The path is rugged and the traveler is weak, says Ghazali in The Path of the Worshipful Servant to the Garden of the Lord of All Worlds. How then do we make the journey? With this single provision—“worshipful obedience.”
Aha! say some religious folks. Good! Tell me the rules, tell me what I must do, that I may obey them and reach the destination.
Aha! say the rationalists. Terrible. This is what faith always comes down to—blind obedience.
Aha! Say I. Ghazali means something completely different. In describing “worshipful obedience” in this first chapter on sustenance, he refuses to give a set of rules than can be applied by the faithful or sneered at by the enlightened. Instead, he presents a view of worshipful obedience along the path as something akin to discernment of the heart.
We are to trust absolutely only in the Creator to provide our sustenance, he says. What does that mean in our lives?
Is the person who does not take along provisions for his or her journey the pious person, then?
Or is the person who takes along his or her own sustenance on the journey the pious one?
The answer to both questions is: Sometimes. Depending on the state of the traveler’s heart, whether it is truly free or it is attached to the provisions.
A person who takes nothing into the desert on a pilgrimage, professing to depend absolutely for all provisions on the Creator, may deep in the heart be attached to those provision left behind. And person who takes nothing along and then whines and begs provisions from fellow travelers would have done better to take their own provisions. There are some, however, who set out with no provisions, completely detached and wholly dependent on the Creator.
A person who takes many provisions on a pilgrimage may be taking them along without any attachment to them, with complete dependence on the Creator to provide. They may be taking the provisions instance, so they will be available to whomever on the journey needs them, according to God’s plan of provision.
It is not simply the act itself, but the heart out of which the action arises that describes “worshipful obedience.” In each case, discernment is the key. Each person must discern for himself or herself where they are in the journey and whether they are to take provisions or not at a particular moment. It is not whether or not they carry provisions with them that matters; it is how complete their trust in the Creator is. Their discernment may lead them to take provisions at some points, and leave them behind at others. There is no absolute rule of action to follow at all times, only the rule of what is required of the purely trusting heart in a given situation.
That is part of what makes the path so difficult: it requires constant discernment of what is required of one in this moment, in this place along the way.
Discernment is a spiritual muscle cultivated not only by Ghazali and other Sufis, but by the Hasids and Christian mystics as well, as we’ll see in a later post.
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