Islam is submission. But to exactly what do we submit? We have no access to God. All we have access to is our experience. All we ever see are the sensations that arise in our awareness. There is nothing for us to submit to but our experience. What might it mean for us to submit to our experience? I think it must be something like the formulation I first remember hearing from Dr. Alan (Abd Al Haq) Godlas: In every moment, the content of our awareness is Gods gift to us. Surely we do not create our experience. We have not ourselves created our sensory apparatus. We ourselves have not created the eternally active environment that continuously feeds our senses with sensation. Nor have we created the architecture of our hearts that determines how we react to what we feel. And just as certainly we did not design the analytic function of our brains that spontaneously searches sensation for whatever intelligence it can abstract. We did not create any of these miracles from which our experience arises. Surely in every moment, the content of our awareness is Gods gift to us. What can submission to God be, but our humble acceptance of our experience. Surely submission starts with not rejecting any moment of experience. Surely submission is the patient abiding that allows a cacophony of sensations to settle into wholeness before were compelled into action. I think it was this exact sense of submission that made Ali sheathe his sword when he felt his anger boil, lest he act in partiality, lest he act from dis-integrated sensation, lest he act with less than full integrity. Surely the essence of submission is the patient mindfulness of calm abiding within the chaos of our lives
Posted on: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 21:27:34 +0000
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