al-Mahabba

That which one yearns for, he loves, and this yearning makes him great by transforming the depth of poverty in the yearning of His slave, his need and his longing to give Him everything, what his heart truly desires. This yearning (al-himma) is the oil in the fire of God’s passion, which makes this fire in the heart of the lover grow very hot and strong and bright. Sparks fly as the lover turns to the right and left, cooking in the fire of love, and becoming more and more tender and ready to be consumed.

The quality of love of which we speak is such that both lover and Beloved are consumed by a single flame, and whether by union or by seeming separation, by presence or absence, the flame is fanned. The lover kills himself to live in his Beloved and destroys all his qualities; he empties the cup of his existence so that it may be filled entirely with the qualities and presence of his Lord.

Why does Allah give the name al-mahabba (gift of love) to this quality of love? Because this fire purifies the heart of everything but the Beloved (al-Mahbub) and the beloved is one who puts his neck on the doorsill of his Beloved and whose heart is inseparable from his Beloved, breath to breath, moment to moment; and his heart is eaten by the fire of the Beloved, yet this fire is not fire, but light upon light. Then when he speaks, he speaks with his Lord, and when he walks, he walks with his Lord, and when he sleeps, he sleeps with his Lord. As Allah says to His prophet David, “I forbid the hearts of My lovers any love except My love. Understand, David, My beloved.”

But the love of Allah has two sides – the love of the truth for the human being and the love of the human being for truth. When truth loves a person, the truth of love within him moves him to love whatever he loves. Not understanding what is inspiring him to love, he attaches the energy of his feeling to what appears to him without as the object of his love. For example, when the love moves a man to love a woman and he stops with her body, the very body he thinks he loves becomes a strong veil to the essence of the love which is moving him. Then he is moving as an animal moves and loving as an animal loves. In this he touches only some of the love, the smell of the love and the heat of the fire, but this is not enough for him to taste the fullness of the truth of the love which is moving him.

When the fire of his love touches the essence of the love of the soul of the woman he loves, then the sparks and the waves of flame flash out and return to their source in the blaze of divine passion (al-’ishq), and his body disappears, and her body also disappears. All the veils, all the fascination of coming and going between them disappears in the experience of their indivisible unity, and God returns to love Himself alone. But He created these people and the fire between them to realize the essence of His love. Whereas, in the beginning, the man thought he loved a woman, when he comes to realize the essence of the fire, he sees that he himself is the Beloved and she is also the Beloved and in this, Allah alone is the Beloved and no other exists.

As Allah has said, “I was a hidden treasure that desired to be known. So I manifested all the creation to reveal the essence of the deep secret knowing of Myself. He whom I created to reveal the treasure carries within himself this treasure, but he must explode the mountain of his existence to discover the treasure which is hidden within it.”

This is the first part of the love in which Allah breathes all the creation into existence, and the second part of the love is the return in which the creature breathes his existence back into his Lord. But how do you explode the mountain of your entire being? Plant the flaming seed of your yearning in your own earth. When a man loves a woman, it is to know her as himself, to love her, to enter her as himself, as Adam entered Eve – who was of his own substance and truth – to penetrate her body as a veil and touch the essence within her, within himself. When you use the fire of your passion to open yourself, to know yourself, and to know the treasure which is hidden within you, the fire of your yearning explodes, in the depth of your own substance, creating an opening within, a space within.

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