Spirituality Studies 115 Nina Bilokopytova 5 Process, Subjectivity, and Ethics The coding results presented in Section 4 provide an empirical foundation for the hermeneutical interpretation developed in this section. Across the analyzed corpus, recursive temporal structures dominate the textual representations of spiritual transformation (RQ1), while repeated practices such as dhikr, muḥāsaba, and the renewal of intention function as constitutive mechanisms sustaining this process (RQ2). Taken together, these findings demonstrate that classical Sufi spirituality is not structured as a linear progression toward a final mystical culmination but rather as a recursive dynamic of stabilization, loss, and renewal. The repeated need to reaffirm intention, reestablish spiritual states, and sustain ethical vigilance suggests that the formation of the Sufi subject unfolds through ongoing interaction between experience and practice. From a hermeneutical perspective, these patterns indicate that subjectivity in Sufi thought cannot be understood as a fixed spiritual identity achieved at the end of the path. Instead, the subject emerges within a continuous process of ethical self-formation in which practices of remembrance, self-examination, and discipline repeatedly reorganize the relationship between the self, the community, and the divine presence. The recursive structure identified in the coding analysis therefore saturates the hermeneutical interpretation proposed here: spiritual experience, ethical practice, and subject formation form an integrated process that remains fundamentally open and unfinished. 6 Contribution Overall, the present study contributes to Sufi studies and the broader field of mysticism research in three interrelated ways. First, it introduces a structured analytic framework for examining spiritual temporality, operationalizing key Sufi concepts such as ḥāl, maqām, and tajallī through explicit textual indicators. This framework allows qualitative interpretations to be supported by transparent coding procedures. Second, the study demonstrates that spiritual transformation in the analyzed corpus follows a pattern best described as recursive temporality rather than strictly linear progression. By identifying different modalities of recursion ethical (al-Ghazālī), practical (al-Qushayrī), ontological (Ibn ʿArabī), and poetic (Rūmī) the analysis reveals a shared structural logic underlying otherwise diverse Sufi discourses. Third, the article provides a comparative model that integrates ethical practice, metaphysical reflection, and poetic expression within a single analytical scheme. This approach bridges phenomenological, textual, and structural interpretations of Sufism while avoiding both reduction of spirituality to subjective experience and its dissolution into purely sociological analysis. Taken together, these contributions show how the temporal and repetitive structures embedded in Sufi texts can be systematically analyzed, opening new possibilities for comparative research on mystical traditions and process-oriented models of spirituality.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTUwMDU5Ng==