SPEAKER_00 0:07

Asalamu alaykum rahmatu lau barakat. This world is separated from the next world. And we are unable to see through that separation. But in reality, this world and the next world are connected. There is no actual separation. There's just an apparent separation. It is veiled from us. We do not see what is beyond that veil. But the Khatubs have told us that death and life are one. They are going on at the same time. There is no difference between them. There's a difference when we are involved in mind and desire. But when mind and desire leave us, time leaves us. And when time leaves us, there is no separation. There's just a continuum. There's a space without end. The scientists have told us time is relative. And we need to understand that we are caught in the illusion of time. Mohayadin said to us more than once, time is the skin of illusion. So as we believe in time, so we are trapped in the illusory nature of existence. And we are in a space where we fear the end of our time. We fear death. We fear the ongoing process that jumps from life to death because we don't understand the nature of the ongoing process. We only see as far as we can see. And when we see further, we can understand more, and fear can leave. There was a badishah, a royal person, riding a horse to go hunting. And he came to a bridge, and there was a drunk on the bridge. And the drunk said to him, Is your horse for sale? And the king looked at him, noticed he was drunk, and just carried on and left. After a day of hunting, he came back and he had to cross the same bridge. And he saw the same man sitting at the edge of the bridge, and he wasn't drunk any longer. And he said, Are you s and the the bodishah said to him, Are you still looking to see if the horse is for sale? And the drunk said to him, The man who wanted to buy the horse is no longer here, but the one who will groom the horse is here now. So after his stupor from drunkenness left, he realized his place and he realized where he was. We are in a kind of torpor, and we see the world in a certain way. And while we are in the midst of seeing it that way, we are like someone with blinders, like a horse who can't see to the sides. We believe what we are involved in, we believe it to be true, and we believe it to be real. Only when we change our consciousness, only when we have faith and wisdom and true understanding, can we begin to see the larger picture of things? Can we begin to see truth and reality? In order to be able to find our path to this, we have to find a true teacher, we have to find someone who has become an Insan Kamal, someone who has become a true human. One of the traits of a true human, one who has acquired God's qualities, is that he is able to transfer his state of being to those who come in contact with him. And he can do this because of his ability to share of himself with all of humanity, to share of the truth with all of humanity, because the Insan Kamal doesn't hold anything back from anyone because he doesn't see any difference between himself and everybody else. Since there is no difference, there is a flow as if but one existed, and he can give freely and readily and make that truth available to all of humanity that comes into his purview, that comes into his surroundings, that comes into the space of his resonance. Now, for us to be able to do that, we have to be able to release ourselves from the separation and the veils that we create between ourselves and others. If we go to the sheikh with the same attitudes of separation that we have or had in the world, we will stop the penetration of truth from entering into us. Not because of anything that he does or anything that he did, but because we refuse to enter into a state of unity. We refuse to give up our own identity. We refuse to allow ourselves to merge with truth. To be able to merge with the sheikh, to be able to merge with the insan, to be able to merge with the teacher, we have to give up our ideas of self. We have to give up what we hold on to as an ego-centric self. The Sufis talk about annihilation, the surrender of the self, the annihilation of the self. But that annihilation means giving up all that which separates us from truth. So we have to annihilate all of our ideas of existence. We have to annihilate all of that which in us which resists annihilation. We have to annihilate all of that within us which resists merging. We have to annihilate within us all of that which wants to hold on to our supposed uniqueness, our supposed identity, our supposed differences, our self-created separations to make ourselves somehow higher, more important, different, unique. We have to give up this idea of uniqueness and understand that what is unique is our Lord. And He is one and alone and unique. All uniqueness comes from Him. And for us to understand the enormity of that oneness, the majesty of that oneness, the truth of that unity, and the majestic nature of that unity, our perceived small uniqueness, our perceived small separation has to disappear, has to dissipate, has to go away. We have to learn to stop holding on to ourselves. We have to learn to release ourselves. This means that essentially they would go into something like a cave that had a door on it, and they would stay there in the dark for a period of 40 days, and they would be given a little bit of food every day. And this was to practice disappearing. And the the Dervishes would wait for their time to be allowed to go into isolation. And one of the dervishes asked the sheikh, When will I be ready to go into isolation? And his answer was, you'll be ready to go into isolation when you're ready to isolate yourself from yourself. And this is the lesson. This was the reason for the isolation, so that you could isolate yourself from yourself. And our work in this world is to isolate ourselves from our perceptions of who we are into something new, into who we truly are. And who we truly are is Insan Tamil, but we've lost touch with that reality, and we've taken on all these other realities. We've taken on all of the things that the world has given to us, and we've accepted all those things as who we are. So we were born into a religion, and we've accepted that religion as who we are. We've been trained into the rituals of that religion, and we believe that those rituals are part of who we are. We were born into a race, and we believe that that race represents who we are. We have taken on all of these external identifications, and we believe that these external identifications decide who we are and display who we are, and we have identified with them as if they were true. So before we can begin to know truth, we have to rid ourselves of all of the lies that we have swallowed over all of the years that are stuck inside of us that we consider real. And if we can't rid ourselves of these lies, and if we can't rid ourselves of the attachment to these lies, then we can't begin the journey towards the truth. Because of all of these lies, we have established certain ideas about ourselves, and each one of us has a different set of ideas about who we are and the way we are. There's a book called The Conference of the Birds, uh, which has to do with an allegory about a group of birds who are trying to find their true king. And the first part of the book is discussions with all of the different birds and all of their different attitudes towards finding this way. Yes, immediately. And because there is no separation, because we've done away with separation in this community, we now are in the midst of feeling the joy that everyone feels as they move on this path. And we are happy for the happiness of the ones who are moving forward and who are finding the truth. And we understand their love and they understand our love. And with the sheikh as the center of the community, this love spreads among everyone, and all of the differences among people disappear. All of the differences and all of the separations that we've spent a lifetime gathering begin to disappear, and we begin to see the truth in unity. We begin to understand the truth in doing away with separations. We begin to understand what it's like to be able to see ourselves in our brothers and sisters, to be able to see ourselves in each other, and know that in truth there is one mankind, there is one humanity, there is one God, and there is one truth. And all of these begin to formulate who we will become. All of these understandings begin to formulate the truth of who we are. And what we learn how to what we learn to do is we learn to endure the world, we learn to overlook the difficulties of the world, we learn to tolerate the difficulties of the world, and we look to forgive each other for all of our faults, we do away with all of that which causes separation, and we create a new harmony in existence, and it is very important that we have faith that this will occur. One of the moments that everyone is aware of in the prophet's life, peace and blessings be upon him, has to do with when he went on what's called miraj, which is when he was transported to Allah. And when he came before Allah in this night journey, there was a veil between him, between the Prophet and Allah. And through that veil, Allah spoke to the Prophet, and he spoke to him about religious observances and prayer and the people of the Prophet. After this discussion had finished, the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said to Allah, I want to see you. I want to know you. And Allah said, I am going to let you remove the veil. And he removed the veil. And what he saw was this incredible, shining, bright, effulgent mirror. And in this mirror, he could see the eighteen thousand universes. And he saw himself as an effulgent sixteen-year-old youth who had all the vitality and all of the majesty that comes with youth and that comes with knowledge of Allah. And there, within that mirror, he saw intermingled Insan Kamil and Himself. Insan Kamil was himself, and this was intermingled with Allah. In the mirror, he was intermingled with Allah. And his body disappeared, and his heart became that mirror where this unity existed. He understood then that if you cannot see Allah within yourself, you'll never see Allah outside of yourself. Because in truth, it is through yourself that you see your creator. And when you know the truth about yourself, you begin to know the truth about your creator. And you and the creator are in a unity that is intermingled as one. And in that unity, the truth of existence is known to all of us. So we, each of us, are in a constant state of going further and further towards unification. We are in a constant state of going further and further towards becoming part of that one. So, in one sense, we are in a constant state of giving up, annihilating all that is not part of that one, and we are moving forward to integrate with everything that is part of that one. So we have to emulate the nature of the Sheikh to begin with. We need to watch the Sheikh, we need to see how he puts his shoes on, how he puts his shirt on, how he reacts to people, his interaction with humanity, how he keeps himself in a consistent state that doesn't deviate from his kindness and his truth and his generosity and his compassion and his mercy and how he stays in that state and things don't push him out of that state. And as we sit with him, we have to take on those characteristics. We have to take on those characteristics of consistency in the action of Allah's qualities without deviating from our faith, and without deviating from our acceptance of the truth, and without deviating from the understanding that there is a unity in all of existence, and there is no separation among us. So we give up race differences, we give up religious differences, we give up sexual differences, we give up all differences, we go to a place where differences no longer exist. And it's in that place where differences no longer exist that truth can be found. And if we can maintain that, then we are moving on the straight path. If we can't maintain that, then we fall from the straight path. And Satan, his work is to put situations in our path that make us doubt the reality of this path, that make us doubt the reality of this truth, that try to bring about differences in our lives by bringing anger, jealousy, hypocrisy, religious differences, race differences, language differences, anything that Satan can push at us to make us think we are somehow different than other people, praise and blame, high and low. Satan, this is Satan's work, and this is what Satan is doing to us to pull us away from that truth of who we really are. This mirror that exists in our heart is there for us to look into it and to see the truth within us and see the truth of who we are. We cannot be afraid to travel the path towards Allah. We cannot be afraid to understand that Allah lives within us. We have to consider ourselves worthy of the fact that Allah exists within us because Allah created us this way. This is His doing. This is not our doing. This is the way it's meant to be. This is not our idea. This has nothing to do with egoism. This has nothing to do with our ideas of who we are. This is Allah's idea of who we were created to be. So we have to maintain our faith in this path and our faith in this reality. We have to choose to strive to understand truth, and we have to understand that to truly understand truth, we have to give up all of the ideas of who we are. We have to go to the precipice of the separation between this world and the next. We have to stand on the edge of the cliff. We have to be able to look over it, and we can't be afraid to fall in. We can't be afraid to take the plunge. We can't be afraid to let ourselves go. We can't be afraid of what's coming to take us. Fear has to leave us. Doubt has to leave us. Excuses have to leave us. Tomorrow has to leave us. Now, now is the only time that there is. There is no time. There is just now. And when we become intermingled with that, and when we feel the joy of that majestic moment of rapture, when we begin to understand that truth, then reality enters us, and we enter reality. And the truth of existence is born within us, and we are born within it. We've seen it, we've seen it manifest, we've seen it in the presence of our sheikh. And he said to us, Become like me. And he didn't say that as a joke, he said that because that is the intention of this journey that is our life. So may this journey go on the straight path and culminate in union with our Creator. Amin, Amin. Ya Rabbilal Amin Asalam Alaykum rahmatullawa barakatuhu.