I Did Not Create You, Except to Worship ME

I Did Not Create You, Except to Worship ME ( The Creator)

 

Allah saying: “I did not create jinn and Mankind (Insan human creation) except to worship me” Wa ma khaliqan jinn wa ins ila ilya buduni (Adh-Dhariyat, 56). Not, “I created, but saying “I did not create” jinn and Mankind except to worship. Mawlana Shaykh is pointing out the importance of when he keeps saying “eternity, eternity, eternity – such a beautiful word!” Sometimes you see him going into a hal and repeating the word “eternity” and he is asking us to contemplate and to realize that what we have is an imitation.

We keep trying to repeat over and go deeper into this understanding that Allah is saying “your like a candle. I’m giving you an opportunity, but don’t think that you’ve made it!” Because you can be a candle that burns for a very limited time, and everyone has a candle and a time period on this earth and then they go, but don’t think you reached eternity. Mawlana Shaykh is teaching that Divine is saying, “I didn’t create” that you are not yet in eternity, you did not yet reach that reality, you are merely a manifestation. You are appearing, but to reach that reality of your creation is only if you are worshipping. It’s a complex phrase and Saints are telling us “go deep into that! Contemplate that!”It means, don’t waste your time playing in this temporary world – that’s why God says throughout the Holy Qur’an that just by you arriving here is not the party – that I’m here in this material world and it’s so fantastic. This life means that you have been given a chance at real existence. Are you going to take this flame and this temporary existence and move towards eternity? So then eternal means Al Dai’im, The Ever-Existing as long as the Divine Wills it to exist. It means we have to reach the reality of light, reach towards our true reality, and then everything in tariqat is assisting us to reach that reality.

Mawlana Shaykh is asking, “Please, keep remembering! Keep remembering that God is saying ‘I did not create you except to worship Me!” Not to play, not to do anything – you are not created to do anything except worship. Then all of our practices, all of their teachings, all of their books, all of their cd’s all this Heavenly knowledge is to reach the reality of God’s satisfaction and God’s pleasure, that “O my Lord! I’m begging your forgiveness and seeking your satisfaction!” they say this is the zikr for the one who is seeking, and never stopping that dhikr until reaching the Divinely Presence. The secret of that zikr is in God’s satisfaction, which is rida in Arabic. That rida is holding many secrets in the haroof. It is the title of Sayedina Ridwan, the angel of Paradise who has all of Qur’an written on his forward. Then, Ridwan Allah was the title given to the companions of Prophet (s). So  Mawlana Shaykh is saying to look at that word and let that word explain itself. Rida is composed of ra, dhal, ya. It means that to approach God’s satisfaction, His rida, you must come through the ya. That ya is Sayedina Ya Seen and for the people of yaqeen, the “people of certainty”. To reach to God’s satisfaction, you must fist achieve the satisfaction of Sayedina Muhammad (s) and the people of certainty, the Saints. To reach to the people of certainty means we must move through 3 levels:

1) Knowledge of Certainty
2) Vision of Certainty
3) Truth of Certainty

These are all the realities of Sufism. It means we’re asking, “O my Lord, grant me the knowledge of certainty.” Knowledge of certainty is not my accounting, not my book keeping, not the knowledge of the material world. I want Heavenly knowledge that will benefit my soul, and I want vision of certainty. That my eyes are seeing an illusion and I don’t want to take my faith by my eyes. I know, my Lord, that everything I’m seeing is an illusion, it’s a lie, it’s fake. I’m asking to reach the Vision of Certainty, but it teaches us that you can’t reach that vision until you accept the Knowledge of Certainty. So then the knowledge of certainty begins to build these realities and the Heavenly talks of Mawlana Shaykh talking about Paradise, talking about achievements which are not something the body can achieve. So material people come and they don’t like listening to these discussions. But spiritual people feel as if they are already dying. They’re closing their eyes and their body is not attached and they’re understanding those knowledge’s. They’re thinking how they can reach to reach to that Paradise, not about going to the mall and wishing he would just stop talking. They’re thinking, “O my Lord! Let me to taste from that Paradise. Let me to hold the holy feet of Sayedina Muhammad (s). Let me to drink from the fountain of abundance in Paradise.” It means they’re hungry! Like a person thinking about a nice kabob, and the mouth begins to salivate. For spiritual people, this Heavenly knowledge is making them salivate, thinking “how am I going to achieve all of this?” Leave your desire and all of your body attachments!

The Divine is saying, “I didn’t create you! You are not yet eternal! Don’t you want to reach existence? All of your material desires won’t mean anything in the end!” When you leave those desires and begin to die to those desires, then you develop a hunger to reach Heavenly realities, and there must be such a strong hunger that you want to leave the oppression of the body. We’ve said before that you won’t eat from the table if you come here full. So people eat before they come here, and we say “here, eat from these blessings” and they, “no thanks! I already ate. I’m full.” How are you going to eat from a reality if you are full from this material world? They come and say, “I don’t know what this guy is talking about!”

So then they push that desire for this world down, and keep hitting it in every association. They say, “this world is worthless, all of its treasures are worthless, you’re chasing all the wrong things!” so that your desire for material pleasures and bodily pleasures begins to collapse in your heart, and all that is left is a hunger for the Divine and a hunger for a spiritual life, and a realization that this world has made me sick. This opens another understanding that this is a hospital. If somebody comes with a sickness stemming from a materialistic life, material people don’t see that person as sick. They see that person that he used to be a big industrialist! They say, “He was doing this, he was doing that, he was doing all these things. Talking, walking, out partying with people. Now he’s sick, what happened to him, Shaykh?” Mawlana Shaykh is teaching us that the materialistic life you were living that you didn’t see as a sickness, Saints saw it as a way of non-existence! That person was running towards their doom. They were running towards complete non-existence.

Divine says, “When the truth comes, falsehood perishes” (Al-Isra, 81). It means that when this truth comes, the love of the material world vanishes. So as soon as the truth begins to dress that servant, they start to get sick. They start to have difficulty, and then the family becomes astonished. “What happened? That person was accomplishing so many things!” That person was accomplishing things, but all of it was towards their own non-existence! Saints want to bring out the sickness that you are not seeing. It was a cancer, it was a heavy sickness – let it manifest! People who have cancer, they don’t know they have cancer, and the people around them think they are completely healthy. They don’t appear to be sick until they undergo treatment, and they start the process of chemotherapy and radiation, and suddenly that person looks very sick. Mawlana Shaykh says it’s exactly like that. You have a cancer in you and they don’t want you to take it with you into the grave, because in the grave is 70,000 times more difficult. So their prayer to the Divine is “O my Lord! Bring that sickness out. Purify them so that they can move towards their Heavenly reality.”

So people who are coming on the path and now finding themselves frequently sick, it’s a blessing from Divine Presence. That existence that you thought was real, the healthiness that you thought was real, in reality was non-existent, and now that person must go through a cleansing, through a sickness, a process like a death, and then they can move towards their reality and Divine has cleaned you already in this life. It was a mercy for you so that you would be spared from that cleaning in the grave. So then again in tariqa we see many people who come and begin to experience many afflictions, and they say “why is this happening?” Because you are being cleansed. Your imitated life is going, and your real being is coming, but the transition is not easy. There has to be a process of cleansing, and that cleansing overtakes the physicality, washing away its burdens and its sicknesses so that the reality of the soul can attain what it wants to attain and what Divine wants it to achieve.

Every creation has a rank, a spiritual station, and Mawlana Shaykh’s teaching for us is “achieve your rank, and don’t look to the rank of someone else!” because that’s not going to achieve your rank. They say the elephant achieves the rank of the elephant, and the ant achieves the rank of the ant, and each one is satisfied with their achievement. It means that the elephant can’t look to the ant and complain, “why don’t you lift what I lift?”

“Uh, because you are an elephant, and the ant is an ant! And the ant lifts what God has proportioned according to its size.” And they say that the ant is very powerful. In proportion to its size, what the ant is able to carry is like us carrying a piano on our back! That again is something for us to contemplate – that everyone achieve according to their ability, according to what God has given to them. Don’t always look left and right, thinking “why they are not doing this? Why I have to do it?”

Because you have your rank, and I have my rank that God wants us to achieve. You achieve according to what God has given to you, and the others are achieving according to their level. The ant does its best according to what it has been given, and an elephant does its best according to what an elephant is given. So that is the certainty.

Then in the haroof of rida رضا we’re coming to the dhal, which is the diya, the source of light. The diya is the description when Prophet Moses (as) was seeking the fire of the Divine Presence like a Sun. It wasn’t nur (light). Nur is the reflection of light, like the moon. The sun is the example for us of the source of light. So Prophet Moses (as) is teaching us in the levels of the heart, that you must seek certainty and that certainty must be taking you to the source of power, the source of light.

But you cannot approach that reality without being a truthful servant ص. It means you must be inheriting from the 4 siddiqs, الصديق and to inherit that reality you must be under the training and supervision of a perfected Sufi teacher. And there are only two doors, either through Sayedina Ali (as) or through Sayedina Abu Bakr as-Siddiq. They are the big siddiqs, and they are teaching us that your character has to be from the people of Sufism, the people who are asking to polish their hearts of impurities and imperfections until they reach their reality. They prepare us to be a truthful servant so that you can be crowned with that nuqt, with that power.

That nuqt on the dhal ض is from the power under the ب Ba of Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem, where all of Qur’an is in Surah Fatiha, and all of Surah Fatiha is in Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem, and all of Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem is in the Ba.

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

The power that God is dressing to His prophets and to His saints is in that nuqt, so then we start to watch where that nuqt is going on the haroof.

So then this dhal, this diya  ضيا , is holding that nuqt, and the ya of yaqeen, of certainty, is taking us to the dhal, and that dhal is teaching us to reach to the diya, to the reality of light, and that we are not sunbathers. We are not just coming here for some blessings. We’re reaching to achieve our eternal reality! So the process has to be hard, the struggle has to be severe, the sacrifice has to be severe. If you are sunbathing, its a different reality. If you’re asking to reach God’s eternal oceans, eternal realities, then reach to that light, reach to that nuqt, be under the flag of these big siddiqs so that we can reach to that power, and then the next haroof in that rida is the Ra. These are the rabb, these are the Lords, means these are the rabbil diya, the Lords of the reality of light, who are the people of certainty. These are Heavenly, Lordly creation, where God is saying that these people are from the reality of light, they are Lords in the Heavenly Presence, and God says you have to be with them:

“Qul audhu bi’rabbin nas wal malikin nas” (An-Nas, 1-2)

Say: I seek refuge with the Lord of Mankind.

God is saying “seek refuge and be with the rabbin nas!” If you are with them, you are under God’s flag of protection. So then Mawlana Shaykh is teaching us to seek these realities. Reach towards the reality of our existence. Everything false is perishing. Now, we are even luckier because everyday we turn on the tv, and one more falsehood gone! One more falsehood perished! So why are you still holding it? Why are you still loving it? Why are you not running from it? If you’re running from it, you’ll begin to see all of Heavens. If the heart is not opening, its because you’re still holding, still having love of material existence, and that materialism can be many things. So then Mawlana Shaykh saying, “Watch! Watch tv!” Everyday, one aspect of this material world is gone. One village is missing from an earthquake. One village wiped-out from a tsunami. And now, volcanoes are erupting putting clouds of darkness everywhere and airplanes are not flying. Mawlana Shaykhs is asking now, how many signs will it take for you to believe? This material world is perishing, its collapsing. Leave that and now move towards your reality, towards the reality of light, and develop the power of the soul and prepare for the life to come. May God forgive us.