Each new moment, new phenomenon, new challenge and every thought is an invitation to both surrender (forget) and renew the connection (remember). The Infinite Love of Rahman is that we can relax, let go, and just "receive". By actively surrendering our compulsion to reflexively grasp at existence we open our interior to the Endless Compassion that is Rahim. This is how to escape the anxiety of ennui; forget and remember. The challenge is to bring the interior life out and internalize the exterior.
"Faith, on the contrary, is the paradox that inwardness is higher than outwardness." Kierkegaard.
A freedom which confronts my own - certain as I am of my own disavowal of predetermined responses: I am not an object, so you refuse to be one, too. Perhaps I will die, out of favor, stuck in the web of my own making, heroic no longer, faithless.
The interiority of faith must be made outward, this life is the world of proofs. It makes no sense to deny this life as this is the existence one encounters. Abraham's faith was for the present. Had he only wished to hasten death, then doing so would have devalued this life for the next.
The fear is that "the best" one has to sacrifice is not truly the best one has... I do not measure up to some "other" kind of standard, other in the sense that it is mine and my brothers artificial standard of Being. Unable to embrace our Nothingness, we tint the color of our behavior with this adversity. Convinced that to be human means to be something, "to have done". It is but a casual glance cast into the void, a cheap and momentary acknowledgement that disguises our fear of it. The point is the void is within and it is our wound. We can not just pretend to know it - we must engage it; otherwise each solitary moment will be spent in self mortification. Flagellation is meaningless when it turns only upon the ego.
How does one love oneself when the premise is unlovable? We are fake. We fail. We are afraid. We have no originality, we mimic. But these protestations are echoes of our fear of being forgotten. Nothingness, again, stares back....
If not now, when?
It is too much to say that we are worthless and Allah is not. The only value that echoes back is the notion of connection. The self is not to be put down or built up. Connection is the answer because it side steps the problem of ego without unbalancing it. But a question of Nothingness remains: Is it possible to connect Nothing with Something?
"Faith, on the contrary, is the paradox that inwardness is higher than outwardness." Kierkegaard.
A freedom which confronts my own - certain as I am of my own disavowal of predetermined responses: I am not an object, so you refuse to be one, too. Perhaps I will die, out of favor, stuck in the web of my own making, heroic no longer, faithless.
The interiority of faith must be made outward, this life is the world of proofs. It makes no sense to deny this life as this is the existence one encounters. Abraham's faith was for the present. Had he only wished to hasten death, then doing so would have devalued this life for the next.
The fear is that "the best" one has to sacrifice is not truly the best one has... I do not measure up to some "other" kind of standard, other in the sense that it is mine and my brothers artificial standard of Being. Unable to embrace our Nothingness, we tint the color of our behavior with this adversity. Convinced that to be human means to be something, "to have done". It is but a casual glance cast into the void, a cheap and momentary acknowledgement that disguises our fear of it. The point is the void is within and it is our wound. We can not just pretend to know it - we must engage it; otherwise each solitary moment will be spent in self mortification. Flagellation is meaningless when it turns only upon the ego.
How does one love oneself when the premise is unlovable? We are fake. We fail. We are afraid. We have no originality, we mimic. But these protestations are echoes of our fear of being forgotten. Nothingness, again, stares back....
If not now, when?
It is too much to say that we are worthless and Allah is not. The only value that echoes back is the notion of connection. The self is not to be put down or built up. Connection is the answer because it side steps the problem of ego without unbalancing it. But a question of Nothingness remains: Is it possible to connect Nothing with Something?