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the signs that He unveiled before my eyes, Signs of His Love, His Power, and His Truth, The signposts clearly delineating His path, That the Beloved enabled me to see.
I was guided in my journey to see and love deeply lands and people of great beauty
That, no longer exist in this world,
lands and people that can never be found again In this world
But are alive in my heart.
They are alive within me.
And it is my loving duty
To bear witness to their life and legacy.
By the Grace of God, the Most Merciful,
I was guided through the countries to appreciate all the details of the life there that I could see, before the devastating floods covered the land.
In this very lifetime we have witnessed the vast transformations of the earth, the nations, the peoples, powerful natural disasters, as well as wars and oppressions,
all of which elicit
the deepest prayer, supplication, and compassion.
I met, on the journey, the Ancient ones.
and received the gifts that they placed in my hands before they left this world and went on their way.
What remains of all the places and the people we have met along the way
after the form of the flower has wilted and disappeared, back into the earth,
is the essence of the fragrance,
the essence of the truth that they imparted to us
in the precious time allotted before they left this world,
leaving us here to carry on the work and the journey.
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And the underlying truth revealed
through all that we are witnessing and learning is,
as the Holy Qur’an tells us,
(as difficult as it is for us, ultimately, to grasp)
“And everything perishes but the face of your Lord, full of majesty and bounty” (55:26-27).
I pose the question to myself:
How can a creature that will perish
Comprehend this truth?
In every land through which I traveled in my search, I found the pieces of a puzzle,
Pieces of beautiful, colored glass.
Piece by piece, every piece found its place
In the stained glass window — my life —
Until, the picture began to be complete.
And then, suddenly the Divine Light, Nur Muhammadiyyah,
Came shining through,
Illuminating the total picture, Causing my soul to proclaim,
“What a wonder!
So that is what it was all about!”
I followed the map only God gave me,
and was led from one situation
and station to the next,
from one Teacher to the next,
everywhere, in every land and in every state, in every holy place and gathering,
collecting clues and messages, following the guidance
as it was given.
Thus, step-by-step
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through the stages of awakening,
the stages of acceptance, understanding, healing and transformation.
I followed the light of guidance
in search of its Source and End.
I came to see that, behind every veil, is the One, Who sees all,
and behind every occurrence
is the Hand that moves all,
and not a leaf falls,
but He knows it And He wills it. What makes every detail
of this story sacred and significant, is that He willed it.
These are the messages, the gifts
that the Creator, Most Kind, gave to me as He drew me through the veils of karmic bondage
into the light, the liberation,
of submission and divine peace.
I came to see that it is not my business to
judge the people that I happened to meet along the way.
They are all instruments of my awakening,
Just as I am an instrument of theirs.
We see, as we continue to travel in the way of God, that there are no accidents or mistakes.
Every stone that we walk on,
every piece of ground that we cover is
is a part of the Way, itself.
And every stage, every new level of awareness
is a preparation for the one which will follow it.
To reach each new step,
we must let go of the one that went before it. The past is gone.
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We must let it go.
The person that we thought we were
is like water in the river that has passed by.
What is awaiting us, at every stage of the journey,
is an unlimited new dimension of awareness,
that we cannot attain, except by letting go
of at least some of the false concepts and patterns that we had been dragging along with us
and are now ready to release.
Sometimes the veils are washed away
in the rain of Divine Mercy,
and sometimes, they are burned away in the fire of Divine Love.
Moment by moment, stage by stage,
the divine alchemy,
if we are willing and able to go through
the complete process,
is powerful and intense.
Sometimes we wish we could get out of that fire and just go for a pleasant walk in the park.
but we are like fetuses in the Divine womb
and we cannot come out of the fire
until, we are gold.
Just as the baby becomes perfectly formed
in the womb
and then, exactly at the right moment, emerges what an amazing divine process!
Like this, does our soul — the purified life
emerge from the crucible
radiant with the light of God, its own true nature. Such is the nature of the profound process
Of transformation, and once we have begun,
we must go all the way through that deep tunnel. Like the baby in the birth canal
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We cannot turn back.
As difficult as it seems to be to carry on, from time to time, what an amazing journey it is -
The journey of unveiling,
the journey of the opening of our inner eye!
What I saw, in the beginning,
through a glass, darkly,
is becoming,
through the process of unveiling, brilliantly clear. In truth, what I saw was always perfectly clear. It was I who was obscured
and could see it only through the densities of veils.
But the truth within me
was magnetically drawn to the truth in whatever form it was hidden and then revealed.
Everywhere I traveled, I searched for the treasures -
The Divine Attributes and Messages -
And found them in every land, manifesting in different people and places more, or less clearly.
Wherever I saw them,
sometimes, even, hidden in the dust,
I recognized their great value
and collected them into my heart, saying, “This is what I was looking for!”
And, thus, through traveling for the sake of God, has the heart of the seeker for truth
been restructured in the form of truth.
For as we gather the treasures of Divine Knowledge into our heart,
in truth, we become united with that, for which we have been seeking.
I sought my Beloved everywhere that He led me,
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and there was not a moment in the journey of my seeking Him
that He was not with me.
No doubt, I felt it,
and my heart was warmed and inflamed by His nearness, and yet, I had to continue to travel, for years and years, penetrating the veils.
As close as He was,
I could not find Him and know Him, until, I came to know myself.
But, what is this knowing? Knowing myself in Him
is to be the drop that disappears in the Ocean.
