Centre of Spiritual & Cultural Advancement (CSCA)
Everyone likes to take a shower every day, which is good, but why do we take a shower? It is to be clean, to smell nice. What do you think about Allah (swt) ‘sitting’ with His Prophet (s) and the Ummah of Sayyidina Muhammad (s), `ibaadullah? He said in a Hadith Qudsi:
أَنَا جَلِيْسُ مَنْ ذَكَرَنِي
[Allah said to the Prophet] I sit with him who remembers Me. (Hadith Qudsi. Ahmad, Bayhaqi)
When we remember Allah (swt) and try to know more about m`arifah, divine knowledge, you need to be very well sprinkled with perfumes. There are two kind of perfumes: manmade perfumes and perfumes that Allah has made. Man-made perfume will disappear, Allah’s Perfume is going to stick to the `abdAllah and never go: it accumulates and becomes Noorun `alaa Noor. As much as you make dhikrullah, as much as you are showering yourself to get rid of bad desires and bringing good desires.
Abwaabu Rahmah, the Doors of Mercy are open, no one can close them. Allah always gives His Awliya from His Treasures of Rahmah, and He gave something that is rahmah for us. You cannot take electricity from the transformer on the electric pole on the street, you have to lower the voltage to come to the house or else it will burn us. These transformers are Awliyaullah and Allah has put them everywhere. Like transformers, they receive from Prophet (s): Allah gives to Prophet (s), Prophet (s) gives to Awliya and they distribute be among their followers.
This is a mercy! The one who has the whole rahmah that Allah is giving in every moment is Sayyidina Muhammad (s). What we need is that door to be opened for us, but it needs a little bit of work, a little bit of struggle. If we struggle in the Way of Allah (swt), Allah will open. If we struggle in another way, we will go the wrong way. We are asking Allah (swt) to open His Doors of Rahmah for us.
Grandshaykh (q), may Allah bless his soul, told a story one time. I used to immediately write down whatever he said and will mention some of it, and keep some of it private. It’s a good story for us to know. He said that there was a shaykh that always liked to travel and take his mureeds with him, not five or six or ten, but at least seven-hundred mureeds and he was known as “The Seven-Hundred One.” As they moved from one city to another, they needed to shower. One night it was a test for the mureeds because all of them needed a shower and in the morning they could not pray without showering, so they entered the bathroom by turn. The shaykh was there. They were listening, hearing. The shaykh said, “SubhaanAllah!” There was someone in the hammam, the Turkish bath, which had many rooms for people to enter individually.
The shaykh stood at the entrance saying, “SubhaanAllah! What kind of sin am I seeing coming from that room?”
There was someone showering in that room like dhabeebu ’n-naml, he saw so many sins like the houses of ants in which they all come together, millions of them! He told them that all this was coming from that room. SubhaanAllah! With that shower Allah was cleaning that `abd because he had repented and went to take a shower. Some of the mureeds doubted him; you have this in every Tariqah.
They said, “What is our shaykh saying? He is seeing sins moving like ants running away from the room?” They went down into the big bathtub to the source. He saw the sins coming like ants and for sure the mureeds were shocked. They waited until that man finished his shower and asked him, “What were you doing in that room?”
He said, “I was showering, because yesterday I committed a big sin.” A sin that we know from Qawmi Lut, the People of Lut for which Allah cursed them. He said, “I did something like that and was repenting and crying in the shower room, asking, “Yaa Rabbee! You are Arham-ar-Rahimeen, forgive me!”
The shaykh said, “For his purity when he was asking Allah (swt). laa yarud ahadan, Allah would never turn away anyone.” inna ’Llah yaghfira adh-dhunoobu jamee`a, Allah will forgive when the `abd is sincere in his decision.
The mureed said, “I am lost! I didn’t find a way except to have a shower and repent, and I don’t know what Allah is going to do with me!”
They said, “Abshir, our shaykh said he saw your sins coming from your shower room going like ants all together in big quantities, moving towards the source of the bathtub.”
That man went to pray two raka`ats shukr because the masjid was near, then he came to the shaykh, who was sitting with his mureeds, and he repented to the shaykh, asked forgiveness and took baya`.
The importance of the story is that whenever the `abd does something wrong (sin), he must turn back to Allah and ask forgiveness, which is like a shower, it takes sins away. Like this man didn’t know what to do, he was not well equipped with Fiqh and Hadith, so he said, “I will take a shower, clean myself, repent, and Allah will forgive me.” Allah forgave him.
We need to be under the mercy Allah gave to Prophet (s) by doing what is required of us through our daily awraad, but more importantly, we have to repent and ask for Allah’s (swt) forgiveness, as Prophet (s) said:
كلمتان خفيفتان على اللسان ثقيلتان فى الميزان حبيبتان إلى الرحمن سبحان الله و بحمده سبحان الله العظيم
There are two words that are very easy to say, yet very heavy on the Scale, most beloved to The Merciful, “SubhaanAllah wa bihamdihi subhaanAllahi ’l-`Azheem.” (Bukhari and Muslim)
Every day when you think you did something, immediately say, “Astaghfirullah,” say, “SubhaanAllah wa bihamdihi.” Kalimataan khafeefataan `alaa ’l-lisaan thaqeelataan fi ’l-meezaan SubhaanAllah wa bihamdihi subhaanAllahi ’l-`Azheem, and Grandshaykh (q) added at the end, “astaghfirullah.”
Rabi`ah al-Adawiyya (q), a lady from Awliyaullah whose sainthood Ibn Taymiyya accepted, along with Abu Yazid Al Bastami (q), Abdul Qadir Al-Jilani (q), Sirr as-Saqati (q), Sulayman ad-Dayraani (q), Junayd al-Baghdadi (q). Her dhikr every day was ‘Astaghfirullah’ because she felt every word coming from her mouth was with a sin. With every breath she said, “Astaghfirullah,” and she said, “My istighfaar needs istighfaar to be accepted, and every istighfaar needs istighfaar for any `amal to be accepted.” She was crying in love of Allah (swt), asking Him forgiveness day and night.
This is a reminder! Awliyaullah remind their students and followers through their hearts, through visions, dreams, through sending inspirations and meeting them physically. In many ways they can reach you, don’t think they are away from you. They reach you because they were able to reach Sayyidina Muhammad (s) and they get the power from him as Allah gave them that power from Bahru ‘l-Qudrah, power that can clean the whole Ummah in five minutes!
In Salaat an-Najaat, Sayyidina Abu Yazid al-Bastami (q) made the du`a Sultan adh-Dhikr, which I explained one time. Awliya they do du`a through Sultan adh-Dhikr. I will not go into it today, but Sultan adh-Dhikr is dhikr from the secret of every letter of the Holy Qur’an; they extract that and make dhikr with it.
Muhiyuddin ibn Arabi (q) said, “In every sajda, I make the whole Ummat an-Nabi (s) pass in front of me. If Allah gives me permission I would turn them to Islam in five minutes.”
When they say that, it means they have already turned us, the whole Ummat an-Nabi (s), into safety, but we don’t see or feel it because we are blocked. Sometimes, like on these phones today, everyone has one or two or three, you can block anyone you don’t want to talk to; you keep ringing but the call is blocked. Also we are blocked from receiving when Awliya are sending to us because of our bad `amal. We are blocking what they have sent to us and we are not able to extract from it. Everyone according to his abilities or level can extract from it. That’s why Grandshaykh (q), may Allah bless his soul, when he was ordered by his uncle Shaykh Sharafuddin (q) to carry the Tariqah as khalifah, his uncle called him and said, “By order of Prophet (s), I am coming to you to deliver the secret of the Naqshbandi Tariqah.”
You can call it ‘Naqshbandi’ or what you want to call it, but the secret of wilaya in the Naqshbandi Sufi Order, our Tariqah, The Most Distinguished One, Tariqat an-Naqshbandi al-`Aliyya, is companionship.
He said, “I’m passing that secret to you; I’m leaving dunya,” because he had extracted the names of 124,000 Awliya from two verses of Surat al-An`am, which took him three months. ‘Extracting them’ means he saw them appearing in front of him. He extracted Awliyaullah, khulafaa wa nawaab al-Mahdi (a), and wrote them in his notebook, which he passed to Grandshaykh (q). When Grandshaykh (q) moved from Turkey to Damascus, I asked him if he can let me borrow that notebook and I made six or seven copies by hand as there was no machine at the time. My cousin has one, Shaykh Adnan has one, and I have the rest. It contains the names of all the Awliya, Khulafaa, deputies and ministers of Sayyidina al-Mahdi (a) and many other Budalaa, Najabaa, Nuqabaa, Awtaad, and Akhyaar, different groups of Awliya.
He said, “I am leaving dunya in three days and am passing to you that secret.”
Grandshaykh (q) said, “Yaa Sayyidee, with my love and respect pardon me, but I can not fulfill that duty. I don’t want it as what is the benefit?”
Today if you give someone a duty like a doorkeeper, he becomes the richest man because he takes bribes from everyone when they want to enter.
That night Shaykh Sharafuddin (q) asked Prophet (s) in a vision, because Awliyaullah can talk to Prophet (s) and he (s) responds to them, and we have many evidences of this. I don’t want to bring evidences and bother with it, everyone knows when Sayyidina Isma`il al-Bukhari (q) wanted to write a Hadith, he made istikhaara and slept, then he saw Prophet (s), who told him if it was a correct Hadith or not and on which chapter he must add it.
Shaykh Sharafuddin (q) said, “Okay, I will see.” That night he saw Prophet (s) and he said, “Yaa Sayyidee, yaa Rasoolullah, this is the story of my son: he cannot carry it.”
Prophet (s) said, “Ask him why.” This is in the inspirational way.
The next day Shaykh Sharafuddin (q) asked Mawlana Shaykh `AbdAllah (q) why.
He said, “I can take it on one condition: that anyone that comes to sit with me even for five minutes, I want him to be raised to my level because I cannot guarantee the mureeds that take baya` will do their duty of awraad and leaving haraam and running after halaal, I don’t trust them. I want to make sure that my followers will go to Paradise with me in the same level. If I get that, then I will do it.”
He was granted that.
You see Awliyaullah as normal people, but in reality they are not. They are subtle people, transparent, they get rid of their forms, their ego. When we get rid of our egos then we can see everything and hear everything, we can speak to anyone, we can reach everyone as Prophet (s) mentioned in a Hadith Qudsi:
عن أبي هريرة قال قال رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم إن الله قال من عادى لي وليا فقد آذنته بالحرب وما تقرب إلي عبدي بشيء أحب إلي مما افترضت عليه وما يزال عبدي يتقرب إلي بالنوافل حتى أحبه فإذا أحببته كنت سمعه الذي يسمع به وبصره الذي يبصر به ويده التي يبطش بها ورجله التي يمشي بها وإن سألني لأعطينه ولئن استعاذني لأعيذنه وما ترددت عن شيء أنا فاعله ترددي عن نفس المؤمن يكره الموت وأنا أكره مساءته
ولا يزال عبدي يتقرب إلي بالنوافل حتى أحبه، فإذا أحببته كنت سمعه الذي يسمع به وبصره
الذي يبصر به، ويده التي يبطش بها ورجله التي يمشي بها،
My servant does not cease to approach Me through voluntary worship until I will love him. When I love him, I will become the ears with which he hears, the eyes with which he sees, the hand with which he acts, and the legs with which he walks (and other versions include, “and the tongue with which he speaks.”). (Hadith Qudsi, Bukhari)
“I will be his ears that he can hear with, I will be his eyes that he can see with, I will be his tongue that he can speak with, I will be his hands that he can change things with, I will support his feet to walk across the Siraat al-Mustaqeem.”
May Allah (swt) guide us. Don’t say we came here only for five minutes, ten minutes, but it's not what I say, it's what Mawlana Shaykh Nazim (q) said, that these five minutes take all our sins. That man who committed a sin, like Qawmi Lut whom Allah cursed, he repented and Allah forgave him. What do you think if you have sinned min as-saghaa’ir, the minor sins? That will be immediately forgiven. Allah forgave that man because of his sincerity; even had he sinned kabaa’ir, of the major sins, still Allah saved him. That doesn’t mean we have to do that; we have to be really careful as we don’t want to fall into the trap of Shaytan. May Allah (swt) forgive us.
This meeting is a cleansing process, for us to be ready at any moment, because Prophet (s) is looking at us, Allah is looking at Prophet (s), and Awliyaullah look at the mureeds. If we are in such a setting once a week, that will purify us. Allah does not look at dirty things, Allah likes clean things. When we clean our body and we clean our souls with dhikrullah, Allah (swt) said, Anaa jaleesu man dhakaranee, “I will sit with that `abd at that moment.”
Wa min Allahi ‘t-tawfeeq, bi hurmati ‘l-habeeb bi hurmati ‘l-Fatihah.
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