THE SUFI WAY OF SELF-UNFOLDMENT
(Excerpts Only)

By: Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri

Chapter 5
On Worship

We are born worshipping God. Without our even knowing it, it is in our chromosomes. In the Qur`an it says, 'We did not create jinn (invisible entities) or man except to worship'.

Worship does not mean that for twenty hours a day we mechanically recite prayers and invocations. It refers to what we are actually doing or striving for at all times; we are, at the moment, worshipping other objects or images. Worship means veering towards, wanting to unify with the worshipped. It is the ultimate form of love. We first like something, then we like it more, then we say we love it. A man and woman kiss. How does kissing come about? Is it not to absorb, to unify, to be one? At the physical level, we are veering towards unification. At the mental level, we are also trying to harmonize. We discovered that the most inharmonious phenomenon, which we described as noise, is when two incongruous systems attempt to unite. The more they are incongruous, the more the result is dissipated energy, which takes the form of noise.

If we observe ourselves, we find that we are always worshipping. The word 'worship', unfortunately, has come to mean something religious, Islam is not a religion – it is a way of life. It is a way of transacting with one, with everyone. It is a way of living. We are at all times worshipping, we are always at an altar – maybe the altar of helping the family, helping a neighbor, making money, painting, composing, the list is endless. We are oriented to be at an altar so long as our mind functions.

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There is nothing sacrosanct about being good, except for one's own real good. If nature, if God, wanted nothing other than goodness, why did He not create it as such? Working for the good is the golden opportunity a human has to rehabilitate himself.

One does not take on goodness. The essence of goodness is already there. The seed of goodness is already in every heart.

It is like the layers of an onion. We remove one layer, and then another, and then it becomes easier. The outer layers are the hard ones. The more we unpeel the layers of the onion, i.e. the more we undress ourselves of our own superimposed layers of personality, the freer, the happier we become and the greater the chance of real fulfillment. Ultimately, when we reach a high state of inner awareness, and when we have been truly and totally immersed in that state, that inner equilibrium, we have little or no clutter left in us and that is like reaching the last, inner layer of the onion. If we now take off that layer, what is there? Space! The so-called 'I' is like an onion, it is a complex system superimposed on pure life, and life is everywhere, has been and will be. That is why we say being born is an impurity on the pure soul, like the onion being an imposition on space!

They asked the Prophet, 'What is spirit?', and he said, 'It is from the order of Allah, from pure light'. The message which we want to see and imbibe is this: you are not what you think you are. There is only God. From Him you come and to Him you return. If you see other-than-God, it is because you are looking at it through the impure prism-prison of the self. Everybody looks at life through his own goggles, and desperately tries to balance and juggle it. Your essence, your reality, is that which has no beginning and no end. It is for that reason every action you take is an echo of that reality. That is why, in our ignorance, we want to permanentize this plane of existence, because the echo of the permanent is within us. Likewise the echo of peace is in us. God is peace. All of these attributes are echoed in us. We want to exalt ourselves, because these are the attributes of the Creator which are deep in our hearts, and we have come from that same Creator.