40 Days with God – Love and Fear

Ever since I posted the article about the experience of actually ‘being there’ at Kaaba many people have over emails or personally talked about how they had a similar experience of having a practiced list of things to seek from God, but once in the presence of the deity having forgotten everything and simply returned with a bowed head and a light heart. Interestingly they belonged to different religions and sects each with his/her own deity or pilgrimage.

How then is my religion different from anyone else’s if our experiences are same? Could there really be different religions? We will continue to understand religion as we go along.

To understand, one needs to explore, to have, as we said in an earlier chapter, the ‘talab’. And for those on a quest to learn there is no dearth of questions. By the end of the first week I was confronted with the question of what is right behavior? To leave my wife and go to offer prayers or to accompany her but miss some part of it? To cry in private or allow the tears to flow publicly, because that would be tantamount to putting ones faith on display which is forbidden.

Is it the burden of the conscientious to be forever in doubt about right and wrong?

I don’t know.

And that was the overwhelming feeling towards the end of the first week. That I didn’t know the answers to so many questions; that I didn’t know whether I was taking the right decision or not and I didn’t know, with all due respect to our scholarly guide, whether he or anyone else would be able to understand my dilemmas and guide me. It was then that I understood what one truly needs to seek from the Lord when one is in His presence – Hidayat (guidance), Hikmat (wisdom), Ilm (knowledge) and Imaan (faith).

If we have this in true measure life would be so simple to live.

The first week at Makkah, as I have narrated earlier was a continuous process of gratitude and forgiveness and the natural tears that flowed from the realization of God’s graciousness and your own wrongdoings. After every such bout of crying, which was frequent in the first week, there would be a feeling of deep relaxation, of having shed a small burden. By the end of the week though, I began to worry about the intensity becoming diluted and the tears drying up. After all how long can one continue to be impacted by the same experience?

There was no need to worry. I should have rather, as one of my trainers at a coaching workshop long ago emphasized, trusted the process.

Sometime during the second week I suddenly realized that I loved the word of Allah on my lips. I have to admit that while I knew that jikr or chanting the name of God is a preferred act any time, I would do it either mechanically or due to the religious decree. There was a lack of feeling or belief in it. I couldn't see how it helped. Suddenly now I realized I loved taking that name – there was no logic or reasoning – just simple, plain liking.

I don’t know how or why that happened but when I think on hindsight I feel that when one is filled with penitence and gratitude it is only natural to eventually feel love. And what pleasure it is when you do something not for reward or fear of punishment but from a feeling of pure love?

I realized that day what the Sufi’s mean by ‘rab da ishq’ – the love of the Lord. When all you want is your beloved’s name on your lips and her sight in your eyes. When you raise your hands to the ears at the beginning of the namaaz saying ‘muh mera taraf kaaba sharief key’ (I start my prayer facing the kaaba) and raise your eyes to see the Kaaba actually in front of you – nothing can match that start. And then when you bow down in sijdaah (prostration) you do not want to rise up again, wanting the forehead to stay in contact with that holy land and the heart in total subjugation to God. That feeling is like no other.

And I questioned myself whether I had ever loved my wife, my parents with the same intense love that I now felt. Or was I only expecting such love in return? How happy would life be if one were to bring such love in all the relationships?

That evening though a new doubt awaited me. In his routine discourse after dinner our guide said that a true Muslim lived his life between the Love and Fear of Allah.

How can Love co-exist with Fear? They appear such contrasting emotions. When you love someone so completely where was the need to fear? How could the Prophet and his followers who were already blessed spend nights in contrition and fear?

The answer wasn't difficult to discover. If your boss told you at the beginning of the year that he was so impressed by the way you work that he had already marked you as ‘outstanding’ in the appraisal system, you would fear that nothing you did that year should make him change his impression. The higher the reward, the greater would be the sense of responsibility and the fear of wrongdoing. And thus the blessed would in fact be more afraid and contrite than anyone else.

The fear was not about losing the reward – that had been already marked in the ‘system’. The fear would be about losing the trust which your boss had reposed by taking that decision. And that is a much heavy but enabling fear which helps you take the difficult but right decisions when the wrong is so easy and desirable.

And this love and fear only can lighten the burden of the conscientious.

The gratitude and remorse of the first week had led to love and fear in the second. As the third and final week in Makkah arrived it started to turn into panic.

Had I done enough to achieve the objective with which I had set out – rab ko raazi karna – to seek Gods consensus. In one week I would be leaving the house of God. There was not much time to seek an answer to that critical question.

40 Days with God – Getting under the surface

We started this series with the intention of trying to understand the process, the ‘how’ of how a pilgrimage has the power to transform, to make you as pure as a newborn. It has taken us four chapters to just reach the physical destination of the pilgrimage, but that was because preparation and planning are so essential to achieving any goal.

The Quran says (in Sura-al-Fatir) that ‘those who plan badly have to bear its consequences.’ Now how much of that relates to Project Management practices? And we thought that religious texts only prescribe to religion and God. One of the interesting realizations during this journey was comprehension of the term ‘religion’. We will come to that during the course of our journey.

I had taken along with me an 800 page volume of the transliteration of the Holy Quran thinking that without any personal and professional obligations I would have enough time on my hands to read a few chapters every day. I was wrong. Inside the Haram (as the grand mosque is normally referred to) you don’t have to do anything to spend time.

Circumambulating the Kaaba (called tawaaf), or walking the seven rounds between the Mountains of Safa and Marwah (called saee) or simply sitting in front of the Kaaba with all the time to yourself, your life starts playing itself in your memory. And it always begins with a single thought; what was the good you did that God bestowed on you this great privilege of being at the place where so much history has been created by such revered people.

And you struggle to identify one honest good deed. What instead come to mind easily are the various wrongdoings; the times when you were angry with your spouse or parents, or envious of a friend’s success or hurt someone because you were upset, often due to your own lacking. There are enough times you realize where you behaved in a manner that your conscious knew, at that time or a little later, wasn’t exactly the right behavior.

Every action of the body first begins as a thought in the mind. If the root (or intent) of that thought is pure the action is likely to be good. We had a scholar as our tour guide – a PhD in Islamic Studies from the University of Madina. He told us that every amal (deed / action) had to be performed with the sole intent of pleasing God. Was there a single deed I had done which could strictly satisfy that criteria – because every success, every good deed, every charity I could think of was somewhere deep down rooted in self-pride, fame or fear.

Whether it is the great sanctity of the place or the unfettered time you get to yourself, it becomes easy to get under the veneer of your own self and you begin to discover your true intent which neither your boss nor your friends or family may have ever come to know about. There is no one in that loneliness to try and impress but you and God and how many lies can you tell your own self?

You realize that in that hitherto unaccessed recess of your heart and mind lay a lot of garbage which you would never have been able to reach otherwise. And your hands automatically rise in repentance and forgiveness that is genuine to the core. It is only such forgiveness which can clean some of that internal garbage and start making you pure.

The sanctity of the place demands reverence. Every good deed done in Makkah, the Holy book says, fetches you a hundred thousand times more in reward. At the same time, every wrong deed or even wrong intent fetches you a similarly high punishment. Leaving the arithmetic apart what it means is that one has to be constantly aware and conscious of one’s intent and not just the deed. It reinforces mindfulness and taqwa and helps in the journey of self-discovery.

And you realize being good also is not as simple especially when the conflict is between two goods.

It is the first Friday in Makkah and I am conscious of going to Haram early to get a vantage place for the afternoon congregation prayers from where I can see the Head Priest reciting the sermon. But my wife who has had a long night doesn’t share my eagerness and is taking her own time getting ready in our hotel room. We get only 3 Friday’s in Makkah and I am getting fidgety and anxious as she takes time with the morning chores. I am not able to decide whether I should leave for the mosque alone letting her come on her own whenever she is ready or stay back and accompany her. Whether my duty as a muhrim (i.e. one accompanying a female relative) means I have to wait for her even if it means having to forego a lifetime opportunity? Which is a greater duty to adopt since both are prescribed by religion and which one needs to be sacrificed?

For the conscientious there could be so many questions. Is it the burden of the conscientious to be continuously in doubt about one’s choices? Is being continuously aware and mindful of one’s choices a more stressful way of living?

We will talk about more such questions in our chapter next week.