Submit Yourself As A Seeker

BismillahirRahmanirRahim

Alhamdulillah Alhamdulillah, alhamdulillahi rabbil alamin wasalatu wa salamu ala rasulina muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi ajmain nahmadulllahu ta’ala wa nastaghfiruhu wa nashadu an-lailaha ilallahu wahdahu la sharika lah wa nashadu anna sayyidina muhammadin abduhu wa habibuhu wa rasuluhu salallahu alayhi wa ala alihi wa azwajihi wa ashabihi wa atbaihi khulafail rashidin, mahdin min ba’di wuzerail immeti alal tahkik khususan minhum alal amidi khulafai rasulillahi ala tahqeeq umara il mu’mineen hazreti abu bakr wa umar wa uthman wa ali wa ala baqiyati wa sahabai wa tabieen ridwanallahu ta’ala alayhim ajmain.

Ya ayyuhal mu’minun al hadirun ittaqullaha ta’ala wa ati’uh inna allaha ma allathina-ttaqaw wallathina hum muhsinun. Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen. Wa Salatu wa Salamu ala Ashrafil Ambiya’i wa Imam al-Mursaleen Sayyidina wa Sayidinna Mawlana Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi ajmain.

All praises are due to Allah, Lord of the Universes, Who says in the Holy Kuran, in Surah az-Zumar: BismillahirRahmanirRahim “Say: “O My servants who believe- fear your Lord. For those who do “ihsaan,” who do good in this world, there is good, and Allah’s earth is spacious. Truly the patient will be paid their wages in full without measure.” Say (ya Muhammad (SAWS)): “Truly, I have been ordered to worship Allah, being sincere to Him in religion. And I have been ordered to be the first (among you) of the Muslims.” Say, “Truly, if I should disobey my Lord, I fear the doom of a tremendous day.” Say, “It is Allah I worship, sincere to Him in my religion. So worship what you will besides him.” Say, “Truly, the losers are those who will lose themselves and their families on the Day of Judgment. Ah, that will be a clear loss!” They will have canopies of fire above them and canopies of fire beneath them. With this Allah does warn His Servants. So then, O My servants- fear Me! And those abstain from worshipping Taghut and turn back to Allah- for them is good news. So give good news to My servants- (those who) hear advice and follow the best of it. Those are the ones whom Allah has guided, and such are the men of understanding.” SadaqAllahul Azim (39:10-18)

May all peace and blessings be upon the Sultan of the Prophets, the Master of the Messengers, the Imam of the Two Qiblas, Sayyidina Muhammad (AS). May peace and blessings be upon him, and upon his noble family, and upon his blessed companions, especially upon the Four Khulafa-e-Rashideen, Hz. Abu Bakr el-Siddik, Hz. Umar el-Faruk, Hz. Osman el-Ghani, and Hz. Ali el-Murtaza, and all those who follow them until the Last Day. May peace and blessings be upon the Khwajagan of this Most Noble Naksibendi Way, the Inheritors of Rasulallah. May peace and blessings be upon the Ottoman Padishahs, who protected the Way of the Holy Prophet (AS). May Allah love those who love them. May Allah curse those who hate them.

Ya Ayyuhal Mu’minoon! O Believers! Alhamdulillah that our Lord has let us to reach the second Jummah of the Holy Month of Muharram. May He (SWT) accept our weak service in the Day of Ashura. If He grants us life to reach to another Ashura, may we again be blessed to worship in the Company of Believers; may we not be cast into the punishment of separation.

O Believers! Our reason of creation is to know Allah and to worship Allah. When we leave this world, we are going to be questioned about whether or not we fulfilled that reason of creation. As our Sheykh, Sahib el-Sayf Sheykh Abdul Kerim el-Kibrisi el-Rabbani (KS) is saying: “If you don’t know the meaning of life, if you don’t know what you have been created for, you are in big trouble. Prophets have been sent, Evliya have been sent to remind us why we are here. What is the reason of man’s creation? He has been created to know his Lord, to worship his Lord. When you are going to the Judgment Day, before going to the Judgment Day, entering into the grave is coming to you. Angels are coming and asking, ‘Who did you live for? Why did you live? What did you do? How much of the life that Allah has given to you, you have lived for His sake?’ Now, you and I, everyone who is hearing these words must think about it. And if you are sincere about that, thinking really sincerely about that, do you think then you are going to become proud ones? Or arrogant ones? Or stubborn ones? Or are you going to attack those who are trying to take you out from the mess that you are in? How are you going to? Impossible. Then intelligence enters to your heart, to your head. Intelligence forces you to think a little bit because now there is an unknown something waiting for you in front of you. It doesn’t matter who you are and where you are from. The highest title that you are going to reach, you are going to get, is to be servants.”

The Evliya, they are coming to take us out of the mess that we have made to ourselves, and put us back on the road of living this life for the reason we are here- to know Allah and to worship Allah. This is not an easy task- but Allah, through His Mercy, has sent us ways through the Prophets and the Saints. They are the Guides to how He wants us to live. Imam al-Ghazali (KS) is telling us that Isa (AS) said: “Make yourselves beloved to Allah by hating (whom he hates). Bring yourselves nearer to Allah by moving further from them, and seek Allah’s favor by (getting the displeasure of those that Allah hates).” They asked, “Ya Ruhullah, then who will we associate with?” Isa (AS) said, “Associate with those whose presence will remind you of Allah, whose words will increase your service, and whose actions will make you desire the Ahiret.” (Ihya Ulumuddin).

Being with one who will guide you is the teaching of Prophets. But to take benefit from that Guide, one must submit himself as a seeker. If someone comes to the door of a Teacher thinking he already has knowledge, then he will never learn anything. We are in the day of the Mevlid of the Pir of our Tarikat, Khwaja Shah-i-Naksibend. He (KS) once said to Khwaja Alauddin: “Every morning when I leave the house I say, “Maybe a murid will be putting his head at the Dergah.” But I find all people to be “Sheykhs,” with no murid among them.” And the Friends of Allah speak the Truth. If we have understanding, this is a very big warning. This Way, the Way of our Sheykh, it is very real. It is not a way to give philosophy and to give theories. The Sheykh brings your ego in front of you and makes you face it. If you turn your face and are stubborn and say, this isn’t me, then that ego is going to ride you and make you become angry with the Sheykh, and eventually, to become an enemy to your Sheykh. This is the pattern of sheytan. But if a man, every day, comes to the Presence of the Sheykh with what our Sheykh called the “empty cup,” then he is going to benefit. If a person comes with an empty cup, then that time he is coming to the Dergah as a murid. If his cup is full, then in reality he is putting on the fake jubbe of thinking he is a Sheykh- and no partnership is accepted in the Divine Threshold.

Our Sheykh is giving us this teaching for years, saying: Association, sohbet is important for people who are looking to find ways to get rid of their own wrong characteristics and to try to become better ones. Association does not give anything to people who are arrogant and stubborn. It does not give anything to those people who come to association thinking that they know so much. It only raises their arrogance and stubbornness. Everything we say, they take it and they try to understand it according to their own egoistic understanding. It is impossible for somebody to understand through his ego what the Prophets were speaking, or to understand the people who inherited secrets from the Prophets. It doesn’t matter if you are with the Sheykh one day, one year, ten years or a hundred years. Every sohbet comes with different secrets in their own times. Sheykh may be giving the same sohbet everyday, but every day different secrets are coming out. If you come, you sit and instantly you say, “Eh, I already know this”, then you come with what you know and you go with what you know. You don’t take anything. If you are coming here with a full cup then you are not taking anything. Whatever you put, it’s not going to take it. If you are coming here with an empty cup then you are going to find your cup getting filled again.

Every time you are tasting from that cup you are going to know that it’s different than what was in it before. But if a person is coming with a full cup, then he is only going to take what he brought. Nothing else. And if he continues that way then Sheytan will be guiding that one. Sheytan will say, “You see this one? This word from him is wrong, that is wrong, this is wrong, that is wrong” and that is the time you hang yourself because you are finding wrong in your Guide. You lost the case. Of course, if a man, if a murid builds a close connection with the Sheykh and the Sheykh is able and capable to scream and to curse at that murid and if that murid is not taking from screaming and cursing, then that murid is never going to take from sohbet. The murid, if he is not taking from the anger of the Sheykh, seeing that Sheykh is angry because he is doing this, and if he is not taking something for himself to fix himself, then he is not going to take it from sohbet. Impossible. But we still have to say.”

Sahib el-Sayf’s words are the truth. And what are these words, what are they teaching us? That until a man understands that he has sickness inside him, until he understands that he has come to a hospital, and that he must submit to the treatment of the Doctor, that man is going to continue to be sick. If a murid insists on not changing, if a murid insists on thinking that he doesn’t need to change, then he is going to become a weapon in the hands of sheytan, and sheytan will use that weapon to harm the murid, to try to harm the jemaat, and to try to harm the Sheykh. We have seen this happening over and over and over again. Our Sheykh is teaching us to think deeply, as Allah is ordering us in so many ayats of the Quran e-Kerim to think, to analyze ourselves, and not to hide from facing the reality of the evil of our egos. The Sheykh is the Perfect Mirror, our Sheykh, and he is there to show us the reality of that ego so that we can fix it before we die. So we must think, and that real thinking, under the guidance of the Sheykh, is going to bring a man to Ikhlas. This is guidance. This is irsyad. This is not just teaching ilm. Hz. Junayd el-Baghdadi (KS) is saying: “Verily, Allah has servants who use their ‘aql. When they use their ‘aql, they move, they act. When they act, they are sincere. Sincerity calls them to all of the gates of righteousness.” (Ihya Ulumuddin).

So one way we can test if we are sincere or not is to see if we are moving, if we are serving, if we are getting up, if we are doing something for the sake of Allah. If we are being lazy and sitting still and then complaining, “I don’t know why I’m not able to change,” then we know this is a sign that hypocrisy has taken over us. The foundation must be sincerity. Sultan el-Evliya Sheykh Mevlana Muhammad Nazim Adil el-Hakkani (KS) is saying: “Allah Almighty asks of His servants to worship with Ikhlas, sincerity, purity. He asks for pure worship, which means to have a pure heart, a heart that has nothing in it but its Lord. Each of us knows which side of himself is not true, or which of his characteristics is not good. We must strive to have pure hearts. That is ‘Jihad’; to fight with one’s bad characters and change them into good ones. Everything that occupies your heart and keeps you from your Lord makes your heart impure. You must try to keep everything away from your heart, but Allah. We say that the heart is for Allah alone. Man is created for the love of Allah Almighty. Any time you put your love in this dunya, it will be wasted. But if you put your love with Allah, with the Prophet, with your Sheykh, or with your fellow believers, you may find that love here and hereafter; it is never going to be wasted. Love is the most precious, most valuable, most expensive thing, that the Sons of Adam they have been given.”

Our Sheykh formed this community and this Jemaat. If a person wants to check if he is living sincerely, he can check that sincerity by seeing how he is with the Sheykh and the Jemaat. Hz. Ali el-Murtaza (KW) is saying: “Truly, the believers are people with good will and love for each other, even if their lands and countries are far apart. The hypocrites are people with ill will for each other.” (Tarikh Dimashq). So which one are we? We are in this Jemaat, either nearby or far away physically. But we can check- do I have good will, good will and love to the members of this Jemaat? Knowing that nobody is perfect, understanding that people come with their own mistakes and their own faults? Am I thinking and running every day to serve these ones, to help others, to be useful to others? Or do I have ill will, always complaining and only seeing all the faults of others, becoming busy with that and not become busy with your own faults? And has my heart become bitter and hard with bad feeling toward others? These are the testers that have been given to us by the Prophets and the Saints to check where we are in relation to our Lord. A man cannot be bad to others and then claim that he is knowing and worshipping his Lord. It is impossible.

Our Sheykh is teaching us, saying: “How are you going to know that your Lord is happy with you? How are you going to know that your Lord is happy with you? The sign of that is when your Master is happy with you, that is the beginning of the steps that now your Prophet (AS) and your Lord is going to be happy with you…Don’t be disobedient to them. Pull yourselves away and try to live a simple life so that you will not be connected so much in so many ways. That’s how we live, elhamdulillah. We pull ourselves from that community and we are trying to build our own community. We are trying to bring all these orders that are given to us through the Holy Prophet (AS). My duty is to bring the community together, to watch, to make you understand what is right and what is wrong and to work on people. Your duty is to accept when I say, “This is right and this is wrong.” That way we can build. Otherwise, we are not going to be able to build and in the Judgment Day you are going to be responsible. Not only me. You will be responsible. You will be accounted for whether you did what is for you or not. Everyone knows what is for them to do and everyone knows what is their duty in this world. This Jemaat looks very small but, who knows, maybe it is one of the biggest works. For me it is one of the biggest works. We are not trying to change the world. We are trying to build something. And whoever helps in that, whoever spends on the way, they will be blessed. Whoever tries to put barricades knowingly or without knowing, they will be cursed. Our duty is to try to do what is for us today. We are not carrying the responsibilities for tomorrow or years ahead that is coming. But when we do what is for us today then we will become beloved to our Lord and when we pass away from this life even if the mission is not complete, that means it was not supposed to be for us to complete it, but we finished our duty and we go out clean from this life.” Sahibulsaif speaks the Truth.

May we keep our duty and promise to our Sheykh, may we be part of his mission, and may we never become barricades to his mission. We are ending with the words of Sultan el-Evliya, saying: “We are weak servants but we are disobedient servants. We are weak and at the same time disobedient. We must leave disobedience. Or else we will be whipped. May Allah Zul Jalal wal Kamal wal Jamal treat us with Mercy. Ya Rabbi, forgive us. We are weak servants. O Master of heavens and earth, our Lord, there is no limit to Your grants. There is no beginning or end to Your forgiveness. O our Lord, for the sake of Your Habib-I Kibriya, give us strength. Give us strength to perform Your servanthood and protect the honor of Your servanthood, so we can love You. So we can respect You. So we can be honored with Your servanthood. Fatiha.”

Sheykh Lokman Efendi Hz
Khalifah of SahibulSaif Shaykh Abdulkerim el Kibrisi (qs),
Osmanli Dergah, New York
14 Muharram 1444
12 August 2022