In this world where we interact with maya, illusion, on a regular basis, happiness and sadness are two sides of a similar coin, the same coin. We react towards certain things with happiness, certain things make us sad. Most of these are robotic reactions to situations that we have been programmed to believe are good and/or are bad.
However, if we examine these situations more closely, if we understand the truth about where we live, and how we live, and how we act and what we do, we begin to understand that most of what we interact with has nothing to do with happiness or sadness, or in fact, has very little to do with anything.
The problem is, we’ve gotten entangled in it, and because we’re entangled in it, we have given it all of these characteristics, and then we react to the characteristics that we’ve given it. And, instead of trying to get untangled we try to resolve, and here’s where the big mistake lies: you can’t resolve the world, you can’t resolve illusion, you can’t make sense out of that which is nonsensical, you can’t make sense out of that which has no reality, you can’t make sense out of that which really is a bubble, a dream that doesn’t exist.
So, our work is not to resolve, but to untangle – to untangle the grip that maya, that illusion, has on us, and to become free of the influences of illusion so that we can focus on the area where joy really does exist.
So we have to change venues, we have to change states, we have to change understanding, we have to change where we stand. Even though, after the change, we may be standing still in exactly the same spot. But we will be different.
Pilgrimage takes you from one spot to another and, God willing, something extraordinary should be happening to you because you’ve made that journey. But the truth is, to go on pilgrimage, you don’t have to move. You don’t have to leave the space that you’re in at this very moment. What you have to do is change the nature of your attitude, the nature of the way you react, and the nature of your ideas as to the world, and as to happiness and sadness.
The world is a place of destruction. Everything within the world disappears. The world is made up of elemental forces which are in conflict with each other. For periods of time, these conflicting elements come together and cooperate — like our bodies. Our bodies are made up of conflicting elements that are cooperating for a period of time, but that cooperation dissipates. It’s called aging. That cooperation begins to fall apart, and as that cooperation between the various elemental forces falls apart, our body falls apart. But not just our body; everything falls apart because of this conflict within the elements. So we need to find a space outside of the elemental nature of existence, we need to find a space outside of the nature of this elemental existence. We need to find a space in the non-elemental; we need to find a space in that which is protected from illusion, that which is protected from dissipating, from falling apart. And where is that?
That is in haqq, in reality. The space that has no space, the space that has no construct, the space that is non-elemental, the space that is without form, the space that is entirely different than what we have been accustomed to seeing, and looking at, and interacting with.
To get to that space we need to become untangled from the space that we’re in. It’s like jail – you need a key to get out, or you need somebody to open the door for you to get out. But until that happens, your body is trapped. Well, we need to somehow escape this entanglement, and Allah has sent wise men, qutbs, friends of His, and prophets to explain to us how to become disentangled from this web of illusion.
Surat al-Asr [Quran:103] says that “Man is lost, except for those who focus on the truth of Allah, and help others in the work of understanding Allah”. Now that’s a pretty simple, and easy to understand proclamation. God’s work is the only worthwhile work, everything else is entanglement, everything else is difficulty, everything else is a useless, non-positive endeavor.
So how do we make this shift? In ancient times, even now in some places, people make this shift by running away from the world. They hide in something called a monastery or a darga. In the world today, in the teaching of Sufism today, we live in the world yet attempt to be not of the world while we live in the world. So we move through illusion…
