The keys of the spiritual path: sincerity and humility

By Karim Ben Driss · August 6, 2021 · 5 min read

In the Sufi tradition, sincerity and humility are considered the major keys of spiritual wayfaring, essential both before the first steps and throughout the journey. Sufi teaching is therefore rich in tales and anecdotes that educate disciples on the value of these qualities, which are indispensable to their progress.

Sincerity in love

In times long past that only storytellers remember, there lived a king around whom crowds pressed every day, drawn by a wisdom matched only by his goodness. This king had a servant whose purity of heart and faithfulness never ceased to fill him with wonder. The man bore his lord a love and a trust that made all those who laid claim to sincerity tremble with humility. One very hot afternoon, the king had an orange brought to him to refresh himself. Before even taking a bite of it, he gave half to his devoted servant who, thanking him with a radiant smile, set about savouring a segment without further ado. Seeing him relish it, eyes closed, face delighted, the king asked him: ‘So, it’s good?’ ‘Succulent, O my king!’ came the reply. The king then took a piece… which he spat out at once, exclaiming: ‘But it’s terribly bitter! How can you find something so detestable to the taste good?’ ‘O my king,’ the servant answered, ‘how could I find bitter a thing given to me by my beloved lord? Everything that comes from him can only be excellent.’ At these words, the king’s eyes and those of many around them filled with tears, their hearts seized by this testimony of a sincerity raised to the highest degrees.

At the beginning of the journey, the sincerity of the aspiration towards the sacred stimulates the heart’s awakening and makes it ready to receive the spiritual nourishment it longs for. Along the way, sincerity opens the doors of spiritual experiences that make love for God grow and sustain one in the delicate exercise of ‘polishing the heart’. Finally, freed from his ‘illusory self’ and from the egotistic tendencies (pride, love of riches, worship of one’s self-image, thirst for power…) that distance him from the Source, the wayfarer reaches the highest degrees of sincere love, where all dissolves in the contemplation of the Beloved.

Humility in order to know

A great theologian once set out in search of a Sufi master. After travelling through many lands, he finally found a master who had made his dwelling in a cave at the top of a mountain. Once the mountain was climbed, the theologian at last reached the cave. He was about to come and greet the master when the latter called to him from afar: ‘Go and perform your ablutions!’ ‘Well now,’ the theologian said to himself, ‘I did think I had already performed my ablutions!’ And he went back down to the stream below to perform his ritual ablutions with care. The exercise finished, he climbed back up and heard the same voice say to him once again: ‘Go and perform your ablutions!’ Troubled, the theologian went back down and performed his ablutions still more scrupulously. ‘This time I’m certain I’ve forgotten nothing,’ he said to himself. It was then that, for the third time, the master called out to him: ‘Go and perform your ablutions!’ Completely disconcerted, the theologian headed for the stream once more. At the moment when he was about to perform his ablutions yet again, he finally perceived what his future master expected of him: before laying claim to anything at all, he had to rid himself, as a preliminary, of his supposed knowledge and all his certainties, which constituted so many veils. He therefore had to perform his ‘inner ablutions’ first. It is indeed in this way that the disciple, having become fully receptive, will be able to benefit usefully from his master’s teaching¹.

Claiming knowledge, especially of the bookish kind, is a veil over inner knowledge. A ‘full’ head, even a ‘well-made’ one, can have only a vague idea of true spiritual knowledge, for bookish knowledge does not reach the inner dimension proper to the mystical experience of unveiling and therefore cannot transform the individual’s behaviour. Thus he who sincerely aspires to spiritual knowledge will have to renounce the illusion of being able to approach it through the intellect. He will have to enter humbly into an inward discipline in which his aim will no longer even be to understand, but to live the proximity with God. ‘At the beginning, one must abandon the pretension of understanding everything from exoteric knowledge. Rather, one meditates and works until the opening occurs. But the goal itself is not that opening. The goal is to have no expectation other than being close, in conformity with the Truth, in complete selflessness’².

Humility is an essential condition of the initiatic wayfaring towards the unveiling of the divine lights. It is one of the fundamental aspects of the science of conduct, which is central in Islam and in the Sufi traditions. This science of conduct is considered the highest degree of Sufism and, at the same time, the unavoidable way of access to spiritual knowledge. ‘True knowledge is obtained only when it is truly asked for with humility. The way of proceeding towards it is comparable to that of a person who wants to drink the water of a stream. That person will have to bend down to the stream to drink. Water is always located at the lowest point of a place, and we must be like water’².

Sincerity and humility are the spiritual traveller’s precious allies in the process of transmutation of the soul, thanks to which, as the ego’s hold disappears, he sees the divine realities revealed to him, until his heart, irradiated with light, is annihilated in the experience of union, just as the moon disappears at sunrise.

Karim Ben Driss is a sociologist, director of the Institut Soufi de Montréal and author of ‘Le renouveau du soufisme au Maroc’ (Archè / AlBouraq).

Further reading

• Religious form and the initiatic approach
• The state of discipleship
• The doctrine of Junayd

Share