Shaykh Muzaffer Ozak: It is easy to know God
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Photo: Sheikh Muzaffer and Sheikha Fariha. Courtesy the Muzaffer Ozak and Lex Hixon Archive Foundation.
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It is easy to know God. But to find the way to God is painfully hard. You cannot find God without passing beyond your own being. A Sufi does not become a Sufi by sitting on a prayer mat. The dervish way is not just the donning of a special turban and cloak. A Sufi is one who annihilates himself in the Truth, one whose heart is purified. The Sufi is someone who needs neither the sun by day nor the moon by night. For the Sufi is one who walks night and day by the Light of Truth. Sufism is poverty that can dispense with property.
How is one to know one's degree of saintliness and vigilance? Only if all parts of one's body join in the Remembrance of God can one be aware of such things. This is the kind of person who is called a Sufi.
(Shaykh Muzaffer Ozak)
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Recommended Reading:
'Love is the Wine: Talks of a Sufi Master in America'
by Sheikh Muzaffer Ozek Al Jerrahi Al Halveti (Author)
Purchase:
Description:
This book presents an intoxicating mix of essays to satisfy the spiritual thirst of those with long experience in Islam, as well as those encountering Sufism and the meaning of spiritual love for the first time. Themes including generosity, faith, self-knowledge, patience and love are developed with stories and teachings by Turkish Sufi master Sheikh Muzaffer Ozak. A mesmerising storyteller, master teacher, and prolific author in his native country, he was ideally suited to bring the richness of the Sufi tradition to the West. The chapters of this book, skilfully edited and compiled by the psychologist and Sufi teacher Dr Robert Frager, were derived from talks given during Sheikh Muzafffer's visits to New York and California over the last years of his life. Sheikh Muzaffer Ozak understood Westerners as almost no Sufi master before him has. His religious bookshop in Istanbul attracted hundreds of Western seekers visiting Turkey. In his travels, he initiated hundreds of Americans and Europeans into the Halveti Jerrahi Order, interpreted their dreams, and answered their questions about everything from theology and mysticism to marriage and earning a living. These stories and teachings are memorable, yet highly enigmatic, and meant to be told and retold. Like great spiritual parables, the themes are universal and their applications ageless. The astute reader will appreciate new levels of meaning in these profound teaching tales with each reading. "Love is the Wine" is a treasury filled with priceless items of Sufi wisdom.
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