To be in search of Allah is not to be disturbed by anything

He  who seeks peace is disturbed by everything that is not peace.

He who seeks joy is disturbed by all that is not joy.

He who seeks enlightenment is disturbed by all that is not enlightenment.

He who seeks silence is disturbed by everything that is not silence.

Those who seek nothing in particular are disturbed by nothing in particular.

The slightest search causes tension in the face of anything contrary to that search."

 

After reading this text by Yvan Amar, a friend of mine, who is familiar with the parallels I often draw between Zen and Sufi spirituality, asked me: "So whoever seeks Allah is disturbed by everything that is not Allah?

 

Let's meditate on this question together.

 

First of all, what does it mean to "seek Allah"? Seeking Allah, i.e. the All-That-Is or seeking "Tawhid", Divine Oneness and Unity, is in reality seeking nothing in particular, for it is seeking the Absolute. We could therefore say that nothing can "disturb" those who "seek Allah", to echo the Zen teaching quoted above.

 

According to the Sufis, "Shirk" (often translated as "associationism") consists in seeking something in particular in order for the soul to find satisfaction, even if that something is a particular Color or a specific Manifestation of the All-There-Is. It's therefore having a particular request, whereas seeking All-Ah is, on the contrary, being receptive to all Manifestations of the All-That-Is without requiring any manifestation in particular for the soul to be satisfied.

 

I think that the meaning of the words “search” or « seek » as used in the passage quoted is similar to the notion of "requesting” that I've put forward on several occasions, notably in a teaching given in 2020 in which I proposed a distinction between three modes of functioning of the human brain, or three different postures of the human being, which are interrogating, requesting or demanding and questing. These different postures are expressed in different ways:

 

- the interrogator comes with accusations to validate or doubts to verify,

- the requestor/demander has particular expectations that must be satisfied and specific needs to met,

- the one in quest pursues the Truth, free of all expectations...

 

The requestor will be systematically disappointed as soon as his or her expectations are not met. The one in quest, on the other hand, is necessarily in search of the All-There-Is, which implies that he or she has no particular expectation of God, other than to be in His Company, in His Presence, and under His Gaze, which is already and always the case. After all, isn't that the nature of true friendship? What do we look for in a friend we truly love, if not their mere presence?

 

In Sufi education proper, the only students who reach enlightenment are precisely those who manage to attain this level of "disinterest" in said enlightenment. These are the ones who have no expectations of their sheikh, other than to be in their company, in their presence and under their gaze. These students thus trained in the school of unconditional friendship and love gradually become ready to become friends of the Friend.

 

We may now wonder about the term "to be disturbed" used in this text, which may be interpreted by readers unaccustomed to the non-dualistic frequency as an invitation to moral, political and ethical disengagement, and a refusal to take a stand in the world. Not being disturbed doesn't mean "liking everything", or "agreeing with everything and letting it be". There are many things that "Allah", the All-There-Is, or the Universal Consciousness and its resonance in the healthy human heart, do not like, such as betrayal, slander, defamation, abuse, and injustice. However, none of this is "disturbing" for The Divine, for the Universal Consciousness, or for the human soul in search of the All-There-Is. God is not disturbed by anything, and the seeker is invited to welcome all that is without being "disturbed" and destabilized even by things he or she doesn't like, and is right not to like.

 

It was not with a soul destabilized or "disturbed" in the sense of the Zen text quoted above, that the Prophets, the Sages, the Sufi or Zen spiritual masters committed themselves to the path of struggle to re-establish peace, justice and goodness in humanity. Rather, it was with a soul satisfied with God and with what was destined for them that they took this path of commitment to the Good.

 

Committed, yes, but not disturbed.

 

Only this "satisfaction", this "ridha", this inner peace, or what personal development today calls "acceptance", will enable the human soul to transcend its context, whatever it may be, to invest itself fully and consciously in the Way of the Beautiful, the Great and the Good. It's in this space of peace and harmony that the soul can begin to act on its context, and no longer just react to its context. I've spoken about this in various essays on spiritual activism, including one on Imam Hussein's spiritual activism in March in 2016.

 

There are several dimensions to the human being, and human texts, like sacred texts, address one or the other in turn, and things can be seen and perceived from different angles, or rather different inner frequencies. The Qur'an, for example, is a religious text that addresses different dimensions of our being. For example, there are verses that remind us that "Everything comes from God", and others that say that "Evil comes from you". How can we understand and differentiate them? Doesn't this seem contradictory at first glance? The first message may seem dangerous to those who hear it as "accept everything and don't take sides", just as the second may seem dangerous to those who see it as blaming man for the difficult things he encounters in life. When in reality, the two messages complement each other: the first is in the frequency of non-duality, while the second is in the frequency of duality…