minute because every minute is very holy, I live with my soul now. This is the holy light, if you know.
Praying is different here from any prayer before. You now pray in two ways – the ritual prayer for the self and the deep prayer for the soul. You live all your time in everything with your soul, but the real soul. This is from the truth. No one can reach if he or she does not change everything from the outside to the inside, and there is no outside and no inside.
Pray, but do not pray only with your body. Pray with your heart and soul. You live now in al-wahid al-ahad, not just one, but all one. Al-ahad is the divine oneness of God. All your qualities in this station are the qualities of Allah because your sun (soul) is rising, and it is a holy sun which contains every meaning. When the sun rises in your heart, you can see everything and know everything. He loves your prayer because when you pray in this station, you pray with your God face to face, and there is only the face of the unity.
“ Oh my God, keep me in this station to pray deeply because my face is Your face. Help me to know, and do not discharge me back to the life I lived before I came to You because now I could not live without You.”
. Text and credit The Stations of the Way. From Music of the Soul by Shaykh Muhammad al-Jamal
. Sidi Muhammad Press
. SufiGift
. graphics: Art by Chrysti
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