Stopping the eternal chatter of the mind

How does one stop the eternal chatter of the mindd especially in prayer?

Walaikum assalam wa rahmatullah,

The key to presence of heart and mind in prayer and life is constantly engaging in the remembrance of Allah.

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The following are the words of Sayyidi Ibn Ajiba in his work Iqadh al-Himam, a commentary on Ibn `Ata'illah's Hikam,

The best of actions through which a murid can pass are stations, and the closest of them is the dhikr of Allah. That is why he then said:

Do not give up invocation of Allah

because you are not present with Allah in it.

It is worse to forget to invoke Him

than to be inattentive while invoking Him.

He might raise you up from invocation with heedlessness

to invocation with wakeful attention,

and from invocation with wakeful attention

to invocation with presence,

and from invocation with presence

to invocation with withdrawal from all that is other than the Invoked.

That is not difficult for Allah.

Dhikr is a strong pillar in the Path of the People. It is the best of actions. Allah Almighty says, "Remember Me and I will remember you." (2:151) He also said, "O you who believe, remember Allah much." (33:41) Frequent dhikr is that you never forget Him.

Ibn 'Abbas said, "In every act of worship which Allah obliged has a specific time and there are excuses for those who perform outside its time - except for dhikr. Allah did not appoint it any particular time. He says, 'Remember Allah much' (33:41), and He says, 'When you have finished the prayer, then remember Allah, standing, sitting and lying on your sides.' (4:103)"

A man said, "Messenger of Allah, I find the practices of Islam to be too many, so tell me something I can do by which I can catch what I miss, and be brief." He replied, "Let your tongue be moist with dhikru'llah." The Prophet, peace be upon him, said, "If a man in has some dirhams which he distributes and another man remembers Allah, the one who remembers Allah is better." The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "Shall I tell you of the best and purest of your actions in the sight of your King, the highest of your degrees and what is better for you than spending gold and silver than meeting your enemy and you striking their necks and them striking your necks." They asked, "What is that, Messenger of Allah?" He said, "Dhikr of Allah."

'Ali said, "I asked, 'Messenger of Allah, which path is the nearest one to Allah, the easiest for the slaves of Allah and the best in the sight of Allah Almighty." He replied, ''Ali, you must have constant dhikr of Allah.'" 'Ali said, "All people remember Allah." The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "The Final Hour will not come until there does not remain of the face of the earth anyone who says, 'Allah'." 'Ali said to him, "How shall I remember, Messenger of Allah?" He, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said to him, "Close your eyes and listen to me three times and then say the same thing while I am listening." The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "There is no god but Allah" three times with his eyes closed, and then he said it in the same way. He taught to al-Hasan al-Basri and then al-Hasan to al-Habib al-'Ajami and Habib to Da'ud at-Ta'i and Da'ud to Mar'uf al-Karkhi and then Mar'uf to as-Sari and as-Sari to al-Junayd, and then it moved through the masters of teaching.

So no one reaches Allah except by way of dhikr. So the slave's obligation is to occupy his moments with it and to expend his effort in it. Dhikr makes wilaya public, and it must be present in both the beginning and the end. Whoever is given dhikr, is given the decree. Whoever abandons it, has retired. They wrote:

Dhikr is the greatest door. You enter it for Allah

and He makes the breaths a guardian for you.

So insofar as he is annihilated in the Name, he is annihilated in the Essence, and insofar as he flags in annihilation in the Name, he flags in annihilation in the Essence. So the murid should cling to dhikr in every state and not abandon dhikr on the tongue because the heart is not present in it. He should remember Him with his tongue, even if he is heedless with his heart. Your neglect of the existence of His remembrance is worse than your neglect while mentioning Him because your neglect of His remembrance is turning away from Him completely, and your mention of Him is turning towards Him by a certain aspect.

By remembering Allah the limb is adorned by obedience of Allah. When it is absent in he turns to his preoccupation with disobedience. One of them was asked, "Why do we do dhikr with the tongue when the heart is heedless?" He replied, "Thank Allah for the success of the dhikr of the tongue. If it had been busy with absence, what would you do?" So a person should cling to the dhikr of the tongue until Allah opens the dhikr of the inner heart. Perhaps Allah Almighty will move you from dhikr with heedlessness to dhikr with wakeful attention, i.e. being awake to the meanings of dhikr when one is busy with it, and from dhikr with wakeful attention to dhikr with presence of the One Invoked and visualising Him in the imagination until the heart is still by dhikru'llah and he is present with his heart and remembrance of Him is constant. This is the dhikr of the elite. The first is the dhikr of the common people.

If you are constant in dhikr of presence, that will raise you to dhikr with withdrawal from all that is other than the One Invoked which your heart is immersed in light. Perhaps the nearness of the light of the One Invoked will become immense and the one doing the dhikr will be drowned in the light until you withdraw from all that is other than the One Invoked until the one doing the dhikr becomes remembered and the seeker becomes the sought and the seeking arrival the one made to arrive. That is not difficult for Allah, i.e. not forbidden. So the one who was in the lowest degrees may rise to the highest ranks where the tongue is still and the dhikr moves to the inner heart. Then the dhikr of the tongue becomes heedlessness in respect of the people of this station, as the poet said:

As soon as I remember You, my secret,

my heart and my ruh curse me when I remember You

Until a watcher from You addresses me in a voice without form:

"Beware and woe to you! Beware of remembrance!

Do you not see that the witnessings of Allah have appeared

and all arrives of your meaning from His meaning?"

Al-Wasiti said, indicating this station, "Those who remember are more heedless in His dhikr than those who forget His dhikr because His dhikr is other than Him," meaning that those who remember Allah with their hearts are more heedless in the state of their dhikr of Allah by their tongues than people who fail to invoke Him, because his dhikr by the tongue and its burden demands the existence of the nafs, and that is shirk, and shirk is uglier than heedlessness. This is the meaning of his words "because His dhikr is other than Him,", i.e. because the dhikr of the tongue demands the independence of those who remember, while the obligation is that the one who remembers should be effaced in the station of eye-witnessing.

Shaykh ash-Shadhili said, "The reality of dhikr is being cut off from the dhikr with the One Invoked and from everything except Him by His words, 'Remember the Name of your Lord and devote yourself to Him completely.' (73:7)" Al-Qushayri said, "Dhikr is the gradual entry of the one doing the dhikr into the One Invoked. They said in that meaning:

I remembered You, not because I forgot You for an instant.

The least part of dhikr is the dhikr of the tongue.

Without ecstasy, I would have become frantic with passion,

my heart wildly beating in passion.

When ecstasy showed me that You are present with me,

I witnessed You as existing everywhere.

I addressed one who is present without speaking,

and I witnessed one who is present without seeing.

In this station the murid realises the worship of reflection or investigation: "Reflection for an hour is better than worship for seventy years. That is why Shaykh Abu'l-'Abbas said, "All its moments are the Night of Power," i.e. all our worship is multiplied, in spite of its lightness, by the realisation of sincerity in it since no angel sees and records it nor does any shaytan see and corrupt it. One of them, said to be al-Hallaj said on that:

The hearts of the gnostics have eyes which see

what is not seen by those who look.

The Sunna is intimate conversation of secrets

unseen by the noble scribes.

Wings fly without feathers

to the Malakut of the Lord of the Worlds.

I added two verses to it:

Hearts are frantic with the passion of ecstasy, yearning

for the Jabarut of the One with certain truth.

If you want to set out early for the one with meanings,

then expend your spirit and have little of us.

Dhikr is the reason for the life of the heart and leaving it is the reason for its death. The like of this is found in the hadith, "The metaphor of the one who remembers his Lord and the one who does not remember his Lord is like the living and the dead." [Ibn Ajiba, Iqadh al-Himam fi Sharh al-Hikam; tr. Ayesha Bewley]

source: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/ABewley/hikamcom5.html

And Allah alone gives success.

Faraz Rabbani