Distill Yourself

 whirling

Even before I began distilling I had already reflected about the inner aspect of the distillation process that produced my perfume ingredients.
As a perfumer using my essences to cure myself and my family I had searched for their meanings and the reasons for their power. 
Frequenting the sufis was the key to this understanding. 

“You can learn to love only by loving” says Rumi, and you can learn to distil only by distilling.

The more I distil and teach others how to do it, the more I realize the fascination that distilling exerts on all people who come across to it.

The transformation of raw matter into pure spirit appears to us like a sort of good magic. I have been pondering for some time on the appeal that distillation has on human beings.

I believe that distillation is showing us a primordial spiritual process of mankind in the material world. The distillation of one’s self.

Distilling yourself means to eliminate all that makes yourself as a person in order to become the pure spirit of your person.

It is no more possible to describe what it is to become the pure spirit of your person than it is possible to describe love. But when you experience even a little of it you know it.

Distillation is a process that is painful to the plant and distillation of self is a painful to our ego. No distillation can occur without a distiller doing it and the distillation of self needs a person to put you in the alembic and to lit the fire in order to boil the water boil.

This is why either we are searching for such a person or we are fleeing from such a person, but in any case, if you are destined to be distilled you will be caught by the distiller.

For the plant it is the destruction of its material part by the fire of the steam. That part which is not its own perfume.

For the mystic it is the destruction of the ego by the fire of love.

Steam dissolves the perfume of the plant and love dissolves the pure spirit of the person.

After this, a condensation must happen, to separate the spirit from the solvent.

Burning steam becomes cool water again and burning love becomes thirst quenching love.

In both cases distillation makes the spirit in its pure form take a material form without really being material. The essential oil is a material liquid but it evaporates entirely to become a smell and the spirit of the mystic prevails so much on his material body that he can walk on the water and fly in the air.

Alchemy is not the science of turning ignoble lead into gold through various processes of purification. It is the science of transforming crude humans into divine creatures through various processes of purification.

Distillation, decantation, filtration … all alchemical processes are processes that show parallel processes of spiritual purification.

The distiller is the Sheikh, the Guru, the Master….

A spiritual distiller is absolutely necessary, for the spiritual distillation of the human being, just as the distiller is, for the material distillation.

To understand how necessary these persons are, let us consider that distillation is an event that cannot take place in the universe without a distiller.

Abdessalaam Attar

9 replies
  1. Lets Get Social in Dubai says:

    Ramadan Kareem Abdes Salaam
    This post is one of the most amzing I have ever read. Mashallah, I am extremly impressed.
    Would be possible to re-post this with all the reference needed on the website that I own?
    Thank you so much for the spiritual message and for the high emotions created by the beautiful words.
    All the best and peaceful Ramadan
    My kinddest regards, Leila

    Reply
  2. Karin Mandell Parramore says:

    The beauty of this post is overwhelming. It feels as though you reached into my heart and enticed my essence to go deeper, and bring that Beauty into the world.
    Mashallah!
    Perfect for Ramadan, Alhumdulillah.

    Reply
  3. Karin Mandell Parramore says:

    The beauty of this post is overwhelming. It feels as though you reached into my heart and enticed my essence to go deeper, and bring that Beauty into the world.
    Mashallah!
    Perfect for Ramadan, Alhumdulillah.

    Reply
  4. Karin Mandell Parramore says:

    The beauty of this post is overwhelming. It feels as though you reached into my heart and enticed my essence to go deeper, and bring that Beauty into the world.
    Mashallah!
    Perfect for Ramadan, Alhumdulillah.

    Reply

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