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We tend to underestimate the role of what I call our spiritual hearts in our religious progress. We tend to see ourselves as the primary movers in our affairs, and so we use, the pronouns “I” and “me”, to indicate the centrality of our roles in our affairs. This is one of the factors that cause people to either stand still spiritually or to go backwards. We do not seem to understand the important connection that our Lord has with our hearts which, together with our actions, He examines all the time, and most probably inspires in different ways for different forms of worship.

I sometimes think of how Allah (ﷻ), at the beginning of time, placed His Decisions, with regard to each one of us, on His (ﷻ) creation, and how He (ﷻ), “at that time”, plotted the direction of the lives of each one of us. We forget this. We do not wish to admit it, because we live in a world which is primarily secular. The kind of world we live in, in no way impacts on the original Divine Decree. That Decree continues to operate and for each one of us our hearts are very special in that Decree. The Decree and how it operates in creation and the role of our hearts in all of this, form a combination so intricate that it is beyond our understanding. Instead of seeing our Lord in everything, we see ourselves or we see others. It is true, we are there and others are also there, but the “Divine Hand” of Decree operates all over us. When we examine our lives and the direction our Lord has given us, then there sinks into our minds the deep gratitude for what our Lord is doing for us and the road He has allowed us to walk. Today many of us are unable to express our gratitude to Him in the words we know, because of the immensity of the grants that He had decreed for us and that are coming our way.

Our hearts are of the primary sources or perhaps the only primary source through which our direction takes place. It is in the hearts that our Lord acts and it is in these hearts that are registered our spiritual achievements. And our Lord says that what is between the heavens and the earth cannot contain Him but the heart of the believer does. Our only response is: “Our Lord, our Lord!” And when He tries to make us understand His nearness to us, nearer than our jugular veins, and His being with us through the action of His Names, we can again only call out: “Our Lord, our Lord!” Sometimes it is as if our breasts have been opened and our hearts have also been washed of all the accumulated garbage in it, as we strive and strive and struggle to reach spiritual stations. We feel it like that. We feel as we walk the spiritual path that our Lord purifies our hearts in whatever way He does. We know that He is busy with us, and we know that He is busy with us through our hearts, and we also know that He allows the intensely pious to have some access to those hearts. We know this but we do not know how. We know this but we do not understand how all this happens. We only know that through what He does with our hearts, He raises us from one spiritual station to another. He does this because He is our Lord. And He does this through His immense generosity for His servant, because His servant has been made to turn to Him. So many times in our lives there is so much appreciation for all of this; it is as if He takes one by the hand (which He does), and leads one to one’s goals. It is our Lord being busy with us for what is good for us, and it is He that sends us from one spiritual station to the other. And it is what He makes one do that helps us in this ascend to these stations. Each one of us must understand that it is our Lord’s actions through which we gain major spiritual benefits.

On another level; I have said in the previous letter that it is when our Lord desires or decrees, or whatever the word might be, that His servant must remember Him, that His servant engages in the celebration of His praises. It is not the servant that works, it is our Lord that works. We celebrate His praises because our celebration of His praises was decreed by Him (ﷻ) and implemented by Him (ﷻ) through our hearts. When we call “Allah, Allah” supposedly from our tongues, it is our Lord at work. He (ﷻ) makes the tongues celebrate because He (ﷻ) is in charge of the tongues and the hearts. We cannot always comprehend this, because of our spiritual limitations but when our Lord opens our hearts to His (ﷻ) praises, He (ﷻ) erases from those hearts the satanic garbage of negligence, and directs those hearts or inspires them to engage in His (ﷻ) other forms of worship. So many times have we seen how servants, negligent with regard to their worship, go back to the prayer mat after engaging in considerable amount of His praises. Allah (ﷻ) uses His praises to purify the heart for His (ﷻ) other forms of worship. So many times, have we seen this without realizing the role of Allah (ﷻ) in the lives of individuals; how He (ﷻ) takes them back to the prayer mat after taking them to their rosaries, and how they intensify their work on the rosaries as they intensify their work on the prayer mats.

All of us must start to understand the nearness of our Lord to us and His continuous impact on our hearts and how He uses those hearts to implement His obedience in our lives. Somehow, many of us cannot always see this. I struggle with this, because I see my own individuality. We struggle with this, because we see our own individualities. The individuality is there but it is subject to the decree of Allah (ﷻ). The individuality is free, as our minds say, but the individuality is not free as our hearts say, because those hearts are continually in the sight of our Lord. Perhaps all of this makes us realize our smallness, our helplessness and our hopelessness in relation to our Lord, because it is He that is in charge of us. We are not in charge. We do not know how this works. We only know that it is so, and to many of us, there is deep gratitude for this, because when we know that He is in charge, He places immense satisfaction in our hearts because of this. We say: “O our Lord, there is deep gratitude in our hearts because Thou are in charge of our affairs. We would not want it otherwise. We thank Thee for placing Thy Decrees over us, and we thank Thee for the implementation of Thy Decree in our lives, amin.

[Unpublished 2012]

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