Maqam of Love

Closeness to Allah

22 February 2021

Rabita

22 March 2021

All power belongs to Allah so may Allah be praised as He deserves.

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Maqam Mahmud

And during part of the night, perform tahajjud [special prayer during the night] as an additional prayer for you. It may be that your Rab [Lord] will raise you to a maqam al mahmud [station of gratitude and praise]. (Al Isra:79)

Now, Allah is constant, His Being is constant but what He does is not constant. Our Prophet (peace be upon him) had a relationship with Allah “now”. He went to Mi’raj [metaphysical Night Journey to Allah’s presence] and he is the owner of the maqam called Maqam Mahmud [Station of Gratitude and Praise], he is the beloved, the maqam of Hubb, which means Love. He is in that maqam. In Allah, he can give love. He can receive and give love to Allah, in that state here, on this Earth. That is where he asked Allah to give this opportunity to his people. He said, “I am here but I have all these people, I cannot have baklava without them. So can they have baklava too?” He said, “Yes, this is what they need to do.”

Striving for the Maqam

Hazreti Muhammad (pbuh) was created as prophet but the things he went through after the hard day of walking on thorns and people throwing rocks and this that, to working for Allah and not quitting. Then Allah said, “Okay, I want to invite him to My Presence. My Home. My Presence.” And that is when he made the Mi’raj. Allah praises him by saying,

His eye did not waver, nor did it lose its focus. (Al Najm:17)

The fu’ad [spiritual heart as perception center] did not reject what it saw. (Al Najm:11)

His eyes did not move. He did not lose his focus and his heart did not move away from being with Allah, watching Allah.

Now, what do we need to do? Repeating the same thing again to bring you up to date. First, we need to intend to focus on Allah. So, Allah opened the door to us too. But we need to do some work and then there is a lot of things involved in this work, a lot of features and a lot of dimensions. Why do we need to work? The answer is so Allah will know who is sincere and who is not. He is not going to give access to His nearness [qarabah] so easily. People have to work for it. He did that before and people did not appreciate it. This time around, He wants to make sure only the deserving, the most deserving can get there.

Do you want this Maqam?

As the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was created as prophet, he still had to go through his thing to deserve the position. So if you think you went through enough, compare yourself to the Prophet what he went through. If you think you have financial difficulties, would you like to exchange places with the prophet or sahaba [companions of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)] of that time or anyone? They were hungry for days. They used to tie a stone on their stomach, to press on it so they would not feel the hunger.

You want to say yes? You want to exchange places? Good! You do not want to eat but you want to be hungry? Is this what you want? Is this what you mean?

This is an edited excerpt of the Online Saturday Sohbet given on October 31, 2009 by Murshid Shaykh Taner Vargonen Ansari and published on sufiview.com on March 8, 2021. The translation of the Qur’an verses are also from Murshid Shaykh Taner Vargonen Ansari. You may read the remaining parts of the same Sohbet by clicking on the following links:

How to live in this world with Allah and How does Allah work

FREE WILL

ADAPTATION

CONNECTION