In this world there is an outside and there is an inside. There is illusion on the outside and there is illusion on the inside. In a tiny dot inside of ourselves, if we’re fortunate enough and pure enough and determined enough to find it, there is reality and there is truth.
We are born into a world with our senses and we live according to our senses. We live within what we see and what we touch and what we hear. What happens is the things that we look at enter into us. The things that we see enter into us. The things that we touch enter into us. The things that are going on outside are not just external to us they are also internal to us. Not only do we look at things, we take these things inside of us and then they reside inside us. Then all of the effects that they have on the outside, they now have on the inside. Even though we may walk away from the situation, we don’t leave it. We brought it into ourself.
The question comes, how do we look at the world and at the same time not bring it into ourselves? At the same time not have it react from the inside out and not just from the outside in. What happens to us is that we become involved with things that are greater then our bodily capacity to handle. Our elements, which we are made of, can only withstand so much pressure. When we bring too much of the world inside us and we react too much inside us, we can become ill. People have become ill from watching baseball games. People have become ill from watching soccer matches or football games. It became so important to them that it’s as if their life breath was attached to it.
If things as peripheral to our existence as sports matches can do that to us, what about our relationship with our families? What about our relationships with our jobs? What about our relationship with the things that we think sustain us? As long as we don’t understand that the only sustenance is Allah, and the only truth is Allah, and the only thing we can rely on is Allah, we rely on the things that we see in the world and on the things that we take inside ourselves from the world.
The world, by its very nature, falls apart. The world, by its very nature, dissipates. Since that happens, it should be well understood by us that whatever we rely on in the world is going to disappoint us and going to cause us difficulty. That which we think is pleasurable will eventually turn into pain. And we need to know that. But…
