Vahiguru ji ka Khalsa, Vahiguru ji ki Fatih!

This week, we are drawn into the voice of Sheikh Farid ji, the 12th-century mystic whose words carry the ache of longing and the sweetness of surrender. Known as Fariduddin Ganj-i-Shakar—Treasure of Sweetness—his verses, preserved in the Guru Granth Sahib, cross every boundary, inviting us to remember what is essential: to love fully, to live honestly, to stay close to the One.

Set in Rag Asa, the musical mode of hope and yearning, his words touch something profound. Not just the mind, but the heart. They don’t teach us as much as they awaken us—to the quiet pull within, to the truth we often forget, to the love we are made for.

Sheikh Farid ji offers this piercing reflection: Those who are dyed in the love of Khuda, the One, are imbued in the love of Khuda’s glimpse. Those for whom Nam has been forgotten have become a burden on the land.

He speaks of two states—one steeped in love, the other lost in forgetting. Nam, the Identification with the One, is not a word we recite; it is the breath we live. It is the thread that tethers us to the Eternal—soft, unbreakable, and always waiting.

Those dyed in this love are transformed. They don’t need to be seen; they long only for a glimpse of the Beloved. Their devotion is not loud—it’s lived. You feel it in their presence. It steadies the air around them. In contrast, those who forget Nam drift, not out of rebellion, but because they’ve lost their way. Sheikh Farid ji doesn’t scorn them. He sees the burden they carry. The weight of disconnection. The ache of walking without a map.

He continues: For whom love is from the heart, they alone are true. This love cannot be faked. It rises quietly from within. It shows itself in the way someone speaks, pauses, and holds silence. When our inner truth and outer words don’t match, something in us breaks a little. But even this is not failure—it’s an invitation—a call to soften. To notice where we are still tender, still becoming. Alignment isn’t perfection—it’s the gentle courage to keep returning to the heart.

And then, in a moment of deep reverence, he offers this: Those whom Khuda, Own-Self has attached to the hem—they alone are accomplished dervishes at Khuda’s door.

What a beautiful image. To be held—not because we earned it, but because the One reached out and drew us near. These dervishes don’t cling to escape life—they cling because they’ve tasted something real. And they cannot bear to let go. This is not desperation—it is devotion. Not weakness—but grace.

Sheikh Farid ji calls them accomplished. Not for their status, their brilliance, or their fame. But because they live near the One. Their lives hum with presence. Their success is not visible to the world, but it is felt deeply in their core, in their spirit.

And in this honoring, he quietly turns the world’s applause on its head. We often celebrate a mother when her child rises to success, earns praise, wealth, and recognition. However, here, the mother is celebrated for giving birth to one who walks humbly, who stays close to the One, who lives in quiet devotion. That kind of love, that kind of nearness—how rarely we recognize it. And how deeply we need to.

We reflect:
What do we admire in others?
What do we hope for in our children?
And what, in the most honest corners of our hearts, do we long to become?

May we let our hearts soften.
May we lean into love that is quiet but real.
And may we, too, reach for that hem—not to prove anything, but to simply belong.

May the Guru-Wisdom guide us!