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Tag Archives: spiritual heart disease

The Heart of Islam

07 Saturday Mar 2015

Posted by opus125 in India

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Islam, Muslim spiritual purification, personal transformation, Spiritual heart, spiritual heart disease, spiritual transformation

allah-7-690x564

Almost all traditions stress a good heart. In Islam neither wealth nor children will benefit anyone on the Day of Judgement, except one who comes to God with a sound heart (QURAN, 26:88-89), free of character defects and spiritual blemishes.

This of course, refers to the spiritual heart, although, like the Heart chakra of Hinduism, it centre’s in the region of the physical organ. In traditional Chinese medicine, the heart houses what is known as shen, or spirit. The Chinese characters for thinking, thought, love, the intention to listen, and virtue all contain the ideogram for the heart.

Now extraordinary research suggests the fist sized 10 ounces of heart, that so marvellously pumps life-giving oxygenated and nutrient-rich blood throughout our bodies, greatly influences our mental, emotional and physical processes.

“The heart is a sensory organ and acts as a sophisticated information encoding and processing center that enables it to learn, remember, and make independent functional decisions,” Institute of HeartMath Director of Research Rollin McCraty wrote in the paper, The Energetic Heart: Bioelectromagnetic Communication Within and Between People.

The heart’s electromagnetic field contains certain information or coding, which researchers are trying to understand, that is transmitted throughout and outside of the body. One of the most significant findings of IHM’s research related to this field is that intentionally generated positive emotions can change this information/coding. Heart Math research suggests the cardioelectromagnetic field transmitted from the heart of people angry, fearful, or depressed take on beneficial energetic influence of others positive emotions.

That care, compassion, or love can be transmitted throughout through our body’s cardioelectromagnetic field suggests the truths found in many ancient traditions.

Metaphors abound. The merciless and unkind are “Hard-hearted”. People are cold hearted or warm hearted. Others wear their hearts on their sleeves, unconcealed. In love someone person “touched my heart” or “touched the core of my being.”

I am not a Muslim but have lived with the Muslim community in India and enjoyed kind hospitality. So I write as an outsider seeking to understand.

The Arabic equivalent for the English word core (which originally in Latin meant heart) is known as lubb, which also refers to the heart, as well as the intellect and the essence of something.

Hamza Yusuf in his Translation and Commentary of Imam Mawlud’s Matharat al-Qulub, points out that “in most ancient Indo-European word for heart means “that which leaps,” which is consonant with the idea of the beating heart that leaps in the breast of man.”

We find this in every day expressions their heart “skipped a beat” when startled, a lover’s “stealing one’s heart.”

Ancient traditions speak of spiritual heart disease.

“And this understanding is certainly at the essence of Islamic teachings. The Quran defines three types of people: al-mu’minun (believers), al-kdfirun (scoffers or atheists), and al-munafiqun (hypocrites). The believers are described as people whose hearts are alive and full of light, while the scoffers are in darkness: Is one who was dead and then We revived [with faith] and made for him a light by which to walk among the people like one who is in darkness from which he cannot exit? (QURAN, 6:122). According to commentators of the Quran, the one who was dead refers to having a dead heart, which God revived with the light of guidance that one may walk straight and honorably among human beings. Also, the prophet Muhammad %£> said, “The difference between the one who remembers God and one who does not is like the difference between the living and the dead.” In essence, the believer is someone whose heart is alive, while the disbeliever is someone whose heart is spiritually dead. The hypocrite, however, is somebody whose heart is diseased. The Quran speaks of certain people with diseased hearts (self-inflicted, we understand) and, as a result, they were increased in their disease (QURAN, 2:10).”

In the Muslim tradition belief is intended to be more than formalism.

Ahmed Mater (b. 1979). Magnetism. British Museum

Ahmed Mater (b. 1979). Magnetism. British Museum

Just as the heart is slightly to the bodies left, the “two sacred languages of Arabic and Hebrew are written from right to left, toward the heart, which, as some have noted, mirrors the purpose of writing, namely to affect the heart.” The importance of the heart on the left side is mirrored in Islamic ritual.

The circumambulation of Ka’ba in Makkah during the Hajj pilgrimage is performed counter clockwise, with the believers left side facing the Ka’ba, “heart inclined towards it to remind us of God and His presence in the life of humanity.”

Beating 100,000 times a day, pumping 100 gallons per hour through 60,000 miles of the cardiovascular system, the heart beats before the brain is fully formed, without control of the Central Nervous System, “it is actually self-initiated, or, as we would say, initiated by God.” Even if all of its connections to the brain be severed as during a heart transplant, the heart continues to beat.

Hence traditional Islamic thought differs from the modern view the brain is the centre of consciousness.

Wayward people who have hearts with which they do not understand (Quran 7:179). It is God placed over their hearts of mockers of the prophet a covering that they may not understand it and in their ears [He placed] acute deafness (6:25).

“Their inability to understand is a deviation from the spiritual function of a sound hear ……. we understand from this that the center of the intellect, the center of human consciousness and conscience, is actually the heart and not the brain. “

With over 40,000 neurons in the heart, brain and heart are in constant communication.

As early as the 1970’s researchers John and Beatrice Lacey found the heart itself has its own type of intelligence that made its own decisions in response to signals from the amygdala, thalamus, and cortex. The amygdala relates to emotions, while the cortex or the neocortex relates to learning and reasoning.

“The Prophet of Islam described the heart as a repository of knowledge and a vessel sensitive to the deeds of the body. He said, for example, that wrongdoing irritates the heart. So the heart actually perceives wrong action. In fact, when people do terrible things, the core of their humanity is injured.”

As Fyodor Dostoyevsky reminds us in his Crime and Punishment, crime itself is the punishment because we ultimately live with the painful consequences of our actions.

To commit a crime, is first against your own heart, which affects your whole human being. Then follows spiritual agitation, which you may suppress.

“The root meaning of the word kufr (disbelief) is to cover something up .. the problems we see in our society come down to covering up or suppressing the symptoms of its troubles” perhaps with drugs, alcohol, sexual deviance or power grabs.

Heedless of their essential nature, we work hard at distracting ourselves fro from our heart and natural feelings. Once connection to the heart is severed we decline further into spiritual malnutrition.

A starved heart is unaware of God and mans ultimate destiny. Refusing to accept accountability for their actions, physical disease manifests before spiritual death.

In Islamic tradition, these diseases fall under two categories:

The first is known as shubuhat or obfuscations, diseases that relate to impaired understanding.

The second category of disease concerns the base desires of the self and is called shahawat. This relates to our desires exceeding their natural state, as when people live merely to satisfy these urges and are led by them.

shubuhat or obfuscations

Consider someone fearful God will not provide for him or her. “This is considered a disease of the heart because a sound heart has knowledge and trust, not doubt and anxiety. Shubuhat alludes to aspects closely connected to the heart: the soul, the ego, Satan’s whisperings and instigations, caprice, and the ardent love of this ephemeral world. The heart is an organ designed to be in a state of calm, which is achieved with the remembrance of God: Most surely, in the remembrance of God do hearts find calm (QURAN, 13:28). This calm is what the heart seeks out and gravitates to. It yearns always to remember God the Exalted.

But when God is not remembered, when human beings forget God, then the heart falls into a state of agitation and turmoil. In this state it becomes vulnerable to diseases because it is undernourished and cut off, Cells require oxygen, so we breathe … the breath of the heart is none other than the remembrance of God. “

This the purpose of divine revelation.

At birth our original state and inherent nature is state is called fipa: disposed to accept faith and prefer morality. Soon we learn from anxiety from others According to the Quran the heart is created vulnerable to anxiety and agitation (QURAN, 70:19). Prayer protects the heart. The highest of people are not diverted from the remembrance of God, whether standing, sitting, and reclining on their sides (QURAN, 3:191).

Shahawat

When led by our desire to satisfy natural urges, our desires exceed their natural state.

Islam claims to be method to make the heart whole and safe again. Centuries of scholarship have gone into examining the human heart.

The Islamic tradition, says Hamza Yusuf, is “in essence is a program to restore purity and calm to the heart through the remembrance of God.”

A major text on the “alchemy of the hearts,” the poem known as Matharat al-Qulub (literally, Purification of the Hearts), which offers the means by which purification can be achieved. Written by the great scholar and saint, Shaykh Muhammad Mawlud alYa’qubi al-Musawi al-Muratani, from Mauritania in West Africa.

A manual on heart transformation, It was written because he observed the prevalence of diseased hearts, neglecting the spiritual condition of the heart.

For example, he often cites the Prophet who said, “Actions are based upon intentions.” All deeds are thus valued according to the intentions behind them, and intentions emanate from the heart. So every action a person intends or performs is rooted in the heart.

Imam Mawlud realized social weakness is weakness of character in the heart, Imam Mawlud based his text on many previous illustrious works.

“If we examine the trials and tribulations, wars and other conflicts, every act of injustice all over earth, we’ll find they are rooted in human hearts. Covetousness, the desire to aggress and exploit, the longing to pilfer natural resources, the inordinate love of wealth and position, and other maladies are manifestations of diseases found nowhere but in the heart. Every criminal, miser, abuser, scoffer, embezzler, and hateful person does what he or she does because of a diseased heart. If hearts were sound, these actions would no longer be a reality. So if we want to change our world, we do not begin by rectifying the outward. Instead, we must change the condition of our inward.

Everything we see happening outside of us is in reality coming from the unseen world within. It is from the unseen world that the phenomenal world emerges, and it is from the unseen realm of our hearts that all actions spring.”

As Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us, to condemn injustice people go through four stages.

  1. Ascertain an injustice has occurred
  2. Negotiate, approach the oppressor and demand justice.
  3. If the oppressor refuses, King said that the third stage is self-purification, which starts with the question: ‘Are we ourselves wrongdoers? Are we ourselves oppressors?”
  4. True self-examination, after removing one’s own wrongs before demanding justice from others.

Modern man is reluctant to look at himself. It is easier to condemn.

When terrible things occur Hamza Yusuf suggests we ask “Why do they occur?” And if we ask that with all sincerity, the answer will come resoundingly: “All of this is from your own selves.” In so many ways, we have brought this upon ourselves. This is the only empowering position we can take. The Quran implies that if a people oppress others, God will send another people to oppress them: We put some oppressors over other oppressors because of what their own hands have earned (6:129).

As a non Muslim how this doctrine works out is hard for me to grasp. Because, as Hamza Yusuf notes, 12th century scholar Fakhruddin al-Razi explains the verse to mean the existence of oppression on earth may be caused by previous oppression. Being part Gandhian in my views could this justify retaliation? I recognize that historically it has been true. The great epics of Major religions tackle the full range of human experience: for example cause and consequence fuels the Mahabharata.

A type of social karma, where, by implication, victims of aggression were once aggressors themselves. But could it now justify retaliation?

Not always. People can be tried and God gives relief and victory to those of patience and perseverance, just as the Prophet s community in Makkah won over oppression. Despite their former brutality toward him, the Prophet forgave them and admitted them into the brotherhood of faith.

“Those who are merciful will be shown mercy by the Merciful. Be merciful to those on the earth and the One above the heavens will have mercy upon you. The womb is derived from the Merciful, so whoever keeps relations with his family then Allah will keep relations with him, and whoever abandons his family then Allah will abandon him.”

Impure people oppress, and the pure-hearted not only forgive their oppressors, but elevate them in status and character.

This requires a truthful heart examination. Self purification changes our life and the lives of others around us.

There are two types of therapy: a theoretical understanding of the disease and the practical prescription we must take in order to restore the heart’s natural purity.

Islam teaches therapy comes from knowledgeable scholars of spiritual purification, the teachings of the Quran and the exemplary model of the Prophet.

Having searched across a vast religious terrain, I feel that in all traditions, in and out of Islam, few people examine their lives and hearts. Religion to easily becomes formalism. Or a good luck charm, designed to buy favour of God.

Few take their spiritual medicine, whatever tradition they choose.

We must turn to a life of spirit, that examines the leadings of our heart.

23.259933 77.412615

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Finding the Sacred in life

21 Friday Feb 2014

Posted by opus125 in Uncategorized

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Tags

beauty, bhopal, Dvid Boehme, Sacral Existence, sacred creation, sacred life, spiritual heart disease, Trickster, Wendel Berry

Bhopalgarneshmaking IMG_0215

The idea that we live in something called “the environment” is utterly preposterous…. The world that environs us, that is around us, is also within us. We are made of it; we eat, drink, and breathe it; it is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh.

– Wendell Berry

The Navaho see creation as a sand painting. A catholic may relive recreation in the eating of the body of god, and the logos John says all things exist.  The Hopi world describe the weaving a microcosmic  womb of the spider woman.

Throughout history various traditions have described chaos turned to order.

It seems to me the universe was described a multi-layered, with both a celestial over world and a chthonic underworld, with appropriate spirit rulers and other denizens. there are also rulers of the principle directions or quarters. The levels of the universe are connected by a central axis, the axis mundi which appears as a sky ladder or world tree. Much as Jacobs ladder ascended and descended to heaven.

It is via this central axis that the shaman gains entry to all the levels of the universe.

IBhopal Lakes Fstival

With this in mind, I am considering the rose. The traditional rose and not the hybrid multi pedalled equivalent. Five petals and five sepals identify the  Rosaceae familly including apples, pears, quinces, apricots, plums, cherries, peaches, raspberries, loquats, almonds and strawberries.

The rose may smell as sweet by any other name, yet still its it’s prickles are  the wounds of love or evil.

Red roses? Like blood?

The Apache Indians red ochre the earths  blood,  coral is teeth, rock the bones, opal  its fingers, nail and teeth,  and abalone the sclera of the eyes. A dark cloud is the hair that later turns white.

In Jewish Kabbalah  the heaven as mans skin, the constellations are to the skins configuration, as the 4 elements to mans flesh, and the internal forces of the universe are angels, servants of god, to men’s bones and veins

For scientist and thinker David Boehme, the  whole body signify heaven and earth, the body cavity or bladder relates to air,  the heart  fire,  blood or liver is water  and the arteries course of the stars and the intestines wasting away.

I wonder if we have lost our connection to the earth behind a mask that distances us from life.

Old City BhopalA mask is a democratic space that on level at least convinces us we are not part  hierarchy , But infact,  increasingly dependent on technology there are new rulers and surfs. The present level playing field is as much   a colonialism as the world post 1492. We have just changed the name.

We have become detached from our bodies unable to listen to the yoga of life or the intuition of nature.

We call them myths.

The majesty of greatness is not known to small souls, just as the moon is not known by a mushroom that dries up by midday, or the cicada that dies before it sees spring.

But we should know.

Whether as crow or coyote , Trickster was the violator of taboo and also power of creativity. Of course, you probably don’t believe that. Which is OK. But do you dismiss it as a pagan or stupid superstition? The common alternative is to kill off nature as dead and uncaring,as emotionally distant   as some distant uncaring god in heaven.

 Do we hear the music of the earth blown through trees ad valleys like hollow reads, and the quiet creative song of heaven?

I would rather admire the geometric cell like plants that float in fluids angles  and the higher organisms which show the highest regard for their offspring.

We seem death to nature’s appeals.

Perhaps we would be better to once again see the Universe is a green dragon: green with life, an embryonic,  cosmic egg, and mystical like a dragon.

Fishing Bhopal

Or like Geothe to describe the essential plant as human potential described in terms of potentials. The Seed is the sum of all previous qualities contracted, the fruit expansion, and the plants exual organs are divided :  stamen – contraction; Corolla – expansion; Calyx – contraction. The stem is expansion and it is in the cotyledons  that duality appears

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari even suggest a “mechanic phylum” of space and its domains. A system of clouds, flames, rivers and phylogenic linage of living systems  of  living and non living systems

To us nature is dead, and life is made ou to be a rare accident.  We – especially the Christian West, except perhaps for Saint Francis – have seen ourselves above and superior to nature.

We as a society have a spiritual heart disease.

Why must we see life as dead? Why not live life as art.

We could see myths of breaking and recreation as did the poet Yeats : “the foul rag and bones shop of the heart.” We can listen to the rhythms of their “canonical formula” (a:b::c:a-l)., an archetypal rhythm that reaches deep within if only we let it.

We could instead ask what is the deeper archetypal yearning a tradition calls from us. We could recall to life the Medeavel festival of fools and offer a second life for the masses. Then taboos were recognized albeit regulated . Now social conformity enforces an  apartheid of wealth that risks imprisonment of those who do not fit the mould.

The West boasts of its Grecian heritage. Of course, the Greeks were obsessed with the patterns and ratios of beauty. So why cant created objects be  somehow sacred? Perhaps this is why I find a sculpture not of form but of belief but a passion.

But alas, like so many others, I allowed the ritual of bookwork, of study  – my mind – to destroy my passion.

I am not suggesting we carry Bibles down to  the church peasants adoring some wayside chapel , bent in adoration of some wayside crucifix.Nor do I ask you to sit in lotus reciting endlessly the Gayatri, Om mane padme aum or the names of Krisna.

Bhopal Old City

I arrived in India with a prefabricated metaphysics.  There was great romance in Mumbai’s  neo-gothic train station.  In sacred enclaves it is easy to admire a hernmetic code, a Buddhist, Hindu even a Muslim theme. But is the red Sindor only Hindu? Is the colour before me a Krisna or an advertising blue?
I arrived in India with a prefabricated metaphysics.  There was great romance in Mumbai’s  neo-gothic train station.  In sacred enclaves it is easy to admire a hernmetic code, a Buddhist, Hindu even a Muslim theme. But is the red Sindor only Hindu? Is the colour before me a Krisna or an advertising blue?

Perhaps I am unable to translate the experience. Perhaps Bhopal  triggers  personal memories  in the  recesses of my being.  Have Freud and Lurian kabala pooled into colours of mind that have distorted my vision.?

What I read as a historian is from a philosophical structure,  much like a wax work video new virtual surface that spirals into new forms.

What I do know is that there is beauty in the  mad painters claiming to be prophets  that offer themselves a sacrificial lamb in cultural mayhem .

Chaos and  somehow flows in a way only India could.

It is more than a tangle of primitive chaos. Even more than a fissionary art caught in possibility of social fright.

 …and through it I am learning to listen and I hear a profound symphonic order.

As the flat sound of my chappals on cobblestones echo a powerful slap, I think I would rather be initiated into the art of god

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