The Nerve of Worship

🌼🔆🌼Wellbeing in Servitude🌼🔆🌼

🌹🔅☘️ بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمنِ الرَّحيمِ ☘️🔅🌹

🔅🌹 “The Human Being, God’s Field”  “The Suspension of Worship”  “The Question of Perfection and Purpose” “Commentary on Supplication 20 of Sahifa Sajjadiyya”  “Session 235” and more — Summary with Addendum      1403.09.22    Ali Saei (Abdullah Meshkat) 110.141(903)  🌹🔅

🔅🌼A Sound Life, a Life Spent Well🌼🔅

🌸🔆☘️وَ عَمِّرْنِي مَا كَانَ عُمُرِي بِذْلَةً فِي طَاعَتِكَ، فَإِذَا كَانَ عُمُرِي مَرْتَعاً لِلشَّيْطَانِ فَاقْبِضْنِي إِلَيْكَ قَبْلَ أَنْ يَسْبِقَ مَقْتُكَ إِلَيَّ، أَوْ يَسْتَحْكِمَ غَضَبُكَ عَلَي‏ ☘️ 🔆 🌸

🔅🌼The Health of Worship🌼🔅

🌹Attend to the health of your worship; examine your acts of worship, lest the spirit of worship have departed, or a blight or illness have crept into its soul.  

🔅🌼Worshippers of the Dirham and Dinar🌼🔅

🌷🔆 قَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ ص‏ مَلْعُونٌ‏ مَلْعُونٌ‏ مَنْ‏ عَبَدَ الدِّينَارَ وَ الدِّرْهَمَ مَلْعُونٌ‏ مَلْعُونٌ‏ مَنْ‏ كَمِهَ أَعْمَى‏  مَلْعُونٌ‏ مَلْعُونٌ‏ مَنْ‏ نَكَحَ بَهِيمَةً. [1]

🌷🔆 قَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ ص‏ مَلْعُونٌ‏ مَلْعُونٌ‏ مَنْ‏ أكمه [كَمِهَ‏] أَعْمَى عَنْ وَلَايَةِ أَهْلِ بَيْتِي مَلْعُونٌ‏ مَلْعُونٌ‏ مَنْ‏ عَبَدَ الدِّينَارَ وَ الدِّرْهَمَ مَلْعُونٌ‏ مَلْعُونٌ‏ مَنْ‏ نَكَحَ بَهِيمَةً.[2]

🌷🔆The Prophet of God, may God bless him and his family, said: Accursed, accursed is the one who blinds the blind man to the guardianship of my family; accursed and cursed is the one who worships the dirham and the dinar; accursed and cursed is the one who copulates with an animal.

🌹«مَن أكمه أَعْمَى عَنْ وَلَايَةِ أَهْلِ بَيْتِي » — in truth, the one who leads those ignorant of the station of the Family of the Prophet, peace be upon them, away from their path.  In truth, the one who drives into disbelief those who wander bewildered and lost in their religion.

🌹الْأَكْمَه: one who is born with blind eyes (blind from birth); and it is also said of one who loses his sight,

🌹Accursed, too, is every glutton and every slave of lust; and likewise every one who worships his own thoughts and personal opinions.

🌹To blind the one blind from birth, to lead the blind astray from the path — like the show-offs of knowledge, the unwise posing as the wise. Those without knowledge are like the blind.

🌹The greedy, the covetous, the miserly and the stingy, the captives of the world — these are among the instances of the worshippers of the dirham and the dinar.

🔅🌼The Function of the Nerve of Worship🌼🔅

🌹Let us examine the nerves of our worship, so that we do not fall into errors of calculation in our acts of worship.

🌹With intellect and innate nature we think; thinking with the belly, with lust and with the whims of the self is ignorance. Whoever prefers his personal opinions to the Two Weighty Things has worshipped himself.

🔅🌼Perfection🌼🔅

🌹Let us not measure the Lord Most High by ourselves; let us not appoint a purpose for God. He creates the purpose — He does not govern creation by means of a purpose. The Almighty Creator has no need of a purpose in order to create according to it; He is free of having a purpose. His absolute will is the summit of beauty and perfection.

🌹God does not complete His creation; rather, He renews it, changes it, transforms it, abrogates and annuls. Each of His creatures is at the summit of its own perfection.

🌹Purpose means striving to reach perfection; God creates the purpose. Purpose is precisely the setting of the path and the technology of journeying and ascent for beings endowed with choice — beings who are exposed to trial and the acquisition of stations.

🌹Purpose is an idea for the future, for reaching a desired outcome, for whose attainment one plans and for whose achievement one strives and labours — while it is bound up with expectation and unfolds within the framework of time, so that the plan and design we intend may be realised.

🌹Movement and effort are necessary to attain a goal. The Creator, who brings movement into being, brings about whatever He wills without waiting, delay or resistance.

🔅🌼 Goals are present to God; they are not absent 🌼🔅

🌹For the All-Knowing Creator, creating a seed, a tree and a fruit is one and the same. In His sight, origin and return are alike; beginning and end make no difference to Him. The goal of which we speak comes to pass solely by His will.

🌹A goal is a kind of creation in which the Creator of existence sets a distance between origin and return, appointing a span of time and a term for the journey between them. Goals belong to creatures who have entered the arena in which their worthiness is put to the test.

🌹He creates the distance. Purposeful creation means creation in layers, a bond between wills, each of which moves towards its own perfection.

🔅🌼 He created the goal 🌼🔅

🌹Unless He creates and defines a goal, there can be no goal and no movement. Unless He creates the path and the foot that walks it, no movement can take place along any path.

🌹Ends and goals, too, are among God’s creations. Unless the All-Powerful, All-Knowing, All-Wise Lord defines a goal, it cannot come to pass. The goal and the end are God’s will directed towards an end; He determines the origin and the return, and by His determination they acquire their identity and distinctness.

🔅🌼 “Why” and “how” are God’s creations 🌼🔅

🌹“Why” and “how” are creations that come into being by divine will. At the first creation, neither “why” nor “how” had any external existence. When He willed “why” and “how” into being, they acquired their identity. To speak, then, of a “why” concerning the Essence of the Real is a grave error.

🌹For the All-Knowing, the station of origin and destination is one and the same. The Exalted Lord is not confined or limited by time, waiting for a result; rather, through His all-encompassing knowledge, He encompasses every matter.

🌹Goals and ends exist within the bounds of time, while God is the Creator of time and of every moment within it. His station is beyond all description.

🔅🌼 Did the Creator wish to behold Himself through creation? 🌼🔅

🌹It is entirely mistaken to suppose that the Creator brought creation into being in order to see Himself. Likewise, to suppose that His creatures might see Him is to impose limits on the Creator, both within Himself and beyond Himself.

🌹The view that “the Creator began creation in order to see Himself, manifest Himself and be seen by others” imposes limits on the Creator, both within Himself and beyond Himself.

🌹To say that God made the human being a perfect mirror of Himself is entirely mistaken. God has no end, and His names and attributes are, in a sense, also His acts.

🌹For God to wish to see Himself would, in a sense, mean striving to know Himself. God forbid—does God wish to come to know Himself?! For seeing and hearing are means of acquiring knowledge.

🔅🌼 Did God wish, through creation, for His creatures to see Him?  🌼🔅

🌹God created names and attributes. So does the Creator wish to show these names and attributes through those very names and attributes? Or to show Himself through His names and attributes, making His creatures His mirror? Are the creatures themselves not already that mirror? Must a mirror look at itself in another mirror in order to see the mirror? Would the Eternal Creator wish to behold Himself in His creation—that is, within the limits He established and ordained? God forbid, would the Creator wish to see a limited version of Himself?

🌹What can be seen is creation itself. God forbid, would the Creator wish to be confined within a limited mirror? If He wished to show Himself in a mirror, He would have to cast something of His own creation into it in order to be seen. In other words, all that is seen, and all that can be seen, is God’s creation.

🌹To argue that He wished to show Himself to others only raises further questions; the “whys” become more numerous and more complex. For example: “Why does He wish to see Himself? Why does He wish to be known? Why must He be seen, or why does He wish to be seen?”

🌹“Why” and “how” are, in a sense, new creations of God. Until God creates “why” and “how,” there will be neither “why” nor “how.”

 🌹Why and how are attributes of created beings, not of the Creator; for Him, why and how have no meaning.

🌹Why and how are tools for acquiring knowledge and understanding, used only to uncover and articulate what we do not know.

🌹He knows the outcome—so why? “Why?” is a question for us, not for Him.

🔅🌼 The Final of Servitude 🌼🔅

The world of this life is the final contest in servitude to God—in other words, the final of servitude.

🔅🌼 Always be bitter on Satan’s tongue 🌼🔅

🌹How does a person become Satan’s pasture?

🌹If a person does not become a field of worship, virtue and noble character, they become a field for Satan.

🌹Be poison to Satan, not an antidote.

🌹Those who merely seem learned are Satan’s pasture and grazing land; he raises his chicks and pups there.

🔅🌼 The Field of Worship 🌼🔅

🌹A person must turn themselves into a field of worship and servitude to God.

🌹A person must be a paradise of worship and servitude to God.

🌹A person must be a source of nourishment for all creation through love, affection, worship and servitude.

🌹Has anyone ever experienced worship? One definition of worship is “the servant’s expression of the highest feelings, and an unimaginable response from the Almighty.”

🌹Worship is the reflection of knowledge that the Creator has cast into the soul of His servant.

🔅🌼 In the Process of Sprouting 🌼🔅

🌹A person’s lifetime is God’s cultivated field.

🌹The ungrateful squander the gold of their time for nothing; they destroy their lifetime and the capital of their servitude.

🔅🌼 Servitude to God Never Closes 🌼🔅

🌹Seeking ways to fill one’s free time means continuing to lose, with losses piling up. To be idle is, in truth, to be on leave from servitude—and to turn that leave into something merely permissible, disliked, or sinful.

🌻🔆An-Nisāʾ: 119   وَ لَأُضِلَّنَّهُمْ وَ لَأُمَنِّيَنَّهُمْ وَ لَآمُرَنَّهُمْ فَلَيُبَتِّكُنَّ آذانَ الْأَنْعامِ وَ لَآمُرَنَّهُمْ فَلَيُغَيِّرُنَّ خَلْقَ اللَّهِ وَ مَنْ يَتَّخِذِ الشَّيْطانَ وَلِيًّا مِنْ دُونِ اللَّهِ فَقَدْ خَسِرَ خُسْراناً مُبيناً

🔆“(Satan says,) ‘I will surely lead them astray and fill them with false hopes. I will command them to slit the ears of cattle and to alter God’s creation.’” Whoever takes Satan as a protector instead of God has clearly suffered a great loss.

🌹We must not remain silent in the face of Satan’s all-out activity.

🌹The misguidance and end-times fantasies of our age erase the Hereafter.

🌹Change to one’s outward appearance, and then to one’s inner nature, extends from plastic surgery on body parts and organs to genetic and DNA alteration—and beyond. Genetically modified organisms are one example, from modified plants and animals to modified human beings; there are also plans and schemes to turn humans into robots and make them into dolls.

🌹Servitude never closes; we must ask God for an advance on our commitment to serve Him.

🌹Amusement and play steal the truth. Beware of their harms and dangers. The marketplace of deception is thriving.

🌹Satan works around the clock; he never takes a break. Yet the heedless person is always on leave—and worse, joins forces with Satan against themselves.

🔅🌼 Let Us Keep the System of Servitude to God Running 🌼🔅

🌹When will a person truly come to life?!

🌹The universe is in labour within the womb of the supramundane.

🌹Every movement is like a young shoot on the verge of blossoming.

🔅🌼 The Cost of Humanity 🌼🔅

🌹 If we make Satan the ruler of our hearts, we turn into Satan’s temple, his place of filth.

🌹 Irreligion is the accursed source of the devils’ income; satanic wealth and capital carry no blessing. A non-Islamic economy is ill-omened and devoid of every blessing.

🌹The devils plunder a person’s religion, worldly life and afterlife, turning the person into their own asset and enslaving them; they also strip them of everything they possess.

🔅🌼 Activating the Network of Innate Nature 🌼🔅

🌹All the divergent paths lead to Him, but only the one path—the straight path—is pleasing to the Beloved, the Worshipped One.

🌹The straight path is made clear by light and guidance, and innate nature is our companion along the way.

🌹Innate nature is the measure, the criterion, the standard. Everyone shares the same innate nature. Who does not cherish purity? Who would turn away from justice? Who does not seek happiness? Who would equate eternity with this finite world? Whoever departs from their innate nature will err in judgment.

🌹The network of innate nature shields people from harm to their innate nature; it is enough to hold fast to the Two Weighty Things.

🔅🌼 Lurking Behind the Minds 🌼🔅

🌹The enemy lies in wait behind minds and hearts.

🌹The devils’ front line is closer than we imagine.

🌹The enemy is just beyond the borders of our beliefs.

🌹The enemy has reached the point of tampering with a person’s “DNA”; it alters their genes.

🌹The devils have learned to hack innate nature, replacing it with their own information. A passive, ignorant person can be hacked.

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

🔅🌼 A Learner’s Perspective on the Subject of “The Nerve of Devotion” 🌼🔅

### 🌟 Seeking Guidance and Sincere Worship

My God and Lord, grant me the support of righteous guidance, the path of truth, and an intention to grow, and make my life a gift devoted to Your worship. When my life becomes a pasture for Satan, take my soul before Your anger and wrath overtake me and take hold. 

My God, do not leave me to myself, not even for an instant. Activate the technology of Your worship in my spirit and soul, and be its director Yourself. I do not know the way of worshipping You; make me understand Your worship. What must I do so that I never leave the bounds of worshipping You? Make me a captive of Your worship and love, so that I sink so deeply into love and affection for You that there is no way out. 

O God, grant me success in this greatest of blessings. At every moment, I must examine the nerves of my worship and devotion, and reflect with my reason and innate nature, so that I may understand where I stand in this existence.

### 🧠 Rational Thought Rooted in Innate Nature

O God, have I succeeded in worshipping and serving You?

My thinking must be rational and rooted in innate nature. Otherwise, I will think under the sway of selfish desire and passion, casting myself and others into the swamp of associating partners with God. 

O God, what must I do to attain sound devotion to You? Let my worship be sound, let my heart become pure and sound, and let me worship You in soundness. 

O God, You are the way and the healer of worship. You are the One who tends to Your servant; perfect my worship and guide me to sound devotion. 

May my spirit never depart from my worship; may I never die of the affliction and sickness of worship. May I never contract the disease of associating partners with You without knowing it, mistaking it for monotheism. 

When I make my own thoughts and beliefs objects of devotion, I have fallen into both hidden and open idolatry at once.

### 💰 Worship of Dirhams and Dinars

. Whoever worships dirhams and dinars is accursed. These are the words of the Messenger of God:  “Accursed, accursed is whoever worships dirhams and dinars.” 

How do dirhams and dinars become idols, become gods, become objects of love and beloveds? When I become a captive of this world, when greed and avarice overcome me, when I resist paying my religious dues and flee from spending in God’s cause, I have become a servant of dirhams and dinars. 

Worse still is the accursed one who worships his own base and vile thoughts.

### 👁 The Blindness of Guidance

Accursed is anyone who makes the blind still blinder, bringing them to congenital blindness and multiplying their blindness a hundredfold. 

Accursed is anyone who turns the path of guidance upside down for those who seek it. 

Accursed is anyone who turns those seeking guidance away from the authority of the Ahl al-Bayt (peace be upon them) and leads them toward immature, base ideas. 

Whoever does not know God has worshipped himself.

### 🎯 The Aim of Servitude

Does God have an aim of His own? Does He perfect His creations, or renew them? 

By God, God does not perfect His creations; each of His acts of will is the perfection of God’s creation. 

God alone renews His will, and His will endures, while His creation is renewed and changed. Each act of His will is an end and a culmination. 

What we call an aim is merely one of God’s means. 

God creates a particular means for His servants who are travelling the path of spiritual wayfaring. He sets an aim for them: a means to guide them to the destination of servitude. 

The aim is created for the servant, not for God.

### 🕊 The Aim of Servitude and Divine Will

For every being striving to attain a rank in servitude to God, God sets an aim. An aim is an idea of the future, a particular plan that calls for effort and striving. But does God need to strive? Does He need a model to reach something? 

God is absolutely powerful and all-knowing; each of His acts of will is itself the summit of perfection. For the All-Knowing Creator, the creation of a seed, a tree, and its fruit are all the same. For this peerless Creator, the beginning and the return are one. The first and the last make no difference to Him.

### 🌌 The Distance Between Beginning and Return

He is He, and none other knows who He is! An aim is a kind of creation in which the Creator of existence sets a distance between the beginning and the return. God creates the distance between first and last: that is, He opens a way for His servant to journey from the beginning to the return. He shows the destination and the return, and appoints a time, so that His servant may travel the path of servitude beautifully. 

All are in the final contest of worship and servitude to God, striving to prove their worth and determine who will be the champion.

### 🛤 Creation with Purpose

He creates the distance. Creation is purposeful: it is layered, with its layers joined together by His will. If He did not create and define the aim, there would be no movement. Until He creates the road and the feet, there can be neither a path nor movement. 

He is the All-Knowing Creator, and knows the outcome from the very beginning. His knowledge and power encompass both beginning and destination. So the aim is for us, not for Him. The end and the aim are among God’s creations, but God Himself has no aim.

### 🌿 Why and How Creation Comes to Be

God determines the beginning and the return. The beginning comes to be by His will, and the return is created by His will. So why did He create? “Why” is itself one of God’s creations. Why and how have no place in God’s essence;

when He willed, “why” and “how” came into being. “How” has no meaning in relation to the Essence of the Real. For God, the beginning and the return are one and the same.

### ⏳ God Transcends Time and Place

The Lord is not confined by time, waiting for an outcome. His knowledge and power encompass all things. Purpose and end can be defined within the limits of time and space, but God is the creator of time and space. He transcends every description.

### 🔍 God and the Concept of Knowing

How can I know God? Did God wish to behold Himself through His creation, or for His creatures to behold Him? Such statements impose limits on the Creator. To say that God wished to see Himself in the mirror of creation is to limit Him. To say that He wished others to see Him is to bring Him down to the level of His creatures. 

### 📜 The Divine Names and Attributes

God’s names, attributes and acts are without limit—let alone His peerless Essence. God is the creator of both finitude and infinity, and can be described by neither. 

To say that God might wish to see Himself is an attempt to impose limits on Him. All knowledge comes from Him; He has no need to acquire knowledge. Seeing and hearing are means of acquiring knowledge, but the All-Knowing God has no need of them.

### 👹 Satan and the Destruction of Humanity

Satan uses human beings themselves to further his aims. He turns a person into his own customer, leading them to bring about their own destruction. 

When we make Satan the ruler of our hearts, we become his temple—his latrine. Irreligion becomes a baleful source for devils. 

Wealth and capital gained through Satan carry no blessing. An economy that is not Islamic is devoid of blessing: it destroys a person’s faith and afterlife, strips all wealth of blessing, and leaves them bankrupt.

### 🧭 Returning to the Fitrah

What should we do? The standard and measure is the human fitrah. We must return to our fitrah to discover who we are. 

Who does not recognise purity or shrink from injustice? Who cannot tell the small from the great, or mistakes eternity for limitation? 

Anyone who turns away from their fitrah comes to regard this world as not merely equal to the afterlife, but greater than it. They sacrifice their afterlife for the sake of this world. They choose impurity over purity, flee from all that is good, and occupy themselves with ugliness.

### 🌌 Connecting to the Network of Fitrah

What should we do? We must connect to the network of fitrah. 

This network is the Two Weighty Things. Without it, we will go astray and move against the path of fitrah. 

Our sworn enemy is at work changing every particle of our being. He lurks behind our thoughts and lies in wait for our hearts; he has them surrounded and wants first to disgrace us, then destroy us. 

Satan’s front line is closer than we imagine.

### 🛡 The Boundaries of Belief

Satan lies in wait beyond the boundaries of our beliefs. He devours our beliefs and installs whatever he wants in their place, in the sacred space of faith.

### 🌌 The Creator and the Limits of Knowing

What can be seen is creation itself. God forbid, if the Creator wished to reveal Himself in a mirror, He would have to place something of Himself in that mirror. Everything that can be seen and viewed is God’s creation, not God Himself. God’s creation is a sign of God, and through His signs we reach Him. 

To say that the Creator wishes to see Himself, or for others to see Him, raises countless questions: Why does He wish to be known? Why must He be seen? These questions of why and how belong to God’s creation, not the Creator. For Him, why and how have no meaning.

### 🔍 Why and How in the Pursuit of Knowledge

Why and how are means of attaining knowledge and dispelling ignorance. They serve created beings, not the Creator.

### 🌾 Becoming God’s Field

O God, if You do not help me, I will become pasture for Satan. What can I do to become God’s field and escape the disgrace of Satan? 

The human being is God’s field. God Himself tends and cultivates it. If I do not turn away from His threshold, its care and harvest, too, will be in His hands.

### 🌀 Satan’s Pasture

Why am I so sweet to Satan? Why have I become his elixir? The human being should become a paradise for God’s servants, but through idolatry and irreligion, becomes Satan’s meadow and pasture.

### 🌟 The Joy of True Worship

Has anyone experienced true worship? Someone who can tell us of its joy and sweetness? 

The Ṣaḥīfa of al-Sajjād is the wine of servitude: it reveals the taste of devotion and conveys the feeling of worship. Worship is the reflection of God’s knowledge in the souls of His servants. When a person offers the highest feelings of the heart to the One worshipped, they reach the threshold of true worship of God.

### ⏳ The Time of Birth from Existence

This world lies in the womb of what transcends existence, and is nearing birth. Time and space are drawing close to birth into what transcends time and space. 

All that exists is made of shoots coming into bloom. Our thoughts and actions are shoots of our lives. From this life, eternity in the past and eternity in the future must grow—not a fall into the lowest depths of Saqar.

### ⚔️ Satan’s Interference in Creation

Satan has sworn to lead human beings astray, keep them occupied with vain hopes, and interfere in God’s creation. 

He urges people to alter genes, undergo surgery, and tamper with their limbs and organs. He changes God’s command and religion, and meddles with His creation.

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

[1] Al-Kāfī (Islamic edition), vol. 2, p. 240  Al-Kulayni, Dar al-Kutub al-Islamiyya, Tehran, fourth edition, 1407 AH.

[2] Al-Khiṣāl , vol.1 , p.129  Ibn Bābawayh, Society of Seminary Teachers, Qom, first edition, 1362 SH.