Are we lost? I pondered this the other day. Listening to the chatter of the news, seeing all the horrible things that go on in the world- a person could wonder.
Not long ago a person that I know (who I thought believed in Allah (God)), dropped a rock out for the universe onto my psyche. She said she didn’t know if she believed in God. She didn’t know if everything happened for a reason or was partly random.
She was in the midst of some difficult emotional struggles. Issues that she didn’t have any real answer for to give her hope.
Now this person had grown up in a muslim household, had been exposed to the Holy Qur’an, so I wondered how could this be possible? How could a person have heard this and not soaked up some of the “holy” word?
I remember thinking how incredibly sorry I felt for this highly intelligent woman who had 2 advanced medical decrees, but had no certainty about the existence of God. I felt that if she knew Allah’s love she would have been able to find solace.
I wished that she could know the beauty I felt when I prayed, the incredible sense of connection and overpowering peace that came with Remembering the Name of God.
Just last week, I spent an hour in Remembering God. At the completion of this practice, my heart felt light. Peace had come pouring in like a river, and I felt the overwhelming oneness of Allah’s presence.
Time stopped. My breath stopped. In that moment I knew, felt, experienced- God. It wasn’t something imaginary. It wasn’t something my mind had made up. It was real. It was as real as any feeling of love that you feel in your heart.
Remember the last time you felt overwhelming love for your child or spouse or even a puppy. Or felt sadness. Feelings like these are real. We can’t touch them with our hands, but our hearts are touched by them.
Our experience of the Divine for me is this experience. It is a tremendous peace that passes all understanding. It is a deep opening and expansion of the heart.
Yet, she wasn’t open to what I had to say, so I didn’t share any of these ideas. My mind, however, came back to the question about humanity. Is humanity lost?
My answer is no. Humanity as a whole isn’t lost. But as a people who do not recognize that we are weak in front of Allah, who do not see the hand of Allah behind everything- then that individual person who doesn’t know this is drifting. They are drifting on the sea without a compass.
They are like a man/woman who is drowning and cannot see the arm in front of him reaching to pull him out of the waster. The hand that is reaching for them is the hand of Allah.
His voice calls. But will you listen?
Habib Laman
