THE PRACTICE OF INTENT

SHAYKH EBRAHIM SCHUITEMA

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Introduction
This matter of ours is about freedom. It is a freedom of such magnitude, that its price is everything in existence and its prize is the whole of existence. There is no higher aspiration and it is therefore worthy of utterly single-minded commitment. In the face of this quest all other pursuits are trivial. By me having accepted the role of a Shaykh or teacher the first thing you should understand is that there is very little I can do for you. There is also not a lot you can do for yourself, other than to cast yourself into practice with single minded intent. In this pursuit you will discover that success lies on the other side of failure and it is always brought to you by a design which is utterly inexplicable and completely outside of your ingenuity. You have to have expended all of your own resources first, though, before you can really say in your heart of hearts 'I give up, I submit'. In other words, 'I am in the state of Islam'. To be graced by this patterning of intent is to encapsulate the whole of existence in the Totality of the Self. Not to discover this, is to spend a life in terror from the inevitable crushing by the Totality of the Other. This journey is about the cultivation and polishing of intent. In this process the first thing one needs to do is take the flying carpet called the musallah (prayer mat) off the wall as an object of worship and stand on it. The deen of Islam is a technology of transformation, and it is ruined in the hands of the sanctimonious who seek to turn it into a cultural identity. As a technology of transformation it is staggeringly powerful. So, a good place to start is with the basics. Commit to the five pillars and most particularly your salah. If you are not praying regularly then do so, five times a day. Make your salah the non-negotiable cornerstone of your practice. Beyond this I recommend that you start keeping a daily journal or diary (any voyage of discovery has a ship's log). The effect of this

is to deliberately pull you out of the minutiae of day to day events and to see things from an increasingly higher perspective. I would also recommended a daily meditative practice to help silence inner dialogue and to facilitate a change in that dialogue from an ambience of resentment to an ambience of gratitude. We do not exist as individuals. Acting in the best interest of the other is acting in your own highest interest. This is the key to the world that we are entering into. The epoch of competitive self interest has brought us to the brink of catastrophe. We either act consistently with the highest possibility of our own intent or we are done for. That said, the key issue with practice is that it is about individuals and not about collectives and the idea running alongside this is, there is only so much that we can do as individuals. A healthy society can only be realised when its members are sound individuals. We are living in critical times and these times demand that everybody become the authority. If you find any of the following practices useful it is imperative that you pass them on to others as this matter is about the survival of our planet. We must try to get as many people as possible to forgo their own agenda and learn how to be receptive, so that they can see what Allah is bringing to them. Islam or submission means that you forego what you are focussing on and your own agenda and you allow or open up your attention to see what Allah is bringing to you, to Allahs agenda. Our position can be summarised as the cultivation of receptivity and gratitude, illustrated with the simple formulae:

We are here to give, not to get. We are here to serve Other, not Self.
This is essence of our journey and the purpose of the following practices.

Shaykh Ebrahim Schuitema

Salah
What is life but the five daily prayers and waiting for death.
Method When you walk onto the musallah (prayer mat) for your salah (formal prayer) become present by bringing your attention into the room. Look around the room and visually identify three things in the room, then identify three sounds, rest your attention on both. Then look down, identify three points on your prayer mat, rest your attention on them. Feel your feet on the prayer mat, your toes sinking into the rug or the sole of your feet against the mat. Register that you are standing on the musallah, then say your niyyah (intention). If your attention starts to wander, become present again by revisiting your points of reference. You will notice an immense increase in your concentration while doing your salah and consequently an immense benefit in doing your salah. Explanation

Salah is more than language and recital. It is like an action exercise. If one wishes to increase concentration in salah, then one must start concentration in wudu (ablution). Try doing wudu with cold water. Feel the water and the movement of your hands with the water during wudu. The essence of the salah is in the postures. If we execute the postures mindfully we cultivate awareness. A persons salah is accepted, accepted meaning transformative and useful to them, if they do the postures deliberately, because the postures are saying something to you entire being. Ruku is saying something to your entire being, sajdah is saying something to your entire being. The reason why we put our attention into the room is in order to become present. Being present is being present in the room, in the place where you are. The salah is only meaningful if the

person doing the salah is actually present doing the salah. If you are not present, then the person performing the salah is absent, so what does that salah mean? It has no meaning. With this method you will notice the profound effect that it will have on your salah, by making sure that your attention is on the musallah before you say your takbir, it becomes a totally transformative salah. You can use the shortest surahs if you like, do it minimalistically and you will find that it will be of more benefit than the way that you were performing it before. Where we are trying to get to, is a place where our awareness functions super-rationally, on an absolutely intuitive level of seeing. That place is not to be found on the other end of a rational discourse. This seeing essentially begins to operate when you stop thinking. The Arabic recitation in the salah can cultivate this effect. In terms of the Arabic I would suggest a little experiment. Find a recording of some well recited Arabic Quran and listen to it alone for maybe 15 or 20 minutes. Don't try to understand it or read anything at the same time. Just sit comfortably, keep your eyes closed and rest your attention on the recitation. Let it flow through your being without interrogating it, judging it or seeking to understand it. Do this twice a day for a few days and reflect on how you feel afterwards. What I would also suggest is that you work with a very limited set of surahs at the outset (Surah Al Fatiha and the three Quls, for example) and learn what the Arabic means so that you can muse reflectively on the meaning while you are reciting it in the Arabic. Use these for a number of months until the meanings become absolutely intuitive and second nature. After having done that you may add one more to your repertoire. Only recite those surahs that you have included in your being understood category for your salah. You can also recite once or twice a day after your salah (Maghrib and/or Isha) the Wird of Shaykh Ebrahim (Appendix 1).

Meditation
Deliberately pull yourself out of the minutiae of day to day events to see things from an increasingly higher perspective.
Shaykh Ebrahim Method Make sure that you are sitting comfortably, sit on a pillow if you like, cross your legs and keep your back straight. Look around the room and visually identify three things in the room (e.g. red/black/green), then close your eyes and identify three sounds, the furthest away first, then bring them closer. Breathe deep from the belly, not your chest. Scan the body for any tension, if you find any try to let it go. After this process finally bring your attention to your breathing. Then breath in with the syllable Al and breath out with llah thus forming the full word llah, Allah, the Divine Name. Do not articulate the name with your tongue. It is as if you are hearing it being whispered on your breath. When your attention wanders to something else, bring it back to your breath. Try to relax, slow down your heart rate and try to quieten your mind. Sit for minimum 20 mins, ideally 40 mins. Take a minute or so to come out. The ideal time for this is just before or after the Fajr salah. (See Appendix 2 for more) Explanation This practice seeks to achieve two things: (1) silence internal dialogue, (2) change the nature of our internal dialogue into something benign: from an ambience of resentment to an ambience of gratitude.

The key to meditation is resting your attention and not focussing. When you rest your attention on the three sounds try not to focus on them, we are listening rather than looking at the sounds. When we rest our attention on the sound of our body, we are listening to what our body is telling us, its present story. This conversation takes the form of sensations in the body. If we liken our senses to computer programs, we want our programmes running in the back-ground, still present, but not being used. We are resting and not focussing, in order to let go, in order to develop a receptive way of using our attention. When your attention wanders in the meditation just bring it back. This is in the spirit of, when you forget, remember, because when you forget, remember has no judgement in it, you are not a bad person if this happens, just pull it back and get back in the saddle again. In this process we are putting a bridle on an animal that has never been ridden before. Few people try to ride their attention in this manner, so expect resistance, it will try to buck you. It will be a long period before we befriend, domesticate and break in this wild horse. Be patient and do not give yourself a hard time, you will get there. The aim of the meditative practice is to learn to silence or find the dimmer switch of our internal dialogue. To use that analogy we want to turn the volume of our senses right up and our inner dialogue right down, to then as a result, rest in the silence of Being. This teaches us how to completely withdraw all attention from thought, so that we can give full attention to what Allah is putting in front of us, in the moment that we are in. This practice should therefore give us an eloquence and skill at working with our attention which can then be applied to all aspects of our lives, especially our Islamic practices like salah, dhikr, fasting etc. It is also recommended at this time to engage in some kind of energy activity e.g. Martial Arts or Yoga, but trying to keep as little text running around our mind as possible. When we commit to process instead of results, its by-product is the effect of quietening us down, it roots our attention in the present and this affects the quality of our consciousness in a positive and transformative way.

Keeping a Journal
Your day is a letter of correspondence from Allah to you. The moments are His words and the flow of the day is His grammar.
Shaykh Ebrahim Method At the end of each day try to make an entry into a journal or diary, for as long as feels right for you, about what happened to you that was significant to you. To write a little consistently is better than trying to write too much and missing daily entries. At the end of the week read your daily entries, then write a summary of that week. Every month read the 4 weekly summaries and write a summary of that month. Then every quarter read the three monthly summaries and summarise them. Then every year read the four quarterly summaries and summarise the year. Explanation Explanation The basic assumption that lies behind the intention of keeping a journal of your daily experience is that your life is a conversation with Allah. The other that Allah presents to you in the moment you are in are the words He uses, and Time is the grammar or syntax. So when you walk through life, assume nothing that happens to you is arbitrary (determined by chance, based or subject to individual will or judgement). There is a constant conversation going on between you and your Rabb (Lord.) We are constantly walking through patterns of meaning. Everything around us is meaningful at any given time. The world is Allahs text to be read and learn from.

So what the journaling does, is give us the opportunity to abstract, to literally pull ourselves back from day to day events, it allows us to pull back further and further, in order to see the much bigger picture. Most of us cant see the wood for the trees. We are stuck with our faces pressed so close to the glass of the events and experiences of our lives that we cannot see them objectively. With the journaling we are trying to learn how to see the wood and the trees. Another outcome of journaling, similar to the meditation, should be to try and change the nature of our internal dialogue from having any resentment or ill feeling, into that of a feeling of gratitude. Its by-product is to see the blessing that is always present. Journaling over a period of time colours the register of our internal dialogue from an ambience of resentment, the nature of 21st century man, to an ambience of gratitude.

Attention
He who flows [attentive] with the changes that come upon him is free, whereas he who is reliant [focused] on things is Jamal their servant and existence owns him. Shaykh Ali al Jamal
The following is applicable and relevant to all of the above practices: practices:

The use of the phrase rest your attention above was very deliberate, because when we focus on something it is very difficult to keep our attention on anything else. The moment that we focus, many things suddenly appear and clamour for our attention. One of the effects of this is that we notice how much of a competition there is going on for our attention. We can only focus on one thing at a time, whereas we can give our attention to many things at the same time. When we focus on one thing we have to fight to keep other things out, but we can rest our attention on many things at the same time. Therefore attention and focus are not the same thing. For example you can focus on one thing but also pay attention to something in your peripheral vision. In other words you can give attention to something you are focussed on or something in your periphery vision. When it comes to attention it can be used it in two different ways, receptive or predatory. To understand the difference between the two let us look at the following two statements:

He is listening to me. and He is looking at me.

They can be classed as follows: Receptive He is listening to me Predatory He is looking at me

When we use our attention in a predatory way we principally use our eyes. When we use our attention in a receptive way we use all of our other senses, as they are principally geared to be receivers rather than senders or penetrators. We can see this has a physiological parallel in nature. If we look at a lions eyes they are in the front of its head as they are designed to see what it is trying to get, its goal. Deer on the other hand, have their eyes on the side of their head. So for the deer it is not about what it can get but what is coming to it, i.e. the lion. The nature of the way attention works can be illustrated with the following scenarios: Q: When they (other) are looking at you (self) who is penetrating who? A: Other is penetrating self, or they are penetrating you. For example when somebody is looking at you from across the street it feels slightly predatory because other is penetrating self. When we use focussed vision we are using our predatory sense. Q: When they (other) are listening to you (self), who penetrates who? A: Self is penetrating other, or you are penetrating them. If they are listening to you, they are letting you in, their attention is receptive. We live in world where the predatory use of our attention is overused. As a result we get completely concerned with what we are trying to get, rather than what is coming to us, i.e. what Allah is presenting to us, the blessing that is constantly present. So if we want to start to understand what Allah is showing to us, we have to understand and explore the receptive way of using our attention. It is like learning to give attention to what is in our peripheral vision, rather than what we are looking at or focussed on.

Many people have had the experience of walking into a glass door, this happens not because they did not see the door, but because their attention was trapped behind their eyeballs, trapped in the discourse that they were having with themselves. You cannot see what Allah is putting in front of you when you are caught up in your own internal dialogue. So we need to learn how to find the volume dial of our internal dialogue and turn it right down. If we have noise in our heads, try to make it compassionate. Learn how to completely withdraw all attention from thought in the moment, so that we can give full attention to what Allah is putting in front of us. For most people, their assemblage point of attention is behind their eyeballs, therefore they are using their predatory sense of attention most of the time, but when our attention is working in a receptive way, we function from behind our solar plexus (the area just below your sternum.) We have three main areas of concentration of neural tissue, the first is in the head, the second is in the cardial sack that holds your heart and the third is in your viscera, in your guts. This concentration of neural tissue implies, that the ability to think is not just in our heads, but from these other areas as well. Consequently we have three sites where our attention can work from: the head, the heart (behind the chest) and lastly the stomach. The balance we are looking for on this path, is for our attention to function from behind our chest.

Intent as Divine Energy present in the Universe.

If one assumes that energy implies movement, and that all movement implies a from and a to, a separation from here and there, then one can describe intent as an energy. All intent therefore implies a from and a to. What one has to add to this movement for the word intent to work, is a degree of consciousness and deliberateness. In so far as Allah is the All Knowing, in other words, the One who is Aware, no movement or energy can happen without His knowing, indeed, without His decree. We can therefore say, that all energy or movement in the universe is deliberate, which means that the universe is a matrix of intent borne on the bed on Attention. Allahs Attention.

Rules Final Rules of Thumb

We need to govern our wayfaring with common sense. There are so many staggering excesses being committed in the name of Islam, that we often get lost in a maze of mystification and obscurantist nonsense. I have found the following rules of thumb helpful: 1. If you can't translate something which is being said to you into plain and simple language that makes a pragmatic contribution to the issue you are struggling with, then be careful. 2. If someone claims that your progress on the path is dependent on your loyalty to them, then be careful. 3. If a group claim to be somehow the chosen, then be careful. 4. Accept help from wherever your Lord has sent it. 5. Be diligent in making your own consciousness and the quality of your perception the fundamental project of your day to day experience, and see all the things that you do as a means to that end.

Postscript
Describing his form of practice Shaykh Mawlay Al-Arabi Ad-Darqawi, the student of Shaykh Ali Al Jamal said:

Whoever does Dhikr as we have prescribed and pays close attention to its conditions as we have said, Allah will lift the veil between Himself and them in three weeks or less. Whoever does this dhikr as we have described and does it for more than seven weeks and Allah has still not lifted the veil between Himself and them, they have no intention, no true sincerity, no love, no resolution and no certainty and Allah is the authority for what we say.
The Darqawi Way. What this implies about practice is that you should see immediate and transformative effects. It is not something that we need to study for years in a traditional environment, it is as simple as just having the right intention. This path is about ease, not imposition. It is not about acquiring information, but attaining transformation. It is about the arrival, not the journey. May we all have an easy journey and a swift arrival. May Allah grant us success on His Path May Allah grant us nearness to Him May Allah grant us Annihilation in Him May Allah grant us death before we die. May Allah grant peace and blessings on our Prophet Muhammad s

Ameen.

Appendix: 1 ppendix: The Wird of Shaykh Ebrahim Schuitema

Astughfirullah x 33

(Allah cover me, forgive me)

MashaAllah x 33

(Allahs Will be done)

SubhaanAllah SubhaanAllah x 33 aan

(Allah is Pure)
HasbunAllah wa nimal wakil x 33

(Allah is sufficient for me and He is the best guardian)

illaha La illaha il Allah x 100

(There is no god but Allah)

salli ala Sayyidina Allahumma salli ala Sayyidina Muhammadin ala wa ala aalihi wa sallam x 10

(Oh Allah send blessings on our Master Muhammad and his Family)
Ikhlas Surah Al Ikhlas 112 x 3 Surah Al Falaq 113 x 1 Surah An Nas 114 x 1 Surah Al Fatiha 1 x 1

Dua for whatever you wish, your Shaykh and all of the Darqawi Shaykhs
A recitation of the Wird can be found here:
https://sites.google.com/site/zawiaebrahimmedia/shadhili dhilihttps://sites.google.com/site/zawiaebrahimmedia/shadhili-darqawiaudio

Appendix: 2 ppendix:

Meditation
By Adnan Al Adnani
Meditation is not concentration, it is relaxation into oneself, awareness. Accept thoughts, no denial, no tension, no rejection, no struggle, and no conflict. Meditation is not introspection. Introspection is thinking about yourself. Introspection is analysing, judging, and rationalising a situation (reaction), not the self. Meditation is simply awareness of yourself (remembrance). Awareness of a reaction (e.g. anger) before it materialises will dissipate the reaction. Meditation is not an experience, it is a realisation, it is a stopping of all experiences. Experience is something outside of you. The experiencer is your being. False spirituality is concerned about the experience. Experiences continually change, the experiencer is changeless (real). Awareness cannot exist with duality, and mind cannot exist without duality. The mind wants to be somewhere else, something else, to become.

The mind does not allow being. The mind is becoming and the soul is being. Time exists only with becoming (desiring). Future exists because you desire. Mind cannot stop out of effort. Mind stops out of understanding, awareness. Watch and understand the cause of these thoughts. Through looking deeply into those causes those causes disappear, then mind slows down. Witnessing is the beginning of meditation, and no-mind is the completion. Witnessing is the method to reach no-mind. Witnessing is in your hands, but no-mind is beyond your control. No-mind means that the higher self is in control of the mind. Mind is a medium for external communication that is used when needed. No-mind is enlightenment, is liberation, is freedom from all bondage, is the experience of immortality, is the Higher self.

Appendix: 3 ppendix:

Aphorisms Aphorisms of Intent

By Shaykh Ebrahim
The world we experience is merely a reflection of our internal dialogue. Every time you act in the best interests of the other, you grow. Our attention is made for the other, not ourselves. Attention is superior to Intention. Perception is above action. You are walking through text: Read it! If its about the outcome then it is pointless. A person demonstrates their maturity by what they pay attention to in the world. The world is too big and complex to deliver what you want at any given point in time. The most significant achievements are feats of perception. When we complain it is like a vessel objecting when the water finds the cracks. How can the universe be hostile to me when everything I am made of has come from it? Gratitude transforms the experience of the vastness of the other from terror to awe.

The root of our squalor lies in self pity. To act justly, is to do what is right, when it is inexpedient to do so. To do the work of finding what there is to be grateful for is to cultivate a habit of contentment. You cant see what is in front of you when your attention is occupied with what is around the corner. If seeing things as they are is not good enough for you, you are not seeing things as they are. My experience that I exist separately from other is an illusion. One of the attributes of freedom is to remain courteous when provoked. Co-operation is a product of the degree to which the self sets the other up to succeed. We are not here to fix things, we are here to witness that they work. Being here to serve is consistent with the shift of attention from outcome into process. The first step out of our misery is the conviction that we produce it with our internal dialogue. To aspire in the outward is to suffer and to fail. Behind the window of perception is the place of no suffering. The intent to serve unconditionally does not require love, it produces it.