The Shaykh: Part 2

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Why a Shaykh?

By Ibrahim Ansari

The shaykh is your soul’s gardener. S/he takes you from where you are right now, and uses your inner materials as fertilizer to grow your heart. Parts of you (the garden) need weeding; some need hoeing, planting, and landscaping. The shaykh represents your highest potential. By learning to trust in the shaykh as a guide, you begin the process of unifying yourself. On a personal basis, the shaykh goes within you, sees the distinction between yourself and your True self, and helps you to complete the process of unification.

Much of what a shaykh deals with at the beginning of his/her work with a student involves trust.

For many people, especially Americans, trust is an issue. In this society trust is not a very common virtue. The first step of learning is to allow trust to develop. For some, this involves testing the water. As you experience your heart’s love in your shaykh’s presence, trust develops and deeper teaching can take place. 

Trust happens over time and through experience. You learn to trust Allah by first trusting your Shaykh. A shaykh sees you as you truly are. S/he sees through your attachments, your nafs. Nafs is the ego matrix that gives you the impression that you are your things, your memories and your habits. The shaykh sees you with your habits, and compares them to your true self. Part of a shaykh’s job is to be a mirror for you. If you are arrogant, the shaykh will allow you to see it. If you manifest love, love comes right back to you. In this and many other ways, your shaykh is here to help you overcome your nafs. Being a mirror to you is one of the quickest and perhaps most startling ways to break old habits. It is like seeing yourself in a special kind of movie, one where you can also hear your thoughts and see what is in your heart.

The shaykh is your best friend and your nafs worst enemy.

The shaykh works with you on an individual basis, and in a vocabulary that you can understand. Like a taxi driver, the shaykh will pick you up wherever you are, takes you where you want to go. The choice is always yours.

At times, the shaykh will talk directly to your soul (ruh). The outer form may not understand as well as the inner soul.  You may find yourself arguing, disagreeing, and even defending what you “know” to be right. This is contrary to the goal of a spiritual discipline. Defending yourself indicates a lack of surrender, mistrust of your guide and reliance upon your nafs. Shaykh Taner says, “Number One: The shaykh is always right. Number Two: See number One.”

One of my many jobs is to teach piano. As a piano teacher, there are students who, when they’ve made a mistake, argue about it. If I record the session and play it back, the student hears what I heard. Eventually, if there is perseverance, the student eventually begins to hear the reality of the sound, not what they imagine. You see, in music, just as in Sufism, when your mind and preconceived ideas are quieted, you can hear the sound (God, Allah, the Divine) without distraction, without attachment. Then you can place your heart into the sound and turn that sound into music.

Salaam Alaykum, murids, seekers, curious and interested listeners,

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