By Shaykh Zulfiqar Ahmad
The first lesson in the esteemed Naqshbandi silsilah is Latīfat al-Qalb. Upon this, the seeker traveling the spiritual path (sālik) engages in the spiritual exercise of murāqabah, where he or she sets aside some private time to sit and reflect on Allah. In this exercise the sālik strives to empty the heart of all thoughts and imagines the blessings and mercy of Allah entering the heart and erasing its darkness. As if in gratitude to being cleansed of darkness the heart joyfully calls out the Name of Allah over and over again: Allah! Allah! Allah!
A general scientific principle states that whenever a vacuum is created, something comes in to fill it and therefore the vacuum does not stay as is. Similarly when we sit and strive to remove all thoughts from our heart the aim is to create a void that will hopefully be filled with thoughts of Allah.