Journey through the Heart:
How to Truly Make Changes in Your Life
If you’d like to go deeper we invite you to explore our Foundations course which will help you heal yourself or others, find or improve relationships, expand your spiritual growth, open your heart + connect you to the Divine.
Video Transcript:
See, there are forces within us which, in Sufism, we call Nafs al-Ammara, the Nafs that are commanding us towards weakness, commanding us towards our shadow, commanding us towards what we shouldn’t do. The Nafs al-Ammara want you to believe that you are not capable of changing.
Every human being has Nafs al-Ammara within them until they overcome it, they transmute that place in themselves. So, if you’re somebody who, when you look inside yourself, you feel that you can’t do it and you’re incapable of doing it, you don’t know how to change, then your Nafs al-Ammara is like a big octopus, it’s grabbing you around the throat and the heart and it’s squeezing you and telling you that you don’t know how to change.
In the Sufi tradition, all transformation comes through God, all transformation comes through the One, the Most High. We say Al Muta’Ali, the most high. So, transformation comes from the Most High and when that transformation comes into us, it changes the very reality that we live in.
In other words, when you’re in the presence of the Most High, you’re not afraid and you feel you can do anything and in fact, you can do anything, because Allah will help you, God will help you. We say Allah, Allah means the One, Allah means the God, that’s what it means, the One God. Whether you call it Allah, or you call it Jehovah, it doesn’t really matter.
Ultimately, it’s the One God, and what we want to do is we want to turn to the presence of the Most High and receive the down pouring of divine providence. And when that comes into you, you’ll see that octopus just disappears into thin air, it’s like it never existed at all. And then the truth will come out behind it, which is the reality.
I remember many, many, many years ago. I was working with my own Nafs al-Ammara and I realized that I was caught. This was when I was in medical school, and I realized I was caught, that the voices were catching me and I couldn’t quite break free of them. They would tear me down and they would sort of bring me into a feeling of collapse inside. So, I went into retreat and I began to sit with these voices inside of me that were saying I can’t do it, I don’t know how to do it.
And as I sat with them, my imagination would grab them, and all of a sudden these voices would turn into beings. I’d see the voice that initially would be like I can’t do it, and then all of a sudden it would turn into the face of a devil or a face of an animal or something like that. And it would scare me. So I was going through this process of being frightened by these voices and what they were turning into, and then that went on for some time, maybe a week or two. I would say I was losing the battle, in the sense that these voices were stronger than me, they were taking me over, I was collapsing, feeling unable to beat them.
Then one day, the Divine smiled on me and I was inspired out of nowhere: instead of fighting with these voices, to bring love to them, to surround them in love. So the next time the voice came and said well, I can’t do it, I surrounded it with love, and it was so fascinating because as I surrounded it with love, what initially seemed like it was a scary devil turned into my own face.
As I began to see my own face, I saw how, as a child, I was programmed into believing that I couldn’t do it. In other words, there were things that I wanted to do and when I wanted to do it my parents said you can’t do it, we don’t allow you to do it, you’re not able to do it, you’re too young to do it. That programming was stuck in my mind, stuck in my unconscious.
Once I found them and I cleared them it was incredible. The devils disappeared, my fear disappeared, my incapability disappeared, and I felt incredibly empowered, incredibly inspired to be able to move forward in trust, in capability. So how do you deal with these things? Well, you start by recognizing what they are, then you bring love to them, you love them deeply and, if possible, you love them in the presence of God. I would call to God and say, “God, I need help here that brings God’s light in.” And then you bring the love.
When the light of God and the light of love mix it is a powerful force, that force is very healing, and when it goes into what you’re struggling with, you’ll see, sometimes, almost immediate transformation that’s incredible. That immediate transformation will free you from your own Nafs al-Ammara and help you to stand freely in the divine grace, the divine presence, and you’ll start to really feel empowered and capable of shifting your life.
But you’ve got to take your time to do this, and please don’t be lazy. By lazy I mean like try it for a minute or two and then you quit. A lot of people want an instant, Burger King drive up and you get the answer, right like that, you get your Whopper. It doesn’t really work that way, you’ve got to cook the meal.
Unfortunately, in this type of thing you’ve got to do the cooking yourself. You’ve got to take the time – in time, I mean maybe 20 minutes or 30 minutes – it doesn’t have to be long, but it isn’t going to be one or two minutes, I can promise you that. You’ve got to work with it, and then all of a sudden, you’ll start to see, “Oh my God, I’m really making progress!” And then you’ll start to feel really good.
So, I wish you all a wonderful time on your journey and may God bless you and support you with learning to transform your inner reality. Thank you.
If you’d like to go deeper we invite you to explore our Foundations course which will help you heal yourself or others, find or improve relationships, expand your spiritual growth, open your heart + connect you to the Divine.
