How do we sincerely put Allah in place of our idols?

BismillahirRahmanirRahim

Question: How do we sincerely put Allah in place of our idols?

This is the beauty of our Shahadat, because it’s showing us the way, how to have La illaha illallah, which is to follow the Prophet.

So in order to do that you have to follow, you have to follow those ones who are following the Prophet (AS), not through your own understanding. It says to follow. The one who has no Sheykh, his Sheykh is sheytan. The one who has no Sheykh there will always be a guide for him, but the guide is not coming from Rahman, it is coming from sheytan, because we are in enemy territory right now. We’re living in the lowest, we are surrounded by dunya, we have our nafs, our sheytan is surrounding us, and the desires are there, you understand?

So, how are you going to put Allah there?

You’re going to ask for a guide to show you how to put Allah there. You have a guide, hold on strongly to your guide, and ask, and say, ‘teach me how. Please pray for me.’ Not to have a guide there, sitting there like an idol, once in a while you come and you put lokma in front of him and then you escape. People are doing that. Once in a while they come and they put like that, of course you’re going to get blessed, but it’s not going to be too much benefit, because this Tarikat, this way, it is the way of our lives, meaning every day, every moment this is guiding us.

What is guiding us? What our Sheykh is teaching us from the Holy Prophet (AS). From the moment we wake up every day to the moment we sleep we’re looking to see whether this fits into the teachings of the Prophet or not. And then we fight with ourselves, we say, ‘this doesn’t fit, but how am I going to make it fit? Today I cannot, tomorrow maybe I can, today I’m going to-‘you’re fighting every day, you’re hearing the voice of your Sheykh, you’re feeling his presence. You’re doing things that’s going to remind you of him, not to run away to do things that’s going to make you to forget about him. You’re doing things that makes you forget about him, doing things that makes you to forget about Sunnah and Rasulullah (AS), you ask for forgiveness, you run back. You fight, you don’t stop. You’re not comfortable. We cannot be comfortable in this world, this world is a prison. This world is a prison. We are blessed, yes, it is very hard for us because our Sheykh is away, our Sheikh is veiled, but we are blessed also because we’re feeling this world as a prison.  We can’t wait to escape from that. People have wrong understandings of what the Sheykhs are. They do, majority.

Sahabi-e-Kiram they don’t take the Holy Prophet (AS) for a joke or just as a wishing well. They were putting his will above their will. They were submitting to him to learn how to submit to Allah (SWT) correctly. They’re not learning how to submit to Allah according to the ego or according to culture or nationalism or family. People are learning Islam that way these days, according to their nationality, according to their family, according to their culture, according to their philosophy, according to their politics, according to their ideology, and they’re happy with it top to bottom, they are running to provide teachers like that, but not Murshids and not Evliya Allah. That’s why you’re seeing so many times they’re aiming, ‘oh, what are you?’ ‘I’m Pakistani,’ ‘you must have a Pakistani Sheykh. What are you?’ ‘I’m Turkish,’ ‘who are you following?’ ‘that one,’ ‘that one? He’s not Turkish. Why are you following that one?’ same everywhere. One time they’re saying to Bilal, saying that, ‘why are you following? He is Cypriot, Turkish. You are black, you have to have a black Sheykh.

People are coming to me and saying, ‘oh, I thought Tarikat means you have to follow the one who is from your own nationality, that’s what Tarikat means, and those ones who are pulling from everywhere, they must be leaning on something it’s not just because of them they are pulling, what is now your support?’ you understand? ‘Where are you learning from? Do you have permission now to pull people from this group, this group, this nationality and this nationality? Do you also have permission?’ Those ones in some ways they are speaking truth too, because they have no permission and they have knowledge how to reach out to different people, you think it is easy to reach out to a Chinese and reach out to an Arab at the same time? You think it is easy now to reach out to a poor, a rich, educated and not? Especially in this world now, there’s so much division, but to have that power now to pull everyone and to bring them somewhere good, not just to pull everyone, sit down and drink tea and coffee. And to pull people and to say that now, ‘put everything aside, Rasulullah (AS) comes first, because he’s teaching us the way to Allah.’ And before we were sent to this world we were all light and light has no nationality, no color. To put everything aside, to struggle against that too.

People coming, ‘why the Turks they are like that to me?’ I say, ‘be patient,’ Turks coming, ‘why the Pakistanis like that?’ I say, ‘be patient,’ everyone has their own thing. It happens. It happens inside a family. ‘Why father is like that?’ I say, ‘be patient,’ ‘why mother is like that?’ ‘be patient.’ This is normal. But just to understand that there is a family there it is so difficult for people, impossible for people to believe these days. They say, ‘you cannot trust him, he cannot speak Turkish, you cannot trust him, he does not speak Arabic,’ move away from all of this, look to the language of the heart.

So, I am happy because I’m remembering first days that I met Sheykh Effendi how happy I am to be pulled out from myself, my smallness of myself. Not to say I got bigger with him, but to feel that you’re not alone and you’re not small by yourself, you understand? You are still small and you are nothing, you are still dust under their feet, but at least now we’re under their feet. Before we’re under the feet of our ego, before we’re dust under the feet of sheytan, but now we say we want to be under their feet, alhamdulillah, shukr. Ah, just to have a simple understanding like this so many people are going to say, ‘this is not Sufism, you’re supposed to talk secrets.’ Now is the time to be busy with that? When our Grandsheykh and our Sheykh is saying non-stop, don’t be busy with that? It’s up to you too, it’s up to everyone. Everyone is going to be hung by his own feet like what the Turks they are saying, what? Every sheep is going to hang by their own feet. You know you cut the sheep when you’re hanging it like that, by their own feet. You’re not going to hang for me, I’m not going to hang for you. So you’re going to be responsible.

I’m responsible to say, and these are the words that our Sheykh has been saying to us for years. Anyone who disagrees, say. We’re trying to hold on. May our Sheykh understand our weakness and never make us to separate ourselves from him. Amin, fatiha.

Sheykh Lokman Efendi Hz  
Khalifah of SahibulSaif Shaykh Abdulkerim el Kibrisi (qs),
Osmanli Dergahi New York
27 Jamadial Awwal, 1440
2 February, 2019