I think that is just another aspect of the weakness of learning from texts. Tassawuf was, and is, taught by personal example and experience.

Hagiography by its very nature, focuses on the pietist orientation of a particular person. In the process, you have a fundamentally skewed biographical, or autobiographical account. I think it’s understood that in doing so, an example is being set, spiritual thresholds of the readers are to be raised. We often forget their humanity, and their failings – however relative.

In discussing miracles, zealous endeavors of traveling to the Divine, I think we often forget that they too lived in their own historical contexts. And that we, in this time, have our own.

Abu Bakr al-Wasiti, a disciple of Imam Junaid (ra) for example, bemoaned the fate that Sufism is gone, and all that is left are regrets. He had the examples of the Ta’ibin and the Sahaba ikram before his time – despite the fact that eminent friends of Allah such as Maulana Rumi, Abu Madyan and Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jaylani came after this period.

You will also have situations where awliyah have different approaches to fighting their nafs, and different attitudes towards the earthly life. One may read a saying to the effect of, “Anyone who claims not to marry (is desirable), is mistaken. Sayyiduna Ali was the master of Zuhd, and he had 4 wives and 10 concubines.” When one reads contexts like this, amidst all the stress on how the dunya is transient and of no real consequence in OUR time and context, it smacks at the very least, of an inconsistency between principle, and the practice of those who came before us.

There are some aspects of sufism which are, in a sense, open for all. These include such things as putting others before oneself, making dhikr, being conscious of one’s sins in order to repent from them, fighting the nafs by organizing one’s time with acts of worship, guarding one’s eyes and ears from what is haram, etc.

One might even argue that everyone must employ these even without a sheikh, as they are the universal commands of Allah and His Messenger, salallahu alaihiwasallam.

The other, experiential aspects are, by definition, unattainable through books or even talks. But this is rarely what is written about.