In order to actually go on this path you have to develop empathy. In other words you have to be able to feel other people. You have to be able to feel their pain. You have to be able the feel their joy, their difficulty and their happiness. You have to be able to get close enough to people so, as they go through their existence, you can feel the nature of their existence.
If you can’t do that, then you’re stuck inside yourself and the only one that you feel is yourself. What happens is you become incredibly isolated and egocentric and everything is about you. So not only is it prescribed in Sufi circles that you feel the joy and pain of others. In order to be able to move in the spiritual path you have to be able the feel the joy and pain of others. A good sign that you’re not moving forward is that you don’t. All you feel is yourself. That all you think about is yourself. All that you’re involved with is yourself.
What that involvement does is perpetuate the illusory nature of existence because it creates a lie that says you’re all that’s here. You are the center of everything.
Now, in one way that’s absolutely true, but in another way it’s also absolutely false. To understand that, is part of beginning to understand how the nature of things work.
Allah created all of existence for each of us. We have to recognize that. We have to be grateful to Allah that everything was created for us. He gave us, each of us, breath. He gives us water. He gives us food, and then he sent one hundred twenty four thousand prophets to explain to us the nature of our existence. When we realize how this was created for us, then we should be overwhelmed with gratitude that this occurred.
When we are overwhelmed with gratitude, we next enter into phases of ecstasy, because gratitude is not only a feeling that we encounter, it’s a quality of God, it’s a name of God. When you’re overwhelmed by gratitude, you’re overwhelmed by Allah. You’re overwhelmed by the truth of existence, you’re overwhelmed by the essence of existence. That’s how, through the gateway of the qualities, you enter into the truth.
Gratitude is one of those gateways. We need to be able to feel it, and touch it, and be it. Allah is gratitude. Gratitude is a noun and it’s a verb. We need to be both the noun and the verb. We need to be grateful and we need to become gratitude. It has to become part of our essential being.
One of the problems that the world has right now with empathy, is that we have selective empathy. The story of Abraham and his son is an explanation of that. Allah indicated to Abraham to kill his son. He took him to perform this slaughter and right at the time it was supposed to occur, with the consent of the son by the way, Allah came to Abraham and said “Sacrifice a ram instead, but understand that the reason I was going to have you do this is because part of the world that comes from your son will say they are the ones of the way — and no one else is of the way. They have some kind of special place in this world because they are from your blood.
It’s actually happened. The ones from that bloodline now claim that they have some sort of superiority in the way of God because they are related to the friend of God, Ibrahim, whether through Isaac or through Ishmael. So, this warning has in fact come into being. Our shaykh called this “blood ties”. The ties to blood that make you believe that you are somehow separate from everyone else and you are in your own club. This club of blood is somehow a superior club. This kind of an understanding is the kind of understanding that actually thwarts the message of religion, it changes it…
