A Worthy Spouse

A worthy spouse is not of this world, but of the next"
- Abu Sulayman Ad Darani

In other words, the worthy spouse allows you to be free to engage in the work of the next world.
When you keep to your worship, if a boredom should appear such that the heart is wearied and you fall behind in worship, looking at her/him and witnessing her/his intimacy and ease to the heart.
That power of worship will return and your desire to obey God will be renewed.

(Sachiko Murata, Tao of Islam)

Let us be grateful

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” 
― Epicurus

Today many people are no longer satisfied with a simple, family-oriented life. As the commercial world produces more and more products and uses its advertising skills to try to entice the public, millions of fathers and mothers spend long hours at work so that they can buy these products. Other millions face a day-to-day struggle just to put some food on the table. They have to spend far more time at work than used to be the case, perhaps holding down two jobs, simply to pay for necessities. Yet others would be happy to find a job, since unemployment is a widespread problem. Yes, life is not always easy for the modern family, but Bible principles can help families to make the best of the situation.

The apostle Paul experienced economic pressures. In handling them, he learned a valuable lesson, which he explains in his letter to his friend Timothy. Paul writes, "We have brought nothing into the world and neither can we carry anything out. So, having sustenance and covering, we shall be content with these things."(1 Timothy 6:7,8).

True, family needs more than just food and clothing. It also needs somewhere to live. The children need an education. And there are medical bills and other expenses. Still, the principles of Paul's words applies. If we are content to satisfy our needs rather than indulge our wants, life will be easier. []

The Creation of Adam

Allah, Exalted be He, says: "Behold, thy Lord said to the angels: 'I will create a vicegerent on earth.' They said: 'Wilt Thou place therein one who will make mischief therein and shed blood? Whilst we do celebrate Thy praises and glorify Thy holy (name)?' He said, 'I know what ye know not'" (Al Baqarah: 30)

Ibn Katheer states: This is a report from Allah to His angels explaining to them the wisdom behind creating Adam and his offspring, and how they will succeed each other on earth.

Allah says in another verse: "It is He Who hath made you (His) agents, inheritors of the earth: He hath raised you in ranks, some above others: that He may try you in the gifts He hath given you: for thy Lord is quick in punishment: yet He is indeed Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful" (Al An'aam: 165)

He also says "Or, who listens to the (soul) distressed when it calls on Him, and who relieves its suffering, and makes you (mankind) inheritors of the earth? (Can there be another) god besides Allah? Little it is that ye heed!"  (Al Naml: 62)

Allah tells that to His angels as a hint to the creation of Adam and his children, as He sets the scene for the occurrence of a great event before it actually takes place.

It is a great grace from Allah endowed upon Adam, as He created him with His hands, breathed soul unto him, taught him the names of all things and commanded the angels to prostrate themselves before him. Allah says: "When I have fashioned him (in due proportion) and breathed into him of My spirit fall ye down in obeisance unto him." (Al Hijr: 29)

Allah also says that it is He who created Adam and gave him shape and bade the angels bow down to him, and they did; except Iblis that refused to be among those who bowed down. Allah says:
"What prevented thee from bowing down when I commanded thee?' He said: 'I am better than he: Thou didst create me from fire and him from clay.'" (Al A'raaf: 11-12)

Imam Ahmad Ibn Hanbal reports that Abu Hurairah said that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him said: "When the son of Adam recites a verse of prostration and the prostrates himself (before Allah), Satan isolates himself, cries and invokes curses on himself and says, 'The son of Adam was commanded to bow down and he obeyed (his Lord), thus he will be destined to Paradise but I was commanded (by Allah) to prostrate myslef (before Adam) yet I disobeyed and thus I will be destined to Hell"

(Ibn Katheer. Stories of the Prophets)

Working With Light

With focused intention and the power of our Beloved we can penetrate the places of worldly power from within. Then we need to hold a place of light in the darkness. This light will grow, and then a subtle change will take place. The light will reveal that the darkness is full of misplaced human hopes and dreams, full of misunderstanding and unhappiness. There is a deep sorrow in these places, like the pain in the drug addict's restroom. Here is the collective sorrow of the soul. We need to work with this helpless despair, this longing for something other than material illusions. Our light can begin to change the substance of the darkness, to infuse hope into hopelessness. The power of our presence can reveal fundamental weaknesses in the logic of material thought-forms, their denial of humanity's prime purpose to praise God. We can bring the light of praise and remembrance into the darkness.

But the purpose of this work is not to dispel the darkness. that would take too long, and certain energies of darkness need to remain - they belong to the density of life. Our work is to have access to the power generating the illusions that govern our culture. There are specific places where this power is concentrated. Being present in this places of worldly power, we can infuse the seed of change, a potent catalyst that can constellate new thought-forms, generate new ideas.

The work of the friends of God has always been hidden, taking place in the inner realms. Part of the demand of the present is that this work become visible to some degree; part of their work needs to be known. Humanity can no longer afford to be ignorant of its spiritual nature or of the spiritual potential of the planet. A certain knowledge needs to be given to humanity about the real purpose of life and the evolution of the planet.

(Llewellyn Vaughan Lee)

The Veiling of Spiritual Power

In the heart of the world there are sources of power needed for the evolution of the humanity and the whole of the planet. Without this energy we will remain stuck at the dawn of the coming era, unable to step into the sunlight of the future. At present, the doors to these places of power are closed, inaccessible. And we remain distracted and dominated by the dynamics of physical and economic force.

Real power does not belong to humanity. It is a gift from the inner worlds and carries a stamp of the divine. It is given for the sake of the whole, not for our own personal gain. The next step in our evolution includes accessing this power, and using it to assist in the tremendous changes taking place in our world.

In order to access this place of power, we first need to understand why they are hidden. There are many reasons that power is hidden from humanity. Often it is to protect it from being used for the wrong reasons or by the wrong people. We know of the danger of the dynamics of power and domination, how easily power corrupts and is corrupted. Spiritual power, power which belongs to the non physical realm, is as corruptive as wordly power, and often more dangerous because it is invisible and not so easy to recognise or defend against.

Traditionally, only initiates have access to frequencies of spiritual power; the greater the power the more demanding the initiation. Supposedly these initiations rejected those who were not pure enough, only giving access to those who could not be corrupted. However, such safeguards are rarely perfect, and human nature is too complex for any safeguard to be fully effective.

Because our present culture's focus is on the physical world, we are familiar with this misuse of power that belongs to this dimension; we have little awareness of spiritual power or its misuse. We see economic and political corruption around us, as well as the underworld forces of drugs, prostitution, slavery, and other form of human exploitation. Our history, present and past, tells story of military power, including the Catholic Inquisition and other forms of religious intolerance. But all these forms of power still belong to the physical, material dimension. Even psychological manipulation mainly has its end in physical or material gain.

Spiritual power belongs to a different dimension, and is invisible to someone who sees only the physical world. But this power is real and has a vast range of possibilities. Traditionally it can be used locally, to heal an individual, or in communities, for example to help the rains come. Or it have a global dimension, involving the well-being and evolution of the whole. We can see the remains of past culture that used spiritual power in the pyramids of Egypt or the stone circle in England. We may have lost the knowledge of how spiritual energies were channeled through these monuments, but we can sense their mystery and potency.

If the new era that is now being born around us is to come into fruition it needs spiritual power, on not just an individual but also a global scale. Many spiritual traditions and practices have given individual a taste of spiritual energies that can free them from the prison of a solely physical, material life and open them to other dimension. But if the future is to be for the whole of humanity and not just a spiritual elite, then we need to find the sources of power that can transforms the whole - give the whole of humanity access to a different dimension, a different way of life. Without these sources of power that transition that is beginning will stagnate. It will not move beyond the individual.

These sources of power are present, but hidden. They have been protected form misuse and the dangers of corruption. And these are even forces that resist their discovery. But the time has come for them to be uncovered and used.

(Llewellyn Vaughan Lee. "Spiritual Powers: How it works"

Why is life so difficult?

No one will disagree that life brings challenges, but step back for a moment and ask the deeper question, which is why. Why is life so difficult? No matter what advantages you are born with - money, intelligence, an appealing personality, a sunny outlook, or good social connections - none of these provides a magic key to an easy existence. Somehow life manages to bring difficult problems, the causes of untold suffering and struggle. How you meet your challenges makes all the difference between the promise of success and the specter of failure. Is there a reason for this, or is life simply a random series of events that keeps us off balance and barely able to cope?

Spirituality begins with a decisive answer to that question. It says that life isn't random. There is pattern and purpose inside every existence. The reason that challenges arise is simple: to make you more aware of your inner purpose.

If the spiritual answer is true, there should be a spiritual solution to every problem - and there is. The answer doesn't lie at the level of the problem, even though most people focus all their energies at that level. The spiritual solution lies beyond. When you can take your awareness outside the place where struggle is ever-present, two things happen at the same time: your awareness expands, and with that new answers begin to appear. When awareness expands, events that seems random actually aren't. A larger purpose is trying to unfold through you. When you become aware of that purpose - which is unique for each person - you become like an architect who has been handed the blueprint. Instead of laying bricks and fitting pipes at random, the architect can now proceed with confidence that he knows what the building should look like and how to construct it.

(Deepak Chopra. Self Power: Spiritual solutions to life's greatest challenges. Harmony Books, 2002)

The Longing in Our Heart

If you have ever been far away in the woods or the mountains, far away from population, consciously or unconsciously there comes a feeling of romance, the wind that is repeating the sound that is coming from the trees, the rock, the murmur of the water running, all are wanting to get back something that was lost. This particular feeling comes to human beings in the pleasure of everyday life. Then there is a joy that opens something in us; then there comes this yearning, and that feeling one feels on every side in the wilderness of the wood. There comes the feeling of longing, the deep yearning of the heart, the searching for something that has been lost.

When we look at the beings living around us we see the same thing. For instance, look at the birds and contemplate on their restless flying, the constant roaming of animals in the forest. The first thought that might come, one might think that they were searching for food. But he who has a deeper sight into the nature certainly will feel the restlessness sooner or later, the searching of that which is lost.

There is the same tendency contains human being, although human being has much interest in life by the various occupations, various moods, he finds thousand and one excuses for his restlessness, for his deppression, for his depressed restlessness. An illusion developed in man is, that reason always comes at his demand. There is always someone that will say to a poor man, "Sad for you that you are not rich."Someone comes and says, "You look depressed, i know there is so much sorrow, that is the reason." But reason is always at command and outside engaged and so cannot find the real reason that is inside. That reason is suppressed behind all the thing that was lost. Nowadays life never gives a man a moment to be tranquil, that he may have a time to breed upon true cause of continual unhappiness, also keeps him in illusion, always looking out, and he can never find it outside. It is as if he were looking for the moon on the earth, but moon is in the sky.

But  then you ask, "What has man lost?"and the answer is, "God himself," that perfect intelligence that is in every being, that intelligence what the Vedantist says is called 'light', the verses of Quran says is 'nur', which means light of God immanent in the world of names and forms, in all that consists in this world of variety.
Various forms of activity giving various results, men in this illusion keeps the same intelligence, to find its perfection in that state of consciousness where he can feel his own perfection. The religious, the mystics, the philosophers of all ages give the key to the secret. That is what sufism will bring back to humanity. Christ has said it so beautifully, "Be thou perfect, as thy Father in heaven is perfect."And the yearning in every soul is in the realisation of that perfection, of everything, every being in this world, consciously or unconsciously. There has been kept one thing in the whole creation to be like an alarm clock set on a certain time, that it will make a sound that one may wake up. That clock sounds through all activity in all evolution, when this is touched men wake up by the alarm. That was the word that was lost and it has its echo in the longing.

And now you will ask, "How can one listen, how can one find it?"That word rises from one's own heart, re-echoing in all mystics of this universe. If it is not rising from one's own heart it cannot be heard in the outer world. And you ask, "What is the sign? what makes it rise? who can hear it?"And the answer comes , "As soon as this word rises in your own heart you touch God, you touch perfection, what is in all beings. In all beings the soul rises to pick it up and begins to understand the divine tongue, the secret that was shut out so long seems to be revealed.

In ancient stories, in the stories of the Bible, it is written men speaking with trees, with running water, that repeats sounds coming from the rocks. A man without patience will not stop to listen, he hurries on, he is ready to laugh at such thing. But  there is nothing surprising or impossible therein. This world which is going on is the inheritance of man. This word only got true to the picture. It re-echoes in all things. Only man must be aware of this privilege, of this oneness which is hidden. The whole treasure of the universe is the understanding of the mystical idea.

The lack of religion, this increasing of materiality, what is it caused by? It is by the lack of knowledge of religion, it is the spirit of religion that is lost. Humanity cannot be turned all one way. The form does not matter, is nothing without the spirit. What is wanted is understanding of each other's fate, to respect each other's idea, to worship that is dear to our fellowman and of the other creatures. An effort to make the whole world believers of one faith would be as if the whole humanity, as if all the people has the same faces, would make the world very uninteresting.

The work, therefore, that the sufi has to accomplish, is to bring that idea of the mystic, that it is the spirit, not the form that matters, and to leave the belief of another out of the question, to understand their belief, to come to the realisation of the word that was lost, the seeking of every soul, that men may be enabled to reflect that picture of oneness, and so to hear the word that was lost, to hear it again sounding in one's own heart.

(Hazrat Inayat Khan)