Companionship with Prayer

🌼🔆🌼“Supplication is the practice of love” “The spiritual journey through supplication”🌼🔆🌼

🔅🌹 “The study of supplication” “The knowledge of supplication” Summary with supplement: “Commentary on Supplication 20 of al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya” “Session 218” “Supplication or a beauty salon” and … 1402.09.30 Ali Saei (Abdullah Meshkat) 110.141(903) 🌹🔅

🌹🔅☘️ بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمنِ الرَّحيمِ ☘️🔅🌹

🔅🌼Let us drink supplication deeply, like a pure wine🌼🔅

🌹How beautiful it is to recite Supplication 20 of al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya at dawn and at nightfall, adorning our days and nights, our bodies and souls. This supplication is a surging sea that calls to passionate divers. Let us drink it in with heart and soul, and become an adornment to earth and sky. Through this supplication, a human being lights the heavens with an earthly lamp.

🌹Before the ظهور of Imam al-Mahdi, peace be upon him, let us elevate our intellect. Supplication 20 of al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya nourishes the intellect and makes it shine.

🌹Let us drink from the cups of Sajjadi wisdom at dawn and at nightfall, and revive the world of our souls with Sajjadi life.

🌷🔆وَ يُغْبَقُونَ‏ كَأْسَ الْحِكْمَةِ بَعْدَ الصَّبُوح‏[1]

🔆At nightfall they drink from the cup of wisdom, having already drunk from it at dawn.

🌹The knowledge of supplication is more important than supplication itself, for if we attain the science and art of supplication, it will become practical and effective, and we will benefit from its effects and wonders.

🌹Understanding supplication is the key to drawing exceptional benefit from its immense power.

🌹Knowledge of the secrets of supplication is the secret to extracting its honey.

🌹Al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya possesses immense energy; when released, it brings prosperity to earth and sky.

🔅🌼Enhancing the quality of prayer🌼🔅

🌹Reciting Supplication 20 of al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya before prayer adds sweetness and grace to our prayer and elevates our spiritual state. Let us include this supplication in our prayer and enhance its quality.

🌻🔆Al-A‘raf: 31 يا بَني‏ آدَمَ خُذُوا زينَتَكُمْ عِنْدَ كُلِّ مَسْجِدٍ وَ …

🔆O children of Adam! Wear your adornment whenever you go to the mosque!

🌹Among the most precious forms of spiritual adornment is Supplication 20 of al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya. By reciting it, we are adorned with every kind of inner beauty.

🌹Supplication 20 of al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya is at once a refinery, a beauty salon, an airport and a launchpad for lovers—for purification and adornment, landing and ascent.

🌹Supplication 20 of al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya makes a person heavenly. It is a space in which lovers can take flight; a sea in which to swim and fish, catching matchless jewels and precious stones. This supplication is a roadmap for servitude, guiding us onward to the highest destination.

🔅🌼An unripe servant🌼🔅

🌹Until we attain maturity in faith, we will not mature in servitude. We will remain unripe and raw, and enter the Great Gathering in that same state. Maturity in faith means ripening and leaving our unripe state behind.

🌹A servant of God must, through maturity in faith, certainty, intentions and deeds, leave behind the infancy of servitude and come into its full flourishing. By cultivating noble virtues, a person turns the raw seed of their being into a mighty tree of servitude.

🌹Imam al-Sajjad, peace be upon him, has laid out a road and, with him, carries his followers toward the highest realm.

🌹In Supplication 20 of al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya, he has mapped the journey of servitude in all its dimensions, with its neighborhoods, lanes and squares.

🔅🌼Healing the wounds of servitude🌼🔅

🌹God is the human being’s industrial engineer, and only He is qualified to heal the wounds and repair the damage and defects that have arisen. With all our heart, we seek the help of the Engineer of the human being to set things right.

🌹With every request and supplication, let us remember to send blessings upon the Prophet and his family, to make it gentle and beautiful.

🌹At every stage in our progress as servants of God, we must not forget to seek solitude with Him. Let us make use of every opportunity to worship by withdrawing into communion with our Beloved.

🌹At the height of perfect faith, the abundance of certitude, and the excellence of intention and deed, solitude with the Beloved will hold an incomparable sweetness.

🌹O God, at every stage of my servitude, remind me of its lessons and do not let me forget them.

🌹O God, prepare me for the questions I will face as Your servant on the Day of Resurrection.

🌹Let us become so familiar with the Ṣaḥīfa Sajjādiyya that, when Nakīr and Munkar question us, we can recite it to them from beginning to end and hold a class for them on the knowledge of God it contains.

🌹How beautiful it would be to teach the angels everything we have learned in the school of the Ahl al-Bayt, peace be upon them.

🌹O Beloved, turn my entire life into uninterrupted communion with You, so that nothing occupies me but You and nothing concerns me but love for You.

🌹Pure provision is the fuel and raw material that strengthen the foundations of the dignity of servitude.

🔅🌼Be a servant of far-reaching vision and high aspiration 🌼🔅

🌹Economic dignity is essential to the path of servitude.

🌹O God, receive me into Your worship and free me from enslavement to my lower self and Satan. Do not make me a servant of pleasure, whether worldly or otherworldly.

🌹O God, make me a stream of Your goodness, flowing like a river to quench Your servants’ thirst and sweeten their lives.

🌹O God, make my very being a source of goodness for all Your creation.

🌹O God, remove from me the impulse to claim gratitude, and remind me that You alone are the Bestower of all blessings.

🌹The lofty stature of our Sajjādī devotion urges us to look toward the highest horizon and reminds us of «هب لی معال الاخلاق».

🌹O God, let me never grow conceited over my own dignity, beauty, or devotion, even at their height. O God, teach me to take pride in You, and never take that away from me.

🌹Sending blessings upon the Prophet and his family is the highest petition for the seal of acceptance.

🔅🌼A servant of depth and stature 🌼🔅

🌹O God, raise the stature of my servitude from the lowest to the highest through exalted rank and humble abasement. O God, expand me in both directions: let me sink deep into humility on earth, while adding to the branches of my heavenly stature.

🌹O God, whoever humbles himself at Your threshold is ennobled in both worlds.

🌹O God, equip me with systems beyond the heavens and furnish me with Your hidden and wondrous means.

🔅🌼How wondrous is the beauty of the Mahdi!🌼🔅

🌹O God, “righteous guidance, the path of truth, and the intention to grow” are the Mahdi You have promised. Equip me with Your Mahdi, so that with him I may soar to the heights of perfection in servitude.

🌹O God, unveil for me the wondrous secret of the Mahdi’s countenance, so that I will be content with none but Your Mahdi. Equip me with him, so that through his prayer, standing, bowing, prostration, and supplication I may shape my stature in servitude. Bring me into the strange magnetic field of Your Mahdi, and let me be transformed in my devotion, like a particle within the vast expanse of his grandeur.

🔅🌼The Sajjādī healing sanctuary🌼🔅

🌹Supplication 20 of the Ṣaḥīfa Sajjādiyya is a divine sanctuary of healing. Let us read it with heart and soul, seeking its cure, and witness the miracle of its healing.

🌹Supplication 20 of the Ṣaḥīfa Sajjādiyya holds the key to the acceptance of our needs. Through it, let us make ourselves beloved of God and give our prayers wings to fly toward His acceptance.

🔅🌼A feast for the intellect🌼🔅

🌹Only the most discerning person can shine through the knowledge of the Lord. Strengthening the intellect draws in the divine lights; with a mature intellect, a person reaches the transcendent maturity of servitude to God. Supplication 20 of the Ṣaḥīfa Sajjādiyya is a lofty feast laid out for the intellect.

🌹The noble virtues of character are the armies of the intellect and a vast treasury of merciful energies.

🌹We are immersed in God’s knowledge; grasping this truth allows us to shine with the light of knowledge.  “ بِعِلْمِكَ الَّذِي أَحاطَ بِكُلِّ شَيْ‏ء” Our connection with knowledge, and our ability to benefit from it, are possible only through reason.

🌹The reason we fail to grasp the all-encompassing nature of knowledge is that reason has departed from the human heart.

🌹Let us never set reason against love or condemn it, for reason is love’s vessel and its source.

🌹Reason is not love’s rival, but its companion. Without reason, love has no meaning.

🌹The light of knowledge wells up from the human soul only when reason awakens.

🌹Reason is God’s most beloved creation. It is dear to God and beloved by Him.

🌷🔆عَنْ أَبِي جَعْفَرٍ ع قَالَ: لَمَّا خَلَقَ اللَّهُ الْعَقْلَ‏ اسْتَنْطَقَهُ ثُمَّ قَالَ لَهُ أَقْبِلْ فَأَقْبَلَ ثُمَّ قَالَ لَهُ أَدْبِرْ فَأَدْبَرَ  ثُمَّ قَالَ وَ عِزَّتِي وَ جَلَالِي مَا خَلَقْتُ خَلْقاً هُوَ أَحَبُ‏ إِلَيَّ‏ مِنْكَ وَ لَا أَكْمَلْتُكَ إِلَّا فِيمَنْ أُحِبُّ أَمَا إِنِّي إِيَّاكَ آمُرُ وَ إِيَّاكَ أَنْهَى وَ إِيَّاكَ أُعَاقِبُ وَ إِيَّاكَ أُثِيبُ.[2]

🔆Imam al-Baqir, peace be upon him: When God created reason, He said to it, “Turn towards Me,” and it did. Then He said, “Turn away,” and it did. Thereupon He swore by His might and majesty: “I have created no creature dearer to Me than you. I bestow you in your fullness on none but one whom I love…”

🌹Reason is the one and only beloved among creation—indeed, God’s most beloved creation—and the wellspring of affection, kindness, goodness and noble character.

🌹Through reason, a person becomes dear to God and beloved by Him. Reason is the sole path to divine love.

🌹When we arm ourselves with the forces of reason—which are the noble virtues—our reason comes to life.

🌷🔆عَنْ أَبِيهِ عَلِيِّ بْنِ أَبِي طَالِبٍ ع‏ … وَ مَثَلُ الْعَقْلِ فِي الْقَلْبِ كَمَثَلِ السِّرَاجِ فِي وَسَطِ الْبَيْت‏[3]

🔆Reason’s relation to the heart is like a lamp’s relation to the middle of a house.

🌹Without reason, a person sinks into the depths of darkness. The human intellect draws breath through noble virtues.

🌹Supplication 20 of al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya is a treasure-house of noble virtues, a training ground for servitude, and a sanctuary of divine love.

🌹With Supplication 20 of al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya, let us take the lead in the race for divine love. This supplication carries lovers all the way to “or nearer still.” Let us make our reason shine like the sun through this supplication. As each inner layer of it is unveiled, the others reveal themselves. Through this supplication, let us raise our worth.

🔅🌼 Blind the Dajjal, lest he blind you 🌼🔅

🌹The Dajjal has entered the field with all his might to wage war on religion and religious devotion. Believers, too, must rise up and confront him with all their strength.

🌹Our master, the Commander of the Faithful, peace be upon him, has put out the eye of polytheism. Perhaps that is the blind eye of the Dajjal; the followers of our master must put out the Dajjal’s other eye as well! This can be done by cultivating noble virtues and strengthening our conviction in the oneness of God.

🌷🔆أنا الذي فقأت‏ عين‏ الشرك[4]‏

🔆I am the one who tore the eye of polytheism from its socket.

🌹If noble virtues are not strengthened, vices will find their way into the human soul. If the heart and soul are not a garden in which virtues are cultivated, they will become a dungheap of vices—and vices are the raw material of human deformity.

🌹A person may be inwardly transformed beyond recognition without realizing it; the veil of the body keeps the truth of their inner self from being seen.

🌹Through Supplication 20 of al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya, the distortions of the human soul are set right by divine grace.

🌹The sciences of the Dajjal’s age are armed with moral vices and bring misery upon humanity. In that age, science rides forward on ignorance. Believers have a duty to place science on the mount of reason and thereby counter the baleful effects of the Dajjal’s satanic sciences.

🌹In the age of the Dajjal, the world has become, for the Dajjal’s followers and the heedless, not a place to beautify and purify people, but a place that sullies them.

🌹The world of the human soul without reason is a silent land. A person without noble virtues is that same silent land—cold and dark.

🔅🌼 Longing for Light 🌼🔅

🌹The provision of noble virtues is a longing for light and illumination. Noble virtues are our guiding lamp on the Day of the Great Resurrection; we must seek both their outward form and their inward essence. Supplication 20 of al-Ṣaḥīfa al-Sajjādiyya is a school of longing for light. On the Day of Resurrection, a person will take flight on the light of noble virtues.

🌻🔆Al-Ḥadīd: 12   يَوْمَ تَرَى الْمُؤْمِنينَ وَ الْمُؤْمِناتِ يَسْعى‏ نُورُهُمْ بَيْنَ أَيْديهِمْ وَ بِأَيْمانِهِمْ بُشْراكُمُ الْيَوْمَ جَنَّاتٌ تَجْري مِنْ تَحْتِهَا الْأَنْهارُ خالِدينَ فيها ذلِكَ هُوَ الْفَوْزُ الْعَظيمُ

🔆On the day when you see the believing men and women, with their light speeding ahead of them and to their right, they will be told, “Good news for you today: gardens beneath which rivers flow, where you will dwell forever. That is the supreme triumph!”

🌻🔆Al-Ḥadīd: 13   يَوْمَ يَقُولُ الْمُنافِقُونَ وَ الْمُنافِقاتُ لِلَّذينَ آمَنُوا انْظُرُونا نَقْتَبِسْ مِنْ نُورِكُمْ قيلَ ارْجِعُوا وَراءَكُمْ فَالْتَمِسُوا نُوراً فَضُرِبَ بَيْنَهُمْ بِسُورٍ لَهُ بابٌ باطِنُهُ فيهِ الرَّحْمَةُ وَ ظاهِرُهُ مِنْ قِبَلِهِ الْعَذابُ

🔆On that day the hypocritical men and women will say to the believers, “Wait for us, so that we may borrow some of your light!” They will be told, “Go back and seek light for yourselves!” Then a wall will be raised between them, with a gate in it: within it is mercy, and outside it, torment.

🔅🌼 The Dregs of the Wine of Wisdom 1402.09.30 🌼🔅

🔅🌼 Reason’s Turning Toward and Away 🌼🔅

🌹Reason’s turning toward and away may refer to joys and sorrows,  قُرب حُبّی و بُعد trials, meeting and separation, abundance and poverty,  ease and hardship, light and darkness, ascent and descent, rising and falling, and so on.

🌹Turning away may refer to veils and darkness.

🌹Both turning toward and turning away involve movement, change and transformation. The nature and quality of the movement differ in each, but in both, the journey of servitude to God is possible.

🔅🌼 Highway Robbers on the Path of Divine Remembrance 🌼🔅

🌹Beware of the highway robbers on the path of divine remembrance. Divine remembrance needs no prompter: the Lord of remembrance Himself has issued the command to remember. Whoever refuses it, or imposes restrictions upon it, stands condemned and accursed.

🌹No one has the right to appropriate divine remembrance for personal gain, present themselves as its spiritual guide and master, or grant permission to remember. Permission to remember has been granted by the One who calls us to remembrance.

🌻🔆Al-Aʿrāf: 180   وَ لِلَّهِ الْأَسْماءُ الْحُسْنى‏ فَادْعُوهُ بِها وَ ذَرُوا الَّذينَ يُلْحِدُونَ في‏ أَسْمائِهِ سَيُجْزَوْنَ ما كانُوا يَعْمَلُونَ

🔆To God belong the most beautiful names, so call upon Him by them. And leave those who distort His names; they will be repaid for what they have done.

🌻🔆Al-Aḥzāb: 41  يا أَيُّهَا الَّذينَ آمَنُوا اذْكُرُوا اللَّهَ ذِكْراً كَثيراً

🔆O you who believe, remember God often,

🌹Jawshan Kabir is an ocean of divine remembrances.

🔅🌼 A Newborn Is Born upon the Natural Faith 🌼🔅

🌹It is not a matter of choosing our religion; rather, we must discover the faith innate within us. A child’s right to choose a religion means affirming the truth of that religion.

🌹A child is born into the religion of their parents. Upon reaching maturity, they are duty-bound to investigate that established faith and affirm it with heart and soul, so that their faith in it may take root.

🌹The interval between the call to prayer and the commencement of prayer is the interval between beginning and completion.

🌹The span of a human being’s worldly life, compared with the life of the cosmos and the true life that is theirs, is no more than a speck of dust in the measure of a lifetime.

🌹Innate nature is entirely pure, whereas one’s original constitution may be mixed with other elements.

🌹Knowledge brings obligations.

🌹There are kinds of knowledge that we are obliged to acquire. There are also kinds we are not obliged to acquire; but if we do acquire them, we become responsible for the particular obligations they entail.

🌼 Ali Saei (Abdullah Meshkat), 110.141 (903) 🌼

[1] Nahj al-Balāghah (Ṣubḥī Ṣāliḥ edition), p. 208  Al-Sharīf al-Raḍī, Muḥammad ibn Ḥusayn, Hijrat, Qom, first edition, 1414 AH.

[2] Al-Kāfī (Islamic edition), vol. 1, p. 10  Al-Kulaynī, Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqūb ibn Isḥāq, Dār al-Kutub al-Islāmiyyah, Tehran, fourth edition, 1407 AH.

[3] ʿIlal al-Sharāʾiʿ, vol. 1, p. 98  Ibn Bābawayh, Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī, Dāvarī Bookshop, Qom, first edition, 1385 SH / 1966 CE.

[4] Commentary on Nahj al-Balāghah by Ibn Abī al-Ḥadīd, vol. 20, p. 296  Ibn Abī al-Ḥadīd, ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd ibn Hibat Allāh, Āyatullāh Marʿashī Najafī Library, Qom, first edition, 1404 AH.