There is a Prophetic saying of Muhammad full of mystical implication where he says: "I was made to love three things from your world: women, perfume, and the comfort of eyes in saalat (adoration of Divine / worship / islamic mode of prayer)."The saying can not be fully appreciated without the understanding of the sacredness that is embedded in every feminine soul, every woman who has direct access and honor to embody life, give birth to new spirit. Only woman is gifted to become the vessel to receive soul, the breath of God.
Also perfume has to do with the faculty of smell, which in spiritual symbology the highest sense and perfume is made from the essence. The Divine Itself is the Essence of essence.
Some place translate the last part of the hadith as, "shining light of eyes in prayer". Eyes being the mirror of the soul, when the human soul is in perfected state of prayer, in adoration of the Most High, its real Source - the Divine Light shines through the eyes which the Prophet mentions as the third object for which love was created in his holy heart.
But among all the three, love for feminine is what this post is about since without exploring the theme and its inner meaning, it leaves much room for misunderstanding. On love for women in the article: True Love Shaykh Tosun Bayrak al-Jerrahi al-Halveti also comments on the hadith. Let me quote few salient points:
This love honors the beloved; it is manifested in the Lord’s order to the angels, whom He created from divine light, to bow in front of Adam, whom He created from earth and water. That is the bond between the Lord and man, and between man and woman.
Thus a trinity is formed, three in one: the Lord, man, and woman. Allah teaches men to love through His own love: that is how he made man to love woman. That is why the Beloved of Allah said, "I was made to love women." He did not say: "I loved women." He attributed loving women to his Lord.
The Prophet said that he was made to love women, nisa’ - in Arabic, a plural word without a singular. He did not say imra’ah, which is "a woman" in Arabic. Thus it is not anonymous femaleness that he loves.
The Prophet of Allah, when he tells of the things he was made to love, puts woman above man. He uses the word "thalath," feminine three, not "thalathah," masculine three, and yet in the same sentence there is the word tib – perfume, which is masculine. In Arabic grammar when it is said, for example, "Fatimah and Zayd came," the verb is in the masculine form. Thus the Prophet has purposefully and ungrammatically given precedence to the female over the male. In addition to the first loved one being feminine, third loved one, salat, is also (gramatically) feminine.
The pattern is repeated thus: Dhat (Essence) is feminine; Adam is masculine; Eve is feminine. It is the concept of trinity: man (masculine) is between two feminines. They are linked : Essence to man; man to woman; woman to Essence.
While reading the book The Last Barrier by Reshad Feild i also came across a nice piece which wished to share along here:- She is waiting to be recognized.
- Do you mean she wants to be recognized as a woman?
- I mean that she is waiting to be recognized as all women ... Don't you yet realize that all women are in the same position? Until the women is recognized by man she can never be completely free. Man has forgotten too much. Yet if he recognized the woman, he would free himself. He would become complete. The woman, the earth, has been waiting so patiently...
+ God is never seen immaterially; and the vision of Him in woman is the most perfect of all. - Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi
+ The Feminine - One of the universal polarities, have to do with the manifestation and form of the Divine; may also refer to the essential and psychological characteristics in the human domain.
The imprint of God is Woman. - Lee Lozowick, The Alchemy of Love and Sex
+ "And among His signs is that He has created for you partners from among yourselves so that you may live in tranquility with them; and He has created love and mercy between you. Verily, in that are signs for those who reflect." - The Quran (30:21)
+ Jesus said to them, "When you make the two one, when you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner, and the above as the below, and when you make the male and female into a single one so that the male will be not male and female not be female ... and an image in the place of an image, then shall you enter the Kingdom." - The Gospel of Thomas (22:4-7)
.: about the photos: Anandamayi Ma, a mysticsaint from Bengal - who embodied the Divine Feminine in such a mystic way that her husband became her devotee in adoration and she remained celibate for her entire life.
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