“He who is caught in the throes of desire is an ass and spends his life competing for the grass,” the Musnatin, Book II. So many incredibly profound things can be said in such a small amount of words. We are all out there competing for the grass, and we all have different reasons why the grass is so important. That which keeps us in that competition is what keeps us from being pure, and to be done with desire, one must become pure. In a state of purity there is no need for that which is impure.
Illusion, Maya, the illusory nature of things is not pure. The qualities that are Allah are pure, and the two don’t exist simultaneously. Bawa used to say, “When I am here, God is not, and when God is here, I am not. When anger is here, love is not. When jealousy is here, love is not. When resentment is here, love is not.”
They are mutually exclusive, and we have to become profoundly aware of the fact that they are mutually exclusive, and we have to become profoundly in touch with the fact that we can’t have our anger and our love too. We can’t have our resentment and love too. So if we have an affinity for anger that makes us happy, or at least we think it makes us happy, if we have an anger or resentment and it gives us some kind of pleasure, we have to begin to understand that we are blocking the path towards love. That we are actively keeping love from ourselves, and to correct this situation we have to give up our anger, and we have to give up our resentment, and that takes an understanding that when you point one finger at somebody else, you’re pointing three fingers at yourself. Until that’s understood, and that’s gotten hold of we will not and cannot understand the dynamic of how love exists, where it exists, and where it cannot exist.
You can’t go fishing on dry land. To go fishing you have to go into bodies of water. That’s where fish live. You can’t find love in the midst of anger, you can’t find love in the midst of remorse, you can’t find love in the midst of need. When we are in need, that need overwhelms our being. And, when we’re not in need we almost forget about it. For instance; when you’re thirsty you understand thirst, after you’ve had a glass of water, you don’t understand thirst anymore. It’s a concept now, it’s not a real thing, it’s gone. So only the thirsty understand thirst, only the hungry understand hunger, only the lovers understand love. And to stay in that state of love you have to constantly, constantly be aware of what feeds it. Fire needs to needs to be fed or it goes out. It constantly needs fuel.
Love also needs fuel, but the fuel that enflames true love doesn’t come from this world. It comes from Haqq, it comes from reality, it comes from understanding the nature of Allah’s creation and the fact that it was created out of his compassion and His love.
So, in order for us to truly be involved in divine love, we have to be involved in divine compassion and we have to understand the nature of that compassion, and in that, we have to understand that as compassionate as we can become we are only touching a minute glimpse of the compassion that is actually created and given off, and is within Allah.
