Ephesians 4:13 · World English Bible
until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a full grown man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,
Ṣuḥba: Keeping company on the road Sufis call this ṣuḥba and treat it as half the training. Nobody ripens alone, since the habits a person cannot see in themselves show up in how they handle the people beside them.
From the Sufism reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
SUFISM
Ṣuḥba: Keeping company on the road Sufis call this ṣuḥba and treat it as half the training. Nobody ripens alone, since the habits a person cannot see in themselves show up in how they handle the people beside them. Patience gets built by people who test it, and this growth happens between people rather than in private.
Tawḥīd: God's oneness Tawḥīd is the Sufi word for everything tracing back to a single source. When people argue over belief, each one is usually defending the piece visible from where they stand, and the arguing feeds on that. As the one thing they are all aiming at comes into focus, positions loosen and people find themselves together without having negotiated it.
Maʿrifa: Knowing God firsthand Maʿrifa is knowing by having been through something. Al-Ghazali put it bluntly: knowing the definition of drunkenness is not the same as being drunk. Facts about God can be picked up in an afternoon and repeated at will, while this other knowing arrives slowly and shows up in how someone behaves under pressure.
Maqāmāt: Stations along the way The Sufis mapped the road as a series of stations, each one resting on the one before. Nobody jumps from the first to the last; patience has to settle before trust does, and trust before ease. When a person feels stuck for years on the same lesson, that long stretch is where the change sets, and ground skipped over tends to give way later.
Take on the character traits of God: maturity is measured in character Sufis repeat this line constantly, and al-Ghazali built much of his teaching around it. Since God is described as generous, patient, and forgiving, growing up means carrying those qualities at human size, in ordinary hours, with ordinary people. Progress then gets measured by how someone treats a person who has nothing to offer them.
Al-Insān al-Kāmil: The complete human being Ibn Arabi used the term for the person in whom every quality of God appears together and in balance. Most of us run heavy in one and thin in another: kind but easily pushed around, or strong but hard on people. The complete person holds the whole set in proportion, and keeping that picture in view stops anyone from mistaking one strong quality for the whole of being grown up.
Sufism lens
Which quality in you is strong enough that you have been letting it stand in for the whole of being grown up?
When you are with people, take the good in them as something to copy and the bad as a mirror for yourself. Character is built in company, not in private.
The Buddha told Ananda that good company is not half the holy life, it is the whole of it. Nobody ripens alone.
Do not say you have learned a teaching, show that you have digested it. Sheep do not bring the grass back to the shepherd, they grow wool.
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Sufism