There’s a story of the sheikh who was at his home during the evening with some of his students. There was a knock on the door and one of the students ran to answer it and came right back in.
The sheikh asked him “What was it?”
He said “Oh it’s nothing.”
The sheikh persisted, “Really, what was it?”
To which the student responded, “It was a beggar, he wanted a loaf of bread. I told him to go on, we were in the midst of something.”
The sheikh said “Go back and get him. If Allah has seen fit to give him a soul, I can certainly see fit to give him a loaf of bread.”
Our ability to comprehend the universal unity of all existence through the granting to each being in existence a soul and understanding that, is central to our being able to be tolerant towards humanity and to be able to make a true connection with Allah.
One of the sayings of Bawa that he oft repeated was “That which separates me from you, separates me from God.”
So if I’m not cognizant of your being, if I’m not cognizant of your soul, if I’m not respectful of your being, if I’m not respectful of who you are, no matter the circumstances that you are in, then I am separating myself from the Creator. And how am I doing this? I am putting intermediaries between myself and you. And as I put those intermediaries between myself and you, those same intermediaries become veils between myself and Allah.
So, if I will only talk to people who have PhDs I have separated a very large portion of humanity from myself. If I only talk to people who have a certain level of wealth, if I only talk to people who have certain kinds of jobs, if I separate myself from people who work with their hands, or people who have different religions or have different ideas, I have cut myself off from sections of humanity.
