A`oodhu billahi min ash-Shaytani 'r-rajeem. Bismillahi 'r-Rahmani 'r-Raheem. Mashaa-Allah laa quwatta illa billah. Madad yaa Sayyidi Mawlana Shaykh Nazim. Madad yaa Qutb al-Mutasarrif.
The Holy Qur'an starts with ‘Alhamdulillahi Rabbi ‘l-`Alameen’, although some scholars say it starts with ‘Bismillahi 'r-Rahmani 'r-Raheem’ and some scholars believe the first ayah of Surat al-Fatihah is ‘Bismillahi 'r-Rahmani 'r-Raheem’, while others say it is ‘Alhamdulillahi Rabbi ‘l-`Alameen’. In any case, it starts with the remembrance of Allah (swt). When we say, “Bismillahi 'r-Rahmani 'r-Raheem” we are mentioning three names of Allah (swt) and when we say, “Alhamdulillahi Rabbi ‘l-`Alameen”, we are mentioning Allah's Name and then “The Lord of all the Worlds”. What worlds? We only see our world, where are the rest? Allah (swt) said the truth, so where are the rest? Why can’t we see them? Why is there a veil on us and what is it? The Prophet (s) is Rahmatan li ‘l-`Alameen, a Mercy to All the Worlds. Where did he go besides this world? What is out there that we don't know?
There is a veil on us: Allah (swt) has created in us that which veils us and Tariqah shows you how to take this veil away. It is inner knowledge, you can’t see your veil, but there one because you can't see all the worlds, you only see the one world in which you are living, so we are veiled.
Shari`ah came for us to practice in this world; after you die you don’t practice Shari`ah anymore: you cannot pray anymore, the body is dead in the grave, it cannot fast, work or give charity anymore. Allah (swt) said in Holy Qur'an:
وَاعْبُدْ رَبَّكَ حَتَّى يَأْتِيَكَ الْيَقِينُ
Worship your Lord until complete certainty comes to you. (Surat al-Hijr, 15:99)
Scholars interpret this as meaning death, so in other words, worship Allah until you no longer exist. Shari`ah tells us what to do in this world: it measures your activities, your thinking, intentions and so forth. So the outward meaning of the Holy Qur'an points to Shari`ah because the Holy Qur'an has rules and regulations on how to behave, what we must do and not do.
ثُمَّ جَعَلْنَاك عَلَى شَرِيعَة مِنَ الْأَمْر فَاتَّبِعْهَا
Then we sent you on a clear road of commandment, so follow it. (Surat al-Jathiya, 45:18)
The Holy Qur'an is ordering us to follow the rules, pray, fast, give charity etc. Shari`ah is dealing with the outer aspects of faith and Tariqah ie, our masters and teachers, are dealing with both the inner (hidden) and the outer (manifest) knowledges. Tariqah is in the Holy Qur'an too, nothing is out of Qur'an, Shari`ah and Tariqah are both found in the Holy Qur'an. Tariqah is the way to unveil yourself, when you take away this veil what becomes of you? Allah (swt) is saying to the Prophet (s):
كنت بصره الذي يبصر به
I will become the ears with which he hears, the eyes with which he sees. (Hadith Qudsi, Bukhari)
“I will become the sight, the vision, the eyes with which he sees.” What does Allah (swt) see? One world or all the worlds? He sees all the worlds; you cannot see all the worlds with your eyes or his eyes or her eyes, no! To see all the worlds which He has created, He has to be your eyes; to hear the glorification, the tasbeeh of everything He created, He has to be your ears. Tariqah teaches you how to do that, how to remove the veils and become someone who can see all these worlds.
We started with tafsir of Surah Yusuf and I will summarize briefly for those who were not present. I did not speak from myself, but only from Mawlana Shaykh's teachings.
A`oodhu billahi min ash-Shaytani 'r-rajeem wa a'oodhu billahi min nafsee al-khabeeth.
I seek refuge in Allah from Shaytan the Cursed, and I seek refuge in Allah from my evil nafs.
We talked about our egos in the previous sessions and we talked about the ruler of Egypt, and now we have reached the part in the Holy Qur'an where Sayyidina Yusuf (a) is racing away from the Aziz's wife and he has reached the door. Our teachers tell us there are hidden, inner realities in the Holy Qur'an, which will take you to the Divine Presence, there is an inner way and an outer way. The verses of the Holy Qur'an have many meanings, so we will be talking about their inner meanings tonight, inshaa-Allah.
The Analogy of Yusuf as the Heart and Zulaykha as the Ego
We said that the story of Sayyidina Yusuf (a) is about the heart. His brothers threw him in a well; he was bought and sold; he was taken to Egypt and became a slave or a servant of the ruler of Egypt; then the wife of that ruler tried to seduce him. We said Sayyidina Yusuf (a) represents the heart, the wife is the example of the ego (seduction) and the ruler, the owner, the one who has bought him, is the soul (spirit).
We said that the wife asked Joseph (a) to give himself up to her. She wanted him because he was very beautiful, very kind and full of light. The same happens with the ego: it goes after the heart because it is pure, clear and full of light. The heart, Joseph (a), does not go towards her (the ego), he turns away and goes towards the door. She shuts all the doors to make it dark, just like when our ego takes over and we are in darkness. The house represents the body. Joseph (a) is seeking the light, he goes to the door, the exit of the house, and is travelling, running towards the door because the heart wants to move towards light and the ego does not allow it to do so. The wife (the ego), is pulling him towards her, she keeps pulling on his shirt until it rips. When the shirt rips we say that the cover of the heart has ripped and some of that light is starting to shine on the ego. The more the ego is pulling and ripping the heart, the more the heart is struggling and moving towards light. Now this light is shining on the ego, so when they meet the ruler (owner of the house, the spirit) at the door they both have to explain.
We shall start with the outer story here. What did the ruler of Egypt have to say? He first spoke to Joseph (a), who is the slave, Yusuf `arid `an hadha."Joseph! Turn away from this sin!” meaning the woman wanted to be with the man and this is a sin. The ruler of the house (the spirit) said, “Joseph (the heart), turn away from this sin!” and then he turned to his wife (the ego) and said, “Repent!” If we look at the hidden meaning, the heart is making the inner journey towards the light, because the heart is moving towards the light of the soul. When Allah (swt) sent the soul into the body it came alive, it is the soul that is powering the body, it is that light that the heart is moving towards.
The ego is following the heart and the ego now has some light shining on it from the heart, it has moved from the station of the Sinful Ego, ammaaratan bi ’s-soow,to the station of the Repenting Ego. Why is the ego now repenting? Because it was following the heart towards the soul. The ego received the light from the heart, which receives from the soul and this light elevated the ego from the level of sin to the higher level of repentance, where the ego is receiving the light of guidance from the soul, moving from the station of ammaarah to lawaamah.
The King Determines What Happened and Instructs Them
Allah (swt) continues the story:
يُوسُفُ أَعۡرِضۡ عَنۡ هَـٰذَاۚ وَٱسۡتَغۡفِرِى لِذَنۢبِكِۖ إِنَّكِ ڪُنتِ مِنَ ٱلۡخَاطِـِٔين
O Joseph! Turn away from this, and you (O woman), ask forgiveness for your sin. Verily you are of the sinful! (Surah Yusuf, 12:29)
The ruler said, “Turn away from this sin, and you, O wife, repent of your sin.” When the ladies in the city found out what happened, they began to talk, “What is wrong with this woman? She has fallen in love with her slave, a servant in her house, and she asked him to give himself up to her! Surely she is misguided.” Let us look now at the inner meaning of that. She is a woman and they are women (the ego). The women of the city are saying she is on the wrong path. When the ego leaves the path of pleasure, desires and sins, it begins to follow the heart on his path, which is the spiritual path. The heart is seeking the Divine Presence, while the ego is seeking the pleasure of this life. So when she shifted, changed direction, the women said, “She has become misguided, she has switched her way. What has happened? At one time she wanted to sin with him, then she shifted away from that pleasure and now she wants to follow the heart on his path of guidance."
When the Ego Struggles to Overcome Physical Desires
When your ego leaves the way of sinning and you struggle against its pleasures, your ego will follow the heart on its journey towards spirituality and the Divine Presence. So the women of the city saw their fellow sister on the wrong path and they said, “She has gone astray and is following the heart; this is strange, dalaal, she has missed the way." We are talking about the powers in your body, the egoistic powers. We say the body has both physical and spiritual senses such as anger and desire, which are egoistic powers. Now they are seeing that the ego has gone out of its usual way of satisfying the body's pleasures (nafs) and is now following the heart.
So what did she do? When she (ego) heard what they were saying about her, she called them and said, “My fellow sisters, I am inviting you.” What do you do when you invite a guest? You tidy the house, plump up the cushions, make it comfortable. She prepared nice food, fruit, vegetables, etc. and gave all the women knives to cut it with. Then she called Joseph (a) to come out. When the women saw him, they glorified him and said, “What high status, what honor is this?” While they were absorbed in thinking about his high status, they did not realize they were cutting their hands, and they said:
حَاشَ لِلَّهِ مَا هَٰذَا بَشَرًا إِنْ هَٰذَا إِلَّا مَلَكٌ كَرِيمٌ
O my Lord, this is not a human! It is surely an honored angel! (Surah Yusuf, 12:31)
The Spiritual Meaning of the Knife
This is the outer meaning, now let’s go to the inner Tariqah meaning. When our ego has repented from sinning and has gone towards the way of the heart, she called on the other egoistic powers, which are also in the body. She gathered all the powers and desires that drive you to sin and she said, “I’m going to give you food and a knife.” Now the ego’s food is pleasure, it thrives on it, your ego lives to have pleasure, that’s how the ego operates. Anything you want to do, if there’s no fun in it you don't do it. So if you tell your ego to wake up at four o'clock in the morning and pray, it says, “No, that’s not fun.” If you tell your ego to go to Mecca and fast there, instead of fasting in Sweden where the sunset and sunrise are three hours apart, or if you go to where Sayyidina `Ali (r) and Sayyidina `Umar (r) fasted, in the middle of the desert where it is 120° Fahrenheit, is that fun? The ego doesn't think so. So the ego seeks anything that gives it pleasure.
The Tools of Pleasure
When the ego prepared for the other egoistic powers to come over, it prepared food and nice places to sit, to give pleasure to the egos. It also gave them a knife. What does this mean, what is the significance of the knife, what does it represent? For pleasure you need a tool and that is why she brought them a knife. It is like ViagraTM, I'll stop there! You need a tool as a means for the ego to gain pleasure. How can your senses feel if they have no fingers to touch? Your fingers are the tool so you can feel the pleasure of touching, or if you don't have eyes to see with, then you can’t go to Paris and enjoy seeing all the sights. If you have no ears, then you cannot hear and enjoy jazz music, for example. The body needs tools, it needs senses to feel pleasure. Allah (swt) is saying that when the wife called her friends over, she gave them the tools. You need these tools to gain the pleasure, without tools there is no pleasure. Go to a nursing home and see a stroke victim lying on his chair unable to move; what kind of pleasure can that victim have with this body?
“Cut Yourselves or Look at His Beauty!”
So the wife gave them options: “You can have pleasure the way you like, with tools for cutting the food I have prepared for you, or you can look at this person, Joseph." Did they eat? No! On the contrary, they cut their hands and missed the fruit. Hands represent power: you acquire things, build things and take things with your hands. When they cut their hands, they no longer wanted to be on the way of those pleasures, they too wanted to follow the way of the heart. When the egoistic powers, the sisters of the ego, saw the light of the heart they cut their hands which were the tools that helped them fulfil their pleasures and this means they chose the way of the heart.
They Remembered Allah and Saw Angels
They said “Haashaa lillah!” they made dhikrullah, they mentioned the Name of Allah (swt). These egoistic powers that previously sought pleasure were now seeking and mentioning Allah (swt), and what else? They saw angels. When they saw Joseph (a), they said, “Surely this is an angel." It means they became honored; now they are following the heart, they have become ‘dhaakir’, of those who mention Allah's Name and see angels. They saw an angel and said, “This is certainly not a human being, he is nothing but a noble angel, malakun kareem!” So first they said, “This woman is on the wrong path and had gone astray,” and then all of them are going ‘astray’ with her on the path of Joseph, on the path of the heart. We continue:
فَذَٲلِكُنَّ ٱلَّذِى لُمۡتُنَّنِى فِيهِ
This is he on whose account you blamed me! (Surah Yusuf, 12:32)
She says, “This is the one you blamed me for loving, this is the one I fell in love with!” The heart has so much to offer: love, purity, light, guidance. The sinner is the ego, not the heart. If the heart follows the ego, the ego sins more and more. Our heart’s love feeds the ego and each sin it commits covers our hearts with layer upon layer of darkness, veils that can be removed with dhikr. The heart is pure in its original state, but we cover it with the sins of our ego.
بَلۡۜ رَانَ عَلَىٰ قُلُوبِہِم مَّا كَانُواْ يَكۡسِبُونَ
But that which they have earned is rust upon their hearts. (Surat al-Mutaffifeen, 83:14)
If you take away sin from the heart, it returns to its normal form, its natural fitra, as the Prophet (s) said:
يولد الانسان على الفطرة ، فأبواه يهودانه أو ينصرانه أو يمجسانه
Mankind is born on fitra (purity and belief). (Bukhari, Muslim)
So Zulaykha said, “This is the one you blamed me for falling in love with! I asked him to become mine but he was chaste, he controlled himself and prevented me from having him.”
The People of the Left and the People of the Right
This is a very important point. The ego is not something that only comes to human beings from the left side, the side of sinning and unbelief, as-haab ash-shimaal, the People of Hellfire, People of the Left are on unbelief and sin. The ego also comes from the right side, as-haab al-yameen, the People of the Right.
Shaytan swore to Allah (swt), “I will sit on Your Straight Path, O my Lord, and I will come to them from the front, the back, the right and the left!” We know the People of the Left are the sinners: mushrik, munaafiqs, the liars, they are the People of Jahannam, Hellfire. From the right side are the worshippers, the believers, the People of Dhikrullah. the People of Jannah, Paradise.
So here, the ego is asking the heart to give himself to her and the ego approaches the heart first on the wrong side. In the beginning, the ego is always asking you to sin, sin, sin. If you don’t sin, then the ego turns around and follows the heart in the right direction, on the right path. I will explain, the People of the Right are the People of Paradise, Imaan, Islam, of `Ilm, knowledge, goodness and the people in submission to Allah (swt). The ego comes to them and says, “Mashaa-Allah what a lecture you gave, look at all these people watching and following you!” If that person says, “Yes, this is true”, what enters the heart? Pride!
How Pride Waits to Pounce on Us
This is the bad characteristic of the ego: pride was the reason Shaytan was kicked out of Allah’s Presence! The ego comes to the person leading groups, the one who has mureeds, who has written one-thousand books and says, “Mashaa-Allah, you have so much ‘ilm now! You were ignorant when you were 15-16 years old, but masha-Allah now you are 60-70 and people are lining up to kiss your hand!” If that person says, “Shut up, ego!” that is good, he is fighting his ego. If he says, “That is true,” then he is finished: all his knowledge and worship for the last 80 years is finished through his own pride. That is why Mawlana Shaykh Nazim (q) said to me that we have to protect our iman until our last breath. You can be a worshipper all your life and when you are dying something might happen and you lose all of that!
Challenges of Following the Heart
So the ego has now repented from sin, but she still wants Joseph (a). She called for her fellow sisters and gave them tools so they could have pleasure, but when they saw him they gave their pleasures up and said, “We want to follow the heart." For example, you decide to pray at night, the following day you sleep and miss all your prayers: Fajr, Duha, Zhuhr, Asr, Maghrib, and you wake up in time for `Isha, and this happens to all of us! When the ego loses control of the body the heart takes over and it will wake up in the last part of night, stay up until Fajr, then at sunrise it will pray two rak`ats sunnah of Prophet (s). Then does it go to sleep? No, it goes to work. The ego will try to say, “I have to do this and that, I have to work and I have kids and then I have to wake up at 3 a.m.”
When the ego is no longer in charge of the body, it tries to regain power by taking control of the heart. It whispers to the heart, “You are very knowledgeable. Who is that person? You don't need to talk to that person.” That is arrogance. Luqman said to his son, “Don't talk to these people, you are high now." So the ego starts to dress the heart with pride and arrogance and begins to control it. No one is safe from Shaytan, not even the brothers of Yusuf (a) who were prophets. Look how those prophets treated another prophet, their brother Joseph (a). They are only safe from Shaytan with Allah's `ismah, protection, so everyone is at risk from Shaytan!
She said, “This is the one you blamed me for falling in love with and I am still asking him to give himself up to me, but he is still resisting. Therefore, I have no choice: if he doesn't do what I (the ego) order, then I will put him in prison." What is prison? In prison you are isolated in a cell with just four walls, you are disconnected from the outside world and its pleasures. The ego is still asking Sayyidina Yusuf (a), “I want you even if I have repented, even if I am on the path, I still want you.”
So what did the heart say?
قَالَ رَبِّ السِّجْنُ أَحَبُّ إِلَيَّ مِمَّا يَدْعُونَنِي إِلَيْهِ ۖ وَإِلَّا تَصْرِفْ عَنِّي كَيْدَهُنَّ أَصْبُ إِلَيْهِنَّ وَأَكُنْ مِنَ الْجَاهِلِينَ
He said, "My Lord, prison is more to my liking than that to which they invite me and if You do not avert from me their plan, I might incline toward them and (thus) be of the ignorant." (Surah Yusuf, 12:33)
“O my Lord! To be disconnected from the world is more beloved to me than what they invite me to!” Your heart is making du`a to your Lord, “ O my Lord, to be disconnected from worldly pleasures is more lovely to me than what they are inviting me to do. I want to be in Your Divinely Presence, but I have no power, only You can take their plotting and their evilness away. If you don't protect me from them, from my egoistic drive for pleasure, O Allah (swt), I will fall into their traps and be inclined to do what they want." That is iftiqaarun lillah, poverty to Allah. The heart's character is that it is always poor to Allah (swt) and always asks for His help. The heart can go both ways: with ego or on the spiritual path with the soul to the Divine Presence.
فَاسْتَجَابَ لَهُ رَبُّهُ فَصَرَفَ عَنْهُ كَيْدَهُنَّ ۚ
So his Lord answered him and averted their plan from him. (Surah Yusuf, 12:34)
So his Lord accepted his prayer and took away their plotting, which means your Lord has shielded you from your ego's pleasures and is able to replace that ego's pleasures with something fifty or one-hundred times better! We heard Mawlana Shaykh Hisham Kabbani talk about Muhammad Zahid (q), whose follower had the power of a saint. One day he was walking beside a pub and said, “Alhamdulillah that I am not like them or in there with them." That was arrogance, because of which Allah (swt) infused in him the desires of fifty men! So here Allah (swt) protected the heart, but He can also infuse in you so many different desires, so be careful, don't let pride enter your heart by saying, “I am doing something.”
So the heart is asking for Allah’s help. Lets see what happened next. Allah (swt) removed their wickedness and plotting by putting Joseph (a) in jail; he entered seclusion.
كَفَىٰ بِنَفْسِكَ الْيَوْمَ عَلَيْكَ حَسِيبًا
Sufficient is your soul this day to make an account against you. (Surat al-Israa, 17:14)
Everyone knows himself; it is enough for you today to know that your ego will be your auditor, the one on the Day of Judgment that accounts for you. It can happen now, today, anytime: we can sit and audit ourselves and where we are on this path. When the shaykh of Tariqah sees his mureed advancing, he can see where you are on the spiritual path. He is looking to see if you are a person coming from the right hand path of worship, `ibaadah. Maybe your ego is trying to control you with pride and arrogance. If you have reached that station where Allah (swt) has shielded you from the pleasures of the ego, then the shaykh will put you in seclusion, which is the start of the real fight with the ego. We are still at the beginning, struggling with our brothers, with our egos.
وَدَخَلَ مَعَهُ ٱلسِّجۡنَ فَتَيَانِ
Now with him there came into the prison two young men. (Surah Yusuf, 12:36)
The heart enters the seclusion and your shaykh says, “Now it is time, here is your seclusion." Inshaa-Allah all of us will enter seclusion, inshaa-Allah we all get to that stage with the push of our shaykh. So what happens? With the heart enters two young ones, they still have to mature. According to history, one of the young men was someone who used to serve the king wine, but he was thrown in jail and tells Joseph (a) his dream, “I see myself juicing wine." The second one says, “I see myself carrying bread on top of my head where the birds are eating it,” and supposedly this is the baker who was also thrown in jail.
They ask Prophet Yusuf (s), “Please tell us what these dreams means, we see you are of muhsineen (the third state), not muslimeen or mu’mineen. Allah (swt) could have chosen another word to describe Yusuf (a). He describes people as mumineen, `abideen, muhsineen, there are many different levels in the Holy Qur'an, but in this ayah He chooses ‘muhsineen’. You have to be at the level of muhsineen to enter seclusion, the level of Ihsan, Moral Excellence.
So why are they talking about a dream? These two immature ones are talking about when their eyes are closed and they are asleep, which means the eyes of the heart aren’t open yet, they are still dormant, still sleeping, and that is why they see in dreams. So the heart is still sleeping, still the veils are covering it.
They are telling the dream and they want an interpretation. One says, “I see myself squeezing wine."
To have wine you have to squeeze the grapes, which grow in vineyards, coming from the earth, and they come out with rain. From one word of Allah (swt) you get all kinds of meanings! So going in sequence: to make wine you need grapes, earth and rain, and rain means `ilm and rahmat, knowledge and mercy. Allah’s Mercy has to rain down on the heart, then that soil of the heart makes the plant grow, then the plant bears fruit, then the fruit ripens and you squeeze the fruit to make wine. So this first being, the young one, represents the love to the Divine Presence and the wine represents the drink of love, which is when you let your heart flourish with Allah's knowledge and mercy. The more knowledge and mercy you receive from your Lord, the more your love of Allah (swt) grows.
How many of us find that the more we read, the more we love our Lord? When we read more Holy Qur'an, more Hadith, more words from the pious saints and we do more dhikr, then we feel our love for Allah (swt) growing. So when showered with that knowledge and mercy we will begin to squeeze the juice of that fruit, making wine and drinking the wine of love. So one who enters the seclusion is a young one, a fataa. He is going to grow and mature and that love will continue to grow.
The second one says, “O Yusuf! I see myself carrying bread on my head for the birds, and they are eating from it." What does this mean? Food gives us pleasure and the birds represent the egoistic powers inside you; they are gaining egoistic pleasures by eating the bread. So the heart can go either way: towards the love of egoistic pleasures or towards divine pleasures. We have both desires, this is what happens in seclusion: love for the Divine Presence and love for pleasure both get adjusted and tuned up.
Allah (swt) continues the story:
يَـٰصَٮٰحِبَىِ ٱلسِّجۡنِ ءَأَرۡبَابٌ۬ مُّتَفَرِّقُونَ خَيۡرٌ أَمِ ٱللَّهُ ٱلۡوَٲحِدُ ٱلۡقَهَّارُ
O my two companions of the prison! Are many lords differing among themselves better, or Allah, The One Supreme and Irresistible? (Surah Yusuf, 12:39)
Yusuf (a) said to those two who entered seclusion with him, “O my fellow prisoners! Is it better to have multiple lords or to have one god?” Most of us love Allah (swt), and we must say this with humility, shame, astaghfirullah, we love Allah (swt) when He gives us something, When He gives us money we pray all day and night and if we are squeezed, we have not a penny, we get upset and angry, yelling and screaming, “Why is this happening to me?” Your heart is saying it loves Allah (swt) when He is merciful, when He is giving and generous, but you don't do the same when Allah (swt) is al-Muntaqim or al-Qaabid, avenging or taking away what you have. You love Him when He gives to you, but you don't love Him so much when He acts with might and power as al-Jalaal. He has the attributes of Power and Beauty, and both are Allah (swt). Are you are going to love Allah if He gives you health, or if he gives you cancer and you are under the knife, day and night in the hospital? It is the same Lord, Allah is al-Waahid.
“Are separate lords better or is one better?” He is the One Who Gives and The One Who Takes, The One Who Punishes and The One who Rewards. For a true lover of Allah (swt) all that is the same because Allah is One, and His Essence has all these attributes, of which you cannot take some and not the others, because this is separation and Allah (swt) is One. So when you are in seclusion the heart tells you while it is in the Divine Presence that you have to shape up and love Allah (swt)! If He gives you a disease or health is the same, if He takes your eyesight it is the same as when you could see! That is how love for Allah (swt) grows, when you start to see and accept His opposites, that The One Who gives is also The One Who restricts: they are the same because they are all attributes of The One you love, and this is how you begin to squeeze the wine of love for Allah (swt).
In reality, the one carrying the bread is carrying the egoistic powers. Sayyidina Yusuf (a) asks if multiple lords are better or The One Lord, Allah (swt), al-Waahid better? What does this mean? Your ego and the desires of the ego are so many that you cannot say you have only one desire. No! The ego has so many different desires and if you obey them you are following or taking them as your lord.
I will give an example: Allah (swt) says get married: this is the easiest thing to understand, Allah (swt) is allowing you to have a relationship with someone. You marry. Then you are walking down the street and you get a text from someone you know, saying, “I am waiting for you." You have a spouse waiting at home but now you get this text, so what do you do? What does your ego like? It likes pleasures, of course, and it always seeks more of it. So when you begin to follow a desire, ignoring that you have a loved one at home whom Allah (swt) gave you, then you are looking for something else, following your ego’s desires. At that point you are taking another lord! If you are not following the advice of Allah (swt) then you are making partners with Him: He is The One Who orders you--your Lord, not your ego!
So the advice for the one carrying the bread is to do only what Allah (swt) allows. For example, if Allah (swt) says don't eat in the daytime because it’s Ramadan, then you don’t eat food in the daytime. If Allah (swt) says eat in the night time, then you eat only in the night time. Food is a pleasure and our desires love to eat, but sometimes Allah (swt) is ordering us not to. You might find yourself at work and someone brings donuts during Ramadan; if you don't eat them you are following huqooq, obeying Allah by only eating food that He provides you in the evening.
You must tune your egoistic powers to only follow what Allah (swt) has ordered for you and observe His restrictions. Allah (swt) says, “Wake up for prayer,” but we all love to sleep, it is an egoistic pleasure, so when you say, “No, I am not going to sleep now, I will sleep later”, you are obeying Allah (swt).
So what happens to the two prison companions at the end?
أَمَّآ أَحَدُكُمَا فَيَسۡقِى رَبَّهُ ۥ خَمۡرً۬اۖ وَأَمَّا ٱلۡأَخَرُ فَيُصۡلَبُ فَتَأۡڪُلُ ٱلطَّيۡرُ مِن رَّأۡسِهِ
As for one of you, he will pour out the wine for his Lord to drink: as for the other, he will hang from the cross and the birds will eat from his head. (Surah Yusuf, 12:41)
“O my companions of the jail! One of you will serve his Lord the drink of love, and the other will be crucified and the birds will eat from his head.” This means the first one will continue to receive the drink of love and quench the thirst of his heart with the knowledge that comes down from Heavens. “You will get out of jail and continue to be in your Lord's Presence and grow in love and you will continue to receive the Wine of Knowledge. The other companion will be crucified and birds will eat from his head.”
What is crucifixion? It means you don't move, you are nailed to the wood so you can't move anymore to follow your egoistic pleasures: no more following women, eating too much food or drinking this, smoking that, moving here and there. No, you are not allowed to do anything, but still the birds are able to eat from your head, which means you can still have egoistic pleasures, but only from the rights Allah has given you. The man was a baker, meaning he was busy making pleasures for his ego, travelling here and there, drinking, smoking and doing all that stuff, so when he is nailed and not making bread any more, he is not seeking pleasures anymore, which is why he was nailed to the wood, crucified.
Inshaa-Allah we are protected from our egos, which will come at us from both ways, from our sins and our good actions.
Wa min Allahi ‘t-tawfeeq bi hurmati 'l-Fatihah.
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