As far as the reality of what we call the human mind is concerned, that is the intellect [‘aql], God is that which reflects as a manifested experience within the mind the heart’s intention with respect to God; if God is approached with a sound heart, then the heart becomes sound. But if God is approached with an unsound heart, then the heart becomes unsound. Intention is none other than the manifestation of one’s true desire, and desire is will and will is desire. Thus, one’s reality accords fundamentally to one’s will, and this is according fundamentally to God’s Will. One’s reality accords to one’s desire, and so impure desire defines the ontological state of the heart such that reality itself is impure, and pure desire defines the ontological state of the heart such that reality itself is pure. If the very experience of Being is unsound, that is the experience of an impure heart, and in the next realm if one’s manifested reality reflects this most unsound of realities, then this is what is understood as the reality of the Hell dimensions. It is for this reason that in Islamic spirituality, good and honorable character is inseparable from religious-spirituality itself, that is to say, belief and character, faith and actions, are necessarily two sides of the same coin. They are mutually existent such that in the absence of one, the other does not exist. Profound spiritual states and knowledges without good character are thus said to be empty and thus despite their external impressiveness they are substantially unimpressive. To reconcile the heart with the Will of God is in fact the true miracle. Indeed, as Shaykh Abdal Qadir al-Jilani, the paragon Sufi and master of the spiritual path, said:
βIf you see a man flying in the air or walking on water, do not be deceived by him until you examine how he is with Godβs commands and prohibitions.β
This is a metaphysical principle that is articulated in different ways in all spiritual-religious traditions; in Hinduism and Buddhism, it is at the heart of karma. That our intentions have a karma, our thoughts have a karma, our emotions have a karma, and our actions have a karma, and they are all linked in the formation of the self in this world and which carries us into the next. There is an emanationist mechanism from the origin of Being that describes the workings of the world and the self, and the self in relation to the world. The Prophet Muhammad ο·Ί described this principle in the most intimate of ways that connects the transcendent directly to the immanent, articulating the message of God to us saying “I am as My servant thinks I am.”Β This is the principle at the heart of Being.
Life, that is conscious existence, is a gift. However, we corrupt this gift by fear based thought that leads to resentment, anguish, stress, and suffering. This is firstly to be understood not on the superficial level of the outer world of manifestation but again at the heart of Being. When we think about the principle of “I am as my servant thinks I am”, the corruption of the heart is a result of corrupt thoughts with regards to God. That is to say, when you are trapped within the delusion of God as unjust, then this perception forms as the foundation of Being, and now the world becomes a manifested projection of that. It is from here that the destructive process of thought and emotion arise and emanate outwardly into one’s actions.Β
In this way, our relationship with life is reduced to a set of expectations that, were these expectations to go unmet, our lives are rendered invalid, and were they to be met, then our lives are rendered as valid. It reflects a transactional relationship with God instead of one that is rooted in pure submission, which is the source of abundance and wellbeing. The validity of life has become externalized, and so life no longer is felt as a gift that is inherently special and that leads automatically to a deep sense of gratitude, but to something that we are bereft of that we must obtain and were we to obtain it, we would not feel grateful because we feel entitled to it.
We become like hungry ghosts, to use the Buddhist concept to describe such a state. We cannot be grateful for that which we feel we do not have, and so when life is something that we perceive as absent from us, and because we are in essence the expression of life itself, then our existence feels so fundamentally deprived and empty and bereft. The set of beliefs and the belief structure itself that we internalize will either superficialize and empty us out, or, will orient the awareness of our mind towards the Source of abundance that is inherent to our existence itself. The spiritual path and the idea of God that is fundamentally at the heart of all spiritual-religious traditions, even if the word “God” is never used, is about transformation through realization of the Eternal and the Real. Realization of the Eternal and the Real contextualizes our material lives by framing physical existence against a greater metaphysical backdrop, it frames life with death, the temporal with the eternal. This gives us perspective, and perspective centers us. Awakening is about preferring the Eternal to the temporal, Truth to falsehood, Reality to illusion, and so on and so forth, such that our lives truly become centered in the Ultimate.
Priority Defines Principle
If you rely on yourself, as in the lower self, you will always be unsettled within. This is because the nature of the imagined self, the ego, is defined by all manners of external inputs, which are in constant flux and outside the control of one’s own will.Β
It is not until you care about God’s opinion of you more than your own opinion of yourself that you will become settled within. When you care more about God’s opinion of you then you will become free from reliance on the opinions of others. And to know God’s opinion of you, you need only ascertain your opinion of God, but this in turn requires effort to cultivate and to elevate and to transform and to experience. There is also the question of what are you willing to give up for the sake of God since this is a proof of one’s true desire. What you are willing to give up, which represents the your desires, determines the degree to which you care about God’s opinion of you. In this way, we see a direction relationship between how settled we are within ourselves and the degree to which we are dominated by the lower desires of the ego. In this way, submission to God is what truly settles us within as it affixes us to the principle which alone is fixed in reality.
From a psychotherapeutic point of view, the superego provides guidance based on the conditioned programming of authority figures during early childhood. What is the natureΒ of that guidance, particularly with respect to self-worth? Are they conditioned beliefs that point to a reliance on others, or are they conditioned beliefs that free one from dependence by pointing towards the Source? As Shaykh [Dr.] Umar Faruq Abdallah said, the mother and the father are like two streams that meet in the heart of the child. They, to the child, are more than just parents but the two polar principles that symbolize God’s Will. Therefore, the nature of the relationships that characterize the household as witnessed by the child plays a fundamental role in how the child grows up to internalize authority and hierarchy. Ultimately, a healthy household will establish a unitary principle that represents the unity of God as the sole unifying force of authority within us while an unhealthy household leaves a fractured individual in submission to a myriad of forces.
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The Principle of The Soul
One must arrive at the understanding that what God decides is good. This eliminates expectation with respect to our own desires that are rooted in insecurity, clinging, and attachment. But this can only be fully actualized when the soul is properly oriented. The principleΒ of the soul is that the more that you prioritize God, the more that God prioritizes you. In this way, the soul has been likened to a Divine Mirror, or as al-Ghazali describes, a tablet upon which the cosmic pen of the Universal Soul inscribes.Β That is, the more intently the gaze of God is upon you, the more real you will feel. God’s gaze is the force of actualization, and were it to fall upon your soul, it would become fully illuminated. A better way to put it is instead that the more receptive the heart is to the gaze of God, the more intense the light of Being becomes. Rather, the soul is like a cosmic mirror that when it is angled correctly and polished sufficiently, it reflects the light of the sun and appears as the illuminant itself. The presence of God, when so powerfully felt, enables a degree of safety such that we are no longer driven by the compulsions of the unconscious. We are able to exist fully aware, conscious, as if we have been awakened from a deep slumber and the fog of exhaustion lifted from our eyes.
And when this feeling of being real settles you into the seat of consciousness that resides inside the heart, then you will no longer care for the contrived expectations and desires that we hold onto but are not really our own. Then you will learn that to be settled within requires nothing other than being settled within the seat of consciousness itself. But to understand what this means, one must experience it. There is no amount of philosophizing that will suffice, for true philosophy is rooted in gnosis.
Consciousness of Death and The Gift of Life
One of the keys pertains to consciousness of death. The way that you prepare for and approach life is the way that you prepare for and approach death, and so one’s knowledge of death will determine one’s knowledge of life.
Life is simply existence and maintenance by virtue of Divine Will. When the Will of God approaches and bestows the gift of life, the grateful servant clings to it protectively; and when the Will of God retreats and the gift of life is withdrawn,Β the grateful servant lets go gracefully, for it has received the gift of death.
This is detachment. It is balance, it is to be in harmony with the flow of the Divine Breath as it approaches and retreats. It is to be in a state of submission to Divine Will, which is what makes possible living gracefully instead of existential tension. To be in harmony with Divine Will is to be in harmony with nature, for nature merely expresses the Will of God. This is the flow of life, and it is not the same thing as material existence. Life, in essence, is transcendent. Attachment is to confuse materiality through which life is expressed with the essence of life itself.
