Salvation 10

Salaam All & Eid Mubarak (Blessed Festival)

 

Night 30

 

When we view the practice of fasting as something which must be endured in order to earn a reward, then we have entirely missed the point. The one who strives after obedience and recoils from disobedience is right to expect from the bounty of God the completion of blessing.

 

When we view the practice of Prayers only in numbers of times bowing & prostrations without comprehension by both intellect & emotions then our prayers are blind, cold, and fatalistic, while spiritual unfoldment is a vital inspiration.

 

Fasting & Prayers are disciplines which forms and shapes us, makes us into people who are more responsive to God. Who would have found the meaning of life.

 

That’s why we will NOT know how effective our Ramadan fasts & prayers have been until a few weeks after Ramadan is over.

 

Will we act differently?

 

Will we be closer to God?

 

Will we be more loving to our families and neighbours?

 

Will we be more sensitive to people in need, to the poor and destitute?

 

If we manage to complete the 30-day fast successfully, but end up acting selfishly and hatefully on the thirty-first, or forty-first, or sixtieth day, 100/200/300 day then our Ramadan will have been a failure.

 

The whole point of Ramadan is to be changed – for good. It’s not simply a set of exercises that one must endure for thirty days so that we can earn a reward in heaven, or earn a check mark next to our name on the “Good” list. Do we take God for a joker?

 

And living “right” during Ramadan does not give one license to live “wrong” the other eleven months of the year. 

 

Ramadan is like a spiritual “boot camp,” training for the rest of the year. It’s intended to make it easier to live in submission to God’s will all the year round. Fasting is learning how to say “no” to permissible things, in order that it may be easier for us to say “no” to things which are not permissible. It also helps us to say “yes” to the eternal, spiritual blessings which God offers to us in tiny, subtle ways throughout the day.

 

As you have found out during Ramadan it is possible for your better nature to govern your passions and appetites.

 

Where the passions are most strongly implanted there, too, is always an equal strength of will if it is only brought forth and exercised.  But the one is indulged, the other neglected. In Ramadan the will was exercised and not the passions. Are we now on this day of Eid and onwards until the next Ramadan to exercise the uncontrollable passions without control and leave the will to atrophy? If we do no growth will occur...

 

All greatness, all strength, in whatever direction, is associated with strong passions...that are under the will's control..

 

That is a discipline we all need throughout the year.

 

Shamal...Eid Mubarak once more and thanks for tuning in for the last 30 days...a most gracious thanks for your replies & calls...Wassalaam