“How do you ever expect for your heart to become polished like a mirror without putting up with the pain of polish?
” Rumi
THERE is a wall, which separates humanity from the lightness around it.
This wall is built by human consciousness, the same consciousness that was given as a gift by the world of light.
Humanity made its choice to stay in the darkening world of separation, in a self-destructive civilization, full of greed, desire, hatred and anger.
We have been conditioned to live in the world of shadows and half-truth governed by our ego, turning our attention away from light, a world in which the divine is no longer present and the earth is no longer considered sacred.
There was hope that awakening humanity could dismantle this wall and out of the ruins of this darkness, we can go back to the time, before there was any wall at all.
You could see the spiritual essence of every tree and flower and the beings of light waiting to guide us and help us follow the right path.
This wall is the physical barrier between two worlds.
There are seventy veils of the light and darkness and these veils filter the divine light and only the glory of His face can burn away these barriers.
Is it our collective destiny to remain separated by the wall of separation, remain stranded in the shadows, or can we can reclaim the world of light, beauty and wonder.
Do we have the will and power to remove this wall, dismantle it brick by brick and see the divine light come in.
There are some individuals, who are able to reach the light of true self and understand the meaning of our soul, while most wander through life without realizing its true meaning.
Hasan-al-Basryee asked Rabia, the great Sufi mystic, ”If I renounce the world and turn towards God, will God turn towards me?
She said, “No never.
First God turns towards you and then you turn toward God.”
The moment you have this experience you are in state of grace.
When something in you has woken up, then comes a possibility of a conscious relationship between you and your soul.
If one reaches the light within one’s own soul than essential Oneness is achieved, all sense of separation is dissolved and the lover merges with the beloved.
The Sufis call it the awakening of the heart.
Here in Rumi’s words swimming ends always in drowning.
The light of the divine is too dazzling to be perceived directly, that is why the spiritual life is a slow process of gradually lifting of the veils, so that you are able to bear and absorb the light gradually.
The yearning to love God is cosmically encoded in every human being and Quran tells us, we yearn for proximity with this glow of Presence.
It is equally true that in order for love to reach its fulfillment, humanity must strive to do its part.
Ibn-Arabi suggested that perfection and ultimate reality already existed and was contained within the essence of every human being, merely awaiting discovery.
One author concurs, saying, “God is present, but individuals cannot see the Almighty, because curtains of ignorance veil their eyes and rust encases their hearts.
The average person is egocentric.
Only after he or she has polished the heart and purified the self, will the curtains lift, the rust fall away and the eyes become able to see God.”
“The journey of realizing this reality becomes the ‘way of knowledge,’ which largely characterizes the mystic endeavor.
It is this type of knowledge, which takes the meaning of love to a new level.
It then grows in direct proportion to one’s awareness of God’s immanence and manifestation in all of His creation.”
“But in order for such knowledge to be ascertained, moral excellence and virtue, which define one of the essential principles of Islam, are a prerequisite.
Humanity must first understand the will of Allah, and proportional to the degree that their own will exists in harmony with God’s, nearness is realized.
” This divine will is encapsulated in the Quran and obeying all its precepts is rather significant.
Through constant remembrance of Allah, through Man’s love of God and the Prophet, through obedience to the commandments of Allah and His Prophet (peace be on him) and through constant struggle to promote good and forbid evil, man may attain nearness to Allah.”
“Therefore, living an upright and ethically superior life in submission vis-a-vis Allah’s commandments seems to be a non-negotiable precondition to attain closeness with God.
Only after faith and obedience exist can the attainment of knowledge about Allah begin.
The conditional nature of both love’s initiation and love’s realization becomes perhaps even more apparent when examining the ostensibly conditional reason for God’s motivation to create humanity in the first place.
Quran tells us, “God will not change the condition of the people until they change what is there in their hearts.
” Mirza Ghalib says, “Your face is unclean and you are obsessed in cleaning the mirror.
” You have to do the inner inconvenient work.
”—To be continued.
—The writer is author of various books based in Rawalpindi. ([email protected])
