Heightened Senses

Repeat to me the mention of His Names,
And polish hearts with His light and brilliance,
And fill the glasses for the souls,
For they are yearning to drink.
A Name from which the universe took its light,
On earth, sea and sky;
The minds of men are dazzled by its qualities,
The hearts of men are brightened by its light.
When its majesty is revealed to hearts,
They sense the mystery of its glory and brilliance.
The hearts of the righteous are glad to be near it;
It takes them up to its highest heights.
The repetition of His Name,
Is the dearest of His blessings to the gnostics.

Found in: Ibn ‘Aṭā’ Allāh al-Iskandarī, (trans. Khalid Williams), The Pure Intention: On Knowledge of the Unique Name, (The Islamic Texts Society: Cambrdige, 2018), 59.

From the point of view of the Divine Reality, there is no evil because there is nothing to be separated from the Source of the Good, but for human beings living in the domain of relativity, evil is as real as that domain, although creation in its ontological reality is good since it comes from God. This is demonstrated by the overwhelming beauty of the natural order. That is why both the Bible and the Quran assert the goodness of His creation and the fact that goodness always predominates ultimately over evil. Furthermore, the infernal, purgatorial, and paradisal states are real although located in the domain of relativity but each with very different characteristics. The problem of evil becomes intractable when we absolutize the relative and fail to distinguish between the existential reality of a thing, which comes from the Act of Being, and its ” apparent” separative existence. To speak of a world without evil is to fail to understand what the world is and to confuse the Absolute and the relative, the Essence and it’s veils, or to use the language of Hinduism, Atman and māyā

Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Garden of Truth: The Vision and Promise of Sufism, Islam’s Mystical Tradition, 55

Shaykh Abu’l ‘Abbas al-Mursi, a master of the Shadhili path, said to the young Ibn ‘Ata’ Allah – who then also became a realised master – on their second encounter:

There are four states of the servant, not five: blessings, trials, obedience, and disobedience. If you are blessed, then what God requires of you is thankfulness. If you are tried, then what God requires of you is patience. If you are obedient, then what God requires of you is the witnessing of His blessings upon you. If you are disobedient, then what God requires of you is asking forgiveness.

May we learn to appropriately act in relation to all of God’s Self-disclosure upon us, in every dimension of manifestation.

https://wp.me/p9pusb-eC

This is most definitely worth reading, and to savour.

From, “A Mercy Case” and an excellent summary.

“The final point of the Tarīq (Path) is that your own being, and even your Nafs, reminds you more of Allāh than it reminds you of itself. In other words, al-baqā’ billāh (Subsistence through Allāh). You find your true identity. You are not just some human being that lives at such-and-such an address, but you find your true identity as an Aya (sign) of the Ayāt (signs) of Allāh. An ‘aya’ means something that signifies something beyond itself, it ‘tells’ something. What does it tell, what does it direct you too? Allāh.” –

Sh. Nūh Keller.

I’m reading Ella George: Purges and Paranoia via the London Review of Books app https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n10/contents