Spiritual Health Learning Community Center Exploring Life's Horizons   »   Streams Menu My servant does not cease to draw nigh unto Me with acts of free-will offering until I love him, and when I love him, I am: the eye with which he sees' the ear by which he hears; the feet where on he walks, and hands by which he grasps. - Hadith qudsi (Allah is speaking through the mouth of the Prophet) Jami' In order to gain some degree of insight into the nature of being spiritually gathered (jami'), one must understand the quality of being spiritually dispersed. Gatheredness is the negation of dispersion. One cannot be present to gatheredness until one is absent from dispersion. Dispersion is an expression of our being veiled from God. Dispersion constitutes a condition of spiritual alienation. Dispersion begins when we forget our original covenant with God prior to being brought into the world. Dispersion entails a wide spectrum of manifestations of heedlessness with respect to our duties before God. Dispersion is the sentence of exile we have imposed on ourselves for transgressions against our own spiritual potential. Dispersion is the illness we have contracted through our failure to observe the requirements of spiritual health. Dispersion is a major symptom of the syndrome from which many of us suffer - namely, sleepwalking through life. Dispersion is a function of the retrograde amnesia we suffer in relation to our true, essential identity. To be dispersed, is to be restless, aimless, drifting, uncommitted, scattered and insincere with respect to spiritual responsibilities. The person suffering from spiritual dispersion feels compelled to be on the move, to be active. However, such activity and movement involves a variety of disparate interests, entanglements. obligations and inclinations in relation to the world and one's false self. In all of this activity, one really does not know where one is going or why. One is merely following the call of the ego wherever it may lead one. One is active in an attempt to keep up with the whims, desires, impulses, and interests of the false self. In dispersion we do not know why we are, rather than not at all. All we know is we have an awareness of existence, and our egos begin to exploit this state of affairs according to the requirements of passion and anger. The dispersed individual is, at best, inconsistent with respect to spiritual activities such as: prayer; charity (both of one's material wealth as well as from one's person); remembrance of God; meditation; contemplation; fasting; and, journeying toward God. Moreover, even when one does engage in these sort of spiritual activities, more often than not, one's attention is preoccupied with something else such as: work, family, career, hobbies, possessions, money, food, sex, and so on. The dispersed individual cannot do justice to herself or himself, nor can the dispersed person do justice to others, creation or God. Justice only can be done when one is a spiritually conscious, purified and realized locus of manifestation of God's irada or will. Dispersion is the antithesis of all of this. The dispersed person is exceedingly vulnerable to the enticements and seductions of habits, passions, anger, Satan, and the world. There is no, or little, spiritual strength to resist such overtures. The heart of the dispersed individual is ready to be prostituted to any number of whims, desires and fancies which come along, whether from within or without. All that remains to be done is the haggling over the price to be charged for this prostitution of self. The life of the spiritually dispersed person is marked by various combinations and proportions of: instability, enmity, ingratitude, self-absorption, narrowness, irritability, pride, arrogance, ignorance, injustice, oppression (of self and others), doubt, shamelessness, loneliness, impatience, insensitivity, intolerance, stubbornness, rebellion, being hard-hearted, and cruelty. The spiritually dispersed individual corrupts and despoils the Divine gifts of: time, being, consciousness, will, power, hearing, seeing, essential capacity and speech. The spiritually dispersed person is present to his or her false self and absent from one's true self. The dispersed individual is present to the world and absent from God. The spiritually dispersed person is convinced dispersion is the natural and inescapable order of life. The dispersed individual has failed to understand that the potential for spiritual gatheredness is an essential aspect of one's identity. Furthermore, the spiritually dispersed person does not understand that the challenge of life involves the struggle to realize one's essential identity in the face of a variety of forces of dispersion. Our capacity for spiritual gatheredness is somewhat like a laser (light amplification through the stimulation of emitted radiation). The laser is constructed so that once light is admitted into this instrument, a series of steps is set in motion to contain the light long enough for all of the photons which make up the admitted light to be organized in a coherent fashion. Coherency refers to a condition in which all of the phase signatures of the photons are synchronized with one another and, therefore, act in concert with each other. When the emitted light or radiation becomes stimulated and amplified in the foregoing manner, the coherent or unified light released by the laser is able to accomplish many things which ordinary, incoherent light cannot do. For instance, laser treated light can be used to: perform surgery; improve communication by generating clearer, longer lasting signals; enhance accuracy of measurements; provide better security systems; make holographic image and memory systems; increase the sensitivity of various kinds of instrumentation, and so on. Like the physical laser, the inner, spiritual structure, so to speak, of the individual contains a variety of mirror-like instruments. When these inner instruments are operating and organized properly, they are capable of preventing spiritual light (nur) from being dispersed or lost. However, unlike the physical laser, the spiritual laser does not organize the nur or spiritual light into a coherent form. Nur is inherently coherent. The spiritual instrumentation within us is, first, calibrated by nur. Once these instruments are synchronized with spiritual light, the instruments use the properties of nur to entrain our consciousness, attitudes, intentions and understanding. The entraining qualities of spiritual light or nur might be considered to be somewhat comparable to a complex phase signature. In order for us to have spiritual coherency or gatheredness, everything within us must be in phase-step, as it were, with the nur which is emitted into the interior of our spiritual instrumentation. In a sense, the spiritual laser reverses the way a physical laser operates. The latter uses a variety of processes inside the laser to organize light into coherent patterns which have different beneficial functions in the external world. On the other hand, the spiritual laser uses nur to organize our interior instrumentation to generate coherent patterns of awareness, understanding and so on. These coherent, or gathered, packages are used, subsequently, to perform various tasks in our everyday lives. In a physical laser, light is amplified through the stimulation of that emitted radiation. The nature of these stimulations will be a function of the character of the laser being used. In a spiritual laser, the "light" of our awareness and understanding is amplified through becoming entrained by, and, therefore, one with, the inherent coherency of the spiritual light emitted into the interior of our spiritual instrumentation. The nature of the "radiation" released by our instruments after entrainment depends on the character or capacity of our spiritual instrumentation. Just as the purity of the crystals and the condition of the mirrors used in a physical laser can affect the quality of the light generated by such a laser, the issue of purity and the condition of our spiritual mirrors also affects the quality of the light generated through our spiritual "laser". This means, among other things, that the spiritual condition of our heart is of primary importance in the generation of coherent or gathered spiritual focus and activity. Like its physical counterpart, the spiritual laser is capable of being used, God willing, to accomplish tasks which otherwise would not be possible under normal, incoherent, dispersed conditions of consciousness, intention and understanding. Enhanced systems of Divine and interpersonal communication, precision spiritual and psychological healing techniques, increased sensitivity to environmental (internal and external) circumstances, more accurate readings of reality, greater spiritual security, and so on, are a few of the many benefits which become possible when our spiritual laser capabilities come, so to speak, on-line. The spiritual light of the gathered individual is not dispersed, corrupted or lost when engaging the circumstances of the life of this world. The spiritual light of the gathered individual reflects only the Reality of the Source of such light. All forms, events, effects, causes, processes, phenomena and manifestations are seen through the coherency and purity or gatheredness of Divine light. Gathered light disperses neither left nor right, but stays concentrated on the beauty and majesty of Divinity. The life of the spiritually gathered person radiates: peace, dynamic stability, harmony, balance, justice, intimacy, love, commitment, gratitude, patience, sincerity, generosity, humility, self-sacrifice, compassion, tolerance and forgiveness. In the life of one whom is spiritually gathered, the Divine gifts of: time, being, consciousness, choice, essential capacity, power, hearing, seeing and speech are utilized in accordance with Divine will. As a result, the unique purpose for which such a life has been created is fully realized. The spiritually gathered individual is absent from the false self but present to the true self. The spiritually gathered person is absent from the world but is present to God being manifested through one's essential self and all of creation. | Return to Streams Menu | Copyright © 2004 Interrogative Imperative Institute. All Rights Reserved.