The Mystery of Nearness and Sacrifice

🔘 The Eve of Eid al-Adha
📆 Date: 1403/03/27 – 9 Dhu al-Hijjah 1445
📌 Meshkat-e Noor gathering
👤 Lecture by Master Ali Saei

🗒 Some of the points discussed at the gathering:
📌 Please note that the hadith cited in this text are paraphrased. For the full wording of the hadith, please refer to the lecture.

🌼 The beginning and end of servitude to God is to be sacrificed at His threshold.
🌼 How can I sacrifice myself? If I sacrifice myself by my own hand, I have not attained the ultimate sacrifice! It must be such that I do not have the power to sacrifice myself!
🌼 O God, You alone can adorn me with sacrifice for You. O God, teach me the art of becoming a sacrifice.
🌼 Woe to ignorant love, which seeks nothing but to torment the beloved! I must sacrifice myself for my God with the utmost knowledge and reason.
🌼 I must sever every vein of idolatry, then leave the veins of oneness for الله واحد.
🌼 I can only slaughter my commanding self; I cannot go beyond that unless my God helps me.
🌼 If I am a sacrifice for my God, then God Himself must sacrifice His sacrifice.
🌼 Once I have severed every vein of idolatry, only one vein must remain, and that is وترالموتور.
🌼 Perhaps this is the secret of the connection to being وتر المتور for the revered Master of the Martyrs: only one vein remains, and only the God of the witr can cut it.
🌼 God severs every attachment.
🌼 (الرحمن /26) کلُّ مَنْ عَلیها فَان وَ یبقَی وَجْهُ رَبَّک ذوالجلالِ والاکرامِ
🌼 Everything must be sacrificed to Him. Everything perishes, and only وجه الله remains.
🌼 The perfection of sincerity—the summit of sincerity.
🌼 A citadel in which I understand that even grandeur is not enough for my Lord; whatever is most exalted is not enough for my Lord.
🌼 The sacrifice of وجه الله—offering وجه الله as a sacrifice to God.
🌼 Becoming a sacrifice is easy, but becoming one beautifully is hard.
🌼 First, I must sacrifice the beasts within my soul.
🌼 He created everything in احسن تقویم. Everything that exists has its own perfect form and order, to which it can return.
🌼 The spirit of the body, the spirit of desire, and the spirit of strength, when accompanied by the spirit of faith, will be in their finest form.
🌼 The cause of ugliness is distance from the spirit of faith and reason.
🌼 I must adorn every spirit within my being as a sacrifice to God, and slaughter it on the path of love for God.
🌼 After all the members and limbs of my being, it is time to sacrifice the Josephs within my soul.
🌼 Whatever beauty I possess, I must make a sacrifice to God.
🌼 The highest adornment is oneness of God, and its perfection is perfect sincerity.
🌼 O God, I have nothing to sacrifice at Your threshold. I have brought You Your oneness; I am Your creature and a mirror of God’s will.
🌼 O God, remove from my heart my love for this lowly world, for it ensnares my appetites and keeps me from what is with You.
🌼 O God, adorn me with the adornment of solitude in Your intimate prayers. I wish to stand alone in Your presence as I pray; adorn me Yourself for Your intimate prayers.
🌼 I long to know the taste of what You love.
🌼 O God, I know my own measure, but deal with me as You deal with Your righteous servants, so that I may taste nearness to You and the sweetness of intimate prayer.
🌼 Adorn me with the treasures of the God-conscious; show me Your grace and bring me to that adornment.
🌼 O God, just as You welcome those who are humble before You and set them to the work of worship, make my heart like theirs too.
🌼 O God, do not withdraw Your hand from me, as You withdraw it from those in whom there is no good. Do not abandon me as You abandon those who have no hope of returning.
🌼 Call me to be sacrificed for You; make me Your sacrifice, moment by moment.
🌼 Prayer is Your permanent altar. Make me worthy of the Mina of Your prayer.
🌼 (Hadith) The Messenger of God (PBUH) said: “When a believing servant stands for prayer, God looks upon him. So long as he does not turn his face away from the prayer, so long as he does not withdraw, he is the object of God’s gaze.”
🌼 What does نظر الله mean?
🌼 God’s gaze is upon that servant, and the shade of God’s mercy rests over his head.
🌼 Angels surround such a person as far as the horizons of heaven, and rush toward the worshipper, for that person is the object of God’s gaze, the place toward which God turns, the shelter of God’s mercy.
🌼 If we do not hear the angels’ voices, we should question our prayer.
🌼 If you knew who was looking at you, if you knew with whom you were communing, you would never turn your face away or pull yourself out of that state.
🌼 The finest place of sacrifice is prayer.
🌼 Let us not allow the remembrance of God to fade from within us.
🌼 Prayer is a means of nearness for the God-conscious. When we say “Allahu Akbar,” we must cut ourselves off from everything.
🌼 Only He is the Most Great, the Supremely Exalted; everything besides Him is nothing.
🌼 (Hadith) Imam al-Rida said: “The servant is closest to God, the Mighty and Majestic, when he is prostrating.”
🌼 The place of prostration is our place of sacrifice. We must give our lives for Him. In the Mina of prayer, we must bring not only every limb and organ of our bodies, but the whole world, into prostration.
🌼 Every cell must be sacrificed for Him; at every moment and in every place, my whole being must be given for Him.
🌼 God accepts the fruits of the cultivation of piety. If we have not reached this stage, our harvest will not be accepted in His presence.
🌼 We are all in a race to draw near to God. The people of Cain always see the people of Abel as obstacles to their love.
🌼 No one stands in the way of another person’s love.
🌼 God purchases the fruits of every tree along with the tree itself.
🌼 (Al-A‘raf/26) يَا بَنِي آدَمَ قَدْ أَنْزَلْنَا عَلَيْكُمْ لِبَاسًا يُوَارِي سَوْآتِكُمْ وَرِيشًا ۖ وَلِبَاسُ التَّقْوَىٰ ذَٰلِكَ خَيْرٌ ۚ ذَٰلِكَ مِنْ آيَاتِ اللَّهِ لَعَلَّهُمْ يَذَّكَّرُونَ
🌼 Let us begin in servitude to God, clothed in new garments; one such garment is marriage.
🌼 Women are garments for men, and men are garments for women. If both are people of piety, they will be one another’s finest adornment. For couples to be sacrificed, they must become one and prepare each other for sacrifice.
🌼 (Ibrahim/24) أَلَم تَرَ كَيفَ ضَرَبَ اللَّهُ مَثَلًا كَلِمَةً طَيِّبَةً كَشَجَرَةٍ طَيِّبَةٍ أَصلُها ثابِتٌ وَفَرعُها فِي السَّماءِ
🌼 God Himself nurtures His goodly tree, and He Himself is the buyer of that tree and its fruits.
🌼 Those who become a goodly tree have no choice but to fall and be brought down.
🌼 I want to draw near to God. The secret lies in the goodly word, which lifts us upward and gives us wings.
🌼 The human being is the fruit of God’s cultivation of piety, and God is its buyer.
🌼 At every moment, we are either Abel or Cain!
🌼 At every moment, we are in Mina and Arafat; so let us consider the nature and measure of our sacrifice.
🌼 Before sacrificing our lives, let us make ready what is needed to offer them. Perhaps there is still one opportunity left to become both the offerer and the offering for God.
🌼 The final chapter of our servitude ends in sacrifice.
🌼 Following the example of Muhammad, Ali, Fatima, Hasan and Husayn, we must sacrifice to God the jewels of our souls, the finest qualities within us.
🌼 The easiest sacrifice is the sacrifice of wealth.
🌼 Let us learn from Imam Husayn (AS) the rites and ways of offering sacrifice and being sacrificed.