False Self Poem by Mystic Qalandar

In the abyss, the heart is veiled—
there lurks the false nafs,
a primordial shadow,
patient, vigilant, unseen.

Its whisper, never a roar,
lures toward the forbidden tree,
fruit cloaked in illusion,
promising timeless bliss.

But I know this call,
silked in borrowed tenderness.
I walk past, silent as the ascending ruh,
unyielding to its darkened rite.

To follow as disciple follows master
would sever the thread of Divine Will—
that summons from pre-eternity,
weaving my fitrah into light.

If I cried, "Submit—to the true Self,
to fitrah's clear mirror of God, "
it would recoil,
sworn enemy of Adam's line.

It stalks the Straight Path,
encircling from every hidden quarter,
adorning worldly dust until heedlessness blooms
like a false rose of paradise.

Yet this adversary knows its limit:
it cannot enter the soul forged in ikhlas—
the soul surrendered completely,
not to nafs, but to the One:

the Eternal, the Unmanifest, the All.

—January,17,2026