The Universe in the Trial of Husayn

🌼🔆🌼 Enchanted by Husayn 🌼🔆🌼
🔹The Arbaeen of Husayn
📅 Date: 1404/05/23 – 20 Safar 1447
✨ Session: Meshkat-e Noor
🎤 Speaker: Master Ali Saei
📝 Some of the themes discussed in the session:
Peace be upon the spirit of God in the body of love: Husayn 🕊

السَّلامُ عَلَى وَلِيِّ اللَّهِ وَ حَبِيبِهِ
السَّلامُ عَلَى خَلِيلِ اللَّهِ وَ نَجِيبِهِ
السَّلامُ عَلَى صَفِيِّ اللَّهِ وَ ابْنِ صَفِيِّهِ
السَّلامُ عَلَى الْحُسَيْنِ الْمَظْلُومِ الشَّهِيدِ
السَّلامُ عَلَى أَسِيرِ الْكُرُبَاتِ وَ قَتِيلِ الْعَبَرَاتِ

اللَّهُمَّ إِنِّي أَشْهَدُ أَنَّهُ وَلِيُّكَ وَ ابْنُ وَلِيِّكَ
وَ صَفِيُّكَ وَ ابْنُ صَفِيِّكَ الْفَائِزُ بِكَرَامَتِكَ
أَكْرَمْتَهُ بِالشَّهَادَةِ وَ حَبَوْتَهُ بِالسَّعَادَةِ

Husayn is woven through the very fabric of existence ✨

Husayn is the sovereign of love and martyrdom.

O God…
Who is Husayn to You?

This is Husayn, whose roots of being are entwined with the very fabric of existence.

Where in this universe could one find
a thread of existence untouched by Husayn?

The earth, the seas, the angels, the jinn, the birds, the beasts… 🕊🌊🦅

The heavens and the earth,
the seas and the angels,
the jinn—
all of them,
are bound to Husayn in one way or another.

A special thread of connection**,
a *nerve of affection and tenderness*,
a **bond of love and devotion
connects them to Husayn.

Husayn is closer to us than our own souls ❤️‍🔥

By God, Husayn
is closer to us than our own souls.

He knows the heavens more intimately than the heavens know themselves,
and is more familiar to us than we are to ourselves.

He is interwoven with every thing in creation.

Husayn is both the vessel and the ocean.
He carries all creation within his soul.

We are woven from Husayn; Husayn is woven into existence 🧶

We are woven from Husayn**,
in both body and spirit.

The whole of existence
is interwoven with Husayn.

**Separation from Husayn is impossible.

The heavens weep,
for Husayn is closer to them and more radiant than the heavens themselves.

Husayn is the tablet of love and the closest appointed place of meeting 🌌

He is the Tablet of Nearness**;
**the tablet of love’s tenderness and martyrdom.

He strengthens the inner sense of our servitude
and draws us toward the One we worship.

Husayn is the closest appointed place of meeting in our worship.

Through love,
he raises us to the threshold of the Beloved.

Love for Husayn is the way to draw near to God.

Let us renew our intention; let Husayn be our qibla 🕋

We must renew our intention toward Husayn,

for Husayn is the path that brings us closer to God.
Love for him is the sweetness of love for God.

He is the Kaaba of love and martyrdom;
whoever turns toward him draws near to God.

Husayn is the measure of how close we are to God.

Let us not worship the Kaaba; let us turn toward the qibla of Husayn. 🧭

Beware of worshipping the qibla itself.
Beware of seeing the Kaaba as separate from Husayn.

The Kaaba of Husayn is the very path that leads us to the One we worship.

Husayn is the great trial of all existence.
A tremendous test.

Husayn is the book of love and spiritual wayfaring. 📖

He is the book of love and of the spiritual journey of servitude to God.

In Husayn’s school,
we learn the sublime joy of serving God.

All God’s proofs
are, like Husayn, Kaabas—sanctuaries of readiness for serving God,
and adorners of the soul for its encounter with the Lord.

All will reach the encounter—but how? 🚪

All will come to meet God;
but how we arrive matters.

To reach God with Husayn
is noble, delightful, sweet, and heartening.

God’s Kaabas are the agents of His love. 🕊

God’s Kaabas
are the agents of His love.

What is a Kaaba?
Someone who has arrived
and wants to bring us there, too.

He himself is the threshold of encounter**,
the threshold of the Face of God.

**Husayn is the word of love; complete the letters of love. 🔤

Husayn is the word of love.
Love’s beautiful, luminous word.

If we were to place all God’s proofs side by side,
we would arrive at the word “love.”

And we would give that word meaning by following and obeying them.

Until we attain this understanding,
love’s secret will remain closed to us.

Husayn is the furnace of God’s love. 🔥

Husayn is the furnace of God’s love.
We must warm our hearts for God**, set them ablaze,
and make our whole being beat for the One we worship.

**Then what is Husayn for?
What is he for, in himself?
What is the reason?

O God,
grant us the learning to read Your Husayn,
and the knowledge to recognize each and every one of Your saints.

If we do not acquire this learning**,
we will remain illiterate in the ways of servitude,
and **perish in the desert of serving God.

Pilgrimage is a pageant of servitude to God. 🕋

When we go on pilgrimage**,
when we *recite a visitation prayer*
when **we remember the Imams…

it means that, shoulder to shoulder with the Household of the Prophet,
we are taking part in the greatest pageant of servitude to God.

Why do we say “Husayn”? 💔

Why do we say “Husayn”?
Why do we go on pilgrimage to him?

So that we may reach God.
We are moving too slowly;
we need a movement like a storm.

And Husayn is our storm-like movement toward God.

Husayn is God’s beautiful name. ✨

To reach the presence of God,
we must draw close to His beautiful name: Husayn.

If we fail, we will stand with darkened faces on the Day of Resurrection.
And if we are asked:

“You had Husayn—what did you do?”

What will we say?

Did we draw on Husayn in the way Husayn intended?

Did we attain the station of following him?
Did we truly accept Husayn’s imamate?

You went on a pilgrimage—what did you bring back? 🎁

I went on the Arbaeen pilgrimage…
I went on the Ashura pilgrimage…
But what did I bring back?

Was I a mirror reflecting Husayn?
Had I taken on Husayn’s fragrance,
so I could offer it back to him?

Or did I go to meet him with ignorance and unveiled?

Husayn drew his sword against ignorance, not merely Yazid ⚔️

Yazid was ignorance made flesh.
Husayn drew his sword against ignorance.

If we approach Husayn in ignorance,
it means—God forbid—
that we are standing against him.

If there is a trace of oppression or idolatry in our souls,
we are enemies of Husayn
without knowing it.

Keeping family ties—or keeping ties with Husayn? 🫂

Have I ever kept ties with Husayn?
Have I ever visited Husayn’s garden and orchard?

If I entered that garden,
Husayn’s fragrance, his words, his flashes of lightning
would awaken me.

They would awaken me so that
my inmost nature might become a screen reflecting Husayn.

سُبْحَانَ الرَّفِيعِ الْأَعْلَى; a tasbih from the heart of Karbala 🌌

When I say:
«سُبْحَانَ الرَّفِيعِ الْأَعْلَى»

it means I have flown
from the earth to the heights of the Throne.

This is Husayn’s tasbih:
a glorification that makes your spirit take flight.

Husayn’s words are a ship.
They are light.
They are wings.
They carry us to a life of purity,
to a life shaped by Husayn.

Husayn’s secret is revealed in his intimate prayers, not concealed 🌿

Husayn
did not hide his secrets.
Rather, he made them known in his intimate prayers.

Blessed are the wakeful, restless souls 🌙

طُوبَى لِمَن كانَ خائِفاً…
Blessed is the one who is God-fearing, awake, and restless.
Perhaps I cannot fully grasp Husayn’s words,
but I feel something in them…
a feeling of awakening, of coming to life,
of rising from the grave of heedlessness.

The inexhaustible mystery of Husayn’s words ✨
Neither men of letters**,
nor mystics,
nor scholars
can interpret Husayn’s words in full.
His words are the source from which every stream of wisdom flows.
We can only catch a ray of their sun.

Complaining to the Beloved; the Worshipped One answers 🕊
When Husayn carries his grief and sorrow
to the Worshipped One…
when he opens his heart in complaint at no door but God’s,
God answers his call.

But what are these responses?
What are they like?
How deeply do they bow in humility?
How much warmth from the furnace of reverence burns within them?

My God, You bestowed Your blessings, yet found no one grateful… 🌧
My God,
You bestowed Your blessings, but I was not grateful.
You tested me, but I did not endure with patience.
Even so, You did not withhold Your blessings.
You did not make my affliction worse.
Instead, You brought it to an end.

Can pain ever outweigh love for God? 🩸
Husayn says:

“No pain or suffering
can overcome love for God.”

If a person is in love with God**,
no suffering, no affliction, no grief
will have a place in their heart.

**The pain of love is sweeter than every pleasure 🍯
The pain of loving God
is the sweetest pain in this world.

It is a pain that is itself a cure.
It is not an illness;
it gives life.

The light of love for God takes the place of every other light 💡
The light of love for God
brightens
whatever it shines upon.

Every reflection is that same light again.
In the heart of a believer,
love for God takes the place of everything.
It leaves no room for anyone but God.

The believer’s heart is God’s sanctuary 🕋
When the heart overflows with the stream of divine love,
it has no entrance for anyone but God, nor any exit into the world.

And Husayn
knows what to plant in the hearts of his followers
so that those hearts may become God’s sanctuary.

The Husayni trial: the final of all creation 🔥

If the heart becomes God’s sanctuary… 🕋
A heart that is God’s sanctuary
admits no one but God.
If the heart becomes a sanctuary,
let no stranger find shelter there.

When you enter Husayn’s garden,
you are intoxicated:
you know not which flower to pick,
nor can you tear yourself away from its fragrance.

Give us refuge, O God! 🕊
Imam Husayn, peace be upon him,
says in a wondrous prayer before God:

“O God, grant refuge to Your friends…”

Who are God’s friends?
The prophets? The saints? The angels?
Adam? Noah? Abraham? Moses? Jesus?

The Imam sees them all caught up in the Husayni trial.
And he asks God to grant them refuge.

The trial of allegiance to the divine is a universal trial 🌍
The trial with Husayn
is a trial of all existence.
All of creation is caught up in the struggle with Husayn.
Every particle in existence is drawn into trial and turmoil through Husayn.

It is not just you and me.
The angels, the prophets, God’s saints…

If the saints are caught up in this trial, what of us?
When Husayn asks God
to grant refuge to the friends of God,
what are we to do?
Where are we to seek refuge?
Can we seek refuge anywhere but with Husayn himself?

This trial
is neither excess nor deficiency…
It is weighty, immense, overwhelming.

Am I failing the test of loyalty? ❌
To be blunt,
I’ve raised the flag of defeat.
I have failed
the test of Husayn.

And it isn’t just me:
every being in creation
is being tested by Husayn,
from Adam to this day.

The final tribulation, the ultimate test, creation’s grand finale 🎯
The Husayni trial
is the final round of every test in creation.

The prophets were tested through Abraham;
the nations through Moses and Jesus.
But all of creation is tested through Husayn.

The weightiest question of our age:
What passes between Husayn and God’s chosen ones?
Is there, between the angels and Husayn,
an appointed moment when the secret of Husayn’s beauty will be unveiled?
Or is another world
to be born within this trial?

🟩 Peace be upon Husayn: the opening words of love

From the very beginning, we enter through the radiant greetings of Ziyarat Ashura:

• Peace be upon the friend of God and His beloved…
• Peace be upon Husayn, wronged and martyred…
  And within these greetings, a profound understanding of Imam Husayn’s very being begins to dawn:

Husayn is not merely a godly human being; he is woven into the very fabric of creation.

🟨 Husayn: interwoven with existence

• Every being—from the heavens and the earth to birds and beasts, jinn and angels—is bound to Husayn by threads of feeling and love.
• Husayn is himself both the Ark of Salvation and the ocean of salvation.
• Humanity is woven from Husayn**; Husayn is **woven into the soul of creation.

🟥 Husayn: the direction of love and the journey to God

• The path of Husayn is the path of drawing near to God.
• The qibla of Husayn is the measure of how close a person is to the Beloved.
• The Kaaba of Husayn is a staging ground for worshipping God. In its presence, a person is readied to soar towards the Lord of the worlds.

🟪 Husayn: the key to awakening and the final trial of creation

• Love for Husayn accelerates our journey towards God.
• Every visit, every remembrance, every cry for Husayn embodies our bond with God.
• If the heart is not cleansed of doubt, idolatry and sin, then we have gone on pilgrimage dressed as visitors, but wearing Yazid’s face!

🟫 The words of Husayn: a volcano of eloquence, an earthquake of meaning

• Even writers and mystics cannot fully interpret the words of Husayn.
• Husayn’s words make you feel, not merely understand**; they awaken and bring you to life.
• If the innate nature awakens, **it will see Husayn. Otherwise, it will not.

🟦 The Hussaini Ordeal: A Trial Beyond Human Endurance

• Imam Husayn’s prayer:

«اللهم اجعلنی فی الفتنة التی یختبر بها أولیاؤک…»

• That is: O God, shelter Your friends within the ordeal of me!
• This trial is so overwhelming that it ensnares even God’s own friends.
• From Iblis to any other Azazil who holds a heavenly rank, anyone may fall in it.

🟧 Husayn’s Crucible of Ordeal: The Field That Sifts God’s Friends

• Husayn’s crucible transforms a person.
• Whoever emerges from it becomes someone else entirely.
• The ordeal of Husayn is the final trial in human history.
• The ultimate test of the spiritual path: the test of annihilation in God through love of Husayn.

🟨 Longing for the Final Trial: By Your Mercy, Cast Us into Your Mercy

• Husayn prays:

«My God, let Your friends enter into my trial—but through Your mercy, for the sake of Your mercy, and within the heart of Your blessing.»

• That is, not through wrath or anger, but through kindness, for the sake of growth, held in the embrace of Your grace.

🟩 Summary of the Final Passage: Husayn Prays for His Own Spiritual Journey

• Husayn says:

«My God, join me with the righteous among my forebears and kin.»