BismillahirRahmanirRahim

Question: You are saying oftenly, ‘ We have to be busy with ourselves, not with others’ I try to do this, but especially inside jemaat, it is more difficult. How can we stop judging people inside Jemaat? How can we stop this inner voice which comes from ego? The worst, this feeling makes you to go from away from jemaat.

That’s good. Don’t spend too much time having conversation with your ego and with your sheytan when these voices they happen. Speak to someone, speak to your Sheykh, you have Hoja speak to your Hoja. You don’t like it, speak to someone else, speak to a friend, speak to someone.

Why is that important? We all know in this way, we’ve been here, sometime so many of us, the first sign that the ego and the sheytan is very busy with someone is when the person now, in a group, they are putting barricades around themselves and they are being very aloof and alone. And we see something is happening, sometimes we may ask but if the door is not open by the person, we don’t enter and we leave it. It’s different from someone who just have nothing to say, he doesn’t really want to say anything, he just wants to be alone. It’s completely different. But you see someone that really from, we know each other enough and I have spent years looking at you, you don’t spend so much time looking at each other may be but I spent years looking at you, I can tell if you are sick the minute you enter the door, of course. I will know. Sheykh Effendi is sending things to me if something is bothering you. I must. We must. And may be for five, ten minutes, twenty minutes, one hour Sohbet, you look at me but for the rest of the time you look at each other. Don’t you?

We are the same people that you see every day or every weekend for years and years and years and years. What we have is what the whole world wants, to have a small group of people, like this or like, that you can rely on, that they know you and you know them, that you may go up and down but you trust that they are able to help you. And the foundation is not just love for each other. It is love for each other for Allah’s sake. There is a complete difference now. Because when you turn this into something that is secular, turn this into something that is dunya, the foundation is rotten, it will fall. But we are doing this for Allah’s sake. For Allah’s sake means what? One day we are helping people, people they don’t appreciate, they curse at us. What? We’re going to get upset? We are not going to get upset. We say, Ya Allah. Allah giving the opportunity to do something, it is not me, It is Allah that is doing it. It is Prophet (asws), it is my Sheykh that is opening.

So person doesn’t appreciate. Doesn’t matter. 124,000 Prophets they all do things for their ummat. The ummat don’t appreciate, correct? Why we must think that we are special? This is how you are going to use the Sohbet and looking into things that you have difficulty in and try to put it in, to not give explanation but to let the voice of your Sheykh to speak to you, not the voice of your ego and your doubt and your confusion circling you around and around and around. Because once, and the thing that ego does not want you to do is to speak. Because you know once you start speaking, if you don’t speak everything is very huge and tangled up, very confusing. But once you speak you have to make it clear to someone. So many times they say, ‘Don’t speak, don’t speak. No one will understand you.’ Because really when you clarify it, the problem becomes smaller. The problem becomes more manageable. And so many cases the problem becomes really stupid. The problem becomes very trivial. Where the ego says, ‘don’t. Because this is not, it’s huge. It means about everything.’ You bring your past you bring your future you bring belief you bring personality you bring everything you start putting it in. It’s just a small thing.

So you come out from yourself once you start speaking. Now when you start speaking to someone who is close to Sheykh Effendi that’s different. If you start speaking to Sheykh Effendi then that time, so many times and you know this, when you make the intention to speak and you really asking you are not holding back, you are asking but you are not opening your mouth, you just sit in his presence and the answer comes to you or the problem just goes away and the clarity just hits you and says, ‘this is it, I got my answer.’ So the key is in our hands really for us to open the door.

So don’t have Sohbet with your ego and sheytan. Have Sohbet with your brothers, with your sisters, with your Sheykh, with those ones in authority that they may help. May be you say, ‘I don’t want to speak to the Sheykh because it is very difficult.’ Then speak to someone who is very close to him. It can make it a little bit easier. Whatever that you are going through, it is not unique, it is not special, it is very common. We have all gone through it or we will go through it and we have walked that road before and we may show you, ‘this is how you walk, avoid this way, avoid that way, jump this way,’ that will make it better. Don’t listen to the ego that says, ‘there is no one here who can understand me.’ That is completely the ego.

Sometimes you need to take time out. American timeout, do like this (Sheykh showing timeout through hands), time out. Okay but when it becomes more difficult for you to open up, that timeout is becoming poisonous. And understand at the end of the day we are here to fight our ego, not to support it, not to feed it. And look, don’t run with your emotions. Because the emotions is going to make a lot of confusion. Then later on when that emotion goes away you are left with the confusion. You are left with the problems. Emotion is no longer there but you have the problems. Person is jealous for no reason, saying, ‘this one is talking to this one, this one.’ Person is angry for no reason. Person is impatient for no reason. Person is arrogant for no reason. Watch yourself. Pull yourself back a little bit. Try to understand. You cannot find an answer, speak to someone. It’s impossible whatever that you are going through does not have an answer. The answer is everywhere. The signs, the Ayats, they are everywhere but you just need to learn how to read. If you don’t know how to read we can give you the Divine Ayats directly from Allah, you won’t understand anything.

And the bottom point is, what is this Jamaat based on? Why we are here for? To worship. You don’t get along with this one, this one, this one, this one, this one. It doesn’t matter. Are you here to get along with people? Or you are here to worship? This is also a very big test for you. You are saying that you are being sincere to worship Allah (swt), that you want to worship what, when you are in Paradise? You want everything to be perfect, you want everything to be Paradise then you are going to worship? You know what? There is no worshipping in Paradise. There is no worshipping in Paradise. Be people of Paradise. People in Paradise they just say Shukur. They are just praising their Lord.

So we are here to worship. Certain things may happen. That is a test for us. Hold on to it. Nothing lasts forever. You go up you go down. You are meant to go up and down. Because that’s what makes your relationship, your friendship to be real. Otherwise you haven’t discover each other yet. You are just fake. May Allah make us to be sincere InshaAllah. WaminAllahu Taufiq. Al Fateha. Amin. Selam Aleykum.

Sheykh Lokman Efendi Hz,
Khalifah of SahibulSaif Shaykh Abdulkerim el Kibrisi (qs),
OSMANLI DERGAHI- New York
22 Rajab 1437
April 29, 2016.