Muhasabah

There are times in life when we are moving forward fulfilling our vision, and then there are other times when we take an account of where we are. We reach a certain point when we must assess what we have accomplished, what we have learned, and what are the results of a particular period of time.

One of the most important practices on the Sufi Path is “muhasabah,” which we can translate as retrospection, assessment, accounting, or reckoning. When you finish a meal in a restaurant in Turkey,for instance, you get the “hisab,” or what we call in English the bill. The tri-literal root of the word (hsb) has to do with accounting. Muhasabah, of course, is more than paying the bill, but that is part of it.

Whether you make known what is in your souls or hide it,
God will bring you to account for it. [Qur’an 2: 284]

If we could see ourselves objectively we would be aware of how we have spent our lives, what debts (or karma) we have created, and what we need to do to “pay” for our actions and our lives. Actually, if we were wise, we would engage in this retrospection every day, assessing our actions, our emotions, and our thoughts.

Some people are by temperament or conditioning extremely self-critical, while others are not self-critical enough. A good psychologist might recommend that we observe our bodily sense, a sense of contraction that comes with this unhealthy blaming, and through that to acknowledge what needs to be acknowledged in order to move to that higher level of acceptance from which real change is possible.

Most of the time most human beings are seeing their lives through the criteria of the desires of the ego—in other words, in terms of what gives us pleasure, or fulfills our vanity and pride. The spiritual seeker, however, is living for something greater. A spiritual seeker measures with the heart, in the light of perfection contained within the heart, which we call Spirit, or Ruh. True Muhasabah is possible when we are in a state of presence, not lost in the labyrinth of self-blame. Muhasabah is seeing from a higher level of compassionate conscience not neurotic self-condemnation.

Now returning to the idea of assessment, there is the daily assessment, the yearly assessment, and longer cycles of time, and the final assessment that comes at the end of a life, an assessment we should never forget. Divine revelation reminds us of this ultimate assessment, which the ego may find rather inconvenient or disturbing.

What makes Muhasabah difficult is that our perception is caught in a web of “wahm,” or relative delusion. We are deluded by the many strategies of the ego, strategies that ignore the highest values that are not easy for the ego to believe in and depend on. The ego is continually calculating its own best advantage, while the Spirit calls us to act unselfishly, without thinking of ourselves too much. The call of Spirit is even likely to seem irrational. The self-sacrificing generosity of love does not make sense to the practical minded ego.

Muhasaba is difficult because the web of delusion that distorts our perception is not completely lacking a vision of goodness and beauty. Our everyday desires do have something to do with a deeper yearning even if these desires are colored in condition by lesser motives. Our desires are not necessarily evil, but shortsighted, trivial, incomplete. Their banality can only be glimpsed from the perspective of higher truths. Only then can their poignant insufficiency be revealed.

To follow the call of Spirit is to cooperate with the miraculous. The highest values have an element of the miraculous about them. When we can give ourselves over to complete trust, unqualified generosity, unconditional love, it seems as if something in nature conspires to support us.

It is true that the ego would like to appropriate the miraculous for itself—this is what many self-help programs attempt to do. But what is truly miraculous requires that the ego become nothing, and surrender to Truth, the Real, al Haqq.

If we engage sincerely in Muhasaba we are progressively dismantling the false self. We are becoming free of reaction and negativity. Every night we can look at our day and ask ourselves: Have I been patient? Have I been non-judgmental? Have I been just? Every day we replace selfishness with generosity, resentment with patience, self-importance with humility, partiality with impartiality, judgment with compassion, and so be liberated from the toxicities of the ego.

Muhasaba attracts the Divine Mercy and atones for our mistakes. The universe has a way of rushing to support the one who in all humility calls out for help; while the one who is self-satisfied, who justifies the lies of the false self, is erecting a huge barrier to Divine Mercy.

Yet it is not efficacious to become compulsive or neurotic about self-reckoning. Muhasaba can be a friendly coach, developing conscience in us by small, progressive steps. Self-observation can be a companion on the way, helping us to make our tomorrow better than our yesterday.

O you who keep the faith be conscious of God and observe your responsibility to him. And let every soul consider what it has prepared for tomorrow. [Qur’an 59:18]
(source: sufism.org)

2 Poems by Hussein Ibn Mansur Al Hallaj

“The expressions of his intimate moments with the Beloved are like a powerful thunderstorm that sweeps the heart with terrifying power and yet brings serenity, life-giving water, freshness, and renewal to the heart, and occasionally a rainbow upon the horizon.”

A friend of my daughter, Nedda, wanted to meet me. He was a young seeker, very interested in the Sufi Path. I picked Justin up at the train station and we spent the afternoon together talking. He told me how he grew up in a non-religious family, “basically atheist,” he explained telling me that he never learned how to pray. Then he attended a talk by Andrew Harvey at Omega and what he heard lit the fire of longing in his heart to communicate with the Divine. “But I didn’t know how!” he told me. It was then that I was awestruck at God’s amazing ways.

The night before I met Justin I was unable to sleep. I got up and for some reason felt an urge to read from the Diwan of Hallaj. I opened up the book and came upon a selection that moved my heart in a very deep way and I felt I needed to translate it. Then I came upon another selection that was also very moving and I translated it. By 4:00 am I was done with the translations and after prayer I fell asleep.

Now as I sat listening to Justin it became clear to me what had happened last night. “Would you like to hear how one of the greatest of all Sufis spoke to God?” I asked him. “Oh, yes! I would love to,” Justin replied eagerly. So I got up with tears welling up in my eyes and flowing freely down my face, and went to get my laptop amazed at how Love works and awed and humbled by how we are placed in service by Divine Decree. I felt the presence of Sidi Al Hussein ibn Mansur smiling gently and nodding as if to say, “Now you see what love does!”

Hussein ibn Mansur was born in the second half of the 9^th century in Persia. His father was a cotton carder and he learned the same skill, hence his nickname Al Hallaj. His family moved to Wasit in Iraq when he was a child. From his early teens he was drawn to learning and spirituality. He studied with some of the eminent Sufi teachers of his time such as Sahl Al Tustari and Amru ibn Uthman Al Makki.

In addition to being a spiritual seeker, Al Hallaj was also a devoted activist, publicly supporting the oppressed people of his society and siding openly with rebellions against the tyrannical rule of the Abbasid State at the time. These rebellions were deeply rooted to the martyrdom of Imam Hussein and this connected Al Hallaj to the profound mystical teachings of the Prophet and his descendents. Al Hallaj’s devotion to the spiritual path and his support for the weak and oppressed made him popular among the people of Basra where he lived at the time. The Abbasid State was gripped in the throes of highly threatening political rebellions and saw the loss of its western dominions to the newly-emerged Fatimid State in Egypt that basically split the Caliphate into two empires. Al Hallaj’s activism and growing popularity eventually made him an easy target for the wrath of the Abbasid authorities and eventually led to long imprisonment and eventual martyrdom.

Al Hallaj was fearless in his actions, unswerving in his commitment to truth, and welcoming of his own death, repeatedly asking people to kill him for his infidelity (few understood what he really meant, for they saw a pious devoted man dedicated to long acts of worship and spiritual work).

Underlying his fearsome courage was a beautiful tenderness that was forgiving, loving, and filled with wisdom. His deep spirituality was expressed in the most exquisitely poetic way that at the same time is filled with powerfully raw and naked power. His words were imbued with the perplexity that overwhelm a heart drowned in the ocean of love. He spoke in ways that shocked ordinary people but awakened and were understood and cherished by his fellow travelers.

The expressions of his intimate moments with the Beloved are like a powerful thunderstorm that sweeps the heart with terrifying power and yet brings serenity, life-giving water, freshness, and renewal to the heart, and occasionally a rainbow upon the horizon.

Al Hallaj often expressed his understanding of Oneness in paradoxical and beautifully poetic ways. For example he was once asked about the path to God and he replied, “A path is between two points but there is nothing beside God!” He was asked to clarify and he replied with a poem:

Is this you or is it I in two deities?

Far be it from you, far be it from confirming duality

Forever there is Hu-ness for you in my La-ness

Over all, my pain is the confusion of two faces

Where is your essence from me where I used to see?

For my essence now appears where there is no “where”

And where is your face sought with my sight?

Is it in the inner heart or in the eye’s seeing?

Between you and me is an I-ness interfering with me

            Take away then with your I-ness my I-ness from between us!

And here are the two selections that our Master, Al Hallaj, gifted to our young seeker, Justin, so that his heart may know…

Here I am at your command, here I am!

You are my secrecy and my intimacy

Here I am at your command, here I am!

You are my purpose and my meaning

I call you, but it is you who calls me to you

Did I call out to you or did you call out to me?

You are the essence of the source of my existence, you are the reach of my resolve

You who are my logic, and my expressions, and my gestures

You are all of me entirely, you are my hearing and my seeing

You are my whole, and some of me, and my parts

You are all of me entirely, and all of it is entirely obscured

And all of you entirely are covered in my meaning

My soul clings to you with intense love until it is spent in ecstasy

And I become a hostage to my longing

I cry over my sorrow, over separation voluntarily from my homeland

And my adversaries please me with my own wailing

I approach but my fear sets me back, and I am anxious from a longing

That takes hold of my deeply hidden insides

What shall I do about an expansiveness that I am in such love with?

My Friend! My healers have despaired of my affliction

They say: take your cure of him from him.

And I say to them: O people, is the affliction cured by the affliction?

My love for my Friend pains me and afflicts me

How then shall I complain to my Friend of my Friend?

I gaze upon him and my heart knows him

Nothing can be explained of him except my gestures

O woe to my soul from this soul of mine,

O such sorrow in me over me for I am the source of my trials

I am like one who is drowned and his hand is seen raised up for help

While he is in an ocean of water

No one knows what I have seen

Except what shows in me of my grief

And that one who knows what I’ve seen of such intense love

In his will is my death and my life!

You are the purpose of my seeking! You are what I hoped for! You are my stillness!

You are the life of my soul! You are my faith and my world!

Tell me, upon my life, you who are my hearing and my seeing,

Why this going back and forth in my farness and exile?

If you are veiled from my eye in the unseen

            This heart still keeps you in farness and in nearness.

I saw my Rabb with the eye of my heart

I said: who are you? He said: You

“Where” with you has nowhere

And there is nowhere where you are

Illusion with you has no illusion

Can illusion know where you are?

You are the one who gathers every “where”

To nowhere, so where are you?

In my annihilation my annihilation perished

And in my annihilation I found you

In the effacement of my name and the outline of my form

I asked about me so I said: You.

My inmost secret pointed to you

Until I was annihilated to myself, and you remained

You are my life and my heart’s secret

Wherever I may be, you are.

You encompass everything with knowledge

All that I see is you

So grant forgiveness my God

            For there is nothing I wish for other than you