The Honey Nectar

When Sorrow Yields Its Golden Seep

“The period of waiting patiently for release from suffering is an act of worship.”

Imam al-Ghazali

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There is a peculiar quality to sweetness discovered only after devastation. When the pure heart has given way to the thorns of the rose, and truly feels devastation and desperation.

I remember the first time I truly understood this; sitting in a proverbial garden years after the worst of it, when the bitterness I had been carrying suddenly shifted. Not vanished. Shifted. The same memories, the same losses, but now they pooled golden on my tongue. The trials had not changed. They had changed me.

This is the station of honey.

We have already walked through water, the pristine clarity of purification that strips us clean until we gleam like polished mirrors, only to discover that purity alone is preparation, not destination. We bled through the rose nectar, learning that spiritual achievement must be pierced, that our hard-won whiteness must be stained crimson by divine love before it becomes truly alive.

Now comes something different. Not the sharp sweetness of fresh fruit, not the sterile sweetness of sugar. But honey, ancient, golden, earned through thousands of small journeys into and out of darkness.

The Qur’an speaks of this nectar in Surah An-Nahl:

“And your Lord inspired the bee, saying: ‘Take for yourself homes in the mountains, in the trees, and in what they construct. Then eat from all the fruits and follow the ways of your Lord made easy for you.’ There comes forth from their bellies a drink of varying colors, in which there is healing for people. Indeed, in this is a sign for those who give thought.”
— (Qur’an 16:68-69)

Observe the journey contained in this verse.

First, the bee must make its home—not just anywhere, but in specific places, responding to divine guidance. Then it must eat from all the fruits, not selecting only the pleasant ones, but gathering from the entire range of experience. Only after this does honey emerge: a drink of varying colors, holding within itself healing for people.

The seeker who arrives at this station has done precisely this. They have built their inner dwelling. They have consumed experience without discrimination, the bitter AND the sweet, the nourishing AND the burning. And now, from within their own bellies, something golden begins to emerge.

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From Bitter to Sweet

There is an Arabic word: sabr. Most translate it as patience. But this domesticates it. Sabr is the quality of the aloe plant, bitter to taste, yet containing within its bitterness the compounds that heal wounds. The relationship between these meanings is not accidental. True patience is not passive waiting. It is metabolic. I am speaking of the active transformation of difficulty into medicine.

The mystics understood, and we seem to keep missing, that this transformation happens in darkness. In the bitter.

Consider the bee and the hive. The bee gathers nectar in sunlight, but the conversion to honey occurs deep within the honeycomb’s interior—in warmth, in closeness, in conditions invisible to outside observers. The bee does not simply collect sweetness; it creates sweetness through a chemical process that requires withdrawal, labor, and time.

So it is with our wounds.

The rose nectar taught us to accept the piercing. Now we learn what happens to what has been pierced. Not all punctured things heal into sweetness. Some fester. Some scar hard. The difference lies in what we do in the darkness after the wound.

Rumi says:

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”

But we must add: the wound is also the place where the Light transforms you, if you can bear to let the transformation occur slowly, in the unseeable depths of your own being. This is not easy, it is hard work, and it requires a laying down, a surrender of self that few in our time are willing to do.

I carry a wound from many years ago. For the first decade, it was simply pain—a door I walked past quickly in my own house, hoping no one would ask what lay behind it. But something shifted when I stopped fleeing and started attending the door. I brought my attention to that closed room like a bee bringing nectar to the comb. I sat with what I found there. I let the heat of awareness do its slow work.

The wound that would not close became a door—
Not sealed, but opened to what lies in store.
I feared the bleeding, but the golden seep
Was honey rising from my deepest core.

What bitter seasons stripped my branches bare,
What frosts descended on my ungloved prayer—
These were the winters that prepared the comb
For sweetness I had no right to prepare.

They told me I would heal, and this was true,
But healing meant becoming something new:
Not flesh restored to what it was before,
But wound transformed to honey flowing through.

What emerged, eventually, was not the disappearance of loss. It became a deep understanding that my “loss” had crystallized into usable form. It became medicine I could offer others who carried similar burdens.

This is the honey station. Our wounds do not vanish. They become resources. The wounds are how God works best. There is a saying in recovery, God does the best work through broken people. Because we have fully surrendered, we have ceased our prayer at the altar of self, and have fully given our hands and feet to the task of service.

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The Gathering Phase

But this requires gathering.

The bee does not transform a single flower’s nectar into honey. It visits thousands—perhaps tens of thousands—of blossoms across its lifetime. Each flower offers something different: sweetness in varying intensities, colors that will tint the final product, and properties that contribute to the honey’s particular healing qualities.

The spiritual seeker at this station must gather similarly. All your experiences, not merely the seemingly meaningful ones, contribute to what you will eventually produce. The ordinary days. The failed attempts. The moments of inexplicable joy and inexplicable sorrow. The times you were broken and the times you were lifted. Even (especially) the moments you would rather forget.

Reynold Nicholson in his commentary on Ibn ‘Arabi’s Tarjuman al-Ashwaq, writes that the hearts of the disciples “receive from the master knowledge in the same way as the bees receive honey from God.” Notice this: honey is not merely produced by bees—they receive it from God through the medium of their labor. The bee does not create ex nihilo. It participates in a process already prepared for it.

The bee does not complain of endless flight—through patience, all becomes sweet From dawn’s first bloom to evening’s fading light, the bitter labor becomes sweet

I visited each garden of my grief and bent toward fallen petals,  
What nectar hid beneath the leaves of loss, through gathering, becomes sweet

“Then eat from every fruit, and follow ways your Lord made easy” 
The thousand flowers, none of them refused, their varying colors become sweet

There is no haste for what slow fire gives, no shortcut through the darkness 
Within the comb, in silence and in warmth, what time alone tends becomes sweet

My belly holds what I could not refuse: the sharp herb and the fragrant 
From it emerges drink for those who heal, and what was sorrow becomes sweet

“In this indeed a sign for those who think”, not those who merely glance
The one who gathers without choosing learns: the thorn itself becomes sweet

O heart, you are no different from the bee, your nature is to gather 
Do not refuse the labor without rest: through service, even death becomes sweet

What is the human equivalent of this?

Perhaps it is recognizing that your suffering was not random. That the particular blend of experiences you have undergone and only you have undergone precisely this blend. This constitutes a formula for a medicine only you can make. Your specific wounds, your particular gardens of both devastation and unexpected beauty: these are the flowers you were sent to gather from.

The gathering cannot be rushed. Classical Sufi masters spoke of forty-day retreats, of years of service before teaching, of seasons upon seasons of repetitive practice before the sweetness emerged. We live in an age that wants honey without labor. Healing without time. Transformation without the slow warmth of invisible fermentation.

But honey cannot be microwaved. What emerges quickly from heat is caramel, hardening fast, useful in its own way, but lacking honey’s particular capacity for preservation, its power to heal wounds it touches.

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The Community of Sweetness

There is another element the solitary spiritual seeker easily forgets: honey is never made alone.

The hive is a unified organism. Each bee’s individual labor contributes to a collective resource. The honey stored in the comb belongs to no single worker—it is the accumulated offering of thousands, available to all, shared through the winter when flowers are absent, and survival depends on what was preserved during abundance.

What does this mean for those of us at the honey station?

It means that the sweetness we have metabolized from our suffering is not ours to hoard. It was never meant for private consumption. The purpose of transforming our wounds into medicine is so that others may be healed by what we have survived.

This is where spiritual materialism becomes a danger. There is a way of collecting wisdom that treats it like currency, we are dangerously beyond the bounds and have engaged in spiritual capitalism. The station where we accumulate insights for our own benefit, measuring our worth by the depth of our understanding or the intensity of our experiences. But honey stored indefinitely without sharing crystallizes. It becomes hard, less accessible, and eventually less useful.

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I thought my sweetness mine to taste alone, but sweetness feeds the hive 
What crystallizes, hoarded, heals no one; only what flows feeds the hive

Each worker brings what burns upon its wings, withholding nothing back 
The winter’s silence will demand reserves: what summer stored feeds the hive

“There emerges from their bellies drink in which is healing”—for whom? 
Not for the bee’s own tongue, the golden cure—what’s offered feeds the hive

Who drinks the medicine my grief has made will never know its cost 
And this is right: transformed sorrow, not sorrow itself, feeds the hive

The one who keeps the comb sealed for herself will watch it turn to stone
Honey was never meant for single tongues; what’s given feeds the hive

Come, taste this gold my burning labor made, this price I cannot name
We who have stayed through winter know the truth: only surrender feeds the hive

The Qur’an specifically notes that honey holds “healing for people”, not for the bee, not even primarily for the bee. The bee makes honey because that is its nature. But the purpose of honey extends beyond the maker to the community that receives it.

I think of those who have carried me through impossible seasons. They did not counsel me with theories they had read in books. They offered what had come through them; the specific golden substance produced by their particular journey through darkness. And I have tasted the difference between information and this kind of lived sweetness. One fills the mind. The other changes the blood.

As you gather your wounds into healing, ask: who needs what has emerged from you? Whose winter might be survived because of what you stored during your summer of suffering?

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The Labor of Love

Let us be honest about the labor.

The romanticized version of spiritual transformation skips from wound to wisdom as if the transition were inevitable. But the bee visits each flower with complete attention. It extracts nectar deliberately. It returns to the hive burdened with the weight of what it carries. And then the real work begins, the enzymatic transformation, the evaporation of excess water, the patient construction of comb cells to hold what has been made.

There is exhaustion in this.

The seeker at the honey station knows a particular fatigue that those at earlier stages cannot understand. It is the tiredness of having processed too much, of having transformed experience after experience without pause, of having offered your metabolic labor to the work of healing without adequate rest.

The temptation here is to stop producing. To say: I have given enough. Let my wounds remain wounds. Let others make their own honey.

But the bee does not have this option. Its nature is to gather and transform. To refuse the labor would be to refuse its own existence.

I have found myself at this edge many times—depleted, uncertain whether I have anything left to offer, wondering if the wells of transformation have finally run dry. And each time, the answer has been the same: return to the garden. Find one more flower. Bring back what you gather, however small. Trust that the labor itself sustains, that the work of making sweetness is also the work of being kept alive.

Practicing the Gratitude of Gathering

Before sleep, move through your day with this question: What did I gather today? Do not filter for significance. The brief conversation. The moment of unexpected beauty. The difficulty that arose. The small kindness offered or received. Let your attention rest on each like a bee landing on a blossom. Then release them into the darkness of sleep—your inner hive—and trust that something is transforming while you rest.

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The Golden Teaching

There is one final teaching of honey we must address before we can speak of what lies beyond it.

Honey is not merely sweet. It is golden.

What is gold? It is concentrated light. It is the color of the sun captured and held in material form. When ancient mystics spoke of spiritual gold, the goal of alchemical transformation, they spoke of a substance that had gathered and condensed divine illumination into something stable, transferable, useful.

Honey holds precisely this. The flowers drew light from the sun. The bee gathered what the flowers had transformed. And now, in the amber darkness of the comb, sits distilled solar energy—sweetness that is also light made tangible.

The bee cannot explain how nectar turns—it only trusts the dark 
Go out, return, and wait: the sweetness burns for those who trust the dark

I wanted honey in a single day, demanded pain give way 
But seasons laughed and flowers closed their heads: be patient, trust the dark

“The patient will be given their reward without account”—without measure— 
What calculus could hold what time compounds for those who trust the dark?

Forty days, forty years, forty lifetimes if He wills— 
The time it takes is not for us to score; the Knower trusts the dark

My grief still raw, my healing not yet started, the comb still forming— 
Fa-sbir sabran jamīla—with gracious patience, I must trust the dark

The chemistry that turns the bitter sweet churns in the belly’s night— 
No one has ever rushed the golden seep; transformation trusts the dark

Be patient with your slow fermenting heart, you who would flee the waiting— 
Inna Allaha ma’a al-sābirīn: indeed, Allah is with those who trust the dark

The mystics teach that the honey station produces seekers whose wounds have become luminous. The suffering has not been erased or forgotten. It has been transfigured, it has been made into something that gives light as well as sweetness.

There is a teaching from the Maghrebi masters that spiritual practice reaches its proper maturity “when the sacred becomes sweet”. In other words, when obedience to divine will ceases to feel like a burden and begins to feel like honey on the tongue. This is not naive positivity or spiritual bypassing. This is what happens when the labor of transformation has been completed: what was once bitter has become genuinely sweet, not because you convinced yourself to call it sweet, but because it changed. I reflect on my own trauma’s as a man in recovery, addicted to all manner of things. The deep suffering I experienced in the darkness of my own honeycomb, before the light was transmuted into sweetness. I now reflect on that suffering as a honeyed memory, for without it, I could not see as I do today.

But here, too, lies a danger.

Honey is wonderful. It is healing. It can be preserved almost indefinitely. It is valuable.

And because of all this, it is possible to become satisfied with honey—to mistake this station for the destination, to accumulate golden wisdom and rest in the sweetness of one’s accumulated understanding. To fall prey to the feeling of “I’m Done. I’ve arrived.”

The tradition warns against this rest.

Honey, for all its miracles, cannot intoxicate.

It nourishes. It heals. It sweetens. But it leaves the ego intact, the boundaries preserved, the self still recognizable to itself. The one who drinks honey remains sober, enriched, transformed, but fundamentally still themselves.

There is a further nectar that dissolves even this.

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The Invitation to Sacred Labor

We end this segment of our journey through the sacred nectars not with arrival but with preparation. But preparation for what exactly?

If you have walked through purification’s water and felt the emptiness of achieved cleanliness—if you have bled through rose-stained trials and learned that spiritual growth requires being pierced—then you stand now at the threshold of labor.

The honey station is not given. It is made. Through countless small journeys between the garden of your experience and the darkness of your inner hive. Through the patient transformation of what you have suffered into what others can receive. Through the exhausting, ordinary, daily work of metabolizing reality into sweetness.

And when the golden substance finally emerges—when your particular wounds have crystallized into your particular medicine—you will discover that you have been preparing all along for something further still.

The wine awaits. The cup that will not merely heal or nourish but annihilate.

But that is another nectar, another thirst.

This sweetness has its bound—it heals, it glows, but still the self remains 
The golden treasure worked and found, the thousand flowers—yet the self remains

The honey-drinker wakes each dawn still counting what she’s gathered— 
Boundaries intact, the merchant with her ware: preserved, the self remains

“In it there is healing for the people”—yes, but healing is not drowning 
The cup that cures still leaves the drinker standing; sober, the self remains

There is another cup beyond this one that undoes what has been done— 
But I am not yet empty enough to hold it; too full, the self remains

The wine awaits the one who’s gathered fully, sweetened all, and still yearns 
Not yet, not yet—first taste what you have earned, while still the self remains

What scatters like the sun, what burns the boundaries—that cup is coming— 
But first: drink deep the gold of what you’ve grieved, before the self remains

O heart, you stand now at the threshold—behind you, every labor blessed 
Before you, the annihilation you have always wanted, where nothing of the self remains

For now, return to your garden. Notice what waits to be gathered. Bring it back. Let the darkness do its slow work.

And trust that what emerges from your belly—that drink of varying colors—carries within it something of the divine: healing for people, offered through the humble labor of your transformed life.

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Golden honey flows from hidden hives, Reward for those through whom the Beloved thrives— Sweetness earned through bitter sacrifice, Each drop a proof that devotion strives.

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Next: The Wine Nectar. When Even Sweetness Must Be Forgotten