Harmony Within
If we find our centre, we find peace and harmony within us and out in the world...
Man-made war is everywhere and it seems as if a collective gloom pervades the global consciousness. Crazy power-hungry demagogues continue to kill and maim millions of people with impunity to satisfy their insatiable desire for power and dominance. Corruption, greed, and entitlement seem part and parcel of governance, and there is a grave sense of helplessness and economic uncertainty amongst the vast majority of ordinary people across the world, who just want to live their lives in well-being, peace and safety.
We understand, if we come from a unified consciousness, that the urge towards destruction, wanting to be rich beyond measure and having unlimited control over everything, are simply the envious and dangerous ravings, addictions, and cravings of the nafs al ammara-- that shadowy, megalamoniacal, part of ourselves that, rather pathetically, wants to be God. The nafs, which is given life and love only by the glory, beauty, and majesty of Allah, is always wanting to be Him, to somehow usurp the throne! We all have these qualities within us, let's not deny this!We would not be aware of it if we didn't. In fact, in a young child and young person, it's essential for this to develop healthily. It's a call to experience and to living life fully. But it is utter stupidity once we reach a more mature stage in our lives.
The misconceived desires and actions of the lowest of the human nafs is what leads to these cycles of violence, destruction, greed and inequality in the world. What we see as seemingly disparate elements interacting on the political and economic levels--not to minimise these levels as they help our linear and limited minds to process and give meaning to the craziness around us-- are actually repetitive patterns within our own, unaware, unawakened, selves that have played out for millennia.
When will we learn? 'Man is asleep, and when he dies he wakes up', to paraphrase the Prophet Muhammad (upon him be peace). All the more reason to see things in a unified way and to find our centre--each one of us doing service to all creatures and the planet itself and radiating what is within us of our gifts and highest attributes, all of which belongs to Allah, anyway. We are after all the 'people of the middle path'. Then, perhaps, with Allah's guidance and grace, we will access the inner harmony, tranquillity and peace that, despite dealing with enormous challenges in our lives individually and collectively, is an essential and natural part of our being and reality.