Keeping It Simple

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Spiritual systems often get bogged down in complexity. Whether it is the Enneagram or Chakras, Lata’ifa or Kundalini, Tarot or visualizing gods; any of these structure can easily become a distraction. It helps to consider these procedures as scaffolding to help with the real work. They are not the actual undertaking itself. They exist because someone found that it worked for that specific person. What often happens, though, is that the personally designed program becomes a business. Money is exchanged for workshops, weekend retreats, merchandising and lectures.

What we call the real work is the essence of Alchemy: taking your crap and transforming it, through time, focus and effort, into a mature human being. The framework of these various external systems are like safety cables, prams, or training wheels, but they are supposed to eventually free you from systems, so that you can become an authentic person. We want human beings who are be able to serve humanity and the world without poisoning intention.

As we pass through various perspectives of how we perceive Reality (Maqams), there are traps at every level. One of these traps is to think you have ‘got it’; that you have figured out how spiritual growth works. You are the blessed one who knows how to reach the Divine, or whatever you are calling it today. This is obviously a trap. Why? Because the only way to reach Maturity (or the Essence) is to continue humbly, sincerely, and with love. This trap functions by allowing you to imagine you are smart, connected, powerful and spiritual. It’s like watching a mechanical toy on a table top, setting it in motion, and watching it careen off the table onto the floor. Sometimes it breaks if it is brittle plastic. Believing in just the system and not its purpose, is like forgetting that you are learning how to learn.

You cannot take ‘you’ to the ‘higher realms’ of closeness to the Friend. You have to leave the business of ‘you’ behind, and get to work facing your ugly selves, and rooting them out, one by one. That is Alchemy: the burning away of the dross, the unnecessary. It really takes effort. It is the hardest thing you will ever do. Facing yourself is harder than marriage, harder than loss of a loved one, more difficult than raising children. That is another reason why all these spiritual platforms exist: so you can stop working on yourself, and pretend the system will do it for you.

At a certain moment, you step back and assess what you are doing, what your goal is, and whether it is for your ‘self’ or for Allah. And here is where the idea of Surrender becomes paramount. Surrender is the concept of learning how to let go of your trust in ‘you’ and others, and to place that trust in the Eternal. This shift of attention is the Magnum Opus. The great work is about getting yourself in the background. Antithetical to our usually self-centered habit of thinking and talking about ourselves first, the practice of putting others before yourself, is how to spiritually grow, centimeter by centimeter, nafs by nafs, problem by problem.

So check what spiritual ornament

Salaam Alaykum, murids, seekers, curious and interested listeners,

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