Sorrow for His sake is a treasure in my heart.
My heart is 'light upon light',
a beautiful Mary with Jesus in the womb.
                                                       —Rumi

The Gnostic (al-'arif)

We have been taught the speech of birds.  —Qur'an 27:16

It is said that there is nothing more hateful in the eyes of God than one who says I have been given, and he has not been given. Having said that, we have been given.

In every generation, there is one who is chosen to carry the secrets of the Path. I am that chosen one. The Hand of God is upon me.

I am the gnostic. Born of spirit, I am the twice-born. Owner of the mi'raj. The haj who has been to the ka'ba of the heart. And the shahid who has died on the battlefield of Love. He who has seen me has seen death.

               And think not of those who are slain in Allah's way as dead. Nay, they are alive

               being provided sustenance from their Lord.  —Qur'an 3:169

There walks among you one who has knowledge of the Unseen. But the detractors say, surely he has gone insane, like his brother, using him as a weapon against me. They imagine my brother to be a liability to me. Nothing could be further from the truth. On the contrary, he is my greatest asset. As you will see.

As for those who mock me, they do so because Allah has placed a veil over their eyes so that I appear weak to them. If they saw me as I truly am, they would die of fright.

Notes:

'light upon light' —Qur'an 24:35

speech of birds - the language of mystics

Sufism is the mystical branch of Islam. The mystic is the one who travels the Path and attains to enlightenment. If granted gnosis (ma'rifa), he becomes the gnostic. Every gnostic is a mystic but not every mystic is a gnostic.

mi'raj - ascension

From here the gnostics climb from the lowlands of metaphor to the highlands of reality, and they perfect their ascent. Then they see—witnessing with their own eyes—that there is none in existence save God and that "Everything is perishing except His face" [28:88]. —Ghazali ,Mishkat al-Anwar

من هنا ترقى العارفون من حضيض المجاز إلى يفاع الحقيقة، واستكملوا معراجهم فرأوا بالمشاهدة العيانية أن ليس في الوجود إلا الله تعالى، وأن (كُلُّ شَيءٍ هالِكٌ إِلّا وَجهَهُ)

Mary is short for maryama. In Hebrew, mar is bitterness and yam is the sea. Maryama means "bitterness of the sea". This describes the hardship of the spiritual path. Every spiritual traveler is a Mary. Hence, the title of this website.

And the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm tree. —Qur'an 19:23
We are like that story of Mary in the Qur'an. Every one of us has a Jesus within, but until the pangs manifest, our Jesus is not born. If the pangs never come, then our child rejoins its origin by the same secret path through which it came, leaving us empty, without the birth of our true self. —Rumi (fihi ma fihi)