Spiritual Health and Purification of the Soul (morals, punishment, reject)

[Cordoba]

Prayer

Prayer is that which enables the soul to realize its divinity.

Through prayer, human beings worship absolute truth, and seek an eternal reward. Prayer is the foundation-stone of religion, and religion is the means by which the soul is purified of all that pollutes it.

Prayer is the worship of the first cause of all things, the supreme ruler of all the world, the source of all strength.

Prayer is the adoration of the One whose being in necessary.

(Ibn Sina - Known also as Avicenna), (980 - 1037)

Background articles on Ibn Sina:

- Ibn Sina's writings on Beauty:
http://muslimheritage.com/topics/def...?ArticleID=521
- Contribution of Ibn Sina in the development of Earth Sciences
http://muslimheritage.com/topics/def...?ArticleID=319
- Bone Fractures in Ibn Sina' Medicine
http://muslimheritage.com/topics/def...?ArticleID=546

[Cordoba]

Love and Human Perfection

Love is the most essential element in every being, and it is a most radiant light and a great power which can resist and overcome every force. Love elevates every soul which absorbs it, and prepares it for the journey to eternity.

A soul which has been able to make contact with eternity through love, exerts himself to implant in all other souls what he gets from eternity. He dedicates his life to this sacred duty, for the sake of which he endures every kind of hardship to the end, and just as he pronounces ‘love’ in his last breath, he also breathes ‘love’ while being raised on the Day of Judgement.

A soul without love is impossible to be elevated to the horizon of human perfection. Even if he lived hundreds of years, he could not make any advances on the path to perfection. Those who are deprived of love, since being entangled in the nets of selfishness, are unable to love anybody else and die unaware of love which is deeply implanted in the very being of existence.

http://en.fgulen.com/a.page/books/towards.the.lost.paradise/a562.html

[Cordoba]

To Care for Others

A nurse escorted a tired, anxious young man to the bed side of an elderly man. "Your son is here," she whispered to the patient.

She had to repeat the words several times before the patient's eyes opened. He was heavily sedated because of the pain of his heart attack and he dimly saw the young man standing outside the oxygen tent.

He reached out his hand and the young man tightly wrapped his fingers around it, squeezing a message of encouragement. The nurse brought a chair next to the bedside. All through the night the young man sat holding the old mans hand, and offering gentle words of hope.

The dying man said nothing as he held tightly to his son. As dawn approached, the patient died. The young man placed on the bed the lifeless hand he had been holding, and then he went to notify the nurse.

While the nurse did what was necessary, the young man waited. When she had finished her task, the nurse began to say words of sympathy to the young man.

But he interrupted her. "Who was that man?" He asked.

The startled nurse replied, "I thought he was your father."

"No, he was not my father," he answered. "I never saw him before in my life."

"Then why didn't you say something when I took you to him?" asked the nurse.

He replied, "I also knew he needed his son, and his son just wasn't here. When I realized he was too sick to tell whether or not I was his son, I knew how much he needed me..."

http://www.geocities.com/mutmainaa/story/care_others.html

[Cordoba]

The heart in its journey to Allah, Majestic is He, is like a bird; Love is its head, and fear and hope are its two wings.

When the heart and two wings are sound, the bird flies gracefully. If the head is severed, the bird dies. If the bird loses one of its two wings, it becomes a target for every hunter or predator.

(Ibn Al-Qayyim)

http://www.geocities.com/mutmainaa/pearls.html

[Cordoba]

Alchemy of the Heart - 1
(Sheikh Hamza Yusuf - California)

The Heart

Allah says:

"On that day nothing will benefit the human being, neither wealth nor children, only the one who brings Allah a sound heart."

A sound heart is one that is free of defects and spiritual blemishes. Though the spiritual heart is centred in the physical heart, the heart being referred to here is the spiritual heart, not the physical heart.

In ancient Chinese medicine, the heart houses what is known as "chen" which is "a spirit." The Chinese character for "thinking," "thought," "love," "virtue," and "intending to listen" all contain the ideogram for the heart. In fact, in every culture in the world, people use metaphors that deal with the heart; in English, we call people who are cruel, "hard-hearted people."

There is also the idea of having "a cold heart" and "a warm heart." People who do not hide their emotions well "wear their hearts on their sleeves." When deeply affected, we say, "he affected me in my heart" or "in my core." In fact, the English word "core" means "inner most," and in Arabic, the equivalent "lub" comes from the Latin word, meaning "heart."

Thus, the core of the human being is indeed the heart. The word "courage" also comes from the same root word as for "heart" because courage is centred in the heart. The most ancient Indo-European word for heart means "that which leaps." The heart leaps or beats in the breast of man. For example, people say, "my heart skipped a beat" in reaction to seeing somebody. Many such metaphors are used for the heart.

http://muslim-canada.org/alchofheart.html

[Cordoba]

Alchemy of the Heart - 2

Three Types of People

The ancients were aware of the spiritual diseases of the heart, and this is certainly at the essence of the Islamic teaching.

One of the first things the Qur’an does is define three types of people: the mu'minun, the kafirun, and the munafiqun. The mu'minun are people whose hearts are alive while the kafirun are people whose hearts are dead.

The munafiqun are people who have a disease or a sickness in their hearts; thus, Allah says, "In their hearts is a disease, and they were increased in their disease." This is also in accordance with another verse: "When their hearts deviated, Allah made them deviate further." When somebody turns away from Allah, Allah causes them to deviate even further from the truth.

http://muslim-canada.org/alchofheart.html

[Cordoba]

The Heart and the Brain

The actual physical heart in our breast beats about 100,000 times a day, pumping two gallons of blood per minute, 100 gallons per hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year for an entire lifetime!

The vascular system that sends this life-giving blood is over 60,000 miles long: it is more than two times the circumference of the earth. Furthermore, it is interesting to note that the heart starts beating before the brain is formed; the heart begins to beat without any central nervous system.

The dominant theory was that the central nervous system is what is controlling the entire human being from the brain, yet we know now that in fact the nervous system does not initiate the heartbeat. It is actually self-initiated; we would say, it is initiated by Allah subhanahu wa t'ala.

The heart is the centre of the human being. Many people think the brain is the centre of consciousness, yet the Qur’an clearly states, "They have hearts that they are not able to understand with." According to the Muslims, the centre of human consciousness is the heart and not the brain itself, and it is only recently that human beings have learned there are over 40,000 neurons in the heart; in other words, there are cells in the heart that are communicating.

Now, it is understood that there is two-way communication between the brain and the heart: the brain sends messages to the heart, but the heart also sends messages to the brain. The brain receives these messages from the heart, which reach the amygdala and the thalamus. The cortex receives input from the amygdala and thalamus that it processes to produce emotion; the new cortex relates to learning and reasoning. These processes are recent discoveries, and although we do not fully understand them, we do know that the heart is an extremely sophisticated organ.

According to the hadith, the heart is a source of knowledge. The Prophet, peace be upon him, said that wrong action is what irritates the heart. Thus, the heart actually knows wrong actions, and this is one of the reasons why people can do terrible things, but, ultimately, they are affected negatively. In Crime and Punishment, the brilliant Russian author Dostoevsky indicates that crime itself is the perpetrator's punishment because human beings have to live with the result of their actions: their souls are affected.

When people do something against the heart, they act against the soul, and that actually affects human beings to the degree that they will go into a state of spiritual agitation, and people will use many ways to cover this up. This is what kufur is: "kufur" means "covering up." To hide their agitation, people use alcohol, drugs, and sexual experimentation; they also seek power, wealth, and fame, taking themselves into a state of heedlessness, submerging themselves into the ephemeral world which causes them to forget their essential nature and to forget their hearts. Thus, people become cut off from their hearts.

http://muslim-canada.org/alchofheart.html

[Cordoba]

Wrong Actions Sicken the Heart

One of the things about being cut off from the heart is that the more cut off from the heart one becomes, the sicker the heart grows because the heart needs nourishment, and heedlessness starves the spiritual heart.

When one goes into a state of unawareness of Allah and the Hereafter, one becomes unaware of the infinite world in relation to the finite world, unaware that we are in this world for a temporary period. When we look at the infinite world in relation to the finite world, suddenly our concerns become focused on the infinite world and not on the finite world.

On the other