Managing the Divine Banquet

🌼Strengthening the Might and Power of Servitude🌼

🌼The Battlefield of Servitude🌼

🌸🔆🌿   “A Guest of Prayer 44” at the Divine Banquet

🌱🔆 An abstract with a supplement from the “Meshkat-e Noor Gathering”   “A Guest of Prayer 44 of al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya”      1402.01.03   Ali Sa‘i (Abdullah Meshkat 110.141(903)  🔆🌱

🔅🌸🔅بسم الله الرحمن الرحیم🔅🌸🔅

🌷🔅🌹 (6) اللَّهُمَّ صَلِّ عَلَى مُحَمَّدٍ وَ آلِهِ، وَ أَلْهِمْنَا مَعْرِفَةَ فَضْلِهِ وَ إِجْلَالَ حُرْمَتِهِ، وَ التَّحَفُّظَ مِمَّا حَظَرْتَ فِيهِ، وَ أَعِنَّا عَلَى‏ صِيَامِهِ بِكَفِّ الْجَوَارِحِ عَنْ مَعَاصِيكَ، وَ اسْتِعْمَالِهَا فِيهِ بِمَا يُرْضِيكَ حَتَّى لَا نُصْغِيَ بِأَسْمَاعِنَا إِلَى لَغْوٍ، وَ لَا نُسْرِعَ بِأَبْصَارِنَا إِلَى لَهْوٍ (7) وَ حَتَّى لَا نَبْسُطَ أَيْدِيَنَا إِلَى مَحْظُورٍ، وَ لَا نَخْطُوَ بِأَقْدَامِنَا إِلَى مَحْجُورٍ، وَ حَتَّى لَا تَعِيَ بُطُونُنَا إِلَّا مَا أَحْلَلْتَ، وَ لَا تَنْطِقَ أَلْسِنَتُنَا إِلَّا بِمَا مَثَّلْتَ، وَ لَا نَتَكَلَّفَ إِلَّا مَا يُدْنِي مِنْ ثَوَابِكَ، وَ لَا نَتَعَاطَى إِلَّا الَّذِي يَقِي مِنْ عِقَابِكَ، ثُمَّ خَلِّصْ ذَلِكَ كُلَّهُ مِنْ رِئَاءِ الْمُرَاءِينَ، وَ سُمْعَةِ الْمُسْمِعِينَ، لَا نُشْرِكُ فِيهِ أَحَداً دُونَكَ، وَ لَا نَبْتَغِي فِيهِ مُرَاداً سِوَاكَ. 🌹🔅🌷
A passage from Prayer 44 of al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya

🌷Strengthening the appetite for worship

🌷🔅Where are those with an appetite? God’s eternal banquet is spread before us!

🌷🔅Where are those thirsting and hungering for knowledge, wisdom, generosity, grace, beauty, and delight?

🌷🔅Are we ready to be God’s guests? We should have spent a whole year preparing the world within us for this banquet!

🌷🔅God’s food is delicious, yet the One who serves it surpasses all delight!

🌷🔅God is more compassionate than a mother, nourishing His servants with the milk of knowledge and wisdom, and with wonders!

🌷🔅There is only one perfect appetite on earth: one appetite and one pure, ready heart; one true and complete guest, with an unblemished appetite, utterly thirsty and hungry! Thirsty for God!

🌷🔅God’s proof on earth is His ever-spread banquet on earth. How extraordinary that this blessed table alone is set at the blessed table of Ramadan; everyone else’s appetite is either weak or blind!

🌷🔅Where are the Salmans, the Abu Dharrs, the Miqdads? Let them come! God’s table awaits!

🌷🔅Ramadan’s banquet stretches as far as eternity, from beginning to end.

🌷🔅A year of cultivating the appetite for Ramadan’s banquet is not enough—it falls short!

🌷🔅What would happen if, for just one moment, a person’s appetite for God were awakened?!!!

🌷🔅The Divine Banquet is an invitation to the encounter with God.

🌷🔅No fare is finer or more generous than the Ahl al-Bayt. The Ahl al-Bayt, peace be upon them, are God’s perfect and purest nourishment for His creation!

🌷🔅The words of the Ahl al-Bayt, peace be upon them, are the very essence of their blessed banquet.

🌷🔅Al-Sahifa is the training ground for preparing to attend the Divine Banquet and encounter God.

🌷🔅For the human being, fasting in the greater world is the true fast; bodily fasting is only a small part of the fast of the human being’s greater world!

🌷🔅The whole human being is fasting, invited to God’s banquet.

🌷🔅The entire inner being of the human world is being nourished at the Divine Banquet.

🌷🔅To be heedless of God is to shut down the human realm, barring it from divine graces!

🌷🔅To become Quranic and to become shaped by the Ahl al-Bayt means to be nourished by the Quran and the Ahl al-Bayt!

🌷🔅To be nourished by the Quran and the Ahl al-Bayt is to taste their essence and to take on their fragrance and flavour.

🌷🔅True recitation means absorbing the elements of the Quran and the Ahl al-Bayt, and becoming Quranic and shaped by the Ahl al-Bayt.

🌷🔅Each year’s banquet is different from the year before, and each year has its own splendour.

🌷🔅When the heart grows constricted, a person’s appetite for the Merciful is blinded!

🌷🔅The heart’s stomach is a vessel for divine knowledge.

🌷🔅Through the Ṣaḥīfa Sajjadiyya, we should have expanded the heart so that we might attain the true grace of the feast of God.

🌷🔅Welcoming the blessed month is like welcoming God’s proof. The way we benefit from the blessed month of Ramadan will be like the way we benefit from God’s proof.

🌷🔅Recognising the blessed month’s virtue and greatness is essential to benefiting from it.

🌷🔅Every part of us must be nourished by God’s feast.

🌷🔅We must learn how to partake of the food bestowed by the All-Merciful; otherwise, we will not be nourished.

🌷🔅Knowing the divine food is like having sight with which to see God’s light.

🌷🔅Our entire being must become longing, appetite and love.

🌷🔅Sensing the majesty of the blessed month awakens a person’s inner faculties.

🌷🔅Let us learn the language of the blessed month of Ramadan.

🌷🔅Let us enter the sacred state of Ramadan so that we may become privy to God’s mysteries.

🌷🔅In the grave, Munkar and Nakir are more ready to teach than to interrogate. A true human being should make this world a place to acquire the special, matchless knowledge bestowed by the All-Merciful. Each person’s uniqueness points to the unique knowledge granted to them. Every human being is a new book from God.

🌷🔅The grave should be every person’s university.

🌷🔅The grave is where we present the thesis of our lives: the outcome of our studies in this world.

🌷🔅In the springtime of the Quran, we should recite and listen to the Quran in its entirety—from its words to its allusions, subtleties and truths.

🌷🔅Hearing and sight are caught up in idle talk and frivolity, captives of this world.

🌷🔅The chains of idle talk and frivolity are the strongest bonds of worldly captivity.

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

🌸🔆🌿 Mastery over the limbs and faculties  “At the Feast of Supplication 44”

🔅🌹 Summary with supplement from the “Meshkat-e Noor Gathering”   Mastery over the limbs and faculties “At the Feast of Supplication 44”      1402.01.10   Ali Saei (Abdullah Meshkat) 110.141(903)  🌹🔅

☘️🔅🌹 بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمنِ الرَّحيمِ 🌹🔅☘️

☘️🔅 The battlefield of worship and devotion

🌷The blessed month of Ramadan is a battlefield for worship and devotion to God.

🌷The blessed month of Ramadan is a time for the spiritual, heartfelt and intellectual revival of life.

🌷Through heedlessness and sin, a person suffers many kinds of spiritual “strokes”; the blessed month of Ramadan brings them back to life.

🌷The human being has many levels, rising all the way to the highest horizon.

🌷The horizons of the human being extend from the seven layers of the earth to the Lote Tree of the Furthest Boundary, the distance of two bow-lengths or nearer.

🌷The intensified life of the lower, ego-centred level of a person extinguishes the life of the other levels.

🌷If a person’s ego-centred level grows audacious, it destroys the other dimensions of their being.

🌷The death of the spiritual realm begins with the life of the ego; animal life begins with the death of human life.

🌷Passing beyond the final veil is the threshold of attaining the truth.

🌷The blessed month of Ramadan is a good helper in reviving a person’s lifeless soul; it awakens the human being’s innate nature.

🌷To escape the narrow cage of this world, we must turn our gaze towards the sublime truth.

🌷The blessed month of Ramadan is a month for practising devotion and an opportunity to test ourselves in anticipation of meeting God.

🌷This world is not a stopover for frivolity and play. It is not a place to become absorbed or to distract others.

🌷This world is the darkest and narrowest classroom; if we study in it with care, we will reach boundlessness, vastness and pure light.

🌷Amusement and play hold a person back from moving forward and turn their attention away from lofty horizons.

🌷A person must train their limbs and faculties and rule over them. The best way to rule them is to entrust their governance to the Ruler of all existence.

🌷Untrained faculties imprison a person. The false sweetness called play and the counterfeit honey called idle talk block the way to truth.

🌷A person should turn dust into gold, not turn the alchemy of their own being to dust.

🌷The blessed month of Ramadan is a fine aid in freeing ourselves from every chain and prison.

🌷The architect of this world declares that the world is play and amusement. The architect of creation explains the world’s properties so that we do not become ensnared by them. Love of this world is forbidden.

🌷The deepest sleep belongs to the human being; its depth reaches into the vast, greater world within. It reaches into eternity past and eternity to come. If a person falls into heedlessness, a vast world falls asleep.

🌷When reason departs, darkness overtakes the human soul. When reason is restored, light and illumination return.

🌷The world is the greatest actor and charmer: it bewitches a person’s mind and ears, and leaves them a loser in the contest for truth.

🌷To make religion a plaything is to assume the appearance of religious devotion in order to strike at religion, whether deliberately or out of ignorance. It can also mean making a mockery of religion.

🌷The heedless heart is a playground, a place of recreation for devils and a field of competition for the demons.

🌷Idle talk—and buying and selling it—is forbidden.

🌷Any sound that distracts a person from remembering God, whether it stirs sensual or bodily desires or belongs to some other genre, falls under the ruling on idle talk—even if it lessens sexual desire—when it silences the remembrance of God.

🌷Idle talk stirs a person’s faculty of ignorance. Therefore, every sound or song that silences reason and gives ignorance the upper hand is an instance of idle talk.

🌷To forget the Greatest Remnant of God is to forget the remembrance of God. The occultation has been prolonged because God’s Proof has been forgotten.

🌷Diversions and idle pursuits take many different forms.

🌷The ignorant person sacrifices the Hereafter for this world.

🌷Perhaps, if a person were to become blind, deaf and mute, the Creator would be more pleased with them, since they would be farther from sin. But let us pray that God’s pleasure may come to us in a state of well-being.

☘️🔅 (3) وَ إِذَا هَمَمْنَا بِهَمَّيْنِ يُرْضِيكَ أَحَدُهُمَا عَنَّا، وَ يُسْخِطُكَ الْآخَرُ عَلَيْنَا، فَمِلْ بِنَا إِلَى مَا يُرْضِيكَ عَنَّا، وَ أَوْهِنْ قُوَّتَنَا عَمَّا يُسْخِطُكَ عَلَيْنَا

☘️🔅 (1) اللَّهُمَّ إِنَّكَ كَلَّفْتَنِي مِنْ نَفْسِي مَا أَنْتَ أَمْلَكُ بِهِ مِنِّي، وَ قُدْرَتُكَ عَلَيْهِ وَ عَلَيَّ أَغْلَبُ‏ مِنْ‏ قُدْرَتِي‏، فَأَعْطِنِي مِنْ نَفْسِي مَا يُرْضِيكَ عَنِّي، وَ خُذْ لِنَفْسِكَ رِضَاهَا مِنْ نَفْسِي فِي عَافِيَةٍ.

🌷🔅🌸الأنعام : 70   وَ ذَرِ الَّذينَ اتَّخَذُوا دينَهُمْ لَعِباً وَ لَهْواً وَ غَرَّتْهُمُ الْحَياةُ الدُّنْيا وَ ذَكِّرْ بِهِ أَنْ تُبْسَلَ نَفْسٌ بِما كَسَبَتْ لَيْسَ لَها مِنْ دُونِ اللَّهِ وَلِيٌّ وَ لا شَفيعٌ وَ إِنْ تَعْدِلْ كُلَّ عَدْلٍ لا يُؤْخَذْ مِنْها أُولئِكَ الَّذينَ أُبْسِلُوا بِما كَسَبُوا لَهُمْ شَرابٌ مِنْ حَميمٍ وَ عَذابٌ أَليمٌ بِما كانُوا يَكْفُرُونَ

🌷🔅🌸الأنعام : 32   وَ مَا الْحَياةُ الدُّنْيا إِلاَّ لَعِبٌ وَ لَهْوٌ وَ لَلدَّارُ الْآخِرَةُ خَيْرٌ لِلَّذينَ يَتَّقُونَ أَ فَلا تَعْقِلُونَ

🌷🔅🌸العنكبوت : 64   وَ ما هذِهِ الْحَياةُ الدُّنْيا إِلاَّ لَهْوٌ وَ لَعِبٌ وَ إِنَّ الدَّارَ الْآخِرَةَ لَهِيَ الْحَيَوانُ لَوْ كانُوا يَعْلَمُونَ

🌷🔅🌸محمد : 36   إِنَّمَا الْحَياةُ الدُّنْيا لَعِبٌ وَ لَهْوٌ وَ إِنْ تُؤْمِنُوا وَ تَتَّقُوا يُؤْتِكُمْ أُجُورَكُمْ وَ لا يَسْئَلْكُمْ أَمْوالَكُمْ

🌷🔅🌸Al-Hadid: 20   اعْلَمُوا أَنَّمَا الْحَياةُ الدُّنْيا لَعِبٌ وَ لَهْوٌ وَ زينَةٌ وَ تَفاخُرٌ بَيْنَكُمْ وَ تَكاثُرٌ فِي الْأَمْوالِ وَ الْأَوْلادِ كَمَثَلِ غَيْثٍ أَعْجَبَ الْكُفَّارَ نَباتُهُ ثُمَّ يَهيجُ فَتَراهُ مُصْفَرًّا ثُمَّ يَكُونُ حُطاماً وَ فِي الْآخِرَةِ عَذابٌ شَديدٌ وَ مَغْفِرَةٌ مِنَ اللَّهِ وَ رِضْوانٌ وَ مَا الْحَياةُ الدُّنْيا إِلاَّ مَتاعُ الْغُرُورِ

🌼 Ali Saei (Abdullah Mishkat) 110.141(903)  🌼