Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam (Studying Qur'an & Hadith Book 2)

by A. Helwa

Although this book is about Islamic spirituality and practices, I believe God is bigger than any one religion or philosophy. I choose Islam as my faith, but I offer you these words from the Qur’an not to change you, but to remind you how much you are loved by God.

pray these words awaken your heart to fall deeper in love with Allah, God, Elohim, Yahweh or whatever you choose to call the supreme eternal Being, who has infinite names, but only one essence.

No one has the power to truly change a heart. I believe only God can decide what path we will walk on this spaciously beautiful Earth. God is intentional and nothing happens by accident. I am a snowflake in the sun, soon to dissolve back into the earth that once formed me, but God and His words are eternal and unchanging.

Awakening to faith is not a one-time event, but a continuously unfolding reality. The journey of faith is not a race, but a marathon of love that each person walks at a different pace. Although each person’s experience of God is unique to them, in writing this book I felt guided to share my story with you, as a testimony that God’s love and mercy has the power to change every heart it touches.

Sidi was a master of the spiritual sciences of Islam and the first teacher I ever had that called me to God through the door of His love. Sidi told us, “Know, my beloved, that the love is eternal between Allah and His creation and the electric circuitry of His love flows through everything. If not for this, nothing would move that moves; nothing would live that lives. Every planet in its orbit and every cell in its course is a witness to the love of Allah and a sign of His wisdom. Keep this love inside you and love with it all the time, because the moment you lose it, you lose yourself; you lose Him.”

The message was clear: write a book about the loving heart of Islam. Although the guidance was straightforward, the voices of doubt in my mind fanned the flames of my insecurity, making me feel unworthy of what I felt God was asking of me.

It suddenly became clear to me that the whole purpose of faith is not to be “good enough” before we begin on the path to God, but to come with all our deficiencies to God, knowing that only He can fill in our gaps through His mercy.

Whoever you are, I am certain you will find this book one day, and when you do I want you to know that God loves you. Your prayer meant so much to God that He brought dozens of people together, dedicating their lives to creating this work to answer your sincere calling. I often think of you and how this book belongs to you. After all, it was your love and longing that put into motion something that is beyond me.

This book is meant to remind you of all that you already are and always have been, to remind you that you matter, that God loves you unconditionally, that you have been created intentionally with a divine purpose, and that you already have all that you need to awaken your heart and soul on the path to God. Place your trust in the Divine and let Him lead you back into the embrace of His everlasting love.

“A pure heart, open to the Light, will be filled with the elixir of Truth.” RUMI

“He is Allah, none has the right to be worshipped but He, Knower of the unseen and the seen. He is The Universally Merciful, The Singularly Compassionate. He is Allah, none has the right to be worshipped but He; The King, The Holy, The Giver of Peace, The Giver of Security, the Guardian over all, The All-Mighty, The Compeller, The Supreme. Glory be to Allah above all that they associate as partners with Him. He is Allah. The Creator of All, The Maker, The Former of the image. His are the most beautiful names. All that is in the heavens and the earth glorifies Him, and He is The All-Mighty, The Wise.” QUR’AN 59:22-24

God did not just create you, He perpetually re-creates and sustains you (10:4). He wraps His love like the arms of a galaxy around every soul who comes and seeks; He sings your cells into harmony and drums your heart into a beat. He is the One that created you from water and earth (23:12), the One that preferred you to His angels (7:11), the One that planted a reflection of His entire universe into the soil of your spirit. Everything in existence is between His fingers of mercy.3 “He knows all that enters the earth, all that comes out of it, all that descends from the sky and all that ascends to it. He is All-Merciful and All-Forgiving” (34:2).

God’s mercy is greater than your sins or circumstances. His compassionate love embraces the cactus parts of you that you swear no one could hug. His grace celebrates the parts of you that nobody claps for. God loved you before you were even created, before you even knew of Him. As the Qur’an says, “It is He who sent down tranquility into the hearts of the believers, that they may add faith to their faith for to Allah belong the forces of the heavens and the earth and Allah is full of Knowledge and Wisdom” (48:4).

It is as a result of these seemingly contradicting statements that Allah is, by definition, that which breaks the mind. As the mystics say, “Only God can know God” because “there is none comparable to Him” (112:4). Therefore, by definition, Allah has no opposites, and since the human mind understands the world through association and comparison, it is rendered incapable of understanding a singular God who cannot be divided into parts and is unlike any other thing known to man.

Our inability to comprehend God’s infinite nature does not mean we cannot have a relationship with God; rather, it means our experience of God begins through admitting our ignorance before His all-encompassing knowledge.

It is only from a place of humility that we can begin to experience a connection with God. Like the famous novelist Leo Tolstoy said in War and Peace, “All we can know is that we know nothing. And that’s the height of human wisdom.”

As the twentieth-century theologian, C.S. Lewis said, “A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.”

As the teacher of Rumi, the mystic Shams Tabrizi, said, “Intellect takes you to the door, but it doesn’t take you into the house.” Despite all divinely sent prophets constantly calling humankind to not seek God solely with the mind, human beings have never stopped searching for a God they can touch and see directly.

A mystic master was once asked, “How can I see God?” The master told the questioner, “Look at the sun.” The seeker looked toward the sun, but after a few seconds squinted in pain and said, “I can’t, it’s burning my eyes.” The master then replied, “You can’t even look at the sun without going blind and you want to see the Creator of the sun?” The seeker then asked, “Then tell me, great master, where is God?” The master asked the seeker, “Do you know where in the galaxy the Earth is orbiting in this moment? Do you even know where you are to ask where the One who created place resides? When we cannot even place ourselves, relative to the universe, how can we attempt to place a formless God in relationship to an existence He completely transcends?”

Rumi metaphorically remarks on this inclination through the following poem: “The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.”

As brilliant and awe-inspiring as the discoveries of science can be, they can only ever speak to how things work in our universe, while God addresses why things exist. Nonetheless, science can be seen as a great ally of faith, because the scientific method, which was pioneered by Muslim physicist Ibn Al-Haytham, helps to unveil the power and wisdom of God that is hidden within the created world, through the God-given intellect of man. However, the intellect of man can only go so far in explaining the world we live in. The following quote beautifully articulates this notion: “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.” WERNER HEISENBERG, PIONEER OF QUANTUM PHYSICS

As God Himself says, “I will turn away from My signs those who are arrogant upon the Earth without right; and if they should see every sign, they will not believe in it. And if they see the way of consciousness, they will not adopt it as a way; but if they see the way of error, they will adopt it as a way. That is because they have denied Our signs and they were heedless of them” (7:146).

“Say: Lord, Owner of the Kingdom, You give authority to whomever You want and take it away from whomever You want. You honor whom You will and You humble whom You will. In Your hands is all virtue and You have power over all things. You cause the day to enter into the night and the night to enter into the day. You cause the living to come out of the dead and the dead to come out of the living. You give sustenance to whomever You want without measure.” QUR’AN 3:26-27

My Lord, help me surrender all that I am, so that I can receive all that You seek to give me. Allah, help me to lay down the burden of doubt and to walk freely in faith, trusting that Your plans for me will always be greater than my greatest dreams. Allah, forgive me for the mistakes I have made and the mistakes I will make. My Lord, please remind me that Your goodness will always be greater than my faults, and that Your love will always be greater than my shame. Oh Allah, shine Your light upon me, so that my eyes can awaken to Your truth and so that my heart can be illuminated by the reflection of Your beauty. In Your sublime Names I pray, Ameen.

You are an intentional creation of a perfect God. You are not a product of chance or luck. As the Qur’an says, “We did not create the heavens and the earth and everything between them playfully” (21:16). There is no accidental life. Allah wrote your story with the pen of mercy, poured His love into every cell that dances and twirls inside of you, and blew His spirit into your mold of clay, making you a bridge between Heaven and Earth (15:29).

You are far more beautiful than mirrors can sing about, you are far too intricate for language to weave into words, because you are the product of a divine love that is so holy and infinite that finite hands fall short in painting your truth. The love of God purposely overflowed to create you and everything in existence.

“The God who made the stars, the seas, the mountains and its peaks, the universe and its galaxies felt this world would be incomplete without you and without me. Do you see how you are a puzzle piece in the whole—how without you here, there would be a hole? Your body is not just a clay tent that you live in, it’s a piece of the universe you have been given. You are not a small star, you are a reflection of the entire cosmos. Can you hear the big bang in your heart? Eighty times a minute God knocks on the doors of your chest, to remind you that He has never left, and that He is closer to you than the jugular vein in your neck (50:16). Every moment is divinely blessed, for this very moment God is blowing the breath of life through eight billion different human chests. You are not just star dust and dirt, you are a reflection of God’s beauty on Earth. You are not this mortal body that death will one day take. You are an everlasting spirit held in the mortal embrace of clay. You are not a human being meant to be spiritual, you are a spiritual being living this human being miracle.” ARU BARZAK, POET

Stop calculating your worth with finite numbers when you were created by an infinite God who brought you to life with an everlasting spirit of light. Stop dividing who you are by the denominator of other people’s opinions. Remember, infinity divided by any number is still infinite. Remember forever cannot be reduced no matter how much you subtract. Remember you are not currency to fall and rise in value.

Like a flawless emerald would not require a beautiful setting to dictate its worth, the value of your spirit is intrinsic because it belongs to God. You are not defined by the opinions of men, by mirrors or by compliments.

Your value is not defined by worldly labels, because although God created this world for you, He says, “I created you for Myself” (20:41).

“Enlightenment is when a wave realizes it is the ocean.” THICH NHAT HANH, ZEN MASTER

“You wander from room to room, hunting for the diamond necklace, that is already around your neck.” RUMI

Our journey on Earth is not just to God, it is from God, with God, and into the love of God. The path to God is less of a spiritual path and more of a spiritual undressing of all that prevents you from seeing that in this very moment God is with you wherever you are (57:4).

The Infinite Faces of God Everything on Earth points to God. Everything here has a divine fragrance. As the Qur’an says, “We will show them Our signs in the horizons and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that this is the truth” (41:53), confirming the idea that a divine signpost resides at the core of all creations, and an underlying unity exists among all manifested multiplicity.

Just as the iron in your blood was made from the fusion of stars and your bones carry the dust of galaxies beyond, you were not only made in Heaven, you were made from the heavens. You are not merely living in the universe, you are living as a part of this universe.

“Just how infinite colors blossom from the light of a single sun, call it an atom or an Adam, everything was once one.” ARU BARZAK, POET

It is the dual nature of man that allows for him to be the perfect receptacle of God’s qualities, which is why Allah has chosen us to be His representatives of love upon this Earth. Even though the angels are in constant worship and witnessing of God, their perfection and lack of free will prevents them from experiencing the entirety of God’s qualities. After all, how can you experience forgiveness if you never make a mistake?

In a pre-eternal realm, before this world as we know it, every soul that would one day manifest into an earthly form was asked by Allah, “Am I not your Lord?” This soup of souls vibrated into a symphony of affirmation as every single being replied, “Yes, yes, we testify” to the singularity of God. As a result of this covenant, it can be said that at the soul level every person, regardless of conscious belief, is fully aligned with the Divine (7:172).

The word Iblis is considered to be the Devil’s actual name and originates from a root word that means “to give up hope, to despair, to be hopeless.”

The Qur’an describes the Shaytan as a jinn, a creation of God made from smokeless fire that is part of the ghayb or unseen realm.

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Whereas some spiritual paths suggest there are separate gods of light and darkness that balance one another, the Qur’an states that Allah is One, has no equal opposites, and possesses infinite qualities of pure goodness that perfectly complement one another.

Some mystics call the Shaytan the guide of darkness or the gatekeeper of Heaven, because it is his voice that tempts us toward the lower qualities of the ego such as envy, lust, greed, and jealousy, showing us the places we need to polish and purify.

Notice how the Shaytan said that he will ambush us on “the straight path.” Just as a thief only robs a house with expensive goods, the Shaytan comes strongest after those who are on the spiritual path and have fostered a sense of faith. Another commentary on the verse suggests that when the Shaytan says he will come from “behind” us it means he will delude us regarding our divine origin, suggesting we are nothing but an accidental creation of a Godless universe.

Being in a state of gratitude is remembering that God loved us before we ever loved Him. When we are grateful we are vibrating at a higher frequency, with more clarity and more awareness of our innate alignment with Allah.

As Imam Ali says, “Your sickness is from you, but you do not perceive it and your remedy is within you, but you do not sense it. You presume you are a small entity, but within you is enfolded the entire universe...What you seek is within you, if only you reflect.” Here Imam Ali is reminding us that the root problem of humanity is forgetfulness of our innate goodness (fitra) and pre-eternal connection to the divine love of God.

The Qur’an says, that only he or she will prosper “that brings to Allah a sound heart” (26:89). It is only when outer obedience unites with sincere inner submission that the eyes of the heart awaken to witness and receive the love of God.

EGO: “Edging God Out” Since sin or turning away from God is an act of the ego, it is important to better understand what the ego actually means. It is believed that the ego (nafs) or the illusionary sense of self is created when the breath of God (ruh) is joined with our mortal body. It is metaphorically said that if the spirit is symbolized by the sun and the body by wet clay, the ego is the translucent steam created when the light of the spirit touches the clay.23 In other words, like a fog that distorts our vision, the ego is a veil between our consciousness and our spirit. The purification and detachment of the ego is so vital within Islam because the more we purify the illusions of the self, the more we are able to witness the light of Allah.

God breaks us down to break us through because the shell of sin has to be broken before the spirit can flower. God does not test us because He hates us, but because He loves us and sees in us a potential that can only be manifested and unveiled through the fires of purification.

Therefore, without the presence of veils the observer and the observed would be one in our worldly physical realm. The veils between us and God are perhaps a product of divine mercy because they allow us to have an experience of God within the multiplicity of His creation.

In order to better understand this, consider the following example: The glass on the helmets of astronauts is created in a shape that deflects the intensity of the sun’s light, and protects the astronauts’ sensitive eyes from the full luminosity of the sun, assuring they do not go blind. The astronauts’ helmets may veil their eyes from the true brightness of the sun, but this veil is a mercy because it allows the astronauts’ eyes to have an experience of the light. In this same way, despite the ego being a veil before God, when transformed and purified it allows us to have a true experience of God.