Perception as a Direct Connection with the Absolute

At this stage of my journey, my Self began to change from a container for inherited data and the sediment of history into a Self seeking to understand the foundations of the cosmic order that God placed in existence. What mattered to me was no longer how many sayings I had memorised or how many texts I had gathered, but the contemplation of the essence that binds these parts together. Freeing myself from the weight of sectarian allegiance was like escaping a gravity that had pulled the Self downward and kept it from ascending the steps of pure knowledge. This rise was not a desire for superiority. It was an innate need to breathe the air of truth, far from the crush of preconceived opinions. As I calmly and dispassionately cleared my scales of perception, it became plain to me that God, mighty and majestic is He, is far too great to be confined to a direction, imprisoned in a particular mental image or reduced to a narrow human understanding. He is the All-Encompassing, in whom every supposition dissolves and before whose grandeur all that is other than Him vanishes. The move from dependence on persons to independence in the truth lies at the heart of what I call for. The human being who is directly connected with his Lord is the one who has the courage to be one in his sincerity, steadfast before the multitude of concretised images that fill the horizons, relying at every step on the one truth that neither changes nor passes away. As the sage Ibn ʿArabī, may God have mercy on him, said, pointing to the abstraction of the Real: “The Real, insofar as it is the Real, admits no entry for anything other than it.” Perhaps the best expression of this humility before the greatness of the One, and of the clarity of vision that comes when intermediaries fall away, is the verse of the poet who understood that God reveals Himself in everything to one whose sight is clear: Consider the plants of the earth and look upon the traces of what the Sovereign has made: eyes of silver, wide and gazing, with pupils of pure molten gold. They stand on stems of emerald, bearing witness that God has no partner. I found then that true knowledge is the kind that deepens our reverence for the Creator and opens us to His creation; it never breeds fanaticism or a closed mind. The independence I am speaking of is the independence of insight: the inner sight that sees by the light of God and treats the divine text as a guide on an endless journey towards human perfection. We do not manufacture the truth. We only draw back the veils that cover it, with humble hearts and reflective minds, so that we can live out our vicegerency in its most beautiful form and its simplest meaning. Hashem Nassar All rights reserved