Reflection by Umm e Maham

Allah has created a state of separation for humans, so that they strive to find meaning and purpose, and hence serve to find true connection – love!

We see the world as we are. As Shaykh Ebrahim discusses, Allah says in a hadith qudsi, “I am My slave’s opinion of Me”. Our thoughts are reflections of our intent. If we have worldly motives, we will perceive others doing things for worldly motives, as well. If we only give conditionally, with an intent to receive something back from others, we will perceive others as having the same conditional motive. Conditional motive means that I can only give something to you when I know that I can come to you to take something in return; it’s based on a transactional relationship with others. What they can do for me determines my actions / transactions with them. My conditional motive creates the condition, where I read conditional motive in other people. This intent and associated behaviour with conditional giving results in making us feel the world is unjust and unfair, although it’s entirely up to us how we create our opinion of the world around us.

Our experience with the world changes only when we open ourselves to giving unconditionally, where we accept that we are here to serve the other and to do what is in the best interest of the other, to the best of our abilities. Acting from this intent consistently introduces us to the experience of feeling blessed and having deep gratitude for the unconditional gifts we have been granted from the world, from other people, from Allah.

Once we keep up this practice of exercising our intent to give unconditionally to others, we realise how unconditional life is with us. The more we realise this bliss, the more the experience moves to the next step of feeling part of a ‘flow’ – part of the Oneness; the experience that I am part of flow which is connected and not disconnected, where I no longer feel like an island. I experience connection with myself, with Allah and with this world. Hence when I see others, I see myself, I find myself in others, I discover myself in others, I realise myself in others and as a result I feel empathy, compassion, kindness, humility, forbearance – attributes towards the phenomenon of love, that we are here to serve.

The purpose is love, the whole cosmos is love. If you are in a process of reinventing yourself to find meaning, to come out of isolation and rewriting your narrative of life, you will find great solace listening to the talk by our dear Shaykh Ebrahim below. The transcription is available here.