الخطوة الأولى
First step
Never read anything about Sufism? Start here. Seven squares only, in order, like a little story: a threshold, a slope, a fall, a return, a help, a term.
Don't look for “your square”. Simply read, in order, and let each image resonate. At each step, a link opens the full square on the board if you wish to go deeper. Nothing to succeed at, nothing to judge.
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1
العدم
al-ʿadam — non-being
At the start, nothing. Before existing, we were not. All that we are was given to us. The path begins with this humility: I did not make myself.
Open square 1 → -
2
الشهوة
al-shahwa — passion
Then comes desire. It is not bad in itself: it is the engine of life. But if it becomes the master, it drags downward. It is the first slope, where the soul (النفس, nafs) takes the controls.
Open square 4 → -
3
الصحبة الردية
al-ṣuḥba al-radiyya — bad company
A typical fall: one lets oneself be surrounded by what pulls downward. The commentary says a “grapnel” then seizes the traveller and makes him descend several degrees. A fall is not a condemnation — it is a call to return.
Open square 30 → -
4
الصحبة الطيبة
al-ṣuḥba al-ṭayyiba — good company
The remedy is often the exact reversal of the fall. To choose a company that raises: “a man will be raised in the religion of his friend.” This single square can make one cross, in one step, twenty-four degrees toward good works.
Open square 40 → -
5
ترحم العريان
al-taraḥḥum al-ʿuryān — compassion for the naked man
A virtue that raises: tenderness for the one we see destitute. The “naked man” designates the essential indigence of every being. From this compassion an ascent toward good character is born.
Open square 39 → -
6
المرشد الكامل
al-murshid al-kāmil — the perfect guide
No one walks alone. The guide (شيخ, shaykh) welcomes the traveller: “Be welcome, I have long awaited you,” and leads him, in a single step, toward the term.
Open square 62 → -
7
بقاء بالله
al-baqāʾ bi-llāh — permanence in God
The term of the journey: what remains when the self ceases to claim itself. But even here, the guide warns against pride: the highest station remains that of servanthood (العبودية, ʿubūdiyya).
Open square 96 →
There — you have walked a tiny but complete path: the threshold, the slope, the fall, the return, the virtue, the help, the term. The whole board works this way, in a hundred squares. The path is not a straight line.