This section has been created for communication with English-speaking visitors of our website.
Finding this forum and reading Master’s book, ‘Keys to Awareness’ has been one of the most fortunate things in my life. When I start getting distracted or feel unhappy, I re-read the book or read comments by Master and some of the students.
A little context…As a kid in school I had accidentally discovered the power of attention and for several years whenever a major exam came, I could simply go into a zone and crush the exam. I grew overconfident and felt that I can beat anything simply by calling myself into that ‘focus/attention’ zone.
More than just a need for anything, I felt in that zone complete peace. I remember thinking one time after a major exam - how nice it would be to simply remain the attention zone. But it always used to disappear soon after the major exam was over.
I felt a connection to God and during the times of those attentiveness, I kept my prayers up diligently even during exam prep.
I completely lost the ability to go into ‘attention’ zone when I entered university and have never found it again except once. For about 3-4 days I practiced attentiveness and one day suddenly after my late-afternoon prayer my mind became completely still. I think it lasted only for less than an hour.
Now I pray and dhikr and it gives me happiness. But I am yearning for more intimacy with God.
My dhilkr, prayers and practice has been far from correct/good, and I have allowed myself to commit wrongful acts, but I am hoping still to be forgiven and accepted and hoping for that peace that I had experienced in my earlier life, and perhaps even greater peace that Master has described in his experiences.
For many years and years … many decades I have yearned for intimacy with God… many times my practice and prayers got sidetracked by life that has been eventful and busy - I have continued to do dhikr and practice - yet true peace eludes me. I am far from calling myself a true Sufi but I feel like crying out as one Sufi had lamented, ‘Even after 100 prayers and 100 prostrations, You will not let me kiss Your feet.’
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Thank you for reaching out and sharing your story. Very interesting. It is always good to know that there are people in the world who are interested in the Sufi Path.
Totally agree that attention management is crucial. You have experienced interesting altered states of mind, kind of “pockets” of increased self-awareness, what you call “focus/attention zone”. It is cool and it does help at exams. You are also right indeed that this is a transient phenomenon (come and go). But it can be made permanent, and this is what we do here.
I like your nickname “seekingpeace”, but actually it is not peace one should seek for. Peace is just a byproduct of our work, although a pleasant one. Seek for who you are and how far you are ready to go to find God speaking with you in your heart.
If you want to study the Sufi Path in a more systematic and scientific way, you can consider joining our School. We run a small English-speaking group for those who do not speak Russian.
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Thank you for your reply Alex95 and for the suggestion for requesting admission to the school. I am in the process of evaluating my time so I can commit to follow the practice regularly once I have been granted admission. For now I am reading Master’s other books and trying to be more sincere with the prayers that I do today. Thank you once again.
Our new searching friend, I will add just a few phrases to the words of a colleague!
- People don’t change quickly. Real human change requires years of persistent and methodical work.
- People are used to creating a world within themselves not directly, but by arranging the external environment and the people around them. Thus, they try to influence the causes… by working with the effects. And this is a strange approach that provides nothing but short-term compensations leading to more and more compensations. )))
The Path (with a capital letter), our Path, traveled and described by someone before you, will help you achieve real changes. Through working with the true causes of your inner states and their external manifestations.
The path always leads you inside yourself.
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Thank you so much Vitalist. I really appreciate your comment. I feel very encouraged and happy to be able to connect with people in this school who are progressing on their spiritual path.
Ну вы тут все молодцы
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I like to talk in such cases. Are we making progress? And where is the physical evidence of our spiritual progress? We are always on this quest. )))
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Thank you so much Vitalist. I appreciate so much that you remembered me and asked. Since I started doing dhikr and prayers with greater certainty of God’s presence I feel a peace come over me every time I pray. I am afraid that I can’t report anything more tangible than that.
I must say that I did get completely disstracted with work the last two weeks and my dhikr and prayer suffered despite my good intentions.
One of my greatest progress in this month was just being able to connect with this school and get to know people like you who are on the spiritual path. I had a whole library of many books on the spiritual paths but I never knew anyone who had actually followed the spiritual path. So just knowing you and the rest of the forum and the Master’s books has been a blessing. I am now reading the Master’s book (The Science of Spiritual Growth) and continue to pray for greater closeness to God.
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Dhikr and prayer are very good. They change the state of the neophyte. But these are rather temporary or superficial changes. Deep changes that stay with us for a long time come from practice (exercises).
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I look at this correspondence, in which, for obvious reasons, only 3 people participated, and I think…
Maybe we should create an English-language section on the forum?
Or maybe leave everything as it is and thus give the forum participants an incentive to master the power of artificial intelligence?
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Thank you Vitalist. I appreciate creating the english section.