“Beware, DEAR WAYFARER, of your own sense of self and SPIRITUAL accomplishment. Beware of imagining yourself to be BETTER than the Adam of your age, and of regarding the EARTHLY nature of your intermediary with disdain. The SAILS of your lower self are still targets for the ARROWS of divine majesty. It behooves you to halt at the shores of
this OCEAN and to become absent from your lower self. Do not DARE to cross this ocean, for even your thoughts are perilous WITHOUT divine permission. Only embark upon this ocean if you are clinging to the SHIELD OF LOVE that protects you from the arrows of divine MAJESTY. Otherwise, your journey’s end will be rejection and misery.”
Tune in to our podcasts “The Sufis of Morocco” for discourses on Islamic mysticism, faith, spirituality and practice by the reviver of the Shadhiliyya Order, Shaykh Mohamed Faouzi al-Karkari (qs).
Select Teachings
On Virtue and Beauty
Ibn Abbas, may God be pleased him, said: “Verily, beautiful deeds bring radiance to the face, light in the heart, good fortune in one's provision, strength in the body, and love in the hearts of creatures. And verily, ugly deeds bring gloominess to the face, darkness within the grave and within the heart, weakness within the body, a diminishing of provision, and hatred in the hearts of the creatures.”
A Knower of God Recognizes your Inner State. Here’s How.
When one of the names of the Real comes to reside in the heart, its luminosity flows through the entirety of the body, so that when that body breathes, it breathes through that name.
Here's How to Train your Soul
Know also that what prevents you from honoring the intermediary (wāsiṭa) are your lower selves, which incline toward leadership and prestige, or imagine themselves to have knowledge, gnosis and proximity to God.
Inclinations of the Heart
The line of the straight Alif is the line of journeying through the levels and ascents of lā ilāha illā Allāh, Muḥammad rasūl Allāh, through the inclining of the heart toward it, and its attachment to it, until it achieves realization of it.
On Spiritual Authority
Every prophet and messenger is a friend of God (walī). That is why every messenger brings together the reality of the Alif with all three levels of Messengerhood (risala), Prophecy (nubuwwa), and Sainthood (wilaya).
The Creative Power of Divine Love
The cosmos was in a state of rest, a rest of non-existence, and then the Real gazed upon it with love, and what was at rest began to move with love, by virtue of, “I loved to become known.”
Witnessing the Alif in all Letters
The Alif is a line that you can extend for as long as you please. That is why it manifests in all the letters, just as the number one manifests in all numbers.
