It is said that the Great Maggid would convene his inner circle every night to teach (the disciples) the sacred texts. All of his greatest students would gather. When the Maggid would begin to speak, "And God said..", Reb Zushya would leap up, overwhelmed with ecstasy. He would yell out, "And God said! God said!"He would spin around and around like a leaf in the wind, and then faint, unconscious for the rest of the teaching. Every night it was the same thing.
The other disciples would tease him, saying, "Zushya, you're missing all the holy teachings!" The teasing went on for days and days until finally the master said, "Leave him alone; he's the only one who gets it."
- Story from The Great Maggid, may God be well pleased with him, the successor to the founder of Hasidism -the mystical branch of Judaism
# Related: Divine Madness
10 comments:
Dear Sadiq,
Thank you for this story.
May we all get it!
Kindest wishes,
mo'in
What is it that “he’s the only one who gets it”?
“Sidq, truthfulness, is the supporting pillar of Sufism. In truthfulness this Way finds its perfection and balance. It is a degree next to prophethood. God Most High said, “Such are together with those whom God has blessed –the prophets and the truthful…” as the the verse runs (4:69). (1, p. 177).
Junayd said, “The truthful person is transformed forty times in a single day, while the hypocrite is stuck in a single state for forty years”. (1, p. 178).
Dhu ‘l- Nun al-Misri said, “Truthfulness is the sword of God. It never falls upon anything without cutting through it”. (1, p. 178).
Some have tasted truthfulness on this site over the last few days, but they have found it too bitter to swallow. They were not ready to “get it”. Moment of truth is a rare occurrence for the hypocrites. “Spiritual immaturity” is not the Way of the Sufis.
Defending oppression is the opposite of truthfulness. Some have shown absolute “spiritual immaturity” over the last few days. You have flunked the test. You can re-take it after forty years!
Truth is All.
Ya Haqq!
AV
AV is hanging on Quran 18:65
AV for AQM-Sufism/Against Sufism w/o AQM
Sufism w/o AQM = Suffocationism (Death/
Spiritual Death
1. Sufi Book of Spiritual Ascent (Al-Risala Al-Qushayriya) Abu ‘l-Qasim Al-Qushayri,
Abridged translation by Rabia Harris, Edited by Laleh Bakhtiar, Copyright 1997. (www.jerrahi.org).
Dear Sadiq a great Chassidic story you revealed to all of us.
This is also a Jewish story which has a very deeper meaning behind it ,even a simple person with no knowledge what so ever of the books has more of God's mercy then all of us who claim to know so much.
This story humbled me a lot.
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The Shepherd
The Baal Shem Tov was once shown from heaven that a certain simple man called Moshe the Shepherd served G-d, blessed be He, better than he did. He longed to meet this shepherd, so he ordered his horses harnessed to his coach and traveled, with a few of his disciples, to the place where he was told the shepherd lived.
They stopped in a field at the foot of a hill and saw, on the hillside above them, a shepherd who was blowing his horn to call his flock. After the sheep gathered to him, he led them to a nearby trough to water them. While they were drinking, he looked up to heaven and began to call out loudly, "Master of the world, You are so great! You created heaven and earth, and everything else! I'm a simple man; I’m ignorant and unlearned, and I don't know how to serve You or praise You. I was orphaned as a child and raised among gentiles, so I never learned any Torah. But I can blow on my shepherd's horn like a shofar, with all my strength, and call out, 'The L-rd is G-d!'" After blowing with all his might on the horn, he collapsed to the ground, without an ounce of energy, and lay there motionless until his strength returned.
Then he got up and said, "Master of the world, I'm just a simple shepherd, I don't know any Torah and I don't know how to pray. What can I do for You? The only thing I know is to sing shepherds' songs!" He then began to sing loudly and fervently with all his strength until, again, he fell to the earth exhausted without an ounce of energy.
After recovering, he got up again and began to call out, "Master of the world! What is it worth that I blew on my horn and sang songs for You, when You're so great? What more can I do to serve You?" He paused for a moment and said, "There's something else I know how to do and I'll do it for Your honor and glory!" He then stood on his head and began to wave his feet wildly in the air. Then he did somersaults one after the other, until he collapsed on the ground, exhausted. The Baal Shem Tov and his disciples watched all this from a distance in amazement.
The shepherd lay there silently until his strength returned. Again, he began to speak and said, "Master of the world, I've done what I can, but I know it's not enough! What more can I do to serve You?" After pausing to reflect, he said, "Yesterday, the nobleman who owns the flock made a feast for his servants and, when it ended, he gave each of us a silver coin. I'm giving that coin to You as a gift, O G-d, because You created everything and You feed all Your creatures, including me, Moshe the little shepherd!" Saying this, he threw the coin upward.
At that moment, the Baal Shem Tov saw a hand reach out from heaven to receive the coin. He said to his disciples, "This shepherd has taught me how to fulfill the verse: 'You shall love the L-rd your G-d with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.'"
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What is it that “he’s the only one who gets it”?
How can the intellect full of borrowed from others spiritual quotations, borrowed from others truth understand it? It is impossible for the intellect, for the mind too stuffed with collected from here and there junk, too full with dead knowledge, with parrot like word repetitions, but in fact totally empty from real knowing, how can intellect get the vibe of the divine truth?
To really “get it” a heart full of love is needed, love towards Existence, towards the all. Not a mind full of hateful projections upon other human beings, but a heart overflowing with love towards what is.
Only a heart full of love can be a heart full of God.
And how cannot it be? All around is love – earth is in love with sky and sky loves earth, trees are in love with birds and birds love trees, flowers are in love with bees and bees love flowers.
Only human mind has encaged its intellect in endless pretensions for being separately special above all Existence, only mind divides and draws ephemeral boundaries between people and things. By its very nature mind cannot love; mind is just an instrument, a device, a bio computer. The real lover is the being inside, the true master inside each one of us.
To “get it” is to connect to your inner most core being, to your center, which is also the center of the Universe, the abode of Love, Truth, Bliss.
"And God said! God said!"
It is the most wonderful thing imaginable that God would find a way to speak to us! The Most High seeks to communicate with... US! We are so unworthy to hear His Voice, and yet He seeks us out in the depths of our self-centered circumscribed consciousness because He cares enough to have something to SAY to us!
"And God said! God said!"
One day the Cantor - who is a haughty and rather arrogant man - goes into the Synagogue to see the Rabbi beating his chest and crying out in ecstasy "I am nothing! I am nothing!".
The Cantor thinks to himself: "the Rabbi has the reputation of being a saint, therefore there must be some benefit in this". So he goes up beside the Rabbi and, watching carefully to see how the Rabbi does it, starts beating his own chest and calling out "I am nothing! I am nothing!"
The sweeper comes in and is rather taken aback by the sight that greets him. "Why does the Rabbi say he is nothing? For he is surely the most wonderful man I have ever met. And the Cantor... He always seems to be such an important person, why is he saying he is nothing? Well, if these great men are saying they are nothing, then I - who really am nothing - should be doing the same." So the sweeper joins the other two.
The Cantor, noticing this, is irritated by it. Nudging the Rabbi, shaking him out of his ecstasy, he whispers across: "Rabbi! Rabbi! Look who thinks he is nothing...!"
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The three characters in this little Hasidic joke illustrate three different attitudes to 'humility'.
The sweeper is someone who, through his experiences of life, knows that he is nothing. He illustrates, if you like, 'natural humility'.
The Cantor is - I suspect - most of us here. He is someone who is concerned with how he looks to others - everything is made up of 'outwardness' to him: codes of behaviour, behaving like a 'spiritual man' is expected to behave, having a grave and serious attitude to the rituals and scriptures, watching and copying others.
But there is no depth to his spirituality - it is all image. And underneath the acting, there is bitterness and resentment of others.
The Cantor illustrates, too, that no amount of acting and behaving and studying and following codes of conduct and imitating others achieves any kind of transformation.
The Rabbi, on the other hand, knows his own impotence - that there is nothing he can do that can make him a more spiritual man. It is all a matter of Grace. And having realised this, he knows the true depths of his own nothingness. And into this nothingness the Divine pours His endless Theophanies.
How does one get from the state of the Cantor to the state of the Rabbi? Not by going back to the state of the sweeper, although some attempt this route. For the person obsessed with images, even the 'natural man' is a role.
Nor is it by doing 'more of the same' - more litanies, more observances, more attentive play-acting and modelling esteemed 'Spiritual Values'. This just makes matters worse.
The truth is, there is no way from here to there except by Grace. Only when one has realised that one's attempts have been futile - that all one's play acting hasn't really changed a single thing, and that one has simply internalised all one's vices - is there a real turning point.
So if there is an opportunity that shows one's true viciousness behind one's mask of virtue, don't scorn it. Because it may be God's way of showing the deviousness of the sense of separate selfhood.
The 'humble' man is not the not the man who is always speaking from a point of 'rightness', but the one who is happy to be exposed as wrong over and over again.
What is happening at this blog?
I want it to be like the old time.
Please bring back the old time.
Dear Mo'in,
May we all get it! Amen to your words.
Dear Vimesh,
What a heart warming story! A story of Sidq, station of pure sincerity. Jazakallah Khair for sharing this wonderful story.
I'Chaim,
Like Hebrew sages, Islamic scholar often begin their speech with the saying, "Qala Allah Subhanuwata'la"
'Said, God, Blessed be He!'
And that praise, Blessed be He, can sometime throw someone into the whirlpool of ecstasy when our open heart realize What Majesty and Glory we are glorifying.
When i first read the story, I was so captivated by this simple story and its effect, I was moved to share it as well.
Dear James,
"The truth is, there is no way from here to there except by Grace."
truth indeed is this. thanks for the insightful parable.
Two really interesting recent short video clips of Sufi master Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee talking about the emerging new order:
A New Archetypal Dance Begins
A Time of Transition
Very Nice,
Sadiq for GODS sake, keep continuing this blog.
You are a life sustainer for us
Thanks
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