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 Sheikh Abdul Aziz periodically collates themes for contemplation, which come from a variety of sources including the writings of Hazreti Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi and other Sufi masters, as well as the Hadith or sayings of the Prophet Mohammed and the Holy Qur’an. They are a focus for reflection and a source of inspiration and both spiritual and practical nourishment.
Current contemplation themes
The themes below are collated from gatherings of the Sufi Circle.
Sufi Circle 24 February 2009
This world is a dream - do not rest in false opinion; if in dream a hand be lost, 'tis no harm.
If in dream a pruning-hook has cut off your head, not only is your head still in its place but your life is prolonged.
If in dream you see yourself cut in two halves, you are sound in body when you rise, not sick.
The sum of the matter is this: in dreams it is no harm for the body to be maimed or to be torn into two hundred pieces.
The Prophet said of this world, which is substantial in appearance, that it is the sleeper's dream.
You have accepted this statement conventionally, but the travellers on the mystic Way have beheld this truth clairvoyantly, without relation from the Prophet.
You are asleep in the daytime: do not say that this is not sleep. The shadow is derivative, the origin of it is naught but the moonlight.
Know, O comrade, that your sleep and waking is as though a sleeper should dream that he has gone to sleep.
He thinks, "Now I am asleep", and is unaware that he is really in the second sleep.
Mathnawi Book 3, vv. 1729-1737
Sufi Circle 17 February 2009
Knowledge has two wings, Opinion one wing: Opinion is defective and curtailed in flight.
The one-winged bird soon falls headlong; then again it flies up some two paces or a little more.
The bird, Opinion, falling and rising, goes on with one wing in hope of reaching the nest.
But when he has been delivered from Opinion, Knowledge shows its face to him: that one-winged bird becomes two-winged and spreads his wings.
After that, he walks erect and straight, not falling flat on his face or ailing.
He flies aloft with two wings, like Gabriel, without opinion and without conjecture and without disputation.
If all the world should say to him, “You are on the Way of God and are following the right religion,”
He will not be made more fervent by their words: his lonely soul will not join with them;
And if they should say to him, “You are astray: you think you are a mountain, and in reality you are a blade of straw,”
He will not fall into doubt because of their taunts, he will not be grieved by their estrangement from him.
Nay, if the seas and mountains should come to speech and should say to him, “You are wedded to perdition,”
Not the least jot will he fall into imagining or sickness on account of the taunts of the scoffers.
Mathnawi Book 3, vv. 1510-1521
Sufi Circle 3 February 2009
Do not regard your ugly or beauteous form; regard Love and the object of your search.
Do not regard the fact that you are despicable or weak; look upon your aspiration, O noble one.
In whatsoever state you be, keep searching; O you with dry lips, always be seeking the water, for that dry lip of yours gives evidence that at last it will reach the spring-head.
Dryness of lip is a message from the water that this agitation (anxious search) will certainly bring you to the water
For this seeking is a blessed motion; this search is a destroyer of obstacles on the Way to God.
This search is the key to the things sought by you; this search is your army and the victory of your banners.
This search is like the cock crowing and proclaiming that the dawn is at hand.
Even though you are not equipped, do you be ever seeking: equipment is not necessary on the Way of the Lord.
Whomsoever you see engaged in search, O son, become his friend and cast your head before him (devote yourself to him),
For through being the neighbour of the seekers you yourself will become a seeker, and from the shadows (protection) of the conquerors you yourself will become a conqueror.
If an ant has sought to attain the rank of Solomon, do not look contemptuously on its quest.
Everything that you have of wealth and skill – was it not at first a quest and a thought?
Mathnawi Book 3, vv. 1437-1449
Sufi Circle 27 January 2009
The eye of sense-perception is only like the palm of the hand: the palm has not the power to reach the whole of him (the elephant in the dark).
The eye of the Sea (Reality) is one thing, and the foam (phenomena) another: leave the foam and look with the eye of the Sea.
Day and night there is the movement of foam-flecks from the Sea: you behold the foam, but not the Sea. Amazing!
We are dashing against each other, like boats: our eyes are darkened, though we are in the clear water.
O you who have gone to sleep in the body’s boat, you have seen the water, but look on the Water of the water.
The water has a Water that is driving it; the spirit has a Spirit that is calling it.
Mathnawi Book 3, vv. 1269-1274
Sufi Circle 20 January 2009
The cornerless corner of the heart is a King’s highway: the radiance that is neither of the east nor of the west is (derived) from a Moon.
Why on this side and on that, like a beggar, O mountain of Reality, are you seeking the echo?
Seek the answer from the same quarter to which, in the hour of pain, you bend low, crying repeatedly, “O my Lord!”
In the hour of pain and death you turn in that direction: how, when your pain is gone, are you ignorant?
At the time of tribulation you have called unto God, but when the tribulation is gone, you say, “Where is the way?”
This is because you do not know God: every one that knows God without uncertainty is constantly engaged in that remembrance of Him…….
Mathnawi Book 3, vv. 1138-1143
Sell intellect and talent and buy bewilderment (in God): betake yourself to lowliness, O son, not to Bukhara!
Mathnawi Book 3, v. 1146
Sufi Circle 13 January 2009
Whether one be slow or speedy in movement, he that is a seeker will be a finder.
Always apply yourself with all your might to seeking, for search is an excellent guide on the way.
Though you be lame and limping and bent in figure and unmannerly, ever creep towards Him and be in quest of Him.
Now by speech and now by silence and now by smelling, catch in every quarter the scent of the King.
Mathnawi Book 3, vv. 978-981
Go forth from inanimateness into the world of spirits, hearken to the loud noise of the particles of the world.
The glorification of God by inanimate beings will become evident to you; the doubts suggested by (false) interpretations will not carry you away (from the truth).
Since your soul has not the lamps (the lights necessary) for seeing, you have made interpretations.
This is the interpretation of the Mu’tazilites and of those who do not possess the light of immediate (mystical) intuition.
When a man has not escaped from sense-perception, he will be a stranger to the ideas of the unseen world.
Mathnawi Book 3, vv. 1021-3; 1027-8
Sufi Circle 2 December 2008
The belly's prayer was answered: the ardency of need put out a flag (produced an effect).
God has said, "Though you be a profligate and idolater, I will answer when you call Me".
Do you cleave fast unto prayer and ever cry out: in the end it will deliver you from the hands of the ghoul.
Mathnawi Book 3 vv. 755-7
Riches are a snake, for therein are poisons; and popular favour and worship is a dragon.
Ah, do not assume a virtue (which you do not possess), O Pharaoh: you are a jackal, do not in any wise behave as a peacock.
Mathnawi Book 3 v. 783-4
God has said that His servants who are attended by His help walk on the earth quietly and meekly.
Mathnawi Book 3 v. 834
Sufi Circle 11 November 2008
If you pass beyond form, O friends, 'tis Paradise and rose-gardens within rose-gardens.
When you have broken and destroyed your own form, you have learned to break the form of everything.
Mathnawi Book 3 vv. 578-9
Nearness to God in respect of His creating and sustaining us is common to us all, but only these noble ones possess the nearness consisting of the inspiration of Love.
Mathnawi Book 3 v. 704
Sufi Circle 4 November 2008
Whatsoever would fling you asunder from the Friend, do not listen to it, for it holds loss, loss.
Even if the gain be a hundred hundredfold, do not accept it: do not, for the sake of the gold, break with the Treasurer, O dervish!
Mathnawi Book 3 vv. 419-20
He related a hundred pretexts of this sort, but his expedients did not coincide with God's decree.
If all the atoms of the world contrive expedients, they are naught, naught, against the ordinance of Heaven.
Mathnawi Book 3 vv. 446-7
Sufi Circle 21 October 2008
How often has your limping been turned into a smooth (easy) gait, how often has your soul been made void of grief and pain!
O heedless one, tie a string to your foot, so that you may not become lost to (unconscious of) yourself even, O sluggard!
Your ingratitude and forgetfulness did not call to mind your former drinking of honey.
Mathnawi Book 3 vv. 308-310
Sufi Circle 7 October 2008
From the door of the spirit and spiritual men how long did you drink the water of life, and your eyes were opened!
Much food from the door of the spiritual, in the form of mystical intoxication and ecstasy and selflessness, did you cast upon your soul.
Afterwards, through greed, you did abandon that door, and now you are going round about every shop, like a bear.
For the sake of worthless scraps you are running to the doors of those wordly patrons whose pots are full of fat.
Know that here where the saints abide the meaning of 'fat' is that the soul becomes fat (flourishing), and know that here the plight of the desperate is made good.
Mathnawi Book 3 vv. 293-7
Sufi Circle 19 August 2008
Dance only where you mortify yourself and when you tear away the cotton from the sore of lust.
Holy men dance and wheel on the spiritual battlefield: they dance in their own blood.
When they are freed from the dominion of self, they clap a hand; when they escape from their own imperfection, they make a dance.
From within them musicians strike the tambourine; at their ecstasy the seas burst into foam.
You see it not, but for their ears the leaves too on the boughs are clapping hands.
You do not perceive the clapping of the leaves: one must have the spiritual ear, not this ear of the body.
Close the ear of the head to jesting and lying, that you may see the resplendent city of the soul.
Mathnawi Book 3, vv. 95-101
Your life is like a purse of gold: day and night are like him who counts the gold coins.
He (Time) counts and gives the gold without stopping, until the purse is emptied and there comes the eclipse of death.
If you take away from a mountain and do not put anything in the place of what you have taken, the mountain will be demolished by that giving.
Therefore, for every breath that you give out, put an equivalent in its place, so that by (acting according to the text) and fall to worship and draw nigh you may gain your object.
Do not strive so much to complete your worldly affairs: do not strive in any affair that is not religious.
Otherwise at the end you will depart incomplete, your (spiritual) affairs marred and your bread unbaked.
And the beautifiying of your grave and sepulchre is not done by means of stone and wood and plaster;
Nay, but by digging for yourself a grave in spiritual purity and burying your egoism in His Self,
And by becoming His dust and buried in love of Him, so that your breath may gain replenishments from His breath.
A tomb with dome and turrets - that is not good on the part of the followers of Reality.
Look now at a living person attired in satin: does the satin help his understanding at all?
His soul is in hateful torment, the scorpion of grief is in his grief-laden heart.
Outside, on his exterior, broideries and decorations; but within he is sorely lamenting from bitter thoughts,
While you may see another in an old patched frock, his thoughts sweet as the sugar-cane and his words like sugar.
Mathnawi Book 3, vv. 124-137
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