When i think about how the best souls whose kindness grace the holiest of pages will fall to their knees, my heart drops in fear. My mind's eye is effaced with shame and knows my place among the dust; for i am a speck of dust itself. Somehow it feels like the further i travel and the more i open my heart to your love, the more i begin to comprehend my insignificance and the more i fear. Yet what is the fear? It cripples me completely at times when i begin to realize i am but living in a dream right now. If i fear your wrath and your judgement then what is my obedience to your word but a mere transaction? And should religion be merely a transactional relationship? Do i obey you simply because i fear hell and wish for heaven? How can i call that love without being a hypocrite?

No.. my fear, i am beginning to understand, might simply be because i am utterly and completely afraid that i am never going to be enough. That i will never be able to find the meaning and experience the completion of my existence through your presence. Heaven is to finally be with you, to finally complete the search for truth through grasping it through your presence. And Hell -more so than the fire, more so than the torture and the screaming - is your absence. I am turning too slowly to your direction. My mind is distracted, my self still too wrapped around my ego. See, i am still talking about a 'self'.. i am still talking about a 'direction'.. when really there is nowhere to turn to find you but to simply be still in complete surrender and discover your reality within my inner being. Tonight the paralyzing fear has subsided to a quiet sadness. It is as if my whole body is mourning for my soul that is still so unready to even begin to graze the periphery of your reality. I am not enough, and never will be. Please, please save me.

“In finding yourself you have found God. In reaching to your own center you have reached the center of the whole universe. Now there is no need to go anywhere; you have found the infinite treasure – what Jesus calls the kingdom of God.”

“You exist in time, but you belong to eternity. You are a penetration of eternity into the world of time. You are deathless, living in a body of death. Your consciousness knows no death, no birth. It is only your body that is born and dies. But you are not aware of your consciousness. You are not conscious of your consciousness, and that is the whole art of meditation; Becoming conscious of consciousness itself.”

“The body is only a temporary house, a caravanserai, an overnight stay. In the morning we have to go. But consciousness is the eternal pilgrim, a journey without any beginning and without any end. It is a journey of dances and songs and music and poetry, a festive journey, a ceremony without any reason. Just being is enough.”

“Just be silent, utterly silent. Let peace descend over you, and the revelation of the mysterious truth of existence is yours.”

**

mm i might never feel that oneness ever again. I once felt it for about 20-30 minutes one night about a year ago, when i was sitting down in front of the computer looking through my inspiration folders, which was weird since i wasn't consciously seeking that experience, i wasn't praying, saying the zikir or reading the Quran. 

I felt an amazing overwhelming calm (ironic, but you can't really talk about these things well, language fails you), this immense gratefulness for being alive, so much so that i was afraid if God would take my life the next day. Then i went to sleep & i never had the feeling again. Though i can't imagine feeling that every day, every second, my body would just dissolve. 

"You are afraid from the darkness, because you are in the darkness, you are not running to that one who is holding the light. You are never going to find that light. Never. Until you go to that one, and you submit yourself. If you are accepting, you will find safety. "

Sheykh Abd Kerim Effendi