
For all those who are still seeking your companion of love (and haven't been found by the beloved) - here is a sufi message for you:
Love yourself the most, more than anyone else. The one who can match that love, will be attracted towards you.
Sidenote:
The success of this attraction, is proportional
to the degree of perfection
of you, loving
your own pure self.
By permission of the Lord, a Prayer to strengthen this attraction and activate that love which comes from a Single source but in infinite disguises:
Pray thus, "O Turner of the Hearts (Ya Muqallib al-Qulub), Turn my Heart towards Love, for You alone is the Source of all Love. Help O God, O the Most Loving (Madad Ya Allah, Ya Wadud)."
Happy Valentine's Day to you and your loved ones.
Probing further:
Yesterday Professor Alan Godlas wrote a lovely status on his Facebook wall that reads:
Many people do not realize that worship, at its best, is an intense act of love, more intense than simply loving.
He further explained: Try this out: say to someone whom you love, "I love you." (Or if such a person is not present, simply think about them and say it.) Then say to them, "I worship you." Feel the difference! It's even scary, as if "I worship you" almost implies "I love you and I'm gonna stalk you for the rest of my life." While someone madly in love with a person might occasionlly say "I worship you" to a person, this is what can be constantly and ideally implicit in someone who is dedicated to worshipping God. Thinking about it in this way throws a whole new light on 'ibada (worship).
Someone commented: Worship requires devotion and devotion does contain love. The best feeling of love translates into an ecstatic state of mind. Loving God must necessarily be an integral part of worshiping Him properly. It's love that begets love. If we love God, He will love us (This follows from 3:31).
Another valuable comment: Ibn al-Arabi says that the correct worship of God is through His Lordship and is not correct through His Unity. He is Rabbil-Alameen. The best worship is as he prescribes in His Book, the Quran al-Kareem which includes attributes of Mercy, Power, Awesomeness, Compassion, etc. There are many attributes of God. Love is one of them. Each of us has a dominant attribute as part of his/her inner makeup (Ibn al-Arabi), so we may find more ease in worshipping Him through that attribute. Daily prayer and calling on Him are essential aspects of worship in Islam and therefore Tassawuf Sufism. Worship through the prayer is directly through the Quranic ayats recited including the Fatihah.
The source (of previous paragraph) is W.C. Chittick's "The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-Arabi's Physics of Imagination", an inestimable source of treasures, page 244, second column under "The Commentary of the Folk of Allah". The words in that portion translated by Prof. Chittick are: "...He is not worshipped in respect of His Unity, since Unity contradicts the existence of the worshipper...What is worshipped is only the Lord in respect of His Lordship... Do not make yourself lowly before Unity as you make yourself lowly before Lordship. For Unity does not know you and will not accept you.... God negates the worship of the worshippers from having a connection to Unity, since Unity is established only and strictly for Allah".
In that book the concept of names and attributes is also discussed at length. I cannot quickly access the reference to my statement "Each of us has a dominant attribute as part of his/her inner makeup," but it is there. In fact, this book, to my knowledge, is one of the greatest contributions to the Islamic spiritual path (also known as "Sufism") in the English language and could be read and studied for many a year. Please let me know (you can message me if you like) if you have come across other books as valuable as this one.
The reason I posted as I did is not because I have taken exception to your statement. I believe what you have said is true, but I have also observed that the great spiritual knowledge and heritage of Islam, most often called "Sufism", is extracted from the context of the "shariah" and the "deen of Islam" in its larger sense. Many people refer to Rumi and love in an extractive way and believe that "Love" is the way. This is incorrect. Love is the result of worship and following the Sacred Law as Prof. Chittick translates (on pg. 245, second column):
"O you who seek knowledge of the things as they are in themselves--that you will never gain this knowledge unless God acquaints you with it from yourself and lets you witness it in your own essence. Then...you become acquainted with it through unveiling. But there is no way to gain this except through...complete preparedness...by means of ascetic discipline in the soul, bodily struggles...[and] by a purity designated and detailed by the Law and not by reason."
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They say its valentine's day today. We shall come to meet this truth that it's Valentine's Day everyday when we know that our Real Valentine, our Real Beloved is the One Who is the Ever Living Who Never Dies, the Nearmost, Who Never Leaves us, the Most Subtle and Most Affectionate. It is He Who choose to bestow upon us our precious existence out of Divine Love so that may come to recognize, witness and love Him and hence complete the sacred circle of love. Fa sawfa yatee Allahu bi qawmin yuhibbu hum, wa yuhibboona Hu / For Allah manifests people whom He Love, and they love Him. (Last Testament 5:54)
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