The Heart BY POWERSUNISAIFI
There is a polish for everything that takes away rust; and the polish for the heart is the remembrance of Allah." [Bukhari Shareef]
The heart is the threshold between two worlds- the zahir and the batin.Anyone who has probed the inner life to a certain extent, who has sat in silence long enough to experience the stillness of the mind behind its apparent noise, is faced with a mystery. Apart from all the outer attractions of life in the world, there exists at the heart of human consciousness something else, something quite satisfying and beautiful in itself, a beauty without features. The mystery is not so much that these two dimensions exist--an outer world and the mystery of the inner world--but that the human being is suspended between them--as a space in which both meet. It is as if the human being is the meeting point, the threshold between two worlds. Anyone who has explored this inwardness to a certain degree will know that it holds a great beauty and power. In fact, to be unaware of this mystery of inwardness is to be incomplete.
According to the great formulator of Sufi psychology, Al-Ghazali:
“There is nothing closer to you than yourself. If you don't know your self, how will you know others? You might say, "I know myself," but you are mistaken.... The only thing you know about your self is your physical appearance. The only thing you know about your inside(batin, your unconscious) is that when you are hungry you eat, when you are angry, you fight, and when you are consumed by passion, you make love. In this regard you are equal to any animal. You have to seek the reality within yourself.... What are you? Where have you come from and where are you going. What is your role in the world? Why have you been created? Where does your happiness life? If you would like to know yourself, you should know that you are created by two things. One is your body and your outer appearance (zahir)which you can see with your eyes. The other is your inner forces (batin). This is the part you cannot see, but you can know with your insight. The reality of your existence is in your inwardness (batin, unconscious). Everything is a servant of your inward heart.”
Our modern languages lack precision when it comes to describing or naming that which can grasp the qualities and essence of this inner world. Perhaps the best word we have for that which can grasp the unseen world of qualities is "Heart." And what we understand by the word "Heart" is an intelligence other than intellect, a knowing that operates at a subconscious level. The sacred traditions have sometimes delineated this subconscious knowing into various modes of knowing. What are known in some Sufi schools as the latifas (Literally, The subtleties, Al-Lataif) are subtle subconscious faculties that allow us to know spiritual realities beyond what the senses or intellect can offer. This knowing is called subconscious, because what can be admitted into consciousness is necessarily limited and partial.
These latifas are sometimes worked on by carrying the energy of zhikr (remembrance) to precise locations in the chest and head in order to energize and activate these faculties. Once activated, they support and irradiate each other.
There are countless attractions in the world of multiplicity. Whatever we give our attention to, whatever we hold in this space of our presence, its qualities will become our qualities. If we give the heart to multiplicity, the heart will be fragmented and dispersed. If we give the heart to spiritual unity, the heart will be unified.
The ego desires multiplicity and suffers the fragmentation caused by the conflicting attractions of the world. Hadrat Rabi'a al Adawiya(May ALLAH be pleased with her), perhaps the greatest woman saint of the Sufi tradition, said, "I am fully qualified to work as a doorkeeper, and for this reason: What is inside me, I don't let out. What is outside me, I don't let in. If someone comes in, he goes right out again-- He has nothing to do with me at all. I am a doorkeeper of the heart, not a lump of wet clay."
The healthy heart requires the nourishment of spiritual foods. When the heart is healthy, its desires will be healthy. The Most BelovedPROPHET MUHAMMAD (May ALLAH shower his Mercy upon him) said, "The heart of the faithful is the throne of the Merciful." When the heart has nourished itself only on the desires of physical existence, it is deprived of life-giving nourishment, and its own desires become less sound, more sickly.
Sufi wisdom offers several traditional cures for an ailing heart. One of these is the contemplating the meanings of the revealed Holy Books and the words of the saints, since these perform an action upon the heart, removing its illusions, healing its ills, restoring its strength.
Another cure for the heart is keeping one's stomach empty. The PROPHET MUHAMMAD (May ALLAH shower his Mercy upon him) said that an excess of food hardens the heart. Fasting is the opposite of the addictions, subtle and not so subtle, with which he numb ourselves to the heart's pain. When through fasting we expose the heart's pain to ourselves, we become more emotionally vulnerable and honest. Only then can the heart can be healed.
Keeping a night vigil until dawn is a practice that is unfamiliar outside of Islamic culture, but it has been a mainstay of the Sufis. It has been said that in the early hours before the dawn "The angels draw near to the earth," and our prayers can better be answered. Another explanation is that in these early morning hours the activity of the world has been reduced to its minimum, the psychic atmosphere has become still, and we are more able to reach the depths of concentration upon our own unconscious.
Finally, keeping the company of those who are conscious of Allah can restore faith and health to the heart. "The best among you are those who when seen remind you of ALLAH."
By living in and through the Center we become still and at peace. Then all the things of the world will run after us. But if while sitting, we are engaged with the attractions of the world, we are not sitting but running after the world. The Beloved PROPHET MUHAMMAD (May ALLAH shower his Mercy upon him) said, "Make all your cares into a single care, and ALLAH will attend to all your cares." The real friends of ALLAH are not occupied with power, self-importance or acquisition, because they are with ALLAH.
Prophet Moses (AS) said, "O Lord, are you close enough for me to whisper in your ear or so distant that I should shout?"
And ALLAH said, "I am behind you, before you, at your right and at your left. O Moses, I am sitting next to my servant whenever he remembers me, and I am with him when he calls me."
The word for heart in Arabic is {Qalb} and literally means that which fluctuates; the heart expands and contracts, and even in its purified condition passes through many states. The PROPHET (PBUH) said, "The hearts of the children of Adam are as if between the two fingers of the Infinitely Compassionate. HE turns each however HE wishes. O God, O Turner of hearts, tour our hearts toward obedience to You."
There are three types of heart- the healthy heart, the sick heart and the dead heart.
Healthy Heart - On the Day of Resurrection, only those who come to ALLAH Subhanahu wa Ta'ala with a healthy heart will be saved.ALLAH Subhanahu wa Ta'ala says:
"The day on which neither wealth nor sons will be of any use, except for whoever brings to ALLAH a sound heart. (26:88-89)"
In defining the healthy heart, the following has been said: "It is a heart cleansed from any passion that challenges what ALLAH Subhanahu wa Ta'ala commands, or disputes what He forbids. It is free from any impulses which contradict His good. As a result, it is safeguarded against the worship of anything other than Him, and seeks the judgment of no other except that of His Most Beloved Messenger Salla ALLAHu ta'ala 'alayhi wa 'aalihi wa Sallam. Its services are exclusively reserved for ALLAH Subhanahu wa Ta'ala, willingly and lovingly, with total reliance, relating all matters to Him, in fear, hope and sincere dedication. When it loves, its love is in the way of ALLAH Subhanahu wa Ta'ala. If it detests, it detests in the light of what He detests. When it gives, it gives for ALLAH Subhanahu wa Ta'ala. If it withholds, it withholds for ALLAH Subhanahu wa Ta'ala. Nevertheless, all this will not suffice for its salvation until it is free from following, or taking as its guide, anyone other than His Beloved Messenger Salla ALLAHu ta'ala 'alayhi wa 'aalihi wa Sallam. Those who follow the Beloved Prophet Salla ALLAHu ta'ala 'alayhi wa 'aalihi wa Sallam in observing his Sunnah and the Shari`ah are guides to those who had not met him Salla ALLAHu ta'ala 'alayhi wa 'aalihi wa Sallam.
A servant with a healthy heart must dedicate it to its journey's end and must not give precedence to any other faith or words or deeds over those of ALLAH Subhanahu wa Ta'ala and His Beloved Messenger, may ALLAH bless him and grant him peace and those who are rightly guided, keeping the Prophetic example. ALLAH Subhanahu wa Ta'ala says:
"Oh you who believe, do not put yourselves above ALLAH and His Messenger, but fear ALLAH, for ALLAH is Hearing, Knowing. (49:1)"
Dead Heart - This is the opposite of the healthy heart. It does not know its Lord and does not worship Him as He commands, in the way which He likes, and with which He is pleased. It clings instead to its lusts and desires, even if these are likely to incur ALLAH Subhanahu wa Ta'ala's displeasure and wrath. It worships things other than ALLAH Subhanahu wa Ta'ala, and its loves and its hatreds, and its giving and its withholding, arise from its whims, which are of paramount importance to it and preferred above the pleasure of ALLAH. Its whims are its imam. Its lust is its guide. Its ignorance is its leader. Its crude impulses are its impetus. It is immersed in its concern with worldly objectives. It is drunk with its own fancies and its love for hasty, fleeting pleasures.
It is called to ALLAH Subhanahu wa Ta'ala and the akhira from a distance but it does not respond to advice, and instead it follows any scheming, cunning shaytan. Life angers and pleases it, and passion makes it deaf and blindto anything except what is evil.
To associate and keep company with the owner of such a heart is to tempt illness: living with him is like taking poison, and befriending him means utter destruction.
Sick Heart- This is a heart with life in it, as well as illness. The former sustains it at one moment, the latter at another, and it follows whichever one of the two manages to dominate it. It has love for ALLAH Subhanahu wa Ta’ala, faith in Him, sincerity towards Him, and reliance upon Him, and these are what give it life. It also has a craving for lust and pleasure, and prefers them and strives to experience them. It is full of self-admiration, which can lead to its own destruction. It listens to two callers: one calling it to ALLAH Subhanahu wa Ta'ala and His Beloved Prophet Salla ALLAHu ta'ala 'alayhi wa Sallam and the afterlife (akhira), and the other calling it to the fleeting pleasures of this world. It responds to whichever one of the two happens to have most influence over it at the time.
The first heart is alive, submitted to ALLAH Subhanahu wa Ta’ala, humble, sensitive and aware; the second is brittle and dead, the third wavers between either its safety or its ruin.
The most beneficial sustenance for the heart is faith and the best medicine is the Qur'an al kareem
The temptations to which the heart is exposed are what cause its sickness. These are the temptations of desires and fancies. The former causes intentions and the will to be corrupted, and the latter causes knowledge and belief to falter.
Hudhayfa ibn al-Yamani, may ALLAH be pleased with him, said:
The Messenger of ALLAH Subhanahu wa Ta'ala said, "Temptations are presented to the heart, one by one. Any heart that accepts them will be left with a black stain, but any heart that rejects them will be left with a mark of purity, so that hearts are of two types: a dark heart that has turned away and become like an overturned vessel, and a pure heart that will never be harmed by temptation for as long as the earth and the heavens exist. The dark heart only recognises good and denounces evil when this suits its desires and whims.
He, may ALLAH bless him and grant him peace, placed hearts, when exposed to temptation, into two categories:
First, a heart which, when it is exposed to temptation, absorbs it like a sponge that soaks up water, leaving a black stain in it. It continues to absorb each temptation that is offered to it until it is darkened and corrupted, which is what he meant by "like an overturned vessel". When this happens, two dangerous sicknesses take hold of it and plunge it into ruin:
The first is that of its confusing good with evil, to such an extent that it does not recognise the former and does not denounce the latter. This sickness may even gain hold of it to such an extent that it believes good to be evil and vice-versa, the Sunnah to be bida' and vice-versa, the truth to be false and falsity to be the truth.
The second is that of its setting up its desires as its judge, over and above what the Beloved Prophet Salla ALLAHu ta'ala 'alayhi wa 'aalihi wa Sallam taught, so that it is enslaved and led by its whims and fancies.
Second is a pure heart in which the light of faith is bright and from which its radiance shines. When temptation is presented to purehearts such this, they oppose it and reject it, and so their light and illumination only increase.
WA SALAM POWERSUNISAIFI
17-2-2013
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