A Brief Reflection on Trust in the Awesome Presence of God in the Surah The Bee

 “[Prophet], call [people] to the way of your Lord with wisdom and good teaching. Argue with them in the most courteous way, for your Lord knows best who has strayed from His way and who is rightly guided.  If you [believers] have to respond to an attack, make your response proportionate, but it is best to stand fast.  So [Prophet] be steadfast: your steadfastness comes only from God. Do not grieve over them; do not be distressed by their scheming, for God is with those who are mindful of God and who do good.” (16:125-128)

It took a long time, unfortunately, that I digested and understood this point and it is such a simple fact: I am very very very limited, not being able to see far enough, without God’s guidance, I would be lost.  In terms of limitation, I am much higher than animals as the guardian of life on the earth, but not far from beings such as worms and ants, limited, very very very limited.  It is this exuberant energy and passion for life, this excess in me that can guide me to hell or heaven, in this world and in the world to come.  If I were told to fear God and to love God, it perplexes me, as I want just the rosy picture of sleeping in the bosom of security of love without committing myself in body and soul to the source of my existence, who has sown in me what purification of soul and body means, and I would reap the fruit of my actions according to the freedom of my will:

“God commands justice, doing good, and generosity towards relatives and God forbids what is shameful, blameworthy, and oppressive. God teaches you, so that you may take heed.  Fulfil any pledge you make in God’s name and do not break oaths after you have sworn them, for you have made God your surety: God knows everything you do.  Do not use your oaths to deceive each other– like a woman who unravels the thread she has firmly spun– just because one party may be more numerous than another. God tests you with this, and on the Day of the Resurrection He will make clear to you those things you differed about.” (16:90-92)

Nonetheless, it felt inconvenient to me and I followed my whims and the delusion of pleasure and pride and instead of listening to the voice within me, to do good and being grateful for the overflowing ebullience of my life to my Source, I forgot how limited I am and the fact that I need God’s guidance and need to trust God, as a blind must trust a person who sees.  I know this after studying sciences and philosophy most of my life, and see how those who seek power and understanding only through human reason and vision are using an immense energy in a canceric and destructive way.  How desperate and ignorant is their arrogance!  However, when I awakened… No, it didn’t happen like this… as based on my eagerness, God awakened me to the startling awesome presence of God and awakened me to my limitedness, and taught me to ponder it, by recognition of God, the forgotten God, I reconnected my reason and heart back to God and I could adjust my reason to the Truth:

“If God so willed, God would have made you all one people, but God leaves to stray whoever God will and guides whoever God will. You will be questioned about your deeds. Do not use your oaths to deceive each other lest any foot should slip after being firmly placed and lest you should taste the penalty for having hindered others from the path of God, and suffer terrible torment.  Do not sell for a small price any pledge made in God’s name: what God has [to give] is better for you, if you only knew.  What you have runs out but what God has endures, and We shall certainly reward those who remain steadfast according to the best of their actions.  To whoever, male or female, does good deeds and has faith, We shall give a good life and reward them according to the best of their actions.” (16:93-97)

This is very simple, but there was a sickness in my soul, and the germ of this sickness is usually at the very seed of exuberance and energy of life, and it is at the very point of despair, insecurity and fear of my deep deep deep limitedness.  It is an energetic canceric rebellious cell that constantly demands power and absolute autonomy to its detriment.  When I could see the truth of my deep deep deep limitedness and dependent origination, I learned to separate the wheat from the chaff and let go of false images, gods, and goddesses of pleasure and orgies, of power and seduction, of delusion of scientism.  Science is a venue of knowledge and life, when disconnected from God, it becomes our soulless calamitous abuse of technology to our self-destruction-grandiosity.

There is no other way, we can’t invent a way or fabricate our God out of pure delusion, fairy tales, reason, or the arts.  The only way is to be completely receptive to the God of revelation, who has been constantly and repeatedly saying exactly the same thing in the course of thousands of years of history: abide in your trust in God, see your limitedness, be grateful for the energy of your life that will not last long, you are nested with death and are nothing, unless God gives you power and sustenance.  Use your reason to walk in the pathos of God.  Surrender to the will of God, the imageless, the nameless, the One who calls you to do good, whose seed has already been posited in you to be able to draw a line between the good and the evil, to be able to feel proper shame and guilt, to be able to hear, reason, and be responsive to Truth, surrender to the One who makes you reflect and doubt, who grants meaning and direction to your life, who connects you to your Source, without which you would perish in agony, who has promised you to be immortal according to your deeds, repeatedly in the course of history, for thousands years, it says you will return to God and this life is just a short dream, if you fear loss and being lost, it is because of forgetfulness and oblivion of the source of Being. 

I am amazed that how easily I fell asleep again and again despite this simple fact, that I am nobody, nothing, a limited limited being, all my wealth and fame, all my beauty of body and mind, all my glory and legacy, are fictitious delusions, a cover up on my deep deep deep limitedness and the fact that the only healing and content I can experience comes from the realization that I need to know my God and to connect to my Source; hence, in dying to my little self, to be granted the Self of immortality, but only for those who have attained that death, to open up to the Other: the experience of humility and nothingness, in doing good: 

 “[Prophet], call [people] to the way of your Lord with wisdom and good teaching. Argue with them in the most courteous way, for your Lord knows best who has strayed from His way and who is rightly guided.  If you [believers] have to respond to an attack, make your response proportionate, but it is best to stand fast.  So [Prophet] be steadfast: your steadfastness comes only from God. Do not grieve over them; do not be distressed by their scheming, for God is with those who are mindful of God and who do good.” (16:125-128)