To Choose God

While I was in my adolescent years, I unintentionally met this man whose wisdom is vast and deeper than most people can ever guess.
“Imagine you were already there in the Hereafter. After your good deeds were counted and your sins forgiven by your Lord, you were to be given huge rewards – that is, to enter paradise and spend all in it as you may wish and live in it for eternity.”He started. “You were already brought near the gate of the blessed paradise from which immense light(nuwr) comes out. And while you were standing there, you could smell the sweetest fruits, and the most delicious foods. And you could hear the chanting of the most beautiful maidens, …waiting for you.”
I was taken for a moment by the imagination as he was describing it. I could not help but smiled back at him.
“Would you accept such reward?” He asked.
“Of course,” I answered after a thought.”yes.”
“If I were to answer the same question,” He focused his gaze at me. “My answer would be ‘no’.”
“Why?” I wondered loudly.
“Because I don’t want to live in paradise forever. I want to live with My Lord beside me. I want to live right beside Him, really close to Him. If I were to visit a beloved king in his palace, I will not only stay in the sala of the palace, but enter to the hallway and into his room.”
All these years, this conversation kept ringing around in the realm of my understanding. It simply gives us a realization of the identity of the created world whenever we encounter this situation, or even just hear or read about such.

Someone in the ecstasy of Love towards his Lord was running in the streets. On his right hand, he was holding a torch of flame and on the other, a basket full of water.
“O noble one!” asked the people in that village. “Why are you doing this?”
“I am going to put out the fire in Hell with this water and burn the paradise with this fire in my torch.” He shouted in reply. “Because people are now worshipping their Lord in fear of the punishment in Hell and in excessive desire to get the rewards and to enter paradise in the Hereafter. And not because of Love towards Him.”

The mark of lovers is high aspiration. They strive only for the Beloved. In order to reach Him, they must turn their gaze away from everything in the created universe, even to paradise.

According to Sam’ani in his “Rawh Al-Arwah”:
“Time, space, entities, traces, vestiges, shapes, existent things, and objects of knowledge must be erased completely from in front of you. If any of these clings to your skirt, the name of freedom will not stick to you, you can never be a true servant of God.”

Love, then, means to be free of everything in the created world, every thing, and to choose God. It is to serve God, nothing else. Human beings alone were created such that they can love God in His infinite, all-comprehensive reality, embracing the attitudes of both beauty and majesty, gentleness and severity. When they focus on God by realizing tawhid, they escape the limitation of possessing certain attributes rather than others.

Again, according to Sam’ani, God addresses his creatures like this:
“O accursed one, are you proud of fire? You belong to fire and fire belongs to you. O Korah, are you proud of treasure? You belong to your treasures and they belong to you. O Pharaoh, are you proud of the Nile? You belong to the Nile and the Nile belongs to you! O you who declare my unity (tawhid), are you proud of Me? You belong to Me and I belong to you.”

If human beings are to aspire to God, they need to be able to differentiate between God and all else. The key to human love and perfection is a discerning heart, one that sees God in the midst of the confusing multiplicity of creation. Adam, our common father, provides the model for lovers.
The root of every business is the discernment of value. The Sultan of Adam’s aspiration sat on the horse of his majestic state. Then it rode into the Garden to measure its worth. There is difference of opinions as to whether or not a person can buy what he has not seen. But all agree that you cannot judge the value of something without having seen it.

Sam’ani relates about Adam as follows:
“’O Adam, what is entering paradise worth to you?” The Lord asked.
“Adam replied, ‘ For someone who fears hell, paradise is worth a thousand lives. But for someone who fears You, paradise is not worth a grain.” Hence the wisdom in taking Adam to paradise was to make manifest his aspiration.’ “

When Adam saw that paradise had no value, he decided to leave. But God had given it to him as his own domain. The only way to get out quickly was to break God’s commandment.

“By God the Tremendous! They placed the worth of paradise on Adam’s palm. THERE WAS NO BRIDE MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN PARADISE among all the existent things, it had such a beautiful face and such perfect adornment! But ruling power of Adam’s aspiration entered from the world of the Unseen Jealousy. He weighed the worth of paradise with his hand and its value in the scales. Paradise began to shout, ‘I can not put up with this brazen man!’
“O noble youth! If tomorrow you go up to paradise and you look at it from the corner of your heart’s eye, in truth, IN TRUTH, you will have fallen short of Adam’s aspiration. Something that your father sold for one grain of wheat – why would you want to settle down there?”