21Sep07

Last night before falling asleep… I opened up this little black notebook I have where I write in some notes about whatever I learn about the Creator and His creation. It’s made up of maybe 200 pages and has this sweet little design on the front made up of swirls in a pale blue color. Underneath, there are Turkish words written “Haliç Deseni,” which translates to “the design of the Golden Horn.” I got it during a boat tour of the Golden Horn in Istanbul a while back. Anyways, I was reading through it and came across a few pages about consciousness (which is sort of what manzoori translates to — literally translating from Urdu to acceptance.) I really enjoyed re-reading the piece, so I thought I’d post the notes.

Consciousness:

There are many ways to understand the structure or nature of iman or yaqin or belief in God. The basic level shows two degrees of belief in God’s Unity. But existence cannot be grasped to the same degree by two different people. Each person sees or knows existence in his/her own way through their own diamond within them; a prism of a sort.

(1) Believing superficially that God has no partners and that He is the true Owner of the universe. This degree of belief is susceptible to certain deviations and obscurities in the person’s understanding.

(2) Being firmly convinced that God is One and that everything belongs to Him exclusively. In fact, He is the Giver of existence. The being within this degree feels himself always in the presence of the Giver and sees the Creator’s seal everywhere he turns. (When I read this part, I was reminded of the Muhammad’s pbuh encounter with Jibril/Gabriel carrying the words of the Almighty.) Doubts cannot find a way in to dilute this degree of each moment of conviction (remembering that each moment is anew and awaits conviction). The scholar Said Nursi compares faith to a prism — “a prism which reveals the true dimensions of the nature of existence and man.” In this way, Nursi explains, the universe (by means of faith in the 2nd degree) becomes a “readable book, an enjoyable exhibition, and man has become an index and proclamation.”

So even when parts of our lives may appear to be separate and different from one another, they are in reality closely connected — just different faces of a whole. Although one may think this simply means that ‘my life is a book and different parts are chapters,’ this is not so. Instead, the book is the universe and you are the index to which are assigned different markings or arrows or parts or areas that you proclaim through living a life or existing; by manifesting His Siffat (the collection of God’s Attributions). Why would a book be written if not to be read? So the Siffat exists in all of creation, but it is man which understands it, utilizes it, and proclaims it to the highest degree.

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Tags: belief, faith, God, life