To happily and willingly serve God and other people.
Bismi'llah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim...for the sake of Prophet Muhammad saws and Sheikh Nazim may Allah protect his secret.
What about that as a motto then? To happily and willingly serve God and others....or God and other people ...God and man? ..no, I think "other people" is the right phrase as "God and others" might sound like God and other deities! and God and man sounds to grandiose. Also I say "happily and willingly" in order to emphasise the right spirit. I do know people that are serving God (or trying to) willingly but there is no happiness apparent in it and that makes it very heavy for others to find it attractive or want to join their group.Sheikh always emphasises that it is the love with which one worships Allah that interests him..that worship without love is like accumulating zeros.What about "To lovingly serve God and others."? A bit shorter and more pithy ... not so Victorian sounding perhaps ...
Anyway,you get the picture...
Really it started off from looking after Bilquis yesterday...She had one of her healing crises on the New Medecine path, which she is on for healing her cancer..lots of blood and a shock to us both as we were preparing to go out for a market.Instead we spent the day at home with her very pale and resting while I gathered my forces for a change of mind set and went to do shopping and made her a lovely shepherd's pie.She is now much better and really yesterday's events were the culminationof a week of paleness and tiredness and a slight temperature.
It is to do with the urinary tract and,according to The New Medecine,caused by not putting limits..She is always so ready to serve that she sometimes forgets about herself and just goes on and on at a detriment to her own wellbeing.We have been together,one could almost say,on the basis of her continually giving, and me recieving..I have always been such a needy person..Not unlike,but a bit less extreme, than her former husband.
It would seem that two complementary opposites got attracted.Anyway..she becomes a bit more needy now,just as I am discovering and using EFT which is giving me the freedom from all my emotional stuff to have some space for others..and..of course..first of all for her.
I realise that EFT also,instead of being a contradiction to my beliefs,helps me to practice them..because,as I get released from all the emotional tangle,the dark forest which I have been lost in,so I have the freedom to practice more what I believe in..
For a while I was worried that I would end up rejecting sufism because it did not seem to sort out all those emotional and mental problems as I hoped it would, but Allah is always the First Cause so who can say wether, or what was going on, in terms of necessary suffering and purification and God's Plan? Maybe Bilquis's love and help were sent to me by Sheikh all those years ago and only because of that have I been able to get to something like EFT.
On a practical level I tend to believe that straightforward sufi Islam has not been prepared for the kind of mental and emotional sicknesses and sufferings which people in the west from broken homes and brought up without spiritual and moral guidance,are suffering from.I see EFT as a kind of emergency first-aid which I would administer as soon as possible to many of the people I know from similar backgrounds to myself ..especially English people who live around here,very disillusioned with the system and suffering from similar lacks to myself,i.e. lack of a stable homelife ..and often from one-parent families..Lack of being raised within a recognised belief system and therefore not having the benefit of wise moral guidance (let alone spiritual guidance).
Well,that's enough for now..I was going to look for some translation work on the net so as to help 'serve' my wife by providing more for us ..but I was a bit waylaid by a lot of stuff on the 'BBC Frontpage' site (which I peruse in the mornings to glean important news.) about Blogging ..and ended up coming here with my latest exciting discovery, which is about the meaning and practice of service.
It is extraordinary how one sees the workings of The Divine Plan all dropping into place,just when it is supposed to happen..and one is very aware that all this cogitating is just looking at secondary causes.It reminds me of those verses in the Koran where Allah says to the Prophet (saws) about the Creation,"You will see no crack in it,Look and look again,your sight will come back to you amazed."..or words to that effect.(I will correct this later if necessary,with the proper reference of sura and verse,when I find it.)
What about that as a motto then? To happily and willingly serve God and others....or God and other people ...God and man? ..no, I think "other people" is the right phrase as "God and others" might sound like God and other deities! and God and man sounds to grandiose. Also I say "happily and willingly" in order to emphasise the right spirit. I do know people that are serving God (or trying to) willingly but there is no happiness apparent in it and that makes it very heavy for others to find it attractive or want to join their group.Sheikh always emphasises that it is the love with which one worships Allah that interests him..that worship without love is like accumulating zeros.What about "To lovingly serve God and others."? A bit shorter and more pithy ... not so Victorian sounding perhaps ...
Anyway,you get the picture...
Really it started off from looking after Bilquis yesterday...She had one of her healing crises on the New Medecine path, which she is on for healing her cancer..lots of blood and a shock to us both as we were preparing to go out for a market.Instead we spent the day at home with her very pale and resting while I gathered my forces for a change of mind set and went to do shopping and made her a lovely shepherd's pie.She is now much better and really yesterday's events were the culminationof a week of paleness and tiredness and a slight temperature.
It is to do with the urinary tract and,according to The New Medecine,caused by not putting limits..She is always so ready to serve that she sometimes forgets about herself and just goes on and on at a detriment to her own wellbeing.We have been together,one could almost say,on the basis of her continually giving, and me recieving..I have always been such a needy person..Not unlike,but a bit less extreme, than her former husband.
It would seem that two complementary opposites got attracted.Anyway..she becomes a bit more needy now,just as I am discovering and using EFT which is giving me the freedom from all my emotional stuff to have some space for others..and..of course..first of all for her.
I realise that EFT also,instead of being a contradiction to my beliefs,helps me to practice them..because,as I get released from all the emotional tangle,the dark forest which I have been lost in,so I have the freedom to practice more what I believe in..
For a while I was worried that I would end up rejecting sufism because it did not seem to sort out all those emotional and mental problems as I hoped it would, but Allah is always the First Cause so who can say wether, or what was going on, in terms of necessary suffering and purification and God's Plan? Maybe Bilquis's love and help were sent to me by Sheikh all those years ago and only because of that have I been able to get to something like EFT.
On a practical level I tend to believe that straightforward sufi Islam has not been prepared for the kind of mental and emotional sicknesses and sufferings which people in the west from broken homes and brought up without spiritual and moral guidance,are suffering from.I see EFT as a kind of emergency first-aid which I would administer as soon as possible to many of the people I know from similar backgrounds to myself ..especially English people who live around here,very disillusioned with the system and suffering from similar lacks to myself,i.e. lack of a stable homelife ..and often from one-parent families..Lack of being raised within a recognised belief system and therefore not having the benefit of wise moral guidance (let alone spiritual guidance).
Well,that's enough for now..I was going to look for some translation work on the net so as to help 'serve' my wife by providing more for us ..but I was a bit waylaid by a lot of stuff on the 'BBC Frontpage' site (which I peruse in the mornings to glean important news.) about Blogging ..and ended up coming here with my latest exciting discovery, which is about the meaning and practice of service.
It is extraordinary how one sees the workings of The Divine Plan all dropping into place,just when it is supposed to happen..and one is very aware that all this cogitating is just looking at secondary causes.It reminds me of those verses in the Koran where Allah says to the Prophet (saws) about the Creation,"You will see no crack in it,Look and look again,your sight will come back to you amazed."..or words to that effect.(I will correct this later if necessary,with the proper reference of sura and verse,when I find it.)
posted by longgone1 at 4/03/2005 09:37:00 AM
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