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Bismillahi Wall handbillLassaulttaussalamu ala Rasoolillah,
It has been said that Tasawwuf has taken its name from many different sources. In some Traditions the Sufis are connected with the Companions of the Holy Prophet? . There was a group of very highly devoted and sincere seekers of Allah known as the Ahl as-Suffa, the People of the Bench. They spent their lives in a state of remembrance of Allah and complete detachment from this world with great love and devotion to the company of their Beloved Prophet?.. It has also been said, that Sufism is related to the root of the word "safa" ? to purify ? here meaning to purify the heart of other-than-Allah. There are many names attached to this particular teaching. The Sufis nonetheless say: "If one says he is a Sufi, he is not a Sufi". To be a Sufi is to be in a state of complete awareness of the self and complete awareness of the Divinity and you must have sufficient knowledge of both the exoteric and the esoteric teachings of Islam. If you try to separate Tasawwuf from its root, which is Islam, you are opening a very dangerous door and could cause yourself and others great harm. To do this is also to try to build a castle without foundations. There are many legends regarding this name, but by whatever name we call it, it is the heart of Islam and we could say that every good Muslim is a Sufi and every good Sufi is a Muslim.
Now, we go back to our subject - the aim, the method, the practice and the travel on this great Path of Allah.
"The goal of self-transformation is to remove all the veils between us and Allah. The final veil is the "I", the sense of separateness we each carry. To remove this is far from easy. Ask yourself, "How can I take the "I" out of me?"
The Sufis take as their starting point the Unity of Allah? 'La ilaha ill Allah' ? There is no god but One God; There is no reality but One Reality. It is not that we have to acknowledge the Unity of Allah. He does not need our confirmation of His Oneness. This acknowledgement is for our own benefit. When one starts with Unity it is easy to integrate all the different "I?s" which have no function except to confuse and mislead us. For this reason the practices of the Sufis include the remembrance of Allah (Dhikr) and His Names, in various forms, to awaken the consciousness and activate the subtle centres of the heart.
In Sufism there are seven stages of consciousness. (Stages of the Self) When we progress through them we will reach the Ultimate Truth and the Ultimate Unity of Realization in Allah. It is hard; and at the same time it is easy. If we are sincere and if we have great determination (himma) and really wish to be with Allah then, as Allah says in the Holy Qur?an, He is closer to us than our jugular vein. It has been said that there are 70,000 veils between the seeker and Allah, but there are no veils between Allah and the seeker. The complications are from our side. We have to put our lives in order and bring peace and knowledge and proper behaviour to our existence so that we may be able, gradually, to remove the veils of personality, conditioning and lower desires (and after that, the higher desires).
"The Sufis are people who prefer Allah to everything and Allah prefers them to everything else."
So the first step, as we mentioned, is the acknowledgment of the supremacy of Allah, and the acknowledgement which includes the acceptance of 124,000 Prophets and Messengers of Allah who have been sent to humanity and to all the creations in the universe, (those creations that we know of and those that have not been discovered yet).
The last Prophet and Messenger of Allah is the Holy Prophet Muhammad? . If we acknowledge this then the second step is to worship, because there is no point in acknowledging Allah if we do not fulfill His commands. As a Sufi poet said: "You disobey Allah and yet you claim His Love. That is indeed a very strange kind of love!" If you truly love Allah you will obey Him because the lover is in a state of total surrender to his Beloved. So ? worship you must! What does is mean to worship? Worship is not just the movements of the body. (Movement of the Prayer). It is the orientation of the heart so that the object of your love is the Supreme Being. It is a state of knowledge, because in the true sense you cannot worship something that you do not know. So, the Sufis say: "Worship!" Worship in the Arabic traditions is called ibadat. Ibadat should take us to 'ubudiyya meaning slavehood. You are slave to none but the One. If worship does not produce this result then it has not been done properly. The highest state of consciousness is to be completely and totally submitted to your Beloved, Allah, the Supreme Being and the Creator of all things and the sustainer of all things, because we all remember when we arrived to planet Earth, we arrived without any luggage, Ipods, computers, or any of the other gadgets that we depend on in our daily lives.
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Why is sufism said to be wrong?
