The Presence...

Junaid had a young dervish he loved very much, and his older
dervishes became jealous. They could not understand what the sheikh
saw in the young man. One day, Junaid told all his dervishes to buy
a chicken in the marketplace and then kill the chicken. However,
they had to kill the chicken where no one could see them. They were
to return by sundown at the latest.

One by one the dervishes returned to the sheikh, each with a
slaughtered chicken under his arm. Finally, when the sun went down,
the young derivsh returned, with a live chicken still squawking and
struggling. The older dervishes all laughed and whispered among
themselves that the young man couldn't even carry out his sheikh's
orders!

Junaid asked each of the dervishes to describe how they carried out
his instructions. The first man back said that he had gone out and
purchased the chicken, then returned home, locked the door, closed
the curtains over all the windows, and then killed the chicken. The
second dervish said that he returned home with his chicken, locked
his door and pulled the curtains, and then he took the chicken into a
dark closet, but he blindfolded himself, so he himself could not see
the slaughtering. Another dervish went into the a dark deserted area
of the forest to sacrifice his chicken. Another went into a pitch
black cave.

Finally, it was the young man's turn. He hung his head, embarrassed
that he could not follow his sheikh's instructions. "I brought the
chicken into my house, but everywhere in the house there was a
Presence. I went into the most deserted parts of the forest, but the
Presence was still with me. Even in the darkest caves, the Presence
was still there. There was no place I could go where I was not seen."

Sheikh Muzaffer
as collected by James Fadiman & Robert Frager