The tariqah is not the goal.
The tariqah is the means to the goal.
Those who wear their wird as a cloak of pride
To look down upon those outside a formalized tariqah
Have fallen in love with the means.
And turned veils into gods.
And lost touch with the real goal.
Those who pride themselves on labels.
And boast that they are a shadhili,
naqshbandi,
qadiri
chisti
rifai
Have returned to tribalism as their deen.
Favoring their group and members
Over other lovers of God.
Those who use their tariqah
as a means of asserting their spiritual “superiority”
over others.
Have defeated the purpose of the tariqah itself
Which mandates humility, loss of egoic self, and husnul dhun.
In the end, the goal is Love for God
and to annihilate ourselves in Him.
Anyone stuck to veils along the path.
Will never progress on the path of love.
“The goal of the murshid is to remove the veils between God and his servant.”
-Shaykh Muhammad Jilani (direct descendant of Shaykh Abdul Qadir Jilani)
“Pass beyond form, escape from names! Flee titles and names toward meaning!”
-Shaykh Rumi
M IV 1285
One of the main goals of the Tariqah is to rid one’s heart of all reprehensible vices (such as pride, conceit, hatred, greed, arrogance, and more), and replace it with praiseworthy attributes (such as humility, forbearance, love, generosity, mercy, etc.). Once the heart is emptied of all egoic tendencies, it can then become receptive to the Divine light and Oresence. This Presence can then permeate the heart and radiate outward into the world.
The moment the murids (students/disciples of a particular tariqah) begin to assume that they are spiritually superior (or have higher spiritual aspirations) than those not in a formalized tariqah, they are treading dangerous waters. God chooses whomever He wants to bestow His secrets, and those lucky enough to receive them may or may not be in a tariqah, they may not even be Muslim. The concept of looking down upon others goes against the very concept of the tariqah. May God guide all murids back to the path of humility.
