bismillahir rahmanir rahim - Only in the healing, illuminating, empowering, and sanctifying Name of Allah, Who is absolute Mercy and inconceivably tender Compassion, can we begin the infinite task of elucidating the mystery of the holy month of Ramadan.
ya wadud O Allah, You are none other than Love - a single love in countless beautiful forms and brilliant facets. Only through awakening as Your Divine Attributes, manifest as both lover and beloved, can we envision, approach, and merge with Your Reality, which is the Only Reality. Your undifferentiated Presence, O Allah, pours through the month of Ramadan like an iridescent waterfall, each drop containing the complete spectrum of Your ninety-nine essential Energies, from delicate Beauty to all-consuming Power.
Only through the open gates of the Paradise of Ramadan can the total flood of Divine Presence enter, awaken, and transform the heart. The fully flowered state of sanctity is hidden within a few human beings, but the noble month of Ramadan is open and available to persons at all levels of spiritual development. Ramadan reveals the intrinsic sainthood of every heart.
True humanity consists of Your Attributes turning and gazing at Your Essence, crying out through their intrinsically Divine Being, la ilaha illallah, the One alone exists.
What is truly human is the return, through the precious human form, of the radiant Divine Energies into their Source, the single Essence. This return is universal fana, disappearance into Allah. Then there blossoms the selfless flowing forth of Divine Attributes against as perfect humanity, which is universal baqa, subsistence in Allah. The hands of this perfect human being are ya rahman and ya rahim, the continuous invocation of Divine Mercy and Compassion. The breath of this fully realized humanity, promised by the whole prophetic tradition, is ya hayy, the ceaseless calling out to Divine Life, which constitutes all lives.
The heart of the awakened human being manifests only Divine Justice, the eyes see only Divine Beauty, the mind experiences only Divine Clarity. This person is the lover of humankind and the tender khalifatullah, or manifester of Allah, upon the planetary plane of existence - cherishing, protecting and spiritually maturing all the creations of Allah as they unfold in universal balance and harmony.
This magnificent awakening of the human being as the mysterious inflowing and outflowing of Divine Essence occurs during the holy month of Ramadan with the ease experienced in Paradise. This most sacred is the actual opening of the Gates of Eternity into the realm of time, inundating the cosmos of the heart with the rose fragrance of the Paradise heart of Prophet Muhammad, may supernal peace surround him. During this most mysterious month, the lovers of Allah can experience the same sweet taste in their mouths that the Holy Prophet experienced, the very honey of prophecy.
Ramadan is the most intense expression of Divine Generosity that humanity can encounter. It is the month during which the Glorious Quran descended fourteen centuries ago. During Ramadan, the Quran actually descended afresh each year, as healing and illuminating Divine Presence. This miraculous descent is most clearly focused during the Night of Power, hidden among the odd-numbered nights in the last ten days of Ramadan. Consciously to enter this luminous Night is equal in intensity and spiritual growth to one thousand months of prayer, as Allah confirms in His Book of Reality.
Prophet Muhammad - upon him be the sublime peace of mystical union to which he draws all humanity with the vast magnet of his love - is the complete Mercy of Allah, the Culmination of Prophecy, the return of humanity into its essential Source, the Distributor of the single Light of Prophecy to the hearts who enter Ramadan through the vast, open portal of the Clear Quran.
The subtle human form, consisting of pure resonance and radiance, is composed from the mystic calligraphy of the Universal Quran. This is the secret Muhammadan nature of every precious human being. All souls were created before eternity from nur muhammad, the Muhammadan Light of praise and submission, the column of clear radiance that is the axis and marrow of all worlds and that existed from before all worlds. This First Light is the Divine Luminous Wisdom, which is the Light of Quran, the living Light of every revelation in the entire history of prophecy.
Allah is Mercy, His Messenger is Mercy, His Message is Mercy, the month of His Message is Mercy, and the recipients of His Message are composed essentially of His Mercy.
The Secret of Divine Mercy is that It eternally overflows with generosity, constantly conferring radiant gifts beyond conception upon all living beings - on the earthly plane and on the heavenly planes, as well as on the supreme plane of Paradise. This spontaneous and infinite pouring forth of riches is precisely the Fountain of Essence, and its countless gifts are none other than the numberless Divine Energies from which all souls are woven, each soul unique and eternal tapestry of unimaginable subtlety. From the Divine Attributes alone is creation woven as a mystical tapestry, as a diagram of Unity.
Ramadan is the state of consciousness in which the boundless generosity of Essence displays Itself openly. For an entire month, Ramadan generates a crystal clear reflection of Paradise upon the mirror of the earthly plane. In this mirror of space and time shines precisely the same Light of Allah that floods the seven heavenly planes and that surges within the Divine Heart. Ramadan opens the gates of Paradise.
The central core of the month, the precise Night of Power, extends timelessly in earthly time from sunset to dawn. This mystical night, containing the golden midnight sunrise of Essence, actually dissolves and resolves galaxies and subtle heavenly worlds into pure Paradise. Paradise is not a physical, mental or spiritual location within creation, but the very Heart of the Creator. Thus Ramadan reveals in daily experience - whether to advanced mystics or to beginners in the way of Islam - the inconceivable identity of the primal Essence, the Divine Attributes, the eternal souls and the pristine creation. This supreme identity or indivisible unity, is prior to and beyond the mystic union of the soul with its Lord, prior to and beyond Divinity and humanity, Creator and creation - for these dynamic polarities are simply the play of Divine Energies. The Night of Power is the prefect Peace in which all dynamics disappear. O Night of Power, please manifest continually as the very nature of Reality, as the very nature of infinite Generosity, as the very nature of the fully evolved Muhammadan humanity.
We greet each other gratefully within the holy month, within this virgin womb of Divine Luminous Wisdom, by speaking the blessed words, Ramadan Karim. These words indicate that Ramadan is the purest manifestation of the particular Divine Energy,karim, the Spiritual Nobility that offers itself generously to all humanity. In desperate longing to express just a single drop of meaning from the radiant ocean of Ramadan - the stormy ocean of love that we feel surging in our hearts during this most mysterious month - where can we turn but to the Glorious Quran? What other than the Book of Clear Light can express the boundless radiance of Ramadan?
.. to practice Ramadan, its fasting and prayer, its acts of kindness and ecstatic delight gives us a genuine glimpse into the minds and hearts of the gnostic saints who have attained the spiritual station of Ramadan - throughout temporal experience, within eternity, and as the essence of Reality. Ramadan is the experience of the perfected friends of Allah who have lost their personal will in the Divine Will, whose fasting has become feasting.
O Glorious Quran, we supplicate Allah to reveal the nature of Divine Generosity through Your magnificent Quran. Ramadan is simply Quran embodied. The transcendent Awareness of Allah awakens through the most sublime conscious instrument, humanity, who is nearer to Allah than nearness and even nearer than that. The Voice of Truth is the Voice of Allah is the Voice of Revelation is the Voice of Quran is the voice of our true humanity - the Ramadan love song of Divine Love returning through itself to itself.
~ from Atom from the Sun of Knowledge
, Chapter titled 'The Generosity of Allah'
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