Make a wish, Pray, and Keep the Aim: A Dialogue Between Sheikh Abdul Qadir Gilani & Annie Lou Staveley

‘Unio Mystika’, painting by

Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken,

also known as Bô Yin Râ.

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Today’s sharing from the Blue House of Via-HYGEIA is a contribution by our friend Emir Abdülkadir İnanç, who imagined a meeting (sohbet) between Sheikh Abdul Qadir Gilani, founder of the Qadiriyya Sufi order and Mrs Annie Lou Staveley, a senior student of Mister Gurdjieff and the dialog that could have flourished. Texts sources are: ‘Seekers of Truth and Reality‘ pages 996-1000, Sağlam Publishing for the Sheikh and ‘Aim and Wish‘ for Mrs Staveley available here. We express our gratitude to our friend Emir.

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Annie Lou Staveley

People often speak of the difficulties they have in formulating their aims. That is because they start from idea, from thought. Aim is not an idea, thought it has thought in it. Aim must be feeling-plus-thought. Start from a picture-from feeling.

Aim has to start with wish-with what you essentially wish to be. Take an egg. It has a hard shell around a tiny growing point surrounded by that which is needed to help it grow into what it is meant to become. In the center the growing point dreams of what it could be. But the wish is weak and is not effective against the protective shell which is its prison. That is, the egg is dormant as long as the wish of the potential growing point and the shell remain on the same level-this level. Our level.

However, wish has a magic ingredient. Being spirit it can reach a higher level from which it can receive help and strength.

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Abdul Qadir Gilani

To make a wish is proper business: it separates the servant from the Lord, so that the Lord may discern His servant, and the servant may draw upon His assistance and power.

Making a wish from the Sublime God preserves the servant from the sentiment of grandeur, the pitfall of hubris, and from the resistance to his Lord. It brings humility and the understanding that the servant is the one who is lowered and in need of his Lord.

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Annie Lou Staveley

The shell or mechanical life has to be broken if the feeble embryo is to continue to develop. It vacillates between fearful apprehension and eager exhilaration. The wayside is covered with the corpses of embryos that have made it up to this point but go no further; the wish to become was less or equal in strength to the wish to be safe. Still, there are a few who continue in the processes of becoming and begin to ask: How can I escape from this prison-the prison that is myself? As the dream that I already am, what I could be, no longer satisfies, the prison becomes less and less endurable, and it becomes more difficult to deceive myself.

It is, of course, a dangerous point and very easy to lose one’s bearings. There are many processes to be completed, and dangers to be avoided, much excess baggage to be jettisoned. I cannot do it by myself-and there is no one to do for me.

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Abdul Qadir Gilani

When the spiritually poor musters these qualities in his essence and soul, cleans his being of everything other than his Protector, and severs his heart from its material inclinations, firm in the belief that they only guide to loss and suffering, he then truly becomes a disciple. All else other than his Sublime Lord appears as mere distraction and illusion.

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Annie Lou Staveley

…Direct your aim to what is above, to what is ahead. Waste no more time trying to correct your past which you cannot do anyhow. You are the sum of all your experiences, the essence of them. Start from there. Look to your own star, to what you are meant to be . The light that comes from that will show you what needs to be transformed-not all at once, but very little by very little. But if you continue to look backwards you may suffer the fate of Lot’s wife. Or you may, like Orpheus, destroy what you most love, your Eurydice.

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Abdul Qadir Gilani

“They wish to see His Face without a moment’s pause” (18/28)

In the Holy Books that He sent to some of His prophets God the Sublime states:
“Among the beloved he who is My most Beloved servant is the one who worships me to fulfill my Lordship and wishes nothing but to fulfill it.”

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Annie Lou Staveley

Bringing it down to practicality, how does one go on from day to day? Try, for a time, to have an aim of aspiration. First ponder: What is aspiration? To what do I Aspire? How can I relate my aim to this in a real but small way? Small enough so that it can be realizable.

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Abdul Qadir Gilani

“Them are the forbearing and the compassionate” (74/56)

So in this case, it rests with His Generosity and Kindness to seize the reins for his disciple, be of evidence to him and nourish him with the world and what it can offer. And so He should bestow even more to his disciple.

Later on He adorns his servant with ranks of spiritual ascension, His incandescence, bounty, and a life so pure that God Almighty confers only to His Friends and His Beloved. Thus the Sublime God states:

“Not a single soul knows of that which will brighten his eyes, but thus remain reserved for him. All this to come are fruits and recompense for his work and toil towards Him ” (32/17)

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Annie Lou Staveley

I almost forgot the most important thing. Don’t be afraid. No matter what happens around you, or to you, don’t be afraid. The plan is good.

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To conclude

from the Holy Quran

“You cannot wish anything

unless it is He who wishes” (81/29)

Elhamdülillah!

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