There’s an old Sufi expression that dates back to at least the fourteen century that Sufism used to be a state of being without a name. Now it’s a philosophy without a state of being. The point being that there is a difference between philosophy and being. There is a difference between actually encountering what it is you are talking about as opposed to touching it with your intellect and trying to describe it intellectually. When we speak of Muslims we speak of believers and then we also speak of mu’mins, the one’s who have internalized the teachings, and it actually comes into their being.
Animals can be trained. Animals can be made to conform to certain types of actions, but that doesn’t mean that they have integrated those actions, the meanings behind those actions into their being. We all know the term nafs, the lower self, the part of us that is constantly pushing us to act out in an animal way, the part of us that is susceptible to the whispers of the whisperer, who is constantly enticing us with the baubles and the glitters of the world to run after them and to chase them and to acquire them and to horde them and to do whatever is necessary to get them for us as if they somehow will for us do some special thing.
The Prophet was once asked about his nafs. And he was asked, “Doesn’t he have any?” And his response was, “I have them also, but mine have become Muslims.” Now, I’ve heard that and you may have heard that, but recently it came to me that he didn’t say that they were mu’mins. He said his nafs had become Muslims, which means they are trained animals, so they don’t disrupt him any more. They don’t become involved wherein they cause a problem, yet they have not come to that other step of integrating these qualities and changing their nature, because the nafs aren’t going to change its nature. The nafs is the nafs. The lower soul is the lower soul. We have to recognize that, we have to recognize that in ourselves. And we have to recognize that as we go through our life, that is going to be with us. The question is what can we do about it?
