Our Lord has granted us, and by this I mean all of humanity, special graces through certain individuals on whom He has placed exclusive blessings. Here and there amongst all of humanity a special light shines on through the hearts of certain people, of both genders. They are His Friends. I have read somewhere, I think by Imam Rumi, that if one wishes to be with Allah Almighty, one should be with His Friends. The intensity of their piety and the very special connection with their Lord places us, through our association with them, in a certain sense, with our Lord. We are not them, because in terms of the Divine Decree they occupy a very special place in the “Divine Heart”, for want of a better formulation. Although we are not like them, through our association with them, they mirror to us the enormous possibility of being like them through special graces from our Lord. Those of us who do not understand this are carried away by our egos to spiritual nothingness. These Friends of our Lord are containers of such Divine Favour that our Lord refers to them as His Awliya’. Why is it that we cannot grasp at least a minor understanding of the contents of these human containers of Divine Blessings or if not a minor understanding, just a recognition?

You see, in different kinds of ways our Lord reminds us of His Existence not by exposing Himself to us and saying: “Here I am”, but by granting certain people blessings of such a Divine Nature that when we look at them and try to gain some understanding of what they are, we say: “O my Lord”. These words are not for them. They cannot be. We say these words because what comes out of their hearts in the expression on their faces or what comes out of their souls in these expressions reminds one of one’s Lord. And so, when we say: “O my Lord” it is to declare our remembrance of Allah Almighty. Those of us who associate with them are granted minor insights, very minor insights, into the workings of our Lord through the hearts and souls of those who are special by Him.

Some of us want to remain in darkness, a darkness associated with dark hearts and souls of those who are not special by their Lord. Those who feel they are special by themselves, they are in layers of darkness and in our association with them we also get engulfed in these layers just as others who associate with His Awliya’ are engulfed by the light that storms forth from their hearts. We recognize their lights because we know the darkness. If we had not known the darkness we would not have understood the lights. And so our Lord, as part of His Generosity, makes us experience what others do not even know about.

Sometimes when I sit in the company of people recognized as Awliya’, our Lord silences me. Perhaps it is just the awe of sitting in the company with the privileged. Or perhaps it is just my soul experiencing some of the lights from their hearts. I do not always know. I just know that there is a major difference between my association with them and my association with others; those without lights or those with darkness. I do not know whether not having lights means having darkness; whether there is a state between having lights and having darkness. These different states are not of our knowing although they might be experienced in ways which we cannot understand. You see, we must understand that just as Almighty Allah has those who He has placed at a special Heavenly Station called Friendship with Allah (ﷻ), so also He has those He has placed in stations of darkness, stations labeled “enemies” of Allah (ﷻ). They are the extremely disobedient ones and are controlled by a variety of satanic forces. Most of us function somewhere between the two categories, the categories of Friends and the categories of enemies. In one sense, we refuse to take steps towards our Lord’s open doors of His variety of Names, and we allow ourselves to be absorbed into the darkness of satanic activities that destroy any good that we might have had in our souls. These are the pathetic ones, found in all layers of our population and in both genders.

I think that in many of us there are deep feelings of desires wanting special Heavenly stations from our Lord. Most of us have that but the heavy spiritual baggage that we have accumulated over the years, becomes a major spiritual obstacle for our moving through the doors of our Lord. His Friends are there as helpers in His Cause and when we sit in their company and enjoy the reflections of their lights, they help us over these obstacles and they guide us towards the doors of our Lord. Without them nothing is achieved. We see the non-achievers in spirituality all around us. They have no guidance from those helpers who are in our communities and so they flounder like little corks in the open seas; with no direction and with no goals. Not only are they misguided and not only are they directionless but they have no understanding of what our Lord has prepared for His creation.

I sometimes wonder how one can get to the hearts of these people but all the entrances to their hearts are blocked by decades of accumulated rust through only which egoistic and satanic insinuations can go. For us to enter, the rust has to be removed. For evil whisperings and insinuations there is no need for the rust to be removed. What more can we say when we see around us how people open their arms to misguidance? What can we do about all of these? We try and we call. We urge and we cajole, but the hearts refuse to respond because of the thickness and heaviness of the rust. Those of us whose hands our Lord has placed in the grip of a guide have so much to thank for but even this some of us play with. When Allah Almighty says, “Grip, and be patient, and you will achieve”, we turn our backs on Him in our own arrogant way.

I sometimes wonder how we are going to face Him on the Last Day. What is our defence going to be? So many decades on this planet and nothing to show. We must ask Him that the arrangements that He has made for us to be for Him be implemented hastily in our lives, and we ask Him that His Will should be dominant in what we do, and we ask Him that He does not look away from us, amin.

 [Unpublished 2012]