* Sufis--which is what practioners of Sufism are called--see themselves to be on a spiritual journey toward God.* This journey is referred to as the path (tariqah). While all Muslims believe that they are on the pathway to God and will 'become close to God in paradise', after death and the "Final Judgment", Sufis believe as well that it is possible to become close to God and to experience this closeness--while one is alive
* Difficulties in following the path or obstacles to getting closer to God derive primarily from one's self or ego (nafs).
* Some of the gross effects of the dominance of the nafs are that one may become overwhelmed by the need to gratify desires such as anger, lust, and the many addictions that afflict us.
* Other gross effects are that one may become dominated by states of consciousness such as anxiety, boredom, regret, depression, and self-pity-- so that one feels like a powerless victim or prisoner tortured within one's own mind.
* The Sufi regards every thought, feeling, and perception that he or she has (including his or her sense of self) as a manifestation of God or as a particular view of God's face.
* Hence, one of the emphases of Sufism is upon the struggle to overcome the dominance that one's nafs has over one.
* The Struggle With One's Nafs
* Shari'ah (Islamic law) set the outer limits that the Sufi must keep within.
* Sufi struggle with one's nafs puts further curbs on the Sufi's behavior.
* Two dimensions: negation (nafy) and affirmation (ithbat), corresponding to the two components of the first shahadah (testification of faith), La ilaha (There is no deity) and illa Allah (except for God).
* The negation:
* To control oneself from acting out one's anger or gratifying addictions, to negate the thought that one will find fulfillment through these means, to negate the sense that one cannot escape one's depression, and to give up imagining that God is absent.
* Affirmation:
* Can be said to take the form of embracing and engaging the presence of God in whatever form it may appear within one's consciousness
* This unconditional embrace of the presence of God is simply called taslim in Muslim languages.
* The struggle with one's own nafs has been called the greater struggle or greater "holy war" (al-jihad al-akbar)
* The practice of "engaged surrender" in the "greater" struggle with one's own nafs diminishes certain obstacles in the consciousness of the Sufi, obstacles that--if not struggled against--will hinder the Sufi's capacity to engage in the "lesser" struggle in their life in the world.
* Awakening to the Awareness of the Unmanifest World
* At any moment in the course of following the Sufi path, Sufis may have an experience in which they become drawn into the presence of God, called jadhbah (attraction) or wajd (ecstasy) (lit. finding), "awakening to the 'unmanifest or unseen world'(al-ghayb)." The unveiling (kashf ) or knowledge of the Unseen that the "friends of God" or "saints" (awliya' ) attain.
* Remembering God
* The Qur'an instructs Muslims to remember God, whose reality encompasses and pervades both the unmanifest and manifest worlds (al-ghayb wa-al-shahadah).
* Sufi’s practice of silent and vocal dhikr (remembrance).
* An inherent problem in dhikr, however, is the difficulty in remembering God when one has little or no awareness of God.In short, the source of one's present awareness--whatever that awareness may be--is encompassed by the name Allah
* Muslims begin with a name of God, such as "Allah," which is often called the "comprehensive" name (al-ism al-jami'). It is comprehensive in the sense that it comprises all of the infinite names of God, which refer to the source of the awareness of all of reality
* Thus, remembering God can begin quite simply and ordinarily with the awareness of two things: one's present awareness and the name Allah--even when one has no awareness of the reality to which the name Allah refers.
* Sufism, Remembrance (dhikr), and Love
* The Sufi follows the path toward God primarily by means of love.
* For the Sufi who is enraptured with the love of God (who is the source of all existence, or, as some might say, who is all of existence), all of existence is extraordinarily beautiful.
* Some Sufis such as Rumi become utterly consumed by love's fire, for most who wish to love God, their love is merely a wavering flame, ever in danger of diminishing. Hence, by remembering God's forgotten reality and beauty, Sufis rekindle the flame of their love for God.
* In Sufism, it is remembrance that makes the heart grow fonder. In a nutshell, this is the relationship between dhikr and love.
* All agree on its essential character as being the inner, esoteric, mystical, or purely spiritual dimension of the religion of Islam.
* "Sufism, the religious philosophy of Islam, is described in the oldest extant definition as `the apprehension of divine realities'," and although referring to it as "Islamic mysticism," it still maintains the popular idea that Sufism is largely the product of diverse philosophical and spiritual influences, including Christian, Neoplatonic, and others, the mystical movement of an uncompromising Monotheism.
* "Sufism is the spiritual Path (tariqah) of Islam and has been identified with it for well over a thousand years...It has been called `Islamic mysticism' by Western scholars because of its resemblance to Christian and other forms of mysticism elsewhere. Unlike Christian mysticism, however, Sufism is a continuous historical and even institutionalized phenomenon in the Muslim world that has had millions of adherents down to the present day. Indeed, if we look over the Muslim world, there is hardly a region that does not have Sufi orders still functioning there".
* Sufism has influenced the spiritual life of the religion to an extraordinary degree; there is no important domain in the civilization of Islam that has remained unaffected by it".
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