These poems are all taken from Sidi’s diwan, or collection, The Meadow of Poetic Truths, Diwan of Shaykh Muhammad Said al-Jamal ar-Rifa’i ash-Shadhili, qadassa-llahu sirrahu.
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I am a child from Jerusalem who sends the voice
Of this Holy City for all who love God.
One night she sent me her order to speak with her tongue
To all who love her because she is the bride,
The bride who carries the essence of the secret love.
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Open your eyes now
before you think you will die,
When you die,
you move to another world,
like passing through a wall into the next room.
But in truth there is no death,
because God did not bring you to live in order to kill you.
Live in God,
to be, in everything, nothing.
The nothingness of self in God is not death,
but life.You are the truth of God,
but She is a hidden treasure,
And the treasure of your own truth is hidden inside you.
Al-haqiqat illahi:
The truth of God does not go.
She endures in everything,
And nothing could exist without the truth within it.
The truth has no beginning
So nothing has the power to end Her
but everything receives it essence from Her;
Even death is true only by virtue of the power of truth.
Sidi Muhammad al-Jamal