Articles
Finding the Completeness
Life can be challenging. It is filled with ups and downs. Illness can be particularly challenging, and then there is loss. It is a rare person who makes it through life without having to struggle with losing something or someone they love.
And it doesn’t always have to be death. A divorce can be so disillusioning that a great sense of loss if felt. Loss for the other person (even when times were hard), loss of income, loss of life the way it used to be- all these are forms of loss that can be quite real. They can strike at the heart like a sickness, an overwhelming cloud.
In times like these that are so perplexing, many people can become discouraged. They can sink down into an emotional hole, a hole so deep that it can seem impossible to climb back out.
It is said in many sacred texts, including the Qur’an and Bible that God “Never gives us more than we can handle.” Although this is supposed to offer comfort, it often can seem like a cruel joke. Because most people often feel that life is giving them much more than they can handle. So much that it doesn’t seem possible that we can handle any more.
Perhaps the words of Mother Teresa can lighten our load. She has said regarding this statement, “sometimes I wish God didn’t trust me so much.”
What I love about Islam and the Sufi interpretation of its teachings, is that an answer often exists for every question that bothers us.
The Sufi answer to this question of life’s challenges is quite remarkable. It is said that challenges are there for us to find the love. On the outside life’s troubles look wrong. At least that is our interpretation of them. They have to be wrong. How could such an unpleasant thing befall me.
Yet, the deeper meaning is that what happens to us is not wrong. It is just love moving us, pulling us in a direction we could have never imagined. We want our lives to go a certain direction, but we do not have Allah’s (swta) wisdom. We want everything in life to be rosy. We want things to be good and easy. We call this al-Jamal- the beauty.
When things don’t go our way, and we are faced with the quality of tiredness or difficulty, the quality of al-Jalil- we become agitated. We become angry, and most importantly we become impatient. We don’t want to suffer. We don’t desire pain.
How can this unpleasant thing be love? How could this be God’s love moving me?
The Sufi lense asks that we look at things from a different perspective. Rather than taking our own view, we are invited to imagine life from a place of surrender. If we surrender to the idea that everything that happens to us is really from the way of the love, that it is God somehow moving us back to Him- how would we view events differently?
Can we now have patients with our place of pain? Rather than trying to avoid the difficulties of life and only wanting to be in the place of pleasure, can we ride the waves of life and look for the wisdom of what is happening to us? Can we accept what God has made in our lives, looking only to see His face?
If we can do this, if we can allow God’s patience to come into our hearts then we can submit to His all-powerful, awe inspiring wisdom, and we can find “the completeness.” We call this, al-Kamal. It is a place of acceptance and peace. To know that Allah has everything in His hand, that everything is exactly as it should be- can be so re-assuring, so comforting, that words cannot describe it.
It is and other than It is not. Here we find our Lord. Here we find the peace that passes all understanding.
The voice of the guide says, “Look within. Know who you are. You are made in His image. Then you can know peace.”