Ramadan and Eid Reflections

Over the last days of Ramadan I spent with this community, along with the Eid celebration that followed, I experienced some of the most intense spiritual jubilation that I've been blessed to come in contact with in this life. It was as if all the spiritual struggles and longings of my adult life suddenly blossomed and bore fruits of deep joy and immediate spiritual intuition.

 

The form of the Sufi celebration of Eid (which is nothing other than the basic liturgical forms of Islamic spirituality—salat (prayer) and dhikr (remembrance of God)) is like no other spirituality I've yet experienced. The joy and jubilation were so saturated amongst the community and the deeply reverent call of "Allahu Akbar" reminded us to turn towards the Transcendent though in such a way that was right in the midst of ordinary life, with children laughing and climbing on parents (and strangers) as they made prostrations.

 

In Islam the world we find ourselves in is known as the dunya. It has characteristics of being a fallen world, marked with distance from God. But it is also a theophanic world—the location of our spiritual return to the One from Whom we came, littered with innumerable signs pointing back to Him. While the Sufi perspective is that truly all things in creation have this theophanic aspect as things only have their being at all through God's Mercy which allows them to come into being through participation in His most beautiful Attributes, certain things are considered to have baraka—an intensity of spiritual aura that, through God's infinite Mercy, does work on our souls simply through being in its presence.

 

This Eid celebration was brimming with baraka to an extent that I have truly never experienced in my life up to this point. Subhanallah, alhamdulillah. What a blessing to have the opportunity to experience such a Mercy in the midst of such a beautiful and vibrant human community.

 

Following these experiences, here are some spiritual reflections that I'd like to share. Inshallah perhaps there might be some wisdom in here for you, or if nothing else even just some encouragement.

 

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In this world, there are a multiplicity of spiritual universes and perhaps God, in His Wisdom, has prepared a blessed abode for your spirit in one of them. There are many saintly paths open to spiritual seekers in our day if one has the proper eyes to discern them, and it was He who crafted your particular, individual disposition with Wisdom that it may be drawn to particular Revelations and Theophanies in His blessed Creation and not others. The eye by with the believer sees God is God’s own eye to contemplate Himself. For this contemplation to be complete, he created the Cosmos and each Soul in astonishing multiplicity, allowing for a kaleidoscopic vision of the One in all It’s Attributes. There is a station for you to participate in this joyous Divine play, and it is one that is written for you by the Best of Planners, with Mercy, Compassion, and Wisdom as its foundation. I pray for ease and joy for you on the spiritual path, my fellow spiritual travelers, with progressive clarity that allows you to draw ever close to Him until, God willing, you may be annihilated in perfect Union with He who is the Origin and the Destination.

 

Peace.