The Five Aspects of Prayer and the Five Elements by Pir Zia Inayat-Khan

While surfing the Sufi web space I encountered this edited transcript from a talk given by Pir Zia in Suresnes (Paris), France on January 28, 2005. The Purification Breath are a basic Sufi teaching and it a blessing to see it enriched by this added dimension, relating the practice to the Five Aspects of Prayer.


Five aspects to prayer are described by the Sufi teacher Hazrat Inayat Khan. I have found a correspondence between these and the Five Elements to which we attune through the Purification Breaths.

The best time for the breath practice is first thing in the morning, outside or in front of an open window. Practise it standing, or if necessary sitting with your back straight. Once you are familiar with the breaths, it is better to keep the eyes open, but at first you can close your eyes.

Earth purification breath

The first element is Earth, and the first aspect of prayer is gratitude.

The earth breath is inhaling and exhaling through the nose. To attune to one’s relationship with the earth one needs to awaken to one’s subtle energetic body. In the same way that the physical body is continuously nourished by digesting and metabolizing the physical substance of the planet, on a subtle level our magnetic field is nourished by the magnetism of the planet.

It is useful to first locate the rhythm of your heart. Then see if you can find the echo of the heartbeat in your hands, feet and head. Scientists used to speak of the heart as the pump of the circulatory system, but now it is understood that the heart itself is pumped by the collective action of the entire circulatory system. So you can’t think of your heart as being limited to your chest. In fact, if you feel the pulsation of circulation in your hands, fingertips, feet and head, you may feel that there is no definite boundary. When you eyes are closed, your hands don’t feel as if they are made up of five fingers, but rather you feel the vibration that pulses through the hands, expanding in all directions and forming a field that emanates into space.

Once you have attuned to your electromagnetic field, as you inhale you can become conscious of how your life field expands with the influx of energy from the earth through the soles of your feet, through the palms of your hands and through the base of your spine. Then as you exhale, feel yourself collapsing into the gravitational field of the earth, sinking down to be composted and recycled in the body of the earth. So you have to overcome the idea that you are separate from the earth. Remember that your cells are always dividing, new cells being born and old cells dying — in the space of five years, one’s entire body is recycled. So one thinks of oneself as a cell in the body of the earth, in which the earth has articulated itself in order to experience itself.

Relax and open your eyes.

Gratitude

Related to the element earth is a specific quality of prayer, which is thanksgiving. Every day is an opportunity to count one’s blessings, instead of the opposite which is to enumerate our troubles — and of course in doing so we attract more trouble to ourselves. For example, if we give a gift to someone, and that person appears indifferent and shows no gratitude, we are less likely to give a gift to that person again. It’s the same way with the universe.

Gratitude is not only for the sake of obliging the one who has given us something; it is for our own sake, because when one is inattentive to the blessings of life, even that which one has been given is as if it were absent. But for the one who is grateful, even when that for which one is grateful is no longer with you, it remains present because of your gratitude. Gratitude immortalizes one’s experience because in gratitude one lives life vividly. That for which you are grateful engages your full attention and comes alive in you.

So we can always remind ourselves to count our blessings, and you will find that it really does affect your attitude in life. When you realize how much has been given to you, you simply feel happy. and if you are happy, then other people are less likely to feel threatened by you, and so consequently they are more likely to be nice to you.

Take a minute now. Invoke one object of your experience: a person, animal, plant, object, or an aspect of nature like the blueness of the sky. As the Sufis say, taste it, savour it, enjoy it in your mind, feel what it means to live in a world in which you have the privilege of experiencing that thing.

Water purification breath

Let us return to our breath, inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth. One becomes attuned to the more fluid dimension of one’s subtle being. The body from the outside looks solid, but we know that we are more than 75 percent water. A Sufi poet once said, ‘That which I took for stillness was the essence of movement’. He meant that when I walk and move around, I feel that I am solid, but when I sit in meditation, I feel the motion within, in the same way that water is buried deep under the earth. The pulsation of the water within carries the memory of the state of the womb – that state of primal unity in which we were bathed in the water of compassion; and the pulsation of the mother’s heartbeat that filled the womb carried a deeper memory, the memory of the primeval ocean from which our life emerged. The ebb and flow of the waves of the primeval ocean carries the memory of the ocean of light.

So through the breath we become conscious once again of this ancient lineage of pulsation that continues to flow through us. Feel yourself washed within as the water flows through every particle of your body and washes away everything that is superfluous, bringing movement where there was no movement, washing away the blockages and obstructions that allow emotion to flow freely, because the true nature of emotion is motion. As Hazrat Inayat Khan says, the water that purifies the heart is the continual running of the love stream.

Relax again.

Repentance

We come to the aspect of prayer that relates to water, and that is repentance, which is most beautifully expressed in tears of repentance. There is the story of a Sufi who was in the habit of praying five times a day. Once, going to sleep late, he was going to miss his morning prayer, when a supernatural creature came and woke him up. You would think that must have been an angel, but it was the devil. You can imagine how surprised he was that the devil should wake him up so that he could say his prayers! The devil explained, ‘I saw that you were going to miss your prayer, and I knew that when you woke up you would be so disappointed in yourself that you would cry, and a tear of repentance of such grace and beauty would fall from your eye that it would wash away all the sins of the world’.

Tears are the perfume of repentance. Repentance is the act of accepting responsibility for one’s mistakes, one’s shortcomings, one’s limitation. One needs to make the vow not to repeat the mistake, and enquire into oneself to understand the condition that gave rise to that mistake so that one learns from it, and then leave the matter to the divine mercy.

Our natural tendency is for the ego, the small self, to perpetuate itself by promoting its agenda and suppressing other people. Denied by the ego, the impression of the mistake, of the harmful action, is repressed and becomes unconscious, but it lingers within oneself as a source of guilt. The mistake belongs to the ego, but there is another part of oneself that never made the mistake, that is one’s soul. Since the ego denies the mistake and therefore the impression of it, the guilt becomes a covering over the soul, covering that which is purity itself. For the soul to reclaim its light, the ego has to accept its responsibility, to bring the error back into consciousness and attempt to grow and not repeat the mistake. Then one finds that the soul becomes liberated because all of that residue of guilt and sin is cleared, and the soul can shine through with such confidence that every action becomes a holy work.

At first it seems like an unpleasant thing to do, to return to bad memories, but one finds that there is much grace that comes when one finally does face up to the Shadow, accept responsibility and turn to the source of forgiveness. There was a Sufi named Samad who said, ‘Although I regret my error, I feel so privileged that my limitation allowed me to experience the incredible beauty of Your forgiveness’. In fact, the Sufis say that the most essential qualities of the divine nature are mercy and compassion. So if there were no error, mistakes, sin, then that which is most essential to reality would have no scope to express itself.

Could we again take a moment in silence. This time, look to see if there is something lingering in the depths of your mind that you don’t feel quite right about, but you haven’t allowed yourself to look at closely. Try to move beyond the rationales, the excuses that you give yourself, and really listen to the voice of your conscience which can see beyond that.

Just imagine what it would be like to be a child who has made a mistake, admits it and turns to the loving embrace of a parent.

Fire purification breath

The breath of fire is inhaling through the mouth and exhaling through the nose. The temperature of our body is an indication that we are in a process of perpetual combustion. Combustion means that matter is quickened; particles escape their frozen conditions and begin to move rapidly, and as a consequence great amounts of energy are released. It is the same as in history when great empires or institutions have fallen and suddenly there are new opportunities and a great surge of creativity and freedom. Physiologically the rate of one’s metabolism can be intensified by consciously cultivating heat. What begins as heat in the lower centres rises and is transmuted into light in the higher centres. As one does this one can imagine what it means to have a countenance, a face, like the sun.

Now return to your natural breath.

Supplication

The direction of earth is spreading (gratitude); the direction of water is descending (the mercy and grace that descends with repentance); the direction of fire is rising: supplication, which means asking for one’s need. Sometimes we wonder whether we ought to ask for our need. I recently visited a church where they told the congregation they must never ask anything from God. That is a genuine teaching, but it belongs to a very high level of attainment, to the station of one who has no expectations; but as long as you are hopeful of something, then you have something to ask for. You might say, why should I impose upon God to help me with what seems like a trifling matter? And moreover it might be said that if God is omniscient and omnipotent, it means that God already knows what I want and if He/She hasn’t fulfilled it there must be a reason that I don’t know.

The problem with that argument is that it is based on duality: God outside there and me over here. But what if one understood one’s relationship with God as the Sufis do, as two ends of a line. On one end is a state of limitation, but nonetheless a state of actualization, and the other side is an unlimited and yet unactualized state. So the actualization of the unlimited can only be through the limited being. In fact it is in prayer that the two poles come together, because in articulating your need you bring your desire into concrete reality, through your thought and emotion.

Something begins as a universal impulse of ishq, of longing, but still very vague and unformed. Then when it becomes more clear it becomes a desire. Then when the desire becomes more clear, it becomes a wish. And when the wish becomes more clear it becomes a will, and it’s through will that everything is accomplished in this world.

So supplication is the process of clarifying one’s desire, letting one’s desire resonate and pulsate within oneself and become more and more strong and focused until it attracts its own fulfilment. Hazrat Inayat Khan said something very challenging: if your desire was not fulfilled it means that you did not know how to desire. It’s also true that sometimes we pray ardently for something and something else happens. This means that the universe is not mechanical, it’s not a vending machine; if it were, there would be no place for evolution. Evolution comes in dialogue: you put forward your wish, your will, with all sincerity and clarity, and that will be heard. The answer may not be the answer you expect, but nonetheless it incorporates the message that you sent in your prayer. And the answer in turn stimulates a new need, a new desire; it is in this spirit that our desires themselves evolve and transform.

God is limitless, and we are creatures of limitation. That is precisely the role that we have to play: we can offer forth our limitation, that is our best gift. We can offer forth our sincerest need in faith, in trust that the answer that is intended will come.

Let us take another moment of silence now. Remember what Hazrat Inayat Khan says, that the one whose desire is not fulfilled did not know how to desire. He goes on to say, ‘Failure is due to indistinctness of motive.’ In fact, our greatest problem in life is being at cross purposes with ourselves.

So just imagine that a supernatural being appears, a genie of the lamp, and says, ‘You can have whatever you want now’. What is it?

Air purification breath

Inhale and exhale through the mouth. Recall that if you were to look at your body through an electron microscope you would have a very different profile than the one that you ordinarily see. Your body would look like the starry sky at night: points of light in the midst of vast empty space. The points of light are all in motion, and so one’s sense of solidity is belied by a profounder vision of oneself which is not a form so much as a choreography. When one becomes frustrated in the constraint of the more concretized mode of ones being, one can revert to this dimension and experience the sense of freedom and liberation that comes with it. Float above everything, and nothing can weigh you down. One identifies with the primordial state of the cosmos which was a swirling cloud of gas, rich with infinite possibilities.

Return to your natural breath.

Invocation

The next aspect of prayer is invocation. There is a saying of Ali, a great saint, who said, ‘Pray to God as if you see God’. What does it mean, to ‘see’ God? It sounds paradoxical. Of course we keep speaking about God and it seems to take for granted that we all believe in God. Do you believe in God? If I ask you whether you believe in God, you’ll probably say, ‘That’s just a word. Define what you mean, and then I’ll tell you whether I believe in God or not.’ But perhaps then I would change the question and instead of giving you a definition I would ask you to supply the definition of the God that you believe in. If we did that we might find that we have as many definitions as there are people. The Sufis say, there are as many paths to God as there are breaths. Every path is an ideal, and everyone has an ideal.

Sometimes someone will say, ‘I can’t relate to prayer because I don’t believe in God and I feel it would be hypocritical to pray to God whom I don’t believe in’. When you ask why it is hypocritical, they answer, ‘It is contrary to my sense of the truth, and truth is something absolute that can never be compromised; it’s an essential principle; it’s of the essence.’ Then suddenly a light comes on, and you see: it’s something prior to all other phenomena; it’s of the nature of essence, and it’s an absolute principle that cannot be compromised. You have a God ideal: it’s Truth.

Everyone has an ideal; one could not live in this world without an ideal – one would be broken. When Hazrat Ali speaks of praying to God as if you see God, it is to bring that ideal from the abstract realm of conjecture into one’s lived reality. So if one’s God ideal is the Truth, it means living according to the Truth, reminding oneself on all occasions of the imperatives of the Truth, seeking the manifestation of Truth in all things. And you may find that that which defines the ideal for a person is precisely what that person needs to develop himself or herself, and it changes at different times in one’s life.

Murshid says, ‘God is what is needed to complete oneself’, so each of us is a work in progress and there are qualities that belong to our essence but are not yet adequately expressed in our life and are struggling to be born. They are brought to our attention in the form of our ideal, and in life we are attracted to people who manifest that ideal in a way that we are not yet able to manifest. That person then becomes a mirror in which our true self sees itself, because all of the perfection that we witness in the world is only the reflection of that which exists within ourselves: you cannot recognize it unless it’s already there in you.

Invocation means, to live with that quality of being just as you would live with another person, to experience it as having such validity, such vividness in your life, that it is a relationship perhaps more important than any other relationship.

Let us take another moment in silence. Open your awareness to perfection. And receive the form, whatever form it is, in which that perfection manifests itself to you.

Ether purification breath

Now we return to the breaths, and we’ll review five breaths of each element beginning with Earth…Water...Fire…Air…

Let your breath return to its natural state, deepened and refined through the purification of those four elements, feeling them balanced in your constitution. In this balanced state intuit the presence of the most fifth and most subtle element, ether.

Communion

Open yourself to the fifth aspect of prayer, which is ‘at-onement’ or communion. A great dervish once said, when you look for God, God is in the look in your eyes. And so suddenly one realizes that it is God that prays to God. And the person that you took to be yourself is just a mirror in which the divine light reflects back on itself.

As we come to the end of this meditation, feel the soles of your feet on the ground, and open your eyes.

The Art of Blessing

This was sent to me by a Sufi brother and I thought it would an appropriate video to share right after writing about generosity. I was raised Catholic and when I was younger I had the misconception that only a religious person could bless another. I found it strange and out of place when I first saw a lay person give a blessing – without calling on god, but from herself - from her heart. I though it was very bold and that maybe she did not have the right to give blessings.

Many years later, I feel very differently about this. A blessing comes from the heart. It is a gift to both the giver and the receiver. It is an instrument that can bring love, peace and joy into the world. So from my heart to yours – I bless you!

al-Karim

As some of you may know Karim is my Sufi name. A Sufi name often represents a divine quality and is usually given to a dervish so that he/she is reminded to develop, explore, understand and manifest the fullness of this particular quality. Karim is often equated with generosity, but words can be very limiting. In this light I would like to share some of the definitions of this beautiful name, followed by one of Hazrat Inayat Khan talks on generosity.


al-Karîm - The Most Generous, The Most Bountiful, The Most Esteemed, The Beneficent

The One who is the most generous, both physically and spiritually.

The One who is continually giving forth the grandest and most precious bounty.

The One whose kind, noble and generous essence is most esteemed, valued and honored.

The One who endlessly gives all manner of precious gifts, including support and refuge.

The One who is eternally giving, even unto those who may not seem (to us) to be deserving.

From the root k-r-m which has the following classical Arabic connotations:

to be noble, grand, high minded
to be generous, giving, beneficent
to be highly esteemed, honored, prized, valued
to be excellent, precious, valuable, rare
to be productive, fruitful


The spirit of generosity in nature builds a path to God, for generosity is outgoing, is spontaneity; its nature is to make its way toward a wide horizon. Generosity, therefore, may be called charity of heart. It is not necessary that the spirit of generosity be shown always by the spending of money; in every little thing one can show it. Generosity is an attitude a person shows in every little action that he does for people that he comes in contact with in his everyday life. One can show generosity by a smile, by a kind glance, by a warm handshake; by patting the younger soul in the shoulder as a mark of encouragement, of showing appreciation, of expressing affection. Generosity one can show in accommodating one's fellow-man, in welcoming him, in bidding farewell to one's friend. In thought, work, and deed, in every manner and form one can show that generous spirit which is the sign of the godly.

The Bible speaks of generosity by the word 'charity', but if I were to give an interpretation of the word 'generosity' I would call it nobility. No rank, position, or power can prove one noble; truly noble is he who is generous of heart. What is generosity? It is nobility, it is expansion of heart. As the heart expands, so the horizon becomes wide, and one finds greater and greater scope in which to build the kingdom of God.

Depression, despair, and all manner of sorrow and sadness come from lack of generosity. Where does jealousy come from? Where does envy, aching of the heart come from? It all comes from lack of generosity. A man may not have one single coin to his name, and yet he can be generous, he can be noble, if only he has a large heart of friendly feeling. Life in the world offers every opportunity to a man, whatever be his position in life, to show if he has any spirit of generosity.

The changeableness and falsehood of human nature, besides lack of consideration and thoughtlessness for those who he meets through life, and furthermore the selfishness and grabbing and grafting spirit that disturbs and troubles his soul, all these create a situation which is itself a test and trial through which every soul has to pass in the midst of worldly life. And when through this test and trial a man holds fast to his principle of charity, and marches along toward his destination, not allowing the influences that come from the four corners of the world to keep him back from his journey to the goal, in the end he becomes the king of life, even if when he reaches his destination there is not left one single earthly coin to his name.

It is not earthly wealth that make man rich. Riches come by discovering that gold-mine which is hidden in the human heart, out of which comes the spirit of generosity. Someone asked the Prophet, whose virtue was the greatest, that of the pious soul who prays continually, or that of the traveler who travels to make the holy pilgrimage, or of the one who fasts for nights and days, or of the one who learns the Scripture by heart. 'None of them', said the Prophet, 'is so great as the soul who shows through life charity of heart.'

Become the Sky by Rumi

I found this while browsing youtube one day. Rumi is a master at putting life into perspective. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. Rumi's words, the music, and the imagery has the effect of making one more lucid and centering the heart on the Beloved.

Relax in the Grasping

It is by the power of breath that the animals search for their food, through breath they perceive what they must eat, what they must not eat, through breath the carnivorous animals search for their prey. It is through breath that certain animals receive warning of dangers and again it is through the breath that some animals, when ill, find their remedy. If the lower creation can do so much by the power of breath, how much more can man do, if he only knows the right way of the development of breath! It is through the breath that birds receive warnings of the changes of the weather, and accordingly they migrate in flocks from one place to another. Through the breath the herds of deer perceive approaching storms or changes of weather or the approach of a lion or a tiger. Man, who is more capable of perceiving by breath still deeper things, warnings and calls from the earth and from heaven, which places are meant for him to dwell in or to settle in, of discriminating between friend and foe and discerning their pleasure and displeasure, owing to his interest in the superficial things of life cannot fully benefit by the power of breath.

Yogis and Sufis, therefore, and all students of the inner cult, believe that breath is the means of receiving all intuitive knowledge from every direction of life. Absorbed in a thousand things of daily life man gives very little thought to breath. Therefore he keeps his heart closed to all the revelation that can be received by the help of breath. Man as a rule is never conscious of his breath, of its rhythm, of its development, except at the time when he is so tired that he is breathless, or when he is so excited that he feels choked up, or when something keeps the breath from flowing. For a Sufi it is desirable to be conscious of every breath. In the schools of the Sufis in the East the members of a certain association take up as their duty to remind the whole assembly of the same. So one after another, in turn, takes it up as a duty. They call aloud 'Hosh bar dam,' meaning 'Keep conscious of the breath,' 'Nazar bar qadam'; this sentence is added when the Sufis are walking, and means, ''Look down and see whose feet are these that are walking.'

- Hazrat Inayat Khan


Today, I would like to share a Buddhist practice that I have used for more than 10 years. It is one of the few that has influenced me, since most of my personal experience is grounded in Sufism and Christian mysticism. In 1997, Sogyal Rinpoche (a Tibetan Buddhist teacher) and Patrick Gaffney, gave a talk in Kirchheim, Germany that was focused on this Buddhist technique. The session was introduced as follows:

Whether we experience happiness or unhappiness depends entirely upon the habits of our mind. If we continually struggle with the negative aspect of situations, we attract unhappiness and happiness will never get a chance. If we put the blame on external obstacles and circumstances alone, then pain, suffering, negative karma, and aggression will spread without end.

Instead, it is essential to realize that whether we experience events and circumstances in our life as pleasant or unpleasant depends entirely upon how our mind perceives them. By developing the habit of generating only appreciation for difficulties when they arise and making every effort to train ourselves in seeing them as something valuable, it is possible to bring peace and happiness to our mind. The teachings say that to become invincible in the face of obstacles, enemies, illness or harmful forces does not mean that we can drive them all away and they never occur again, but that they are not able to function as obstacles to our pursuit of happiness and enlightenment. This is the whole point of the practice: to relax and stop grasping, and to change our mind.

Let me call attention to part of the last sentence – to relax and stop grasping. This is the key. Changing the mind, which can be quite a task, is easier if we are able to do this. Like many teachings in mysticism, this is so simple, but at the onset not that easy to implement due to conditioning and our lack of vision and guidance. Essential to this practice is the breath and almost every path has teachings on the breath. But what does it really mean to breathe? How can one learn to breathe fully?

The breath is our connection with the more subtle aspect of reality. It is the link to our inner being. In the Bible it is said that it was the Divine Breath that brought Adam to life and many spiritual traditions enumerate that it is with the last breath that spirit departs from the body. Every impulse of one’s will, one’s heart is first made manifest on the breath. Many of the great wisdom traditions teach initiates how to purity their breath. For many neophytes, a basic teaching is learning awareness of one’s breath and bringing thoughts back to the breath when they stray.

Purifying the breath, giving it depth and dimension, giving it power and giving it direction takes a great deal of mastery. This is a basic science that many inner schools teach, be it directly or indirectly. At the extremes, the human condition can often be compared to a tiny vessel violently trashing on a stormy ocean, or one that is floating on a calm sea basking in the soft light of dawn. Indeed, it takes great skill to navigate through the storms of life. But the blessing trully comes when one realizes that staying afloat is in your hands and that you don’t only have control of the vessel but that you also have control of the sea. Unfortunately, not many are aware of the breath, much less the power behind it.

Relax and stop grasping – Recognize that you are responsible for your condition.

This practice is useless if one does not realize that in them is the power to influence and manage the quality of every inhale and exhale. The magic of the mystic path is about learning to take responsibility and that starts with the self. In the Koran, it is said he who knows himself knows his lord. Become conscious therefore of the fact that with every single breath we play an important role in defining who we are. With each breath we are recreated. One’s spiritual attainment can be measured by the quality of the breath.

Relax and stop grasping – Focus your thoughts, focus your energy.

Practice mindfulness of breath. Bring your thoughts back to the breath. Don’t get caught in the whirlwinds of your mind. Realize that it is by your own inner power that turmoil and negativity can exist within you. You have the ability to fan the flames and you also have the ability to direct your light elsewhere. Bringing your thoughts back to the breath can set you free from the conditioning of your mind. Center your very being on breathing. If thoughts bubble up, don’t fight them. Resisting a thought only give it power, just let each thought gently fade while you bring your attention back to the breath.

Relax and stop grasping – Breathe peace into your being.

Relax, let go, stop grasping. Listen to your body. Transport your awareness to those points where you feel tension, be it in the solar plexus, the heart or the head. Where are you grasping? What are you holding on to? Bring your attention to this point and breathe. Slowly let go and feel calm and relaxation manifest in that part of your being as you let go of any anxiety you might be feeling. Recognize that it is only you who has control of this process. It is your negative thoughts and emotions converging on these points that cause the stress and pain you might be feeling.

Relax and stop grasping – Change your mind.

Redirect the current of your thoughts. Let go of judgment and dissolve being attached to certain outcomes. Sometimes it is necessary to stop trying to understand and allow a space for mystery to unfold. Imagine your worries being released. A situation becomes clearer and can be easier to deal with when one is in a more positive state. Don’t see your condition as insurmountable and appreciate that everything is passing.

Relax and stop grasping – Give the heart space to breathe.

Allow your feelings to surface in the openness you have just created. If your heart feels lonely, hurt or sad, do not fight it but experience your feelings from this calm, open space. Give your heart the opportunity to expand. Give it the ability to accommodate your experiences. The heart is an instrument of joy. It is designed to love and love starts with the self.

This is a practice one grows with and grows into. With time one derives more and more benefit from it. Like many spiritual practices, the goal is that ones very being becomes the practice.

A prayer by Rabe‘a al-'Adawiya

Rabe’a bint Esma’il al-‘Adawiya was born in humble circumstances and sold into slavery as a child. Later, she settled in Basra where she attained great fame as a saint and a preacher and was highly esteemed by many of her pious contemporaries. Rabia is regarded as one of the most well known female Sufi saints. A lifelong celibate, she is attributed with being an embodiment of the teaching of Islamic mysticism and the theme of Divine love.

In the prayer below Rabe'a relates a state of yearning that is at the core of the Sufi path, the unswerving path of union with the Beloved.

O God, whatsoever Thou hast apportioned to me of worldly things, do Thou give that to Thy enemies; and whatsoever, Thou hast apportioned to me in the world to come, give that to Thy friends; for Thou sufficest me.

O God, if I worship Thee for fear of Hell, burn me in Hell and if I worship Thee in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise; but if I worship Thee for Thy own sake, grudge me not Thy everlasting beauty.

O God, my whole occupation and all my desire in this world of all worldly things, is to remember Thee, and in the world to come, of all things of the world to come, is to meet Thee.

This is on my side, as I have stated; now do Thou whatsoever Thou wilt.