Expanding the Horizons of Being

📆 Date: 1403,01,23 – 2 Shawwal 1445
📌 Meshkat-e Noor session
👤 Lecture by Master Ali Saei
🗒 Some points discussed in the session:

🌼 Ramadan came and went, proclaiming that God alone endures.
🌼 It is He who made all things transient.
🌼 It is He who made the months of the year change and pass.
🌼 O God, time does not wear You down or change You.
🌼 Ramadan as a true point of entry and return
🌼 Ramadan, God’s special emissary and commander-in-chief of all the months of the year, carried out its duty beautifully. Truly, it was the commander of our bodies and souls. Truly, like a mother, it gathered us into its embrace, transformed us, and placed God’s provisions from the divine table upon our tongues.
🌼 Truly, Ramadan was a training ground for servitude, a clinic, a place of adornment, and a setting for divine attention.
🌼 Now is the time when this month’s effects begin to take hold.
🌼 Without Imam Sajjad, peace be upon him, we would never have come to know this month or understood it. The Imam taught us to welcome it as a companion and beloved, and to bid it farewell at the end.
🌼 Without God’s Proof, we remain unaware. The true sight is God’s Proof—the heart with which we must begin to beat and set the blood of servitude flowing. We must seek deep understanding through the divine proofs.
🌼 Without God’s Proof, our souls are locked and our hearts grow hard.
🌼 Our innate nature is illuminated by the Messenger of God; the greatest sight and hearing are God’s Proof.
🌼 Ramadan opened new paths and ways within our souls, and after passing through it, we have become new beings.
🌼 By passing through Laylat al-Qadr, we passed through the heart of Ramadan.
🌼 The signs of God are paths that lead us to Him, not things that distract us and make us forget Him. We must not let blessings distract us from the Bestower of blessings.
🌼 Our God is more delightful than every delight and surpasses all beauty.
🌼 He made everything beautiful, and every pleasure has taken shape through the divine pen.
🌼 The time has come to reckon with Ramadan: the spiritual capital we have gained must be spent in serving God.
🌼 Ramadan is the month in which the fruits of Ramadan come to light. We must examine within ourselves the traces of being guests of God.
🌼 Whatever food a person eats leaves its effects within them.
🌼 Has our capacity for servitude grown, or are we just as we were before?
🌼 We were born from the womb of the blessed month of Ramadan.
🌼 Shawwal is a month of blossoming and opening; God Himself is the Opener.
🌼 Eid al-Fitr is the time of opening: the whole of a person’s stature must unfold.
🌼 (Hadith) Three months will bear witness on the Day of Resurrection. God will ask: “How did My servant act within you? How did he worship Allah, the Mighty and Majestic?” Rajab, Sha‘ban, and Ramadan will answer: “He took no provision from us without making it a means of helping him worship You and drawing upon it to receive Your gifts. He strove and turned toward You, seeking to attain Your banquet, and sought Your love through all that he could do.”
🌼 Giving thanks for Ramadan’s blessing means making that blessing manifest. We must display its effects and blessings in our thoughts and actions; that is what it truly means to give thanks for Ramadan.
🌼 “أَيُّهَا الْإِنْسَانُ إِنَّكَ كَادِحٌ إِلَىٰ رَبِّكَ كَدْحًا فَمُلَاقِيهِ” The path of servitude is a path of hardship and striving.
🌼 The Sahifa Sajjadiyya teaches us the secrets and ways of worship.
🌼 O You who show mercy to those whom no servant shows mercy. If someone shows us mercy, that person is a representative of God’s mercy. Remember: whoever we turn to for mercy apart from God will prove even more merciless.
🌼 A mother represents a particular aspect of God’s mercy.
🌼 O God, who does not humiliate those who turn to You in need.
🌼 O You who do not disappoint those who confide in You.
🌼 O You who open the arms of Your mercy to those who claim to possess it (those who make an outward show, possess nothing inwardly, yet imagine themselves rich).
🌼 O You who accept even the smallest offering and thank Your servant (O All-Thankful One).
🌼 O You who are grateful for little and reward it with generosity.
🌼 O You who never change, and who bestows blessings
🌼 You forgive evil so completely that no trace of it remains.
🌼 Hopes and wishes fall away before Your generosity (what I wanted, and what God had prepared for me).
🌼 Through the bounty of Your forgiveness, the vessels of those who seek You were filled.
🌼 All attributes fall apart before Your praise (the attributes raised the banner of defeat
🌼 The attributes lose their way before the description of You.
Note: At the end of the session, passages from supplication forty-six of the Sahifa Sajjadiyya were discussed.