I am always amazed at how the blessings of Allah Almighty are distributed amongst people. Here I am not referring to the normal distribution of worldly goods to people, but I am referring to those very special blessings which are given to people as a consequence of their spiritual stations. Worldly goods are given to all people irrespective of their beliefs or non-beliefs. Allah (ﷻ) grants them health and whatever else of this planet. Spiritual blessings are something very special granted by our Lord to some of His very special servants.
The other day a lady from Valhalla Park described to me how her son told her on New Year’s Eve that he was going out to enjoy himself into the New Year. After he had left, she supplicated to our Lord and asked Him to return her son to their home and to stop him from participating in the New Year’s Eve revelry in the suburb. It was not long when there was a knock on the door and she was informed that her son was involved in an accident and had been rushed to hospital. Only his leg was injured, but he came home with his personality seriously dented. He could not participate in any of the revelry and he was also at home. This was a mother’s supplication for her son.
I have always said that there is something very special about the poorest of the poor when they turn to their Lord for different forms of help. This lady is one of our strong murids in Valhalla Park. She is partly responsible for spreading the remembrance of Allah (ﷻ) where she lives and in some of the surrounding areas. She is not highly educated neither is she well off, but Allah Almighty had answered her prayer not only because she is a mother, but also she is very special by Him, because of the work that she is doing for Islam. I could only look at her in amazement when she told me what had happened. Many of us strive hard, day in and day out, to have our supplications answered in the same way. Her striving was not in the form of daily supplications, but rather in the form of creating an Islamic awareness in her home and of spreading this awareness to other homes.
I have spoken to you on numerous occasions about how poor people demonstrate spiritual strength and how they are able, despite their lack of worldly goods, to reach out to their Lord, in semi-arid social environments and with very little to their name.
During the last few months I have been increasingly in contact with those at the bottom of the social scale in our society; and I have come to learn so many valuable lessons. I know that at the beginning of Islam Nabi Muhammad (ﷺ) worked primarily amongst the poor. This comes down in our history and we even talk about it. Unfortunately, to a large degree, this extremely important Prophetic Practice has been neglected. Our work, and this I say very humbly, amongst the poor people, is an imitation of that Practice. Today more than ever, I am convinced that our spiritual progress lies amongst the socially-depressed and if we wish to attain high stations by Allah Almighty, then such attainment will be accomplished in areas where people have very little worldly goods. These people, the socially-depressed, are the “rough and tumble” of our society. There are many of us who assume that very little spirituality can operate amongst them. One lady told me: “I do not envy what other people have, because I have my Lord”. One of the aims of Tasawwuf is to reach a station at which worldly goods mean nothing and at which our Lord takes priority. Did she attain this or was she just pretending? In my association with her, I found her attachment to Allah Almighty almost unbelievable. We should remember that in terms of the acquisition of worldly goods, Nabi Muhammad (ﷺ) was an extremely poor man. He had his Lord. He wanted nothing else. Perhaps each one of us should look at our worldly acquisition of goods and ask ourselves what those goods mean in our lives, and what being for Allah (ﷻ) means. We are in a Tariqah and we are walking a path, which leads to a goal at which worldly goods mean nothing and our Lord means everything. We ask Allah Almighty to help us in the acquisition of that goal, amin.
[Letters to Seekers on the Spiritual Path Vol 3 – Unpublished 2012]
