Understanding our creation is Sufism, is tariqa (spiritual path). It is not a particular religion
that sets you apart and to be proud of that religion, to be born into a religion. But a
religion is a discipline upon the physicality. It means going towards the Star of David (as). It is
not exclusive to Jewish people. It is a Star! The prophetic teaching is that follow any of
my Sahabis (companions), they are like stars on a dark night. Stars are guidance, are saints.
All prophets came and taught law for the general public, and taught spiritual realities
for the very few elite who were willing to take a spiritual path and to seek.
The process of enlightenment is to become a star. It means that once you become enlightened,
you are filled with light. So when you are filled with light, you are
a star. You will guide in this world, in your physicality, because light is glowing from you.
And you’ll guide in the hereafter because you are a star in the heavens. We
take guidance for granted nowadays. But before, when people were sailing on ships, they relied
completely on the heavens. They had to look at the sky to determine where they were, because there
was no GPS. There was no MapQuest. It means all guidance was coming from that analogy.
The Divine is showing that anyone seeking enlightenment,
the reality of that enlightenment is to become a shining star. So Najm Dawood (Star of David) was
not Dawood’s (as), it was Sayyidina Muhammad’s ﷺ. It was the Divine Kingdom. It was a gift from the
Divine Almighty that anyone applying this law is going to unlock the power of heavenly kingdoms.
Understanding that star is towards the station of self realization.
That star is made up of two triangles: one triangle that points towards the Heavens,
and one triangle that points towards the earth. The triangle that points towards the heavens
represents faith. This means it goes up, down to the right and then the left. The lower
base of triangle is your religion, then the next is Faith. Religion, faith, then
perfection and moral excellence. It means when we split the star and to understand the star,
the base of this star is religion. That’s why Divine sends you deen and deen in Arabic is
religion. Whatever the religion is, is meant to tame your physicality. Not to be lost in
its name and to fight over its title, but was to tame your physicality. What to feed this body,
what not to feed this body. What to give to this body and what not to give to this body.
How to treat myself, how to treat my family, how to treat my loved ones, how to treat my community.
Religion is for physical taming and for taming our physicality.
Once we understood that and the upper triangle all has to do with power of the soul and
reaching the heavenly kingdom. It means once you understood religion and applied a religious faith
that works for you, that applies a discipline to your physicality, applies a discipline to
your family and your community because it is not the law of the jungle. Because we weren’t created
apes, it means we were created in the creation of Adam (as) which was the most noble creation.
The law of the jungle is take and harm and do as you like and think nothing of it. But the
law of the Divine Kingdom has nothing to do with the jungle. It’s all based on discipline and not
going beyond your bounds, not harming other people, not harming your family,
your loved ones, not even harming yourself. hen the second base of that triangle opens up
which is iman and faith. It means once you have religion, it doesn’t necessary mean you have
faith. Because you can pray all day long but not believe in the Divine, not believe in the angels,
not believe in holy books, not believe in the day of judgment, and not believe in destiny.
It’s very apparent. As soon as you talk about angels, people say ‘Oh, don’t give
us that hocus-pocus.’ This means you start talking about unseen, they don’t want to talk about that.
Well, then that’s faith. Faith has nothing to do with what you see, touch and feel. It has
to do with your heart. It’s like love. How do you describe love? It’s nothing that you can see, it’s
not something that you can hold. It’s something that you can feel and everyone feels it. It
means that the second pillar of this belief is that you apply the physical discipline,
but now the power that is coming into the heart, the power that is coming into
the mind is that you have to develop faith. This means then you apply your physical discipline
but you have to spend all your time with your eyes closed. Because faith is built by eyes closed.
Why? Because it has nothing to do with the seen.
If your religion is just with your eyes open and everything is based on what you see, you have
not yet received faith. It’s simple because all you are doing is saying I accept only what I see
and what I can touch. But the station of faith and bringing down the material desire
has all to do with keeping the eyes closed. It means then you apply your disciplines and you are
comfortable with yourself. You are comfortable contemplating, meditating, reciting, chanting,
listening to the recitations. And asking, ‘O my lord, what I am seeking is not going to be found
here in the physical dimensions. I am not going to find it a movie theatre. I’m not going to find it
in a grocery store. I’m not going to find it in a nightclub. I am not going to find find that
faith anywhere but in the heart of the believer.’ It means as soon as you close your eyes and
contemplate and mediate, a power in the soul opens up and vision through the soul opens up.
Because you are using the faculty of seeing through the eyes but there is another power
seeing through the soul. As soon as you close your eyes and spend your time and a great deal
of that time with your eyes closed, the power of spiritual vision opens up. The spiritual vision,
which we call khashf. All of a sudden you may have like a shot of lightening that shows you
something from the Divine, something heavenly, something not from this dimension
made to build that faith. That keep coming, keep coming – what you are seeking is not in this seen
dimension but, it’s in the unseen dimension. That builds faith and taqwa, fear of the Divine.
It means that builds that love that you don’t want to do anything wrong because the Divine is opening
all these endless mercies for you. You are feeling the angels come. You feel energies come. You feel
Divine visions start to open. It means that is the nectar that makes us run towards that Divine
Presence. Now I am going to open to you what no eyes have seen, what no ears have heard, and what
no lips can speak because each one has his own gift and her own gift from the Divine Presence.
Then the station of faith. You apply the physical discipline. You apply the spiritual belief,
and spiritual practices. All of the sciences of that spirituality which is in Sufism and most
faiths have all of these sciences, these two the religion and faith, when they mix,
the chemical reaction of your discipline and your faith builds the station of moral perfection.
We say the Station of Ihsan (moral excellence). It means once you are using that discipline
to build your faith, what’s being built is this pyramid and the pinnacle of this pyramid has to
do with the perfection of your character. That yes, you pray. Yes, you fast. And yes you do
all of these things based on your religion, but you do it because of faith and by love.
You do it because of complete sincerity. Based on that, of course you are going to
have moral excellence. You are not going to cheat. You are not going to steal.
Where Divine says in holy Qur’an, “If you give that person one coin, they give it back to
you.” But there are people that you give a bag of coins, and you will see nothing back from it.
It means that is station of perfection and faith. Divine is showing you that when we can unlock
these powers and start building this upper strength of the soul, means then we truly have the
ability to fight against our desires. It means we can fight against that hole towards evilness.