2001-09-11: A Sufi Brother from Mexico

....The issue of the twin towers (the World Trade Center) is, of course on everyone's mind. It's a good example of how nothing is as it seems. There are many many levels to this incident. Many ways to look at it. Of course everyone is looking at it from only on angle, one point of view, one emotional point of view - theirs. They see things from a linier (wave (Sufi Psychology)) perspective and therefore lose sight of the other realities. As we have talked, people don't really see anything, they only see their perception of a thing, amply colored by their experiences and prejudices. The reality of a situation escapes most people. That’s why I say that most people live in a fantasy world, a world fabricated entirely in their nafs mind.

Even from a linier perspective there are various scenarios. It's cause and effect. Choose your favorite cause (the materialistic anti-spiritual world dominating U.S. devil, uncivilized fanatic fundamentalist Muslims, mistaken interpretation of religion, etc.) and choose your favorite effect (the tragic murder of thousands of innocent people, the just execution of people during an act of war (no American is innocent, ignorant people reacting to years of abuse and frustration, etc.) In any case no one is really, objectively viewing the incident - it's all emotional reactions based on narrow, ego-centered perspectives.

Another level is one of destinies. Allah is amazing. At the same moment, simultaneously, many destinies are being fulfilled while at the same time intermixing and overlapping each other. There's universal destiny, galactic destiny, solar systemic destiny, Earthly destiny, continental, country, state, city, community, and individual destiny. All are intertwined, interconnected and yet operate independently. If someone dies alone in an accident, we are sad but know that it was his time and Allah's will. When that same person dies in the company of 6000 others under strange circumstances we forget that it's no different, it's still one person dying at his appointed time.

OK, that's the situation from a "particle" angle. Now from a "wave" angle. When Allah created the universe, He created a pattern, like a DNA map, or like a molecule with its atoms circling around it. In Kabbalah this pattern is called the Tree of Life - the ten Sefiroth (Let us create man in our image - Genesis). Everything that exists is based on a pattern of Divine Attributes. And these Divine Attributes are further divided in two sides. Like the Chinese ying and yang, Cabbalists and Sufis divide everything into two opposing camps - Force and Form, Sternness and Softness, Rigidity and flexibility, Justice and Mercy. Both are necessary.

Lets look at how this works in a family. If a father inclines towards the hard, force side (Severity), he could enforce moral principals on this family and produce good, honest, righteous children or, he could be a tyrant, rigid and inflexible to the extreme, his interpretation of moral principals could be highly exaggerated and he could enforce his ideas with cruelty and even violence.

Another father who inclines toward the merciful soft side (Mercy), might be compassionate and understanding, helping his children to make good decisions and lead them subtly to a correct and peaceful life. Or, he could be overly permissive, never insisting on doing right or teaching right behavior. He could be so lax and "free" that he permits even atrocious behavior for fear of offending or hurting anyone. His exaggerated lesshe faire attitude could lead to materialism and licentiousness - his love turning to lack of care.

In a country or movement a similar thing can happen. Remember the Crusades, the inquisition, the violent conquest of the Americas (in the name of the Holy Church), Hitler (who justified his actions with the Bible) and now Islamic "fundamentalists". All want(ed) to enforce (their) righteousness on others by force, rigidity, inflexibility.

On the other side we have countries and movements that, in the name of freedom and liberty abuse and dominate others. They are for freedom and democracy but only if it serves their interests. In the process they permit whatever moral excess as long as it doesn't interfere with their ends. They seem soft and permissive but it's a front.

Both sides are motivated by the same force - the ego. The side of Severity feels superior to others and wants everyone to do what they say. The side of Mercy is ego centered also, they are only interested in their own interests, their own selves.

If we stop thinking in terms of individuals, we can see how the world is a giant tug of war between these two forces - remember, the Earth is alive (we are like cells in an earth body). History is cyclical and countries and movements play roles in it's cyclical progress towards some logical end (Worlds within worlds within worlds).

What happened in New York is going to effect the world to it's core. What the outcome is I don't know, it could go both ways. One thing is for sure, Bush will not do the right thing and the terrorists also will continue their incorrect behavior. This isn't going to end soon.

From the example of Severity/Mercy I'll continue a bit about Sufi Psychology. We see how it is that evil came result from good. This is the answer to those who wonder how Allah can create evil. We know that everything comes from Him, the Almighty - therefore, it follows that God created evil. How can that be? He is all Good. Well, we could easily make an argument that all evil serves a good purpose but I'll leave that for now. Actually Allah created only pure good and we (humans) perverted it. We can transform good into bad. We saw it in New York.

When we were born we were pure Love. Love is the absence of ego. Being as such without an "I", we were at that moment filled with love and that love connected us with Allah. Very quickly we began to use the earthly soul that Allah gave us, the nafs, to serve our needs. We had bodily needs to fulfill and the nafs' purpose is to protect and obtaining food and avoiding discomfort is part of that protection. Gradually our life was solely concerned with nothing other that our own needs and protection. We become pure ego. We could only think about ourselves. Then comes the period where we become aware of others, primarily as sources of our needs and help in alleviating discomfort. We begin to learn that we have to make concessions, that is, we have to learn to deal with others, or we become aware of the presents of others as more than just objects. Of course, some learn better than others. However at about this point the conscious contact with Allah is completely broken. We are now only aware of this world and all its stuff. Now we feel alone and that leads to fear, the first transformation of the love that we were born with. So this break with Allah, or the severing of our conscious awareness of Him and His guidance made us feel alone, estranged and afraid. Without proper education or God’s grace, to reestablish the contact or at least the awareness and belief in Allah, everyone exists in a constant state of fear. Fear is the basis of almost all our problems in life.

Being afraid, leads to paranoia. We begin to see threats to our "self" (nafs). We have been exposed to a thousand different influences up to this point and these influences determine our inclinations and reactions to the threats - whatever they may be, our reaction is to construct a self image (a false self) as a defense mechanism against the threats real and imagined. Who we are is mostly a lie fabricated by our nafs in order to protect us from the mostly imagined threats to our self image. A big vicious cycle - we create a false personality to protect ourselves from threats to that very same unreal entity.

All negative emotions and anti-virtues are a result of our nafs' work to protect itself and remain in existence. After all, that's its job, to protect us - only problem is that the self it is protecting isn't really us.

From fear comes anger, greed, arrogance and every bad emotion or behavior springs from these 4 basic evils. The answer is "simple" - destroy the nafs. The first step is self awareness. The first step is self awareness is awareness of the non-self - the nafs (knowing who we aren't is how we find out who we are). The first step in that is watching those four emotions in ourselves. At first we think we don't have them (or not all of them, or not much anyway). Then we see them but they seem simple. Then we start to see that anger has a thousand forms and ramifications.

After awareness comes the battle. How to get rid of these things. Like all bad habits, it's easier to replace a bad habit than do battle directly with it. We have to start by (before this I have to say that for us Muslims, the first step in replacing the bad habits is prayer, zikr, zikr, and zikr. For a Sufi, it's the help of his shaykh.) giving (being generous), working hard to be humble (in fact, even debasing ourselves, working to endure humiliating circumstances, etc.), making staying calm in maddening situations a challenge, etc.

We should also make an effort to watch and study the motives behind all our actions. We can find that we do good things for bad reasons. Giving for instance. Or even salat.

That's the kind of self observation I'm talking about.