Issues on Which the Openings in the Path are Dependent

Our master, the Imam, Shaykh Salih al-Jaʿfari , Allah be pleased with him, said ^[1]:

Indeed, the openings in the path are dependent on these matters:

1) For the murid to know the status and worth of his shaykh, in order that his heart be filled with honour and respect for him. And he witnesses the shaykh when he reads his awrād and witnesses taking from him in his daily life.
2) Loving the shaykh with an immense love until you do not prefer anyone in existence as a shaykh in his time. This is in order that your heart does not incline to another shaykh because the inclination of the heart locks the door without arrival. And the murid doesn’t obtain the meaning of the hadith “Give us rest by it o’ Bilal.”
3) Know the virtue of the awrād of the shaykh so that one doesn’t belittle them by reciting other than them and leaving them all together. He will then become like the one who plants a plant but doesn’t water it. He prevents the fruit himself. Far-fetched! Far-fetched! That a plant produces fruit without water!
4) Know the states of the shaykh during his life in the dunya, in order to emulate him and to make one’s state like his. Indeed, every shaykh loves that his murid follows his methodology and be in the state which he was on without alteration. Every murid inherits from his shaykh but one the condition that his state be like the state of his shaykh.
5) Do not consider one’s self higher than the shaykh regardless of obtaining a state from the various states, whether its obtaining knowledges or unveilings. One must see oneself as merely an extension of the shaykh and always and perpetually submit his spirit (ruh) to the shaykh, like Sayyidi ʿAbdul Karīm al-Jīlī, may Allah be pleased with him, who said: “The foundation and the branch of my desire is seeking his foundation.”
6) Having adab with the shaykh who he received the awrād of the ṭarīqa from. It is incumbent to be given the awrād, and that the shaykh and the ṭarīqa acknowledges one. Likewise, it is incumbent to love him and have proper manners with him for the sake of the shaykh of ṭarīqa^* because the shaykh of tariqa has a door, and it is the shaykh from whom you received the awrād , and the Muhammadan presence has a door, and it is the original shaykh of the tariqa, and the Divine presence has a door and it is the Prophet ﷺ.

Your door to the Chosen one is the shaykh, o’ youth
By him is the arrival to the Chosen one in the realm of nearness
And by the Sayyid, the Chosen one, you ascend to the heights
And you draw near to the Lord of existence without a barrier

[1]Miftāḥ al-Dukhūl li-Ṭarīqa al-Jaʿfarīyya pgs. 42-45.

[*] see FAQ