Observation (Haqqiqa)

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Sufi Seeing: Observation (Haqqiqa) shaykh ibrahim ansari 

Seeing as a Sufi means getting enough of yourself out of the way so that you can actually observe Reality without your brain interfering. This means that first you have to get enough of your Nafs out of the way so that they're not interfering with what you are actually, really seeing. Some call this Being Present. This means that you are not lost in the regrets of the past, nor stuck in the swamp of some future fantasy. 

One way to start being present is to shift your awareness from the inside to the outside so you are not constantly thinking about yourself or your next project or last failure. 

We often talk about watching Allah’s Names in action, in other words, Allah is always manifesting through His creation. Now it's important that you understand this is not an intellectual exercise. This means first, learning how to stop and settle your mind. If you're already thinking about yourself, then you're not going to be able to see or hear or feel Allah. So the pre-requisite in observation is to first learn how to quiet the mind and how to get yourself enough out of the way so that you can actually see and experience the reality around you. 

Part of the reason we work on the Nafs, to get them under control, is so that we can be closer to Allah. Nafs are the insulators from connecting to the Friend. Nafs create distance from being connected to Allah. So the target of our energy is always Allah first. As soon as we forget that Allah is the purpose of all this, the self or nafs will worm itself into our thinking and ask the inevitable: the mental wrench or spanner in the works: “What about me?” 

And like any two-year old, the nafs will whine, berate, throw a tantrum and lie. And there are many spring-loaded traps that will release those nafs. For example, if you think you are spiritually advanced, this is especially when it will try to get away with introducing a distraction. Whether it’s ‘let me read your aura, your hand, heal you, channel your dead father or tell your future through numbers, the enneagram or Tarot cards’ it is still all about ME. Our Pir, Hadrat Abdul Qadir al Jilani, suggests we must leave all that behind. Why? because it is a distraction. And it inflates the ego. We must continue to be sincere, humble, and honest. It is a distraction from advancing on the path to set yourself up as a spiritual guide without having completed the entire journey several times. 

So, our primary objective is to keep our focus on Allah, because then the Nafs have less and less power over us. 

This process of learning how to see what’s really there is a somewhat long and involved process. The whole intention of alchemy was this process. And that means that we are dealing with distillation, condensation, sublimation, putrification and all of the other chemical processes that creates a change and transformation into something beautiful. But the source of this beauty, this essence, is time effort practice and reheat. This is called a practice because just like any sport or art or anything of quality, it takes constant work over and over again. That is why focusing on Allah keeps your int

Salaam Alaykum, murids, seekers, curious and interested listeners,

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