Abdal Hakim Murad – Presence in Every Breath
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AI: Transcript ©
We are on that journey back to him. And let's be awake on the
journey because he has instructed us so and because the informed
traveler who knows what he's looking at, as he passes to this
quite amazing landscape really is the real traveler who's not
wasting his time.
Smilla hamdulillah wa Salatu was Salam ala Rasulillah earlier he
was happy woman while up
the notch bandier have this idea of hot, dark, dumb, which is
something like presence in every breath.
Each breath is not something we can claim credit for. It's a
divine gift. And we are by that Divine Generosity given most of
us, quite a few of them. And each breath should be ultimately a
resonating with some form of care, some recollection of the holiness
which is our birthright,
the qasida that we've been singing, the Turkish one is about
the heart that I have within my breast, which is saying Allah,
Allah, Allah, again, a characteristic Naqshbandi idea
that heart is, carries the divine carving to impress of the divine
name, it is that mysterious seat of the roof, which is that part of
the human composite which in comprehensively, the angels could
bow down to the rest of us. It's just kind of mucky clay, nice for
a few youthful years, perhaps. But soon, gravity takes over and it
winds its inevitable way to the grave. But the part of us that is
not subject to gravity, which has wings, is the imperishable spirit.
And it is that which is what we really are rather than the false
self, which is what we think we are. So if we're in a session now
called Reflections, we need to think about what that means the
idea in the Hadith that the believer is the mirror of the
believer, mirror. Atul McMinn. In other words, a reflection,
reflection of ourself, well, if we adjust the lower turbulent self
that is likely to be by the usual human osmosis, the impulses that
we bring out in the other. You can see this in most human context
nowadays, almost all not least in debates in the House of Commons,
not much spiritual flying going on there. It's ego against ego,
expression of greed, against expression of greed, the exchange
of anxieties, not much fun. But the believer tries to remember
that beneath this false self, that is, in a sense, what we are, but
it's also an illusion. Very strange, paradox, what we really
think I am the self, I am myself, evidently, it's a kind of trap and
an illusion, and that there is something else that I can discern
with only through engaging with others. I can't really knock
myself away, and work it out, except for the one in a million
solitary type of saints, but that is hardly to be found nowadays,
and that is itself only a temporary stage. The Lord hit up
the cave of Hera, which was which preceded prophecy didn't trigger
prophecy, but it preceded it. But it wasn't repeated during
prophecy. Instead, we have the principle of * WordStar
undermanned solitude in the crowd.
Which sounds a bit depressing. Aren't we intersubjective
creatures that we want to reach out and engage and hug each other
and be part of the world isn't Islam, a social religion, a demon
or ArmaLite? Why be alone? It's realisation
more than an instruction really, that we are alone, and that every
human collectivity, including this is made up of solitary entities.
However, it is the Divine Decree, that in the mutual engagement,
of egos, a kind of fire is generated in the engagement of
Ottawa, where that occasionally happens, and it's always there.
To a very small extent, at least, light can be generated and some
kind of secret can be discerned.
affinities become evident. The mystery of Anwar Junoon maganda
the spirits are much
stirred souls are mustard armies,
those which knew each other, find an affinity. Those which did not
know each other, are repelled from each other.
For matter Nakara minhag tellef is a Hadith, which is one of the most
mysterious of Hadith, and refers to most Evidently, the time when
we were together in a more fully interactive state, that the day of
Allah to be robbed become, Am I not your Lord, the primordial
covenant, the original congregation, when everybody faced
that nebula without the single exception and things were
appropriate, right, meet, as they should be, human beings are bad
Allah, He Juana, slaves of God as brethren, the normal normative,
primordial state of human beings.
In this world, we tend not to experience that. But sometimes
there are affinities and sometimes there are instinctive mutual
dislikes. This is part of our experience in our human journey,
you immediately take to some people, and you immediately feel a
dislike to some others. And this is a subtle thing. And much of
ethics is about overcoming that, and maintaining an equilibrium
with everybody. But in those affinities, sometimes there can be
discernible, some form some form of transcendence. And this is what
the believer seeks. That's why he is alone in the crowd, not being
distracted by the crowdedness of it, but still aware of himself and
seeing where the signs of transcendence might be.
The world is pretty interesting. Human beings are even more
interesting. There is no context that is not full of objects of
study and fascination and inspiration for the believer. The
believer should, even if in a dreary, crowded place, like an
airport terminal, be filled with delight at the spectacle of the
forms of humanity, all of whom want said militia hidden Yes, we
bear witness even if now they're distracted with their handheld
devices, but all of them created for a noble end, and sculpted by
the benign hands of a rock man. This is what the believer sees,
this is the teaching of the showerhead, the witness, every
human being is one of the Shahadat bear witness, every human being
has inscribed within him or herself, the divine qualities, all
of the divine qualities, although in ourselves, we get the balance
wrong, and many of them are veiled. And in some cases, they
may not be evident at all, but they are all there because the raw
is there, which is where these qualities come together.
And therefore every human being is Shahid, witness, more than the
beauties of the other orders of creation. We can be inspired by
trees, or the sounds of birds, or the waves of the ocean and the
other things that bring about a strange, nostalgic calm in the
soul. And all of this is good and the Quran urges us quietly with
the lobe, the inner core of ourselves to ponder these signs
that are yet in the old Al Bab. And as we saw yesterday, I buy
that tends to be geared to natural forms and rhythms. So that at the
particular atmospheric moment of Fajr, there is a particular type
of prayer and we are aesthetically and spiritually engaged with the
particular spirituality of creation at a particular time. But
with Benny Adam, with human beings, it is more complex and
more interesting. A tree or the rising sun can manifest some of
the Divine Names you could say strengths or even light or
whatever. But only human beings can manifest all of the divine
qualities. Albeit Of course, not in an infinite way that is God's
alone but in a kind of wonky, very limited very finite way, but they
can be present. And your human being can be just and merciful, as
well as strong and bright. These ethical qualities of divinity are
reflected in human beings and that is the secret of human beings as
being potentially the pillar of the angels, which is a deep
secret.
So in moments of stillness into crowd as we clutching our boarding
passes, head for the gate. Instead of allowing the busyness and
aimlessness of everything to become apostate. We should try and
stop
To look at the miracle of the human family,
all of them from Adam, we are part of a single family, everybody is
our relative. We all come from the same rather humble point of origin
in this world.
Our parents came together, we were fetuses, we were born screaming,
we are all the same kind of thing. We are all in this together, and
to see what we can discern by way of divine indicative of it,
wherever there is goodness, or beauty or tenderness or patients.
That is interesting to us. A mother looking after her child, a
child, looking for its parent, old people, struggling, whatever it
might be, there is always something of human interest there.
And that can be our techie AZZAWI.
We don't really have this idea of a secular space in Islam, because
the earth belongs to God, there is nowhere where his operations are
not proceeding without any impediment. Every space is part of
God's place with prostration for human beings. And this is part of
the meaning of withdrawal, a lateral automatic Gita, which
doesn't just mean the whole world is a mosque, so I can pray
wherever I want. But also the whole earth is a place of
prostration for everything cuando la Makani tune everything in the
heavens and the earth. As the Quran says. It as it says in Surah
Rahman, which we heard the other day, the stars and the trees
prostrate, nothing is submitting. Everything is prostrate. And the
believer, particularly the believer in this Tarapur
Muhammadiyah way, is the one who sees that Oh, who strives to try
it strives to see it. Everything subject and submitted, in every
instance, to the divine command to the Divine Creation, everything is
in its inner true nature, appropriateness, even if we with
our half blindness, that really see that and a full of grumbles.
But everything is, as it should be, at the deepest ontological
level submitted to God.
And we need to remember that and force ourselves to remember it
because the whole project of the modern world is to get us not to
think about that, but to look at the surface of things.
And when we look within ourselves, which is done Only very
occasionally, and in a self serving way, by the mechanisms of
modernity, what do I want to eat for breakfast today? That kind of
thing? Or what fragrance? Should I buy? Duty Free, it's that kind of
looking within consulting the neffs. In every case, we need to
recognize that that is a search for the false self
and a fool's errand because that false self
usually encourage us encourages us to things that soon turn to mush
in our mouth and disappear. Even if it tastes good. You'll forget
it in an hour's time. You thought you needed it so much, never
tastes bad. Well, even worse, it's dunya. It is
a kind of
trick, in many ways that the aspect of dunya that is dunya that
use us
looks from afar, as if it's really gorgeous. But in fact, the more
people get into it,
mental health problems amongst the super rich in London, reported
recently it doesn't really deliver on its own promises. The shaytaan
promises you only hoorah
delusion misguided this kind of a vain dream
guy that's done yet
toolbars the hospital deep thought of us all the period is only true
top labels shinny D below makan Rob Do
you and her roommate is referring to the the self the human self as
a Falken which is quite a common metaphor in our literature. You
are a royal Falken in the clutches of an old woman. The pyramids and
the old woman is his image for dunya for the world. From the
distance looks really gorgeous. But actually it turns out to be
kind of really old wrinkly bad tempered. That's that's done yet.
But it still holds us
to top levels shiny deep and all makan rough t when you heard the
Falken is drum you went to the place which is no place. In other
words we are designed to fly to rise that's the real nature of
ourselves and we're trapped in a certain way, not by the flesh,
nature, all of those things that Christianity often speaks about,
because these are also parts of the world that submits to God in
his compassionate decree, but rather allowing ourselves to be
tricked by the surface of things, not by the meaning of things. The
ascent, the departure from the cage of the ribs that the heart
has to attempt is just a kind of metaphor. It stays put, as it does
with that holy app and the NBA, it stays put and just achieved a
proper equilibrium, and an appropriate relationship between
outwards and inwards. But the full conundrum Well, that's Nicola, not
just sitting around in a circle with a white bearded, twinkly eyed
sage and singing beautiful rock and outside the way we think of it
as having to happen. But any recollection of God, even this
recollection of the show ahead, the other fellow human beings, our
brothers and sisters at the departure gate, this is also a
place that's full of the Corolla, there should be no time where we
believe him not to be fully evident, because he has always a
button where his God, but he's also Zaha
manifesting everything to the unimpeded interaction of the
splendor of his attributes.
So we need to be people who recognize even in our highly
artificial age, when the air we breathe is somehow not real, when
the materials that we touch are at some removes from the natural
source, when human beings seem to be living according to rhythms
that are far from what the human organism is designed for, and
everything is anxious and out of kilter. And on a helter skelter
race for something. Everybody's in a hurry. But what's, what's the
final destination?
That's anxious. If you're spending your life and your money racing
for something and civilization is headed towards no kind of ideal
except maximizing desires, and the rights of the self. No wonder
people are anxious.
And depressed antidepressant sales reached an all time high in the UK
last year,
so much for
life, happiness, and so forth. So all of these Enlightenment ideals
people are shaking. So this is the horror or that the shaytaan
promises us all of that stuff.
In duty free, that promises that you will feel better about
yourself.
It's all just his transparent lie in Nikita shaytani. Canada is that
the devil was ruse is always weak. But humanity falls for it, because
hey, it looks good. And advertising is cool. And what else
is there to do after all, waiting for the flight.
So as we disperse, let's try and remember this and remember that
religion always, even though it is necessarily severe, about the
consequences of harming others and moral infraction, and turning away
deliberately from the light, that religion is based on a vision of
creation as the work of God's mercy.
That Ketubah Allah and FC her Rama, he is prescribed mercy upon
his own self doesn't say that any other quality.
The Creator describes himself as a rough man, before using any other
name. World has been created out of mercy, the Holy Prophet alayhi
salat wa salam is sent as a mercy to the world its mercy from start
to end. And there are the darker bits in our lives. These are the
shadows. The light is there, the light is God's light, which is the
ontological reality of everything. Notice on our table, he is Light
of the heavens and the earth.
But there's the shadows as well. There's all of that.
Well, that's just necessary as part of the process of folk
differentiation. If there has to be any kind of differentiation at
all, there has to be gradations in the light, there have to be
shadows and we human beings, like the victims of Plato's cave, kind
of think the shadows are what it's all about, but the shadows have no
real causal relationship to each other and they don't sustain
themselves. Everything in creation is just absolutely in every
instance dependent upon the Divine Light, whose shadow
IT it differentiates
Allah Who
While you let me know, your courage your home Minos automatic
Illa No.
One of the functions of the divine name Al Walid, the protecting
friends, perhaps is that he takes those who have Eman, secure
confidence, better than faith, secure confidence and awareness of
how things are out of the shadows into the light. Always in Allah's
book, shadows are in the plural. Light is singular. Light is a
divine name. So it's one thing it can't really chop it up and put it
in different places light is like, it's the great symbol.
But the world is the shadows.
So a lot takes those who have Eman out of believing in the shadows
into the light.
So you look at the same things. You see what every other human eye
perceives in creation, you hear what every other human ear
perceives in creation, but in a radically different way.
Through Eman, you don't just see the shadows. But you see the light
that is differentiated in the form of the shadows. And that's the
journey of faith. That's the garage that
is speaking about. And that's the process of moving towards the
divine compassion in his self manifestation as a Wali,
the protecting friend, which is one of the most precious human
beings of the Divine Names, because without that dimension of
Godhead, in this tremendous terrifying vast creation full of
black holes and extreme temperatures and human mortality,
things would be unbearable, unbearable for us, but it's
sustained and made palatable for us and sweet by the Divine Wilaya
by Allah as Al Welly, so we need to orient ourselves towards that.
And he is always oriented towards us.
The tabler is always there, but we're not always there for the
Qibla we're kind of interested in other stuff. So there's Lafleur
and there's dhikr.
There is heedlessness forgetting stuff like little child.
short attention span.
Pay attention. Oh look, there's a doggy pay attention. Oh, look at
the birdie. That's one of the aspects of human beings when we're
kind of new and unformed and we need the discipline. So that Allah
subhanaw taala calls us and we hear the drum of the Faulconer and
it's only there for our mercy who's calling us Lima, you're
equal to what gives you life.
Everything else is kind of somnolent,
at least the tightest, half real not fully present in the moment.
So we're kind of almost dead, like sleep, and gnome. Occult. Sleep is
the brother of death. That's a third of your life gone right
there. But much of your so called waking hours, you're in a kind of
autopilot, driven usually by the vague and hopeless turbulences of
inarticulate, lower self, who I think I'll have another slice of
bread and jam and all I think I'll call my sister and that's hardly
any real directedness there, that's a kind of death as well as
Lafleur. We have to awaken from that Afula from that heedlessness,
because Allah is calling us to be alive.
preternaturally conscious of the moment, truly aware of the
miraculous in the true sense of the word. Now oneness of
everything that is the perfect rightness of the actual
or as the husserlian say, Lisa, fill in Kenny Abda on the Mac, and
there's nothing possible, more amazingly beautiful and perfect.
And that which is we might object and say, Well, what about smallpox
and Syria that there's the divine majesty, as well as the divine
gentleness, though the shadows as well as the light and that's the
consequence of differentiation
of the light is to be differentiated in the being of the
world they have to be beings however, contingent not death,
provisional, unreal, clearly, they might seem to be in that we're in
with them. We have to engage with them
and go through the motions as if cause and effect was something
real, as if the relationship between the shadows was just what
it seems to be.
A lot is the real source and allies the ground of being and
Allah is the author of time and is a data and it's our place of
origin and return and mugged up when the ad
And beyond that journey back to him and let's be awake on the
journey because he has instructed us so and because the informed
traveler who knows what he's looking at as he passes to this
quite amazing landscape really is the real traveler who's not
wasting his time is not constantly checking texts or fantasizing or
daydreaming. Oh, if only I'd done that. Oh, maybe I'll do that one
day and all of these chatters that jump around in the head like
monkeys. Take us away from the irreplaceable sanctity of the
moment.
All that has to be fought with as enamel Junaid says the Red Sword
of Mujahidin you don't compromise in that battle. Because those
things are putting you to sleep. They want to comatose the devil
wants you to close your eyes and Allah wants you to be awake and
alive. So in sha Allah, on this little journey, three days here at
West lexham We have experienced a little bit of that and perhaps
also we've experienced something of the sweet seriousness of the
spiritual path that requires effort
does do the prayers as does the fast as do the forms of religion
but they bring with them a nourishment for the spirit that
despite us in a comatose, billeted state, we perceive and we envy
those who have more of it and then living more naturally in it. So
may Allah subhanaw taala take us out of the mud of our own selfhood
and help us to spread our wings as royal falcons and to return not by
our merit or by our power but by his compassion back to our place
of origin and return and to be resurrected in sha Allah amongst
those who have already made that journey and may Allah grant us all
a safe and best return and give some of the Bearcat of this of
this retreat to our hearts and to our loved ones in a way that is
lasting in short or long or economically well off Allah
Fomenko was salam o aleikum wa rahmatullah
Cambridge Muslim College, training the next generation of Muslim
thinkers