“God is never distracted from you, never forgetful, so you are never apart from Him. He keeps watch over your inner heart in all of your states; if you are in seclusion, He is watching you, and if you are among people, He is watching you. Whatever your state, He is your love!” said A’ishah bint Yusuf al-Bauniyyah (1456-1517), one of the greatest female scholars and mystics in Islamic history. Her observation about a seeker’s bond with God captures the essence of Sufism.

Sufi mystics have seen the relationship of the seeker with the Almighty as one of divine romance. The seeker is engaged in a constant yearning for the Divine Beloved. His journey to his Maker is marked not by fear, anxiety or distance, but as a constant yearning for oneness. It may be seen as the journey of the drop that yearns to merge with the ocean. The drop loses all sense of separateness in its quest for union with the Divine. And ultimately the drop surrenders itself to the ocean, only to find that it has become the ocean.

Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi (1207–1273), among the most beloved Sufi mystics globally, often invoked ocean imagery to express the bottomless depths of the Sufi path. In his celebrated work, the Masnavi, he urged that a seeker must make space in himself for God’s love to pour in. The seeker must forever undertake the search for divine love and divine intoxication. Equally, he also urged the seeker to be judicious in his choice.

The world offers multiple choices and what we choose to align with defines our path. Mevlana Rumi wrote, “Every object, every being, is a jar full of delight. Be a connoisseur, and taste with caution. Any wine will get you high. Judge like a king, and choose the purest, the ones unadulterated with fear, or some urgency about ‘what’s needed.’ Drink the wine that moves you as a camel moves when it’s untied and is just ambling about.”

In the Sufi tradition, the wine is a metaphor for divine love or spiritual intoxication. Sufi mystics urge that the seeker must consciously seek spiritual joy and must not be limited by anxiety or fears. When one loves God out of fear of Hell or driven by worries of the future, then love is not real or deep. True love is reflected when we love God totally and completely, and our joy comes from loving Him.

Rabia, the great saint of Basra, understood the value of loving God. She was once seen running through the streets carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When asked why, she replied:

“I want to burn down Paradise and put out the fires of Hell, so that people may love God for Himself alone—not out of a desire for reward or a fear of punishment.” This indeed represents the highest form of human love for the Divine. God loves us with his mercy and his magnificence. No divisions created by man matter in the path of divine love. Sufis dwell on a specific Hadith Qudsi (a saying where God speaks in the first person) that beautifully illustrates God’s magnificence towards the efforts made by His devotee: “If my servant draws near to Me by a span, I draw near to him by a cubit. If he draws near to Me by a cubit, I draw near to him by a fathom. And if he comes to Me walking, I go to him running.”

Hazrat Bayazid Bastami (904-874), one of the most towering and enigmatic figures in the history of Sufism, spoke of how God loves his devotees as much as they love him. Hazrat Bastami wrote, “For thirty years I went looking for God, and when I finally opened my eyes, I found that He was the one looking for me.” Known as the Sultan al-Arifin (King of the Gnostics), Hazrat Bastami was a pioneer of the “drunken” or ecstatic school of Sufism, characterized by intense, rapturous love for the Divine. He is credited with introducing the concept of fana, the total “annihilation” of the self in God, into Sufi thought. Mevlana Rumi also wrote of the divine reciprocity of God’s love. He taught that our longing for God is proof that God is seeking us. “Not only the thirsty seek the water, the water as well seeks the thirsty,” Hazrat Rumi wrote. Our search for God’s love pulls us towards him. We lovingly knock on God’s door because we are blessed by God and he moved our hand to knock and seek his love.

There is a Sufi story that illustrates how God loves all those who love him.

“Moses!” God called. “Moses! Why didn’t you visit me when I was sick?”

“I don’t understand,” Moses replied. “You are All-Powerful and All-Perfect! How could you be sick?”

But God didn’t answer Moses’s question. Instead, God said, “When I was sick, why didn’t you ask after me?”

“God, I still don’t understand,” replied Moses. “How could you be sick?”

“When my servant is sick, then I am sick,” God replied. “Why didn’t you visit me when I was sick?”

Moses wept and said, “O God, now I understand. I will ask after your servants and visit them in their sickness.”

God is the only reality, the only abiding truth. Everything exists by His will; everything is sustained by His will.

Hazrat Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi (1165–1240), a revered Sufi mystic, wrote, “None loves God but God, and there is no lover and no beloved but God. Lovers grasp this when they reach the point of seeing God in everything that exists.” This reflects Hazrat Ibn Arabi’s core philosophy: Wahdat al-Wajud, or the ‘Oneness of Being.’ The finite limited and base human ego is incapable of loving the Infinite. God lights the “divine spark” within us and blesses us with the capacity to recognize and love the Divine. Loving Him comes from His Grace, His Mercy. When we see God in everything, it shifts our perspective from knowing about God to witnessing Him in the flow of everyday life.

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