There are many ways to Almighty God. All true ways have been derived from the Qur’an, but some are safer and more comprehensive and direct than others. The way I have derived from the Qur’an depends upon our perception and confession of helplessness and poverty before God’s Might and Riches, and upon affection and reflection.

This way is as sure as the way of loving God, or even safer, for it elevates you so as to be loved by God on account of your sincere devotion to Him. Your perception and acknowledgment of your poverty leads you to the Divine Name the All-Merciful. Affection is more effective than love, and leads to the Name the All-Compassionate. Reflection is brighter and more comprehensive than love, and leads to the Name the All-Wise. This way does not resemble the way of those Sufi orders that have developed a 10-step method to purify and sharpen their members’ 10 outer and inner senses or faculties and that prefer to recite God’s Names silently. Neither does it resemble those orders that practice public recitation and seek to purify their members from all defects contained in the soul’s seven stations. 

Our way consists of four steps and is the Shari‘a (or the truth) itself; it is not a Sufi order. Its fundamental principles consist of following the Sunna, performing the religious obligations, avoiding the major sins, performing the five prayers properly, and praising, glorifying, and exalting God after every prayer. The steps are as follows:

• The first step is expressed by: Do not justify and hold yourselves sinless (53:32).

• The second step is indicated by: Be not as those who forgot God–and so He caused them to forget their own selves (59:19).

• The third step is pointed to by: Whatever good visits you is from God; whatever evil befalls you is from yourself (4:79).

• The fourth step is shown by: All things perish except His Face and His good pleasure (28:88).

The following is a brief explanation of these four steps. 

First step: Never regard yourself as infallible and sinless. Since you love yourself first on account of your evil-commanding self, you will sacrifice anything to satisfy it. You praise yourself as if you were a deity, and believe yourself to be without defect. You strive so insistently to prove yourself free of guilt that others consider you to be full of self-love. You exploit the faculties given to you for praising and thanking God by glorifying your self. Given this, you resemble those people mentioned in: who takes as his [her] god his [her] own desires and fancies (25:43). You praise, rely on, and admire yourself. To be purified of such attitudes, regard yourself as fallible and liable—even susceptible—to error.

Second step: As the verse: Be not as those who forgot God—and so He caused them to forget their own selves teaches, you are oblivious and unaware of yourself. You do not want to remember death, although you always consider others mortal. You hold back when confronting hardship and rendering service, but believe that you should be the first one rewarded when it is time to collect the wages. Purifying yourself at this step involves carrying out your responsibilities, being prepared for death, and forgetting whatever reward you might obtain.

Third step: As the verse: Whatever good visits you is from God; whatever evil befalls you is from yourself teaches, your evil-commanding self always ascribes good to itself and feels conceited. In reality, you should perceive your defects and insufficiency and then thank and praise God for whatever good you can do. According to the meaning of: Prosperous is the one who purifies it (91:9), your purification at this step consists of knowing that your perfection lies in confessing your imperfection, your power in perceiving your helplessness, and your wealth in accepting your essential poverty and inadequacy.

Fourth step: As the verse: All things perish except His Face and His good pleasure teaches, your evil-commanding self causes you to consider yourself as completely free and existent in your own right. Furthermore, you claim divinity for yourself and rebel against your Creator, Who alone deserves worship. You can save yourself from this perilous situation only by perceiving the truth that everything, with respect to its own self, is essentially non-existent, contingent, ephemeral, and mortal. In addition, you must realize that you are existent, experiencing and experienced, only because you are a mirror reflecting the Majestic Maker’s Names and entrusted with various duties.

Here, you can purify yourself by perceiving that your existence lies in acknowledging your essential non-existence. Considering yourself to be self-existent, you fall into the darkest pit of non-existence. In other words, relying on your personal existence and thus ignoring the Real Creator causes your ephemeral, fire-fly-like personal existence to be drowned in the infinite darkness of non-existence. But if you abandon pride and egoism and recognize that you are only a mirror in which the Real Creator manifests Himself, you attain to infinite existence. One who discovers the Necessary Being, the manifestations of Whose Names cause all things to come into existence, is counted as having found everything.

Conclusion

This way is the method of affection and reflection, as well as that of recognizing your own incompetence and insufficiency. This four-stage way leads to its objective rapidly, since it is the easiest and most direct way. Recognizing your incompetence leads you to rely on God alone, for it means that you have freed yourself from your evil-commanding self’s influence. Love, regarded as the quickest route, can lead to the true Beloved only after the false, ephemeral beloved is no longer loved. This method is safer than other ways, for it obliges you to recognize your incompetence and ascribe all defects to yourself.

This way is a main highway, one that is much broader and more universal, for it allows you to attain a constant awareness of God’s presence without denying or ignoring the universe’s actual existence, as demanded by believers in the Unity of Being (Wahdat al-Wujud) or Unity of the Witnessed (Wahdat al-Shuhud). Instead, it admits the universe’s actual existence, as proclaimed in the Qur’an, by ascribing it directly to the Majestic Creator. It considers all things as mirrors reflecting the Divine Names’ manifestations, and views creation as manifestations of His Names and thus devoted to His service, as opposed to being self-existent and self-perpetuating. It saves you from heedlessness by allowing you to travel to Him through everything, by making you always aware of His presence. 

In short, this way considers beings as neither existent nor working on their own behalf; rather, it states that beings function as signs and officials of God, the All-Mighty.

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