The Muslim must learn beyond mere lip service that s/he is only nourishing, safeguarding, wasting or destroying the Life s/he could never have acquired by her own efforts; Allah t’ala says, ‘Oh mankind! A similitude has been coined, so listen to it (carefully): Verily! Those on whom you call besides Allah, cannot create a fly, even though they combine together for the purpose. And if the fly snatched away a thing from them, they would have no power to release it from the fly. So weak are (both) the seeker and the sought.’ [Qur’an 22:73]
If that body within which your life is contained is damaged, and by life I mean your soul, then the mere presence of that soul stimulates by Allah’s permission and to varying degrees, the repair of that body; no soul in a body means it has no life, and no life means decay and ruin.
Just as the soul stimulates the repair of the body, so too does the body have an effect upon the soul; it enables in some part the soul to recover from the harm done to it by it’s guardian, that thing we call ‘me’, ‘myself’, ‘I’. When we raise our hands, prostrate, straighten the prayer rows, sit close together in circles of knowledge, shake hands and smile and pass ‘salams’ the body is engaged in re-directing itself and all that it contains to the road of repair, of renewal, of return. The inner and outer have a mutual effect, and for sure the inner is stronger as it is closer to the intentional element that is ‘me’, closer to the source of the cause of action, by Allah’s permission, so it’s effect on the mind and the body is greater.
People stray, they do not ‘do good’ all the time despite best efforts. Nor can they heal at will, whether of the flesh or of the spirit. To effect a recovery, they must begin with an intention to rectify themselves through diet, medicine, counselling and even simple restfulness. Spiritually equivalent efforts are also necessary, most importantly is the recognition and then the attempt to abandon those sins and acts that brought upon ourselves such injuries; we must endeavour to repent. Allah t’ala may thereafter from His Mercy and Justice, His Guidance and His Wisdom cause and bring about a beneficial response to our pleas of contrition. Medicine for the body does not always work, that is patently and empirically true. Because it is intrinsically a part of faith, it is neither patent nor empirically possible to prove that spiritual medicine works, but within our faith we are utterly convinced it does, just so long as it is ‘applied’ correctly: as outlined above, recognise and admit your complicity in the errors pf your ways to Allah alone, desist from them, have remorse for having carried them out in the first place and resolve to not visit them again. Sincerity is the key. It flows consciously from that unique ‘physio-psycho-spiritual’ organ, the heart. It is a choice, it is an action, it requires effort; we are responsible, blame must only ever be seen in mirrors, excuses don’t work in the end.
The Mercy of Allah t’ala exceeds His Wrath, though wrath there is. But He cleanses, heals and makes good those hearts that have strayed in error into sickness and decay. And until the parting of the body and the soul this tonic, this medication is always ready and waiting to be administered. One need only truly and sincerely ask for it. The Mercy and Forgiveness of Allah not only clears the past but lights the way for our future steps towards our ultimate goal, the Face of Al-Rahman (The Merciful), and there is nothing greater than this:
All good is from Allah alone, we can reach none of it by our own efforts, it is from sincerity and an intention to follow and adhere to the correct path and methodology, through the observance and application of duty that we hope to gain the good of this world and the next, ‘Whatever of good reaches you, is from Allah, but whatever of evil befalls you, is from yourself. And We have sent you (Oh Muhammad) as a Messenger to mankind, and Allah is Sufficient as a Witness.’ [Qur’an 4: 79] We must hope that like the greenhouse glass we capture some of the rays of guidance to grow that which is within us from a base mixture of whims and desires into that which is, in the final judgement worthy of being called righteous. It is not attained through lip-service, but through a light from Allah and our effort every day.
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