Name 74 / 100 · ✦ Plenitude
اَلْأَوَّل
al-Awwal
The First
Before all beginning.
The tongue
From w-ʾ-l; awwal is the first in order — but here, with no second that prefigures Him.
The reason
Before Him, nothing. No empty time precedes Him: He is before time.
The Sufi meaning
To meditate on al-Awwal is to go back beyond every thinkable origin. Thought draws back, and back, and finds at last a silence: it is there.
The servant's portion
Seek within yourself what was before your stories: bare consciousness, there where you had not yet an image of yourself.