On my Tariqa's private FB page , each week I post a Shabbat greeting along with a brief (and usually spontaneous) commentary. Those little commentaries are mostly concerned with things that would only apply to the confraterity, but this week's commentary ALSO has a message for all spiritual seekers: and so I decided to share it here as well:
G-d Alone
"Soli Deo" is the motto of the Carthusian hermit order and has long been a personal favorite of mine. It also expresses the core theology of both Islam and Judaism: for we are among the principal religions that declare G-d's unity daily (in the Shahada and the Sh'ma.)
The Judeo-Arabic Song of Yehuda Al Harizi (from which we took the first mantra of our Tariqa´s Wird) proclaims:
" O He, O He, I will have none but He".
(Ya Huwa Ya Huwa mah li illa Huwa)
Repeatedly and insistently in Kuntres Maarat Ha Lev, I made the point that contemplative prayer, private devotions, meditation practices,and retreats or spiritual-style gatherings focussed mainly on the self and on personal development......... all miss the point.
"Prayer is not about us. Prayer is about G-d." was my cry.
This is both the Beshtian and the Sufic stance. For the former the highest prayer was when the Shekhinah prayed through the one davening.
For the Sufi, prayer (as in zhikr) is an activity performed by G-d who is actually "remembering" us....It is He who generates our very own prayer.
The principal aim of Jewish Sufi Dhikr (in our Tariqa) is to make a space in our souls for this Divine activity to be realised in its fullness. For that to happen ....we need to work on consciously forgetting our selves and our problems and our superficial obsessions ......and focus on Him.
Ya Huwa Ya Huwa mah li illah Huwa
Focus On G-d.... Focus On G-d...Focus on G-d alone.
14 Nov 2024
Safed
oooOooo
I had not planned to write the above until just a few moments after I had read this wonderful story from "The Conference of the Birds":
In Moses' time there lived an anchorite
Who prayed incessantly by day and night,
And yet derived no pleasure from his quest;
No sun had risen in his troubled breast.
He had a beard, of which he took great care,
Loving to comb it hair by silky hair.
It happened that this pious man one day
Caught sight of Moses walking far away —
He ran to him and cried: "M ount Sinai's lord,
Ask God why he denies me my reward."
When next on Sinai's slopes good Moses trod,
He put this poor man's question to his God,
Who answered: "Tell this would-be saint that he
Pays more attention to his beard than Me."
Whatever stage you've reached, to spend one breath
Unmindful of your God is worse than death -
And what of you, still wrapped up in your beard,
For whom grief's ocean has not yet appeared?
Forget this beard and you will understand
How you can swim across and gain dry land -
But keep it as you enter that profound
Ungoverned sea, and with it you'll be drowned.
(from "The Conference of the Birds" (Farad Uddin Attar trans. Dick Davis and Afkhad Darbandi, Penguin Books 1984)