The Beloved looks at your heart
August 7, 2014
The world, the Beingness of Allaah is very great and spacious. You’ve put it in a box: “It’s only this that my intellect perceives.” So, you’ve confined the Creator of the intellect inside the intellect. What you imagine is not the Prophet -- that’s your Prophet, not Allaah’s Prophet. You’ve read your own picture -- read the Companion’s picture. You’ve read your own page -- read the Companion’s page!
... Where is the heart? Is it this common heart that is addressed in preaching and that is given the advice, ‘Purify yourself of vileness, miserliness, and blameworthy qualities so that you may be delivered from hell!’ Of the attributes of the heart, say just this much from the Hadiths:
‘Neither My heavens nor My earth contain me, but the heart of My faithful servant contains and embraces Me.’
‘The heart of the faithful one is between two fingers of the All-Merciful.’
‘The Beloved looks at your heart.’
(adapted from Me and Rumi: The Autobiography
of Shams-iTabrizi, translated by William C. Chittick, p. 131)
***
These are the words of Shams-al Tabriz, that wandering mystic master who turned Jalaal ud-Diin Rumi to the door of the heart. It wasn’t that Jalaal ud-Diin didn’t know of the heart prior to his encounter with Shams: as an Islamic scholar, mystic, and teacher, the subject of the heart had a constant presence in his life. But these were all ideas, mental stuff within the box of the mind. Jalaal ud-Diin Rumi’s time with Shams first challenged, then brought him beyond the box of the mind to the unending reality of the heart, wherein the Beloved dwells.
The world, the Beingness of Allaah is very great and spacious, some say endless. One of the purposes of the Sufi path is to come to a genuine realization of this, beyond just concepts. There are many who are conscientious of this idea of endlessness yet live life in a (mental) box -- even if the walls of this box seem expansive. When this statement is considered with the hadith that the Beloved lives in the heart of the faithful, it is revealed to us that within our heart is an endlessness beyond words. And if this endlessness is within us, why do we reduce life to the limitations of the mind -- particularly the confines of what the ego identifies with, pursues (as pleasures), and seeks to avoid? This is done when the endlessness of the Beloved is just another idea. When we genuinely realize what this idea points to, the experience of endlessness reveals the utter impotence of any limitations we hold to.
This is not to say the mind, body, and physical world we live within are without limitations: by all means, these have limitations that we are wise to respect. But in realizing endlessness, even these limitations become components of an endlessness that is not limited by any conditions. The most prominent of these limiting factors is the mind. If we don’t realize (not just as an idea) how we are reducing life to fit within this mental box it becomes nearly impossible to transcend its limitations and be open to realizing endlessness.
The danger of this reductionist approach is that we literally reduce everything to fit within the limited understandings of our mind. Even Jalaal ud-Diin Rumi, as great and expansive as he became, did this prior to his time with Shams. Therefore, Shams warns: you’ve confined the Creator of the intellect inside the intellect. When we do this, we worship our own contrived ideas of the Beloved, not the Beloved Itself. If we do this with the Beloved, chances are we’ll do this with any aspect of creation: that as we engage a portent of creation, we are actually engaging our ideas of that portent, not that portent itself. What you imagine is not the Prophet -- that’s your Prophet, not Allaah’s Prophet. Contextually in Islam, this contrived perception is dangerous because Muslims look to the life of Muhammad (p.b.u.h.) as a guiding example of how to live surrender to the Beloved. If instead of seeing Muhammad’s life as it is and we follow our imagination of his life, we can get lost in what we perceive to be his example. Then even things we are told directly of his life can be unknowingly misinterpreted as we try to fit his life into the box of our mental understandings. What these words speak to can be applied to any prophet, master, saint, or teacher.
But Shams doesn’t stop there: he includes even our reduction of the Companions of the Prophet. For many people on the spiritual path, a master who lives realization of endlessness may seem too high of an ideal to aspire toward: we look to these masters for guidance, support, and encouragement, but we don’t necessarily look to live the whole of our lives as they do. There are still too many attachments and points of ignorance we hold to that prevent us from living this realization. Instead, for many of us, our lives better mirror the Companions of the Prophet: those who still lived within the box of their mind yet were committed with unabating conviction to overcome the obstacles to the realization of endlessness, namely the unrestrained ego. In many respects, they are better examples for most people to follow: living as students to open to the realization of endlessness while not yet free from mental reductionism. In looking at the examples of their lives, we may realize ways to progress toward the realization of endlessness while still struggling with the reductionist mind. But if instead of seeing their lives for what they are, we see our perception of their lives, Shams cautions: You’ve read your own picture -- read the Companion’s picture. You’ve read your own page -- read the Companion’s page!
Most often the unrestrained and misused mind is the prevailing obstacle to the realization of endlessness. The mind is not capable of such realization, nor is it created for this purpose. But the mind can realize its reductionist tendencies, and this is sufficient to turn us in the direction of the heart. Remember, the Beloved dwells within our heart; this is self-evident when we are faithful. So if we come to rest within our heart the endlessness of the Beloved also becomes evident.
Yet this begs the question: Where is the heart? We are not talking about the common heart, which is actually impure veils that cover the heart. In the old days, these were included under the term “the heart” and it is these that are addressed in preaching and that is given the advice. Shams challenges us to go deeper, to that innermost place that not only contains but embraces the Beloved. This means going beyond the perceptions and conceptions of the mind. This is not a “journey” made in motion (of the mind, body, etc.) but in the stillness of faith, which makes one open -- the heart of My faithful servant contains and embraces Me. Keep opening within (whether through meditation, prayer, selfless service, etc.) until you realize that innermost place where you are resting between two fingers of the All-Merciful, the Beloved. Here, endlessness cannot be denied, just as a person looking into the sun of the sky cannot deny its light even as it blinds the eye. Here, life is forever transformed and not even the limitations of creation are limiting. We genuinely realize that the Beloved is, within our very own heart, so therefore all is possible. And when all is possible, we no longer reduce things to fit within limitations. Then we are able to see things as they are, that even limitations are indications (expressions) of the endlessness that is. This, in part, is why The Beloved looks at your heart. We would be wise to follow the Beloved in this respect and be free from the delusions involved with living life through limitations instead of an orientation of endlessness.
The Beloved looks at your heart. When we look at the heart, we are able to realize all as it is.
