The Beloved of the Imam

🔘 The First of Muharram
📆 Date: 1403/04/17 – 1 Muharram 1446
📌 Meshkat-e Noor session
👤 Lecture by Master Ali Saei

🗒 Some points raised during the session:
📌 Please note that the hadiths quoted in this text are paraphrased. To study them in full, please refer to the lecture.
🌼 Husayn: love made manifest, a fountain of love, a lover who is the equal of love itself—the lover who made love fall in love with him.
🌼 Whoever truly knows Imam Husayn, peace be upon him, will have their past and future sins forgiven.
🌼 How much have I grown through Husayn?
🌼 If we have spent a lifetime saying “Husayn, Husayn” without reflection, we have lost. We must love Husayn wisely and thoughtfully, with sincerity.
🌼 I must understand why I weep and what burns within me, and know the reason for and purpose of every tear I shed. These tears are the water of life: when shed sincerely, they bring prosperity to this world and the next.
🌼 Surely, the tears of the God-fearing are accepted.
🌼 Let us beware that pretending to weep does not become an act of ostentation; it should instead help bring about genuine weeping.
🌼 Have we truly come to know Husayn? Have we learned from him the lesson of freedom and the holding fast to noble virtues? Have we, too, fallen in love as he did? Does love for God well up in our hearts?
🌼 Love for Husayn should awaken my innate nature. Have we attained belief in the oneness of God through Husayn’s school?
🌼 When we read the words of Imam Husayn, peace be upon him, is the light of divine oneness kindled within us?
🌼 Husayn is a jewel, and everyone loves jewels. But the one who knows how to recognize a jewel is a true connoisseur.
🌼 Whatever is God’s gaze shines upon the world from that qibla of love. It is the sun—how could anyone not love the sun?
🌼 Husayn is the sky; we must become Husayn’s earth.
🌼 A follower must be able to give expression to God’s Proof, who encompasses all things.
🌼 Whoever turns towards the Kaaba must become like the Kaaba.
🌼 When we raise our hands to seek sustenance, it is because God has placed His provision in the heavens. When we turn towards wilayah and call upon our God through wilayah, I draw near to God through intercession.
🌼 By the heaven, possessor of حبک (beauty, interwoven patterns, woven fabric).
In other words: By the heaven sewn together with its earth.
In one interpretation, the heaven is the Messenger of God, and Ali is woven into him so completely that they cannot be separated.
Ali is ذات الحبک; he is Abu al-Hasan and al-Husayn, and they are one.
🌼 A Shi‘a is one who is woven into their Imam.
🌼 Whatever happens in heaven also affects the earth. The seventh heaven is woven into each of the heavens; whatever occurs there affects the others.
🌼 The earth is not stationary: it travels with the heavens, moving at the speed of the galaxy.
🌼 Have we attained an explanation of al-Husayn, or a description of al-Husayn? However difficult this knowledge may be, God places it in the heart of one who truly loves.
🌼 If I know myself, I will be able to know my God. Whatever God has poured into my vessel determines the measure of my knowledge of God.
I must enlarge my vessel. It is God and His Wali who enlarge it and increase its capacity. (True servitude to God expands one’s being.)
🌼 Without God’s Proof, I can know God only within the limits of my own measure and capacity. If I wish to escape those limits, I must enlarge the vessel of my being. I must attain knowledge of the Imam, so that my capacity may extend from pre-eternity to eternity. (Thus, I must equip myself with Imam Husayn.)
🌼 When God wills greatness, into which treasury does He pour it? If I connect myself to God’s Proof, I too will become a keeper of the treasury!
🌼 The knowledge of divine oneness is the highest form of knowledge.
🌼 Is our being a flourishing Husayn—or a ruin wrought by Yazid?
🌼 It is easy to become Yazidi. Those who harbour a love of sin within themselves are Yazidis, even if they beat their chests for Husayn.
🌼 Those who love obedience to God, loathe sin and continually disavow it have a being that flourishes with Husayn.
🌼 Let us learn the etiquette of pilgrimage from Imam Reza, peace be upon him.
🌼 (Hadith) “Whoever loves me, and loves me solely for God’s sake”—then he brought his two index fingers close together, indicating that our connection is like this.
But he said that if someone’s love for him is for worldly reasons (to attain rank, respect, and so on), then when the قائم عدل rises, his justice will encompass the righteous and the wicked alike.
This means that whoever loves us for worldly reasons is like the wicked.
🌼 If we are beloved of our Imam, then we are his followers.