Awliyaullah go into many difficulties to remove obstacles Shaytan has put in your way. Grandshaykh `AbdAllah, may Allah bless his soul, said that everyone from Ummat an-Nabi (s) will go into khalwah in his grave and that will clear him of his sins and clean him, and Allah will turn their grave into a piece of Paradise to do their seclusion there, because due to many issues in dunya they were unable to complete khalwah, but they will do it in the grave because the soul of the mu’min is free, as Prophet (s) said. In Barzakh, which means in the grave, there is a cycle of life we call al-Hayaat al-Barazakhiyya, the barazakhee life, which is between dunya and Akhira. That period of time in the grave, Allah will turn it into a Paradise mu’mins and Muslims and they will complete khalwah.
When Grandshaykh `AbdAllah (q) became sick, he jokingly said, “I am going to go where no one can follow me.” At that time we didn’t understand what he meant, that he wanted to have the operation and get his health back, but we didn’t understand because he said, “I have to go for khalwah, which will be very strong, but before that I must have cataract surgery.” Everyone just thought Grandshaykh was going to go for that easy operation, not as easy as today but still simple, and then he will go to Madinat al-Munawwara to complete his seclusion.
We didn’t understand that he meant something else, that he is going to a place where no one can reach him. We thought he was going to Madinat al-Munawwara while we were in Lebanon or Sham, and it would be very difficult to go there to reach him. So by his order, we took him to do the surgery, but then there were complications and he stopped eating, saying to us, “I don’t have a big appetite.” It went on like that for forty days, he did not eat and said, “I still have that suhbah,” meaning what we didn’t understand then, “I have finished forty days of seclusion on behalf of my followers and Ummat an-Nabi (s). In order to carry the load of my followers; I took that responsibility on myself and completed the forty days.”
That entire forty days we were with him and saw that he ate so little and mostly drank water, then on 14th Sha`baan he said, “This is forty days, I finished my seclusion.” That took place in Rajab and the first ten days of Sha`baan. Then he said, “I want to go back to Sham, because I am leaving this dunya.” So, also we didn’t understand, but I remember we took him and I drove him in the car; we removed the seats and made a bed for him to lay on and drove from Beirut to Sham on 14th Sha`baan, the night of Laylat al-Bara`ah.
Grandshaykh (q) said, “Do a Mawlid and invite all followers that can come and tomorrow on the 15th we will go to Sham.” We did that, and from a vision, a dream that he saw on the 15th, he said that Prophet (s) was happy with his intention to do khalwah on behalf of his followers and not only that, but he extended it on behalf of Ummat an-Nabi (s)! Spiritually, I can say according to that, Grandshaykh, may Allah bless his soul, did a khalwah on behalf of every one of us that is written in our notebooks and his khalwah is not like our khalwah!
إنما الأعمال بالنيات
Verily actions are by intentions.
This was his intention and it was accepted from him, then on Sunday, the 4th of Ramadan, he left dunya. In some Tariqahs, seclusion is an obligation included in different awraad because Awliyaullah know our weaknesses and they did it on our behalf. So people are asking about seclusion these days. Due to problems around the world, seclusion is as Prophet (s) said in the Hadith we mentioned yesterday:
فكسروا قسيكم وقطعوا أوتاركم واضربوا سيوفكم بالحجارة فإن دخل يعني على أحد منكم فليكن كخير ابني آدم
Break your bows, cut your arrows, and blunt your swords with stones, for if one comes upon any of you [to attack], you will be like the best of the children of Adam. (Abu Dawood)
“Stay in your home, break your sword and hide yourself in the deepest room at the end of the house far from the doorway.” So the intention is to do seclusion, but from that Hadith we understand that if you cannot do it because of too much fitna but your intention was to do, it will be written for you. You can observe solitude in the last hour of `Asr before Maghrib and from Maghrib to `Isha and then from Fajr to Ishraaq. If you do so at these three times, it will be written as if you completed forty days of seclusion.
Allah's Rahmah is great and in this holy month of Rajab Allah will not allow angels to write our sins immediately, He delays it for 24 hours so that perhaps we will repent. Grandshaykh (q) said, “I look at my followers at that time and if they did not repent, it is as Prophet (s) said:
تعرض علي أعمال لكم فإن وجدت خيراً حمدت الله وما وجدت غير ذلك استغفرت لكم.
I observe the `amal of my Ummah. If I find good I thank Allah, and if I see other than that, bad, I ask forgiveness for you. (al-Bazzaar in his Musnad)
Prophet (s) sees our `amal and Awliyaullah look after everyone to present them to Prophet (s), so everyone in the Ummah will be cleaned every 24 hours. In this holy month, sins will not be written immediately, and our deeds go to Allah directly without the angels and you will be rewarded for repenting. So try to avoid sins, because if you go out anywhere you see every kind of naked people, men and women, which is a sin, so we ask Allah to protect us, reward us and include us, grant us a share in Grandshaykh’s seclusion, and Prophet's (s) seclusion and Sayyidina Musa’s forty days’ seclusion and Sayyidina Yunus’s seclusion in the whale
To make it easy for us, Prophet (s) made seclusion easier: because we are weak servants he dropped it to ten days, the `itikaaf in Ramadan, whereas before in Ghari Hira he did seclusion for forty days. So do `itikaaf in Ramadan, not forty days seclusion, because Prophet (s) knows we are weak. You can observe the ten days in your home: after work read Holy Qur’an, Dalaa’il al-Khayraat, istighfaar, your awraad or Qaseedah Burdah, or Salat al-Mudariyya and anything you want. `Itikaaf is in the last ten days of Ramadan, the days that are security from Hellfire. Those who are coming here, it is considered seclusion for them. So if you do khalwati jalwati--“khalwah” is to seclude yourself from people, “jalwa” is to observe the three times we mentioned--it is three steps, multiplied by ten it is thirty, so it is as if you have done thirty days khalwah!
May Allah (swt) forgive us and turn our `amal as if they are our khalwah and that every day you do different from what people do. Wa min Allahi 't-tawfeeq, bi hurmati 'l-habeeb, bi hurmati 'l-Fatihah.
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