Recently we’ve been talking about ritual, and the shell of ritual, and how you need to fill that shell that is ritual with consciousness, and with wisdom. Because, if you merely go through the performance of ritual without consciousness and without wisdom, the experience is not what the experience is supposed to be, and the experience is lacking in legitimacy. It becomes an act of obedience as opposed to an act of transcendence.
Now, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do acts of obedience because we need to do acts of obedience, but we also have to become transcendent, and if we can mesh the act of obedience with an act of transcendence, then we’ve reached a different level of being within our din, within our religion, within our way, within our understanding.
But prior to understanding things, we sometimes need explanations of what they are. Like, to say you have to fill your ritual, you have to fill your life with consciousness and with wisdom, flies over most peoples’ heads. What’s consciousness? What’s wisdom? What’s it mean? How does it work? What is it? These are big words, yet to get a grasp on them is a difficult thing.
Bismillahir-rahmanir-rahim, bismillahir-rahmanir-rahim, in the name of Allah, the merciful and the compassionate. Consciousness is becoming closer to Allah. Consciousness is having a state of being where that which you are involved in moves towards Allah. Wisdom is making the right choices. Wisdom is knowing what it is that brings you closer to Allah, and choosing to do that which brings you closer to Allah. And, what is the key to understanding all of this? Bismillahir-rahmanir-rahim, in the name of Allah, the merciful and the compassionate.
Mercy is consciousness, wisdom is mercy, compassion is consciousness, compassion is wisdom. If we choose compassion we are doing the wise thing, and is we choose compassion, we are elevating our consciousness.
Within these few words, “bismillahir-rahmanir-rahim” which we are supposed to say before everything, is one of the keys to the mysteries of understanding what these words mean. The level of your consciousness is the level of your compassion. The depth of your consciousness is the depth of your compassion. If you walk around, and all of your acts come from compassion, if all of your acts come from mercy, then you are in an exalted state, because the acts are based in an exalted state and Rahman and Rahim, mercy and compassion, are exalted states. Why? Because they’re God’s state.
So, the terminology may be confusing. The words need definition. In the same way we have to fill the shell of religion with consciousness, we have to fill these words that we throw around so readily with understanding, and the understanding is not difficult. What’s difficult is the transformation into compassion, the transformation into mercy, and the choice to constantly choose mercy and compassion.
When anger comes, do we stay with anger or do we choose mercy and compassion? When jealously comes, do we choose jealousy or do we choose mercy and compassion? When hastiness comes, do we choose hastiness or do we choose mercy and compassion? Do we, in every instant, act with mercy and compassion as the bedrock of what we do? Is it the foundation of who we are? Because, consciousness isn’t going to be, as we say, “elevated” without that occurring. So, when we talk about consciousness, what are we really talking about? We’re talking about the qualities of Allah. That’s elevated consciousness. Degraded consciousness is quite simply acting like animals, who act for their own self-preservation, who act in order to fulfill just their needs. Elevated consciousness is when our deeds extend beyond our own needs, when our deeds are an assist to the world, just like Allah is in a constant giving state. For us to reach higher levels of consciousness we need to be able to extend beyond ourselves. So, limited consciousness is limited to our needs. Extended consciousness is empathetic to the needs of everything that surrounds us. Limited consciousness is elemental qualities, is animal qualities. Elevated consciousness is dealing within Godly qualities, is dealing within the parameters of bismillahir-rahmanir-rahim. So, consciousness is a function of what we do, who we are, and how we react to things. Do we react to things in an egocentric way or do we react to things in a Godly way? And as we react to things in a Godly way, our consciousness becomes elevated, and we could just as easily say, instead of saying our consciousness becomes elevated, our mercy and our compassion become elevated, and as our mercy and compassion become elevated, we enter into the ecstatic state of being near Allah…
