Nafs

The nafs (Arabic) is a word used by Muslim scholars and also used in Sufi terminology to denote the lesser selves or the elements that create us but are of lesser 'value' than the noble creature that we are emergent towards. In Christian terminology they may be seen as our passions and vices – the elements in us that tempt us and lower our stature as Noble creatures.The nafs are described in a similar vein to the model of the life forces that this work (InnerDialogue and Being Human: the Life Forces) engages in. The language historically was couched as if a notation of their nature – a nature seen as difficult, a fault or stain (psora), a vice or passion. The classical Sufi or person on the tarika or inner Way, would see these elements within, as forces, that need to be bent towards the Greater Will. These forces are simply the potential energy of elemental aspects of our selves, empowered, moved, altered, placed on display; as a consequence they change from potential to actual energy and become a force altering our state.

Muslim theolgians appeared to have missed out the material physical structure – the tibs – as an aspect of the nafs. These are the forces inherent within our material structure. They may be named as the material forces, inferring that we carry within us myriad aspects, remnants, elements, nuances that flavor our building (our phsyical structure). When we meet a situation that triggers off these patterns in our matrix, the patterns become a force in the form of a signal or vibration. These are transmitted through the material nature of ourselves and picked-up (received) by the emotional or feeling body, amplified by our instinctual capacity to 'hear' or 'feel' and then decoded and named or worried over,perhaps taken into fear, if we don't actually know what it is. This is the normal state of affairs.

Most of our patterns which we deal with are material. If I llok clinically over the years working with humans, I would empirically indicate that most of us ore dealing with patterns inherited, which of course them trigger off patterns in the other selves or nafs. The nafs really mean the lower forces, and these forces then influence us.

The vegetal realm, our feelings, may be receiving information from below, or conversely may have fabricated / created some emotional sensorial pathophysiological state. In this case what we create internally, build and summate within our physiological matrix – the living element within us – we hold in our neurological plexi or chakras. These summated fields that we are the creators of, are of energy, and these change us as they become a force, influencing how we feel. Ontologically these emotional charges then move up the house of ourselves, moving from chakra to chakra, ascending – as all life that has been created likes to be experienced 'as if' human. These feelings then engage our instincts or our humanity, or our noble Self.

In a similar vein the animal self may be involved with amplifying signals and emotions from below, but also may in itself metaphorically mate and engage with other forces, building a herd or large driving force that truly influences how we do things. These elements then make us addcitive, sexually disorganized, habitually engaged, gregarious or its opposite a loner, may lower us to become 'as if' animal: operating from pure survival, egotism, altering our real character that is normally manifest.