The Intimate Discourses of Ibn Ata’illah 13 – Abdur Rahman’s Corner
Peace, one and all…
Intimate Discourse 13
‘My God, if someone’s virtues are vices, then why cannot his vices be vices?
And if someone’s inner realities are pretensions, then why cannot his pretensions be pretensions?’
Our innermost reality is emptiness. At the inner core of our being is a fundamental nothingness. On one level, this is because we are so ephemeral, here one moment and gone the next. All of our identities, all of our attachments, all of our selfish thoughts are like so much dust on the wind. On another level, at the very centre of ourselves is an emptiness, a hollow space – not in the sense of worthlessness, far from it, but in the sense of a vast space, a something that is neither this nor that. We don’t exist, at least not in the ways we ordinarily think we do. We are, from time to time, allowed to witness a truth, to partake of an experience, but that doesn’t make it ours. As all of Ibn Ata’illah’s beautiful munajat have made clear, everything belongs to God; we own nothing: ‘O humanity! It is you who stand in need of Allah, but Allah is the Self-Sufficient, Praiseworthy’, as the Quran so powerfully puts it (35:15)
Our deepest realisations, our most profound moments, are thus a kind of pretense. We think these moments belong to us, as such. We think we learn something, when it might be truer to say that we are absorbed for a moment into a deeper knowing, a deeper truth. We are not the centre of the universe, neither are we its purpose (in the sense of our everyday individuality). Thus, if our deepest truths are pretensions, then how much more so are our actual pretensions? If our deepest virtues are a kind of vice, then how much more so are our actual vices?
On one level, this prayer can open up a moment of quiet reflection, of a kind of tawba, a clarity in which we can understand this error of claim-making. And then, when we read these devotions as a whole, we can also encounter a moment of release, a much needed moment of letting go of unhelpful baggage. Understanding our inner nothingness can help us let go of trying to outdo God, of the utter ridiculousness of ownership in the face of the Real! Although letting go can be difficult, often because we have held our hands tightly closed for so long opening them is painful, it is freeing. How tiring are the burdens we carry, all unjustly! After exhaling, we can breathe in once more; after la ilaha comes illa Allah!
This one has yet to experience this deep letting go, so it is difficult to speak of it. In the past, I have conceptualised it as an overwhelming moment, a sudden event. Perhaps it is that, but perhaps it’s also made up of many preparatory moments, of a steady practice of letting go in each new moment, in each new breath?
And our last prayer is in praise of God. Lord of all the worlds.
