Question:
Asalamu Alaykum,
Kindly, instruct me on how to perform Rabita Shareef.
Is it true, if I inshAllah attain annihilation in Mawlana Q.S., I’ll cease to be sinful and whispers of Shaytan shall have no effect on me?
JazakAllah Khayran.
Answer:
wa `alaykum salam,
Here are the instructions for rabita. To reach annilation you must attain levels, ultimately negating yourself by giving up your irada, will. Read here about annihilation in the Divine Presence. Shaytanic traps from the ego keep us away from attaining connection to our real being which is on Haqq. Mawlana Shaykh Nazim has explained the reality of the darkness of our physical (shadow being) and how important rabita is in the suhbat: Rabita Makes Us Like Shining Stars In a Dark Sky
Therefore, it is an order to keep the suhbat, association; you must keep in line with them, mubashir, directly, that runs to your real being. Don’t think this physical body is a real being; this is only a shadow being. The world cannot carry our real being. Therefore, Archangel Gabriel (a) sometimes appeared in a man’s form, and we are saying, “Jibril just came. He left his station and is coming.” When he is coming here to Prophet (s), is his station empty? Is he coming himself, with his real being? Haqq. It is his representative, a shadow being in the form of man, but his real being is never going here and there in the Divine Presence. Never!
Clean yourself and Come to Me!
We are now on this planet and our lives is imitated, imitated beings. Our reality is according to our creation: first level, second level, third level, fourth level, fifth level, sixth level, seventh level through seven heavenly stations and levels. Mankind is going to be under that tajalli, manifestation. Therefore, everyone’s looking through their spirituality just appearing in this space with different colors. This manifestation that we are looking and seeing, such a simple thing, it is going to be seen through darkness. But really it is appearing on heavenly levels, appearing through lightenings and not through darkness. Their sky is not black. No black. Your skies are never going to be the same as his skies or that one’s skies. Different colors to give our spirituality something about heavenly stations. Through the seven stations which station, which level will be for you, through that station an appearance will just come.
O People! What is here? A stable of animals, and we are living around the dirt of animals. This whole world is full of dirtiness; everyone on it is making dirty, putting dirt on this planet. What are you going to understand? You are running through animal dirt in this world. Everyone’s work is to put dirt on it. How we are going to be happy? You are just surrounded everywhere, making your dirtiness and putting it there? Why are you going to love dunya? You must clean your clothes, you must try to change. Dress in a clean dress and for everyone clean dressing is just prepared in heavens. In heavens no dirtiness, dirtiness only on this planet.
وَثِيَابَكَ فَطَهِّرْ
– wa thiyaabaka fathahhir – “And your garments do purify.” (74:4)
Try to clean your real being from dirtiness. Small child ’til growing and keeping dirtiness to put in special place, mums covering their bodies and keeping that dirtiness with that baby ’til taking it and cleaning and using another.
Therefore, holy order, O people, wa thiyaabaka fathahhir. We are dressing you in a dress of humanity. Clean it, then you will see and you will reach levels that no dirtiness, no ugliness, no darkness, no ignorance, no trouble, and no sufferings. Everything (hardship is) because your body is running in dirtiness, but when we are changing and cleaning, they are putting our real being according to our level, putting there nazheef, clean ones. Therefore, prophets coming to teach people how they should be clean and their messengerhood only for teaching the ways of cleanliness for Mankind. But small ones, when their mums running after them, they are escaping and they are not happy to their clothes changed, but mums catching them and cleaning them and dressing clean, taking inside. Heavens and our real being are looking after ourselves. When we are clean we are going to reach our real stations on our levels: may be first level, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth or seventh level. According to our being we are going to be taken up.
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Humbleness is what brings you to the Presence of the True One, al-Haqq, where you will see nothing but Allah’s remembrance. When you remember Him, He will open for you the reality that there is nothing worthy of worship besides Him. Therefore, you have to submit with humility in your prayer; you have to reflect, to meditate, to see with real vision and to observe. As Sayyīdinā Mu`adh ibn Jabal (ra) said while advising his son:
“My son, when you pray, pray the prayer of a dying man who does not think he will pray again. Know my son that the believer dies between two rewards, one he sent ahead and the other he left behind.”
This is why, O reader of these lines, you need to have piety in secret and in the open. You must follow the sunnah in word and deed. You must turn away from creation in your going and your coming. You have to be pleased with your Lord both when you possess little and when you possess much, and you have to turn to Allāh during times of ease and when hardship comes.
Know that the best of deeds is leaving hidden disobedience, because if a person leaves hidden disobedience it will be easier for him to leave open disobedience. When a person’s hidden, inner self is better than his outer self, that is a favor. When the hidden and outer self are equal, that is justice. When the hidden is worse than the outer, that is injustice and oppression. Beware of oppression, because it takes you far away from humbleness.
[Excerpts from book, Fifty Days: the Divine Disclosures During a Holy Sufi Seclusion by Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani].
Staff
