Search is the Way to the Way.  It is the Caravan of Winter that proceeds to the Caravan of Summer.  Search implies correct motive, which means you are seeking the higher human development that is in harmony with the Infinite.

Genuine higher human development is neither rapid nor slow, which means there must be a right foundation without desperate short-cuts.  Both Baraka (blessing, empowerment) and Discipline (correct effort) are needed.  Search is therefore also for connection to the necessary channels of Baraka, which implies a discipline of preparation to receive Baraka in such a manner that its effect will be permanent and not merely temporary.

An important aspect of the preparatory discipline is that you must unlearn your Western University education that has trained your intellect to counter-productive routines of false thinking in accordance with an accumulated pattern of superficial knowledge.  Developmental learning is through doing and experiencing certain things that unfold the consciousness in other dimensions beyond your conditioning.  This means that you must even learn to read certain kinds of books or articles such as this one in such a manner as will allow you to experience what you need to experience.

On the Way to the Way, the Baraka enters your personal system from time-to-time in an unpredictable pattern that slowly accumulates, giving you an increasing “feel” of how the Way actually works for human upliftment.  The presence or absence of this “feel” is what we also call “taste”.  Imitators and charlatans are easily identifiable by their lack of Feel or Taste, which they will try to cover up with wordy explanations or personal postures and making faces, wearing hats, growing beards and so on.  The less real the student or the teacher, the more they will try to “look the part”.  With a real student, the Baraka works on him (or her) in accordance with the need as well as the time and the place of that necessity.  Certain insights, capacities or empowerments will therefore not take place until the Baraka has arranged for the emergence.  You can call this Divine Timing.  Learning to flow in a state of acceptance of the true Way is a deep aspect of the receiving of Baraka.  Those who are greedy and hurried about their development only dissipate and squander the Baraka and the opportunities of its hidden pattern, while those who make claims about themselves to attract attention cannot receive Baraka or channel it to yet others.  Baraka does not like pretence and will not agree with it.

If you sincerely wish to search for the Sufi Way and put it into practice for the higher benefit, then learn to read Sufi materials in your real essence and not merely from your so-called “understanding” of your brain-intellect.  You do not need to “understand” the Sufi Way.  The Baraka enters into you through your Spirit and Heart, Ruh and Qalb.  Spirit and Heart are the inner eyes of real reading and progressive insight.  If there is no activation of subtle perception from your reading, your reading has only given your brain-intellect further information to confuse it or stimulate arguments and assertions for feeling right and self-important.

Baraka has a mind of its own.  It avoids proud, argumentative types, which means that the People-of-Baraka also avoid them.  Without Baraka you will never meet the right people for the higher connections of development.  The concept of Baraka can now take a step from the definition of “Blessing” to something more significant.