By
Aadil Farook, New Age Islam
17 November
2021
Spirituality
Is The Process And Pursuit Of Inner Purification, Unveiling Of God
Main
Points:
1. In the West,
spirituality is often confused with Yoga, meditation, and similar exercises
2. sole aim
behind life in this world is seeking, discovering, and recognizing God as He
is.
3. Spirituality,
indeed, is only for the chosen people of God that He especially selects for His
path.
------
What comes
to your mind when you hear spirituality? In the West, spirituality is often
confused with Yoga, meditation, and similar exercises for attaining peace of
mind. I do not deny that inner peace is a fruit of spirituality, but it does
not imply spirituality. Islam has a very comprehensive, deep, and intense
understanding of spirituality. There is a very high criterion for something to
be spiritual.
Spirituality
is the process and pursuit of inner purification, unveiling of God, unlearning
of false knowledge, attainment of wisdom, the elevation of morals, the
perfection of ethics, and self-rectification. It is a journey in which you
slowly and gradually attain proximity to Holy Prophet (PBUH). The real purpose
of spirituality is to purify your intentions to such an extent that you do
everything only to please your Creator. It is an outcome of getting rid of
worldly, egotistic, selfish, and materialistic desires. According to religion,
a deed as big as giving birth to a country is worthless if there is no
sincerity in the intent. You have to fight and conquer the strong impulse of
the lower-self (nafs) again and again till your last breath.
Spirituality
is almost impossible without a spiritual master, mentor, guide, or teacher?
Why? Because the lower-self (nafs) in humans is such a deceptive, powerful, and
complex entity that a person cannot analyze and judge his deed objectively
without bias, prejudice, narcissism, and favoritism. Only a person who has
crossed the spiritual path far ahead of him can rightly tell him why he did
something and for what reason. Only a person who has walked miles ahead of him
on this vulnerable way can determine if his heart, mind, and soul complied with
spirituality. Secondly, the traps of Satan are so clever, brilliantly
disguised, and beautified that only a man of superior spiritual level will tell
him if he has been deceived or not.
There is no
spirituality without religion. In the West, some innumerable people describe
themselves as "spiritual but not religious." Undoubtedly, you can be
religious but not spiritual. However, you cannot be spiritual without
religiosity. This misunderstanding arose because people assumed certain
positive traits to be a sign of spirituality. Love, forgiveness, compassion,
honesty, humbleness, generosity, patience, humility, simplicity, tolerance,
sincerity, sacrifice, perseverance, and fearlessness are spiritual attributes
if accompanied by the correct belief. These qualities alone in themselves do
not qualify for spirituality because even an atheist can possess them. There is
an immense difference between temperament and spirituality. The motive,
psychology, and incentive of a humanitarian who is not a believer may be
genuine empathy for others which is commendable. However, it is not comparable
with the humanitarian efforts of a Sufi driven solely by the pure intent to
earn the pleasure of God alone.
Spirituality
is attainable when you sacrifice your desires, wishes, wants, ambitions, goals,
dreams, and passion for a higher cause, a Higher Being, a higher aim, and a
higher plan. In this regard, you have three options. You do not give up on your
objectives and remain far from spirituality; you give up on them and turn
towards spirituality; God Himself will destroy all your plans and forcefully
bring you towards the spiritual way. Most people would never adopt spirituality
because it is giving them the signal that, "Your will, choice, preference,
opinion, like, dislike is of no value whereas only the Divine Will is important."
In simple words, YOU are not significant; only HE matters the most.
The second
reason spirituality is unpopular is that it may bring a lot of suffering,
tragedies, setbacks, disappointments, and rejections, and let us be honest – no
one wants that. Why is it so often associated with pain? Rumi, one of the
greatest spiritual masters ever, said, "The wound is where the light
enters." We do not want our ego to be hurt because psychologically and
emotionally, it is a painful experience. Spirituality is not attainable until
and unless your ego gets destroyed – not once, not twice, not thrice - a
thousand times indeed. Since human beings are highly egoistic creatures by
nature, you cannot sell an idea that says no to the ego.
Here, any
intelligent mind would ask why we need to suffer so much in the first place. It
is because we need to understand the real purpose and true meaning of life
itself. According to religion, the sole aim behind life in this world is
seeking, discovering, and recognizing God as He is. There are many veils
between man and God. These veils need to lift before we can know the reality of
anything. These veils exist due to the false knowledge we learn since childhood
from education, parents, society, motivational speakers, and best-selling
authors. They have given us perspectives, concepts, definitions, theories, and
opinions that oppose spiritual wisdom. We blindly follow them because they
complement and endorse our desires. We never see them with critical lenses if
they are actually in line with the essence and spirit of religion or not.
Why do the
genuine seekers of truth suffer? The deeper, hidden, mystical and secret
meanings of everything are bestowed on them when, one by one, their wrong
beliefs are shattered by real-life experiences that demonstrate that what they
had thought and understood earlier was not the case at all. Instead, what Quran
and Sunnah say is the real thing. While an average believer pays lip service to
revelation and prophetic traditions, a spiritual person goes through a sequence
of circumstances, episodes, and events which leaves him with no choice but to
affirm what religion stated many centuries ago. It is called faith in the real
sense. This level of conviction cannot be developed by reading books, listening
to sermons, academic studies, and intellectual pursuits. It is only possible
after you have undergone something abnormal which goes against worldly wisdom,
which challenges the phenomenon of cause and effect. The majority of people
believe that everything is happening due to cause & effect. However, a
spiritual person disbelieves it and realizes that not even a leaf stirs without
God's will.
It is not
something to be debated, argued, or discussed in drawing-rooms; it has to be
experienced, tasted, undergone, and understood from the deepest core of one's
heart and soul. It is foolishness to share spiritual secrets with an ordinary
man as he is a product of his mind which cannot understand spirituality through
logic, science, and philosophy. It is only an actual connection and relation
with your Creator which would make you comprehend it properly. That is why it
is so unpopular because not many people in the modern age possess such a pure
and potent link with the Almighty. This bond is far beyond any yoga, meditation,
or well-being exercise. It will give you inner peace without any yoga,
meditation, or well-being exercise. The Western form of spirituality can only
guarantee a good life in this temporal world. It cannot give you anything in
the eternal life after death which is the concern of religion. Islamic
spirituality starts where its Western counterpart ends.
The third
reason why spirituality is so unpopular is that we live in a world where all we
hear about throughout our lives is success, achievements, accomplishments,
glamour, pomp, prosperity, glitter, money, power, dominance, fame, and
recognition. All these words are utterly worldly terms. We dwell in a society
where our entire worth, value, importance, intelligence, competency, knowledge,
and respect is judged based on these so-called positive aspects of life because
they feed our ego to the fullest. No one wants to be a failure in the eyes of
others. In spirituality, the opposite is true. Our worldly failures are an
asset because they diminish or weaken our ego. Our false pride decreases by
these failures. So, from a spiritual point of view, it is a blessing in
disguise; it is a sign of real success that we will only realize on the Day of
Judgment. However, this idea is not appealing to anyone because we want to
safeguard our egos at any cost. So you cannot make spirituality sell and
attract others.
Spirituality,
indeed, is only for the chosen people of God that He especially selects for His
path. Only those who are blessed develop the capacity for selflessness. Only at
His discretion, few people have a soul so refined and fine-tuned. In this
quest, man sees his complete dependence on God hidden from the majority. Since
it is a game of love rather than intellect, it is only for the beloved. It is a
journey of untainted devotion, uninterrupted heartbreaks, unconditional virtue,
and unending resilience. It is a test of genuineness rather than smartness. It
is a tale of a man embracing characteristics even beyond the reach of angels.
It is a story of why God did not listen to angels when they opposed the
creation of man. When you would know divine love, you won't have better things
to do!
---
Aadil
Farook, Winner/Nominee of 2 International Awards (US & UK), is a
Lahore-based blogger.
URL:
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