The Mystical Ladder & Ascent of Sufism

The Sufi during their spiritual journey along the tariqa (path) ascended a double ladder consisting one of the initiatic stations (which were the fruits of spiritual discipline) and the other of spiritial states (which were divine favors granted to the mystic) which the devotee experienced.  The Sufi climbed a mystical ladder which is sometimes referred to as the Ladder of: Experience, Devotion, Divine Love, Vision, Whirling, and  the prophetic "flight of understanding".  During the ascent the Sufi sage would surrender his/her heart completely in contemplation of the divine beloved.

The Sufis practiced the mystical ascent on a ladder toward enlightenment.  On this ladder, both those higher up on the ladder and those further down need one another to pull, or to push up, to feed, or to be fed.  Sufism did not exclude women from the path to God; in fact there was no distinction between men and women in their ability to reach the divine.  The classical stations of the Sufi Ladder are repentance, abstinence, poverty, patience, love and fear.  Other questionable stations alluded to by modern authors were destitution before God, Contentment, desire for God, Contemplation, intimacy, The Fear of God, Hope, constriction and dialation.

To Sufis, the Qur'an exhibited a pattern of meanings, hidden or visible, the constant contemplation of which ultimately delivered the key to a ladder of spiritual ascent.  As Sufism developed, so the steps of that ladder became more carefully distinguished and dileneated.  the entire ascent was often described as a process of unveiling progressively more profound and meaningful stages of reality and experience, a series of epiphanies were sometimes expressed in language of great power and beauty, terse, oracular pronouncements, mystifying to the non-initiate, seemingly contradictory in their embrace of opposities, para Qur'anic in style and energy.