I have many questions.

[Mahasvapna]

Bismillah


Salam Mahasvapna


With all due respect to my brother Wael, but I think I did understand what you were aiming for in your very first post..


I think that u r a troubled soul searching for comfort, u r looking for comfort and contempt. Obviously, as anyone else, u must have looked for it through materialistic means. I m not trying to act smart or put words into your mouth. But this is how I felt. You are looking to know how best you can, after being done with the materialistic path, connect to Allah. Which is which? Which religion or let us call it way to Allah is correct???


Isnt this in a nutshell what you aimed for???


If what I understood is correct let me know, Insh a Allah I will try my best with Allah Close Help to put my words from the heart. Just a human being talking from the heart to the heart…

Namaste Muslimah,


This is close as you could get - certainly the spirit of the assumption is proper. It is not so much as that I am looking for the 'correct religion' as I am looking for the seeds of truth that I believe to be buried within each religion. There is much that so many paths have in common! Their differences, then are debatable as to 'correctness'. However... I have begun to look at the world in a particular frame of reason - that there are ultimately no contradictions in the substance of Truth. If you look at the differences in the right light, you often begin to see that they are not really differences at all - simply different interpretations of the same fundamental truth.


I do not know that troubled is the right word, although it could be. I am not seeking comfort, because I have this already. I have been blessed with a will to seek out truth early in my life, and so I feel that I have time to consider and experience. I should make no assumptions, i feel, but rather allow Truth to cultivate in it's own time as I feed it with perspective and, hopefully, wisdom. I do not believe I seek contempt... this word to me means essentially disrespect, or a great disliking of something, I am not sure if it is what you meant to say, as the two goals - comfort and contempt - seem rather diametric.


I am done with the materialistic path - at 21, I was not on it for very long. There is no connection or relationship to any person, place, thing, or even opinions which in any way change the ultimate course of my incarnation - my life, as it were. In the end, I'm going to die, and neither my career, nor my posessions, nor my vast stores of knowledge will mean anything. I still have my practical considerations - one must live in the world amongst the many others seeking truth, or live away from the world and selfishly hoard experience and wisdom. I believe that the only lasting actions I can do are those which somehow impact mankind in a beneficial way. In this regard, this understanding of what my priorities should be in life, I feel a resonance with the message in Islam. I believe we can choose these things, but I wish to choose properly, that i may live a life I will be able to be at peace with.


However, there is much that I do not quite agree with as well. Not because It doesn't sound pleasant to me, or that I do not wish to devote all of myself to something, but rather I hear, I consider, and in the end it doesn't feel like a tradition I can fully embrace. My first religion was christianty. I feel that at a point I grew beyond it. My view of God became less anthropomorphise - I began to stop seeing God as 'him' or a person, and more of a universal intelligence, the cumulative of existence. It is difficult not to make my view of the divine seem clinical or scientific... The axis of this view, in any case, is the deep connection I have to my own 'source' as it were. I feel connected to God, and it has left me with a sense of transience - as though I am ultimately an illusion, here only briefly before disappating and returning to the Source. I'm comfotable with this. But, I now struggle with a schism between my Domestication - that is, my social conditioning by parents, community, etc. - and my intuitive connection to the natural order of the world. I know there is purpose, I know that there is Truth, because I can feel it. But, knowing what this means I should do in life, what things should be important to me, becomes difficult. I am forced to weigh things like Loyalty, Companionship, and Love - friends, family, lovers, all ultimately as transient as I am - with Devotion, the search for Truth (which must be experiential, not done at a computer screen, at a book, or with a pen in my fingertips), and ultimately my own ideal of Ascension.


I don't want to stray too far off topic, but the reasons that I want to know deeper the Wisdom, not just the dogmas and verses, of Islam, why I want to understand how it affects its followers, what it means to them, what assumptions about life it changes, is a wide, wide question, and is rooted in many personal revelations which I will not say are valid for all people. The world feels more complicated than that to me. Our individual purpose feels so specific and special that I have begun to question all together the necessity and validity of relgion itself.


This is the reason that I have such a difficult time posing direct questions. What I am seeking is not a textbook answer, but a personal perspective. I have said before that to me, text is useless - it is as transient as as the hand that scribed it. The function of Religion is not in it's text, but in it's effect on the world, on the people in it. Text can be interpreted however one chooses - this obviously holds true in every religion so far. It's cumulative impact on humanity, though, is obvious through observation, and needs no interpretation - only a complete perspective.


Across the world, relgions have caused almost as much misery as they have hope. I struggle with the opposed ideals of a world in which struggle is the source of growth and is inevitable, and a world in which God truly seeks peace on earth. I cannot know the mind of God, but many people have claimed to. They all present very different personalities and ideals - so you can see my confusion.


I have faith enough in God, and more devotion with every day. I don't think I need religion. What I need is understanding of the function of religion. We would say that we can define it's function, but this is normally a superficial conceptual ideal. The only way to know the function of a thing is to observe what it does - regardless of what people say it is for, the truth is in the actuality. By undersanding the function of religion, I hope that I will be able to develope a greater understanding of God's greater purpose for the world, and for mankind. I don't mean to uncover some sacred truth - this understanding is of use only to my own greater understanding of my own path in life, and how to more closely follow it.


There are many people offering salvation these days, and there have been since the dawn of man, I think. But my intinct tells me that we are the key to our own salvation, individually.


Pardon my tendancy to ramble, I often do not know when I have said either too much or too little. What I seek is philosophical discussion, from a personal point of view. About the nature of God, about the necessity of spirituality or religion - not always mutually exclusive - about the purpose of prophets, about the possibilities for man. We evolve, we grow, we change. Why? Everyone has a different answer, and every person who says they have seen the answer directly says it differently. Why? Perhaps because we all see the same truth, but give it different words, interpret it differently. God does not contradict. God is Truth unmitigated, unambiguous.


I seek truth.


Namaste


Mahasvapna