The path is long.  The obstacles are many.  As Westerners we are not used to admitting that we need help.

Yet, to know God.  To truly come to be sitting a the feet of the Divine Presence, you need help.  You need to find someone who knows the way, who knows how to overcome the obstacles that loom in the path. You need a Shaykh, someone knowledgeable in the way to God.

Growing up as a Christian, in the south, I had no idea about this concept.  Even today, Christianity really has no understanding of such an idea.

It has been said by the Sufi’s, that Christianity ends where the Sufi path starts.  This has been my experience.  Growning up as a Christian, a campus minister, I longs to have the deep peace described in the bible, the peace that passes all understanding.  Yet, no real road map existed to reach such a goal.

In Sufism, a road map exists.  It is real.  It starts with the outer law, the Shariah.  Knowing and following the outer laws of God is essential.  You cannot reach God if you do not follow the outer law.  But my Shaykh, Sidi Muhammad al-Jamal writes that, “the outer law in itself cannot carry you to Allah.”  You need to know the inner way, the way that can only be revealed through the hands of a real Shaykh, a real knower of God, who knows how to steer the boat through difficult waters.  You need someone who has reached the other shore.

In order to find the peace that passes all understanding you need a Shaykh who can guide you, teach you what you never would know on your own.

Shaykh Noorodin Durkee says (and I’m paraphrasing from one of his CD’s, Allah forgive me if I error), “that if you’ve been walking with a teacher and haven’t noticed a profound change in your life, then perhaps your teacher isn’t for you.”

By this  I believe he means that your teacher may not be a “knower of God.”

For years, I was looking for a way to know God, to have the real knowing.  After Allah brought me to Islam, and to the Sufi path, this longing has been satisfied.

Thanks be to God, often I feel the peace that passes all understanding. I am astonished.  I am unbelievably thankful.

All that can be said is: “Glory be to Allah, the Compassionate, The Merciful.”

(I ask Allah to forgive me if I have shared what should be kept personal.)

Listening to the peace.  Like a song in the heart.  A turning, turning of stillness.  A       place where the breast is opened wide and the song pours in like rain.

How to get there.  Ahhh, this is the work.

For me it is a struggle.  A struggle against the pulling of the world.  A struggle against the illusion that I’ll miss something, that something will be lost if I sit on my rug and disappear into the prayer.  Not occasionally, but everyday.  Sit on the rug, remember my Lord over and over and over.

It’s easy to go to sleep.  It’s easy to sit at the computer.

It’s difficult to sit on your rug.

Everything other than Allah that occupies us, takes us from the peace we so desperately want and need.

The results have been beautiful.  But it hasn’t been without effort.  I’ve had to cut back on my usual habits.  I’ve been working at reduce my attachment to television.  It takes a committment to stop what I’m doing each night to fit in the hour of prayer.

It has taken a few months, but now when I go up and spread out my prayer rug, drop to sit on the floor, it is like coming home.  It is a coming home to my Lord in a way that hasn’t always been real for me.  Something inside me has changed.

Now I am feeling more and more the deep love of the heart.

I enjoy the time on the carpet.  It is like returning to a familiar place, a comforting time.

Allah says in a hadith qudsi, “If you draw near to me by a fingers length, I draw closer to you by a hands length.  If you come to me walking, I come at you running.”

Now I know what that means.

My heart, oh my heart how beautiful you are when you are with you lord.

How soft you are when you sing His beautiful names.

How you are lit up by his light when there is no light only his light.

How strong you are by him and

How weak you are and lost without him.

Oh my heart,all this years I was asking for this beauty, this secret coming from you,

for this softness, for this music, for this magic.

Oh my heart, oh my heart, I know now  the secret.  I know now the magic,

the secret that there is someone inside  you… beautiful, great, strong, a lover.

There is Allaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

Oh my heart, I cry for his beauty to be inside of me.  I cry for his softness.  I cry for his kindness to be with me.

Oh my heart, I cry for wasting time, for being far from Him.

Because he is never far from me,

because he is living inside me.

El Hassania Sennour

Are we lost?  I pondered this the other day.  Listening to the chatter of the news, seeing all the horrible things that go on in the world- a person could wonder.

Not long ago a person that I know (who I thought believed in Allah (God)), dropped a rock out for the universe onto my psyche.  She said she didn’t know if she believed in God. She didn’t know if everything happened for a reason or was partly random.

She was in the midst of some difficult emotional struggles.  Issues that she didn’t have any real answer for to give her hope.

Now this person had grown up in a muslim household, had been exposed to the Holy Qur’an, so I wondered how could this be possible?   How could a person have heard this and not soaked up some of the “holy” word?

I remember thinking how incredibly sorry I felt  for this highly intelligent woman who had 2 advanced medical decrees, but had no certainty about the existence of God.  I felt that if she knew Allah’s love she would have been able to find solace.

I wished that she could know the beauty I felt when I prayed, the incredible sense of connection and overpowering peace that came with Remembering the Name of God.

Just last week, I spent an hour in Remembering God.  At the completion of this practice, my heart felt light.  Peace had come pouring in like a river, and I felt the overwhelming oneness of Allah’s presence.

Time stopped.  My breath stopped.  In that moment I knew, felt, experienced- God.  It wasn’t something imaginary.  It wasn’t something my mind had made up.  It was real.  It was as real as any feeling of love that you feel in your heart.

Remember the last time you felt overwhelming love for your child or spouse or even a puppy.  Or felt sadness.  Feelings like these are real. We can’t touch them with our hands, but our hearts are touched by them.

Our experience of the Divine for me is this experience. It is a tremendous peace that passes all understanding.  It is a deep opening and expansion of the heart.

Yet, she wasn’t open to what I had to say, so I didn’t share any of these ideas.  My mind, however, came back to the question about humanity.  Is humanity lost?

My answer is no.  Humanity as a whole isn’t lost.  But as a people who do not recognize that we are weak in front of Allah, who do not see the hand of Allah behind everything- then that individual person who doesn’t know this is drifting.  They are drifting on the sea without a compass.

They are like a man/woman who is drowning and cannot see the arm in front of him reaching to pull him out of the waster.  The hand that is reaching for them is the hand of Allah.

His voice calls.  But will you listen?

Habib Laman