The Secret Of Happiness

Broadly speaking, what this verse is doing is it is dividing all of humanity and all of us in particular as Muslims into two groups. There is one group that is heedless, that is a ghafil, and there is one group that is in a state of wakefulness, that is conscious, that is aware. The dhikr here is not simply recitation with the lips, where I sit on the prayer mat and do Subhana Allah, Subhana Allah, Subhana Allah all morning, all night, but my heart is somewhere else, my desires are something else. But this state of complete presence in the now and wakefulness and consciousness. Now, the natural question to this then is how do I measure myself and identify which group I belong to? Most of us, out of a sense of humility, would say, I'm in a state of ghafla. I'm not in a state of wakefulness. But there are degrees even in the state of ghafla and in the state of wakefulness. I want to place myself somewhere on this continuum from heedlessness to complete wakefulness. The way to understand this is to first look at what are the sources or inputs to our experience as humans in this life.

We know we come to this world from the womb of our mothers and we will live here for a short while. Some will live for four decades, some five, some six, some seven. Nobody lives for more than 10 decades. There are very few that cross the age of 100. Those who reach even 100, they're usually not famous for anything other than their age. In other words, even though we strive for a long life, very often once we get to an old age, we really can't do much. There isn't much productivity that we have. Really, the life that we have is very short. In this life, the experience we have, the human experience we have is driven by certain inputs, by certain sources. I want to narrow this down to three and then challenge you to think of anything else besides these three. Everything that occupies us from the time we wake up to the time we go to sleep can only fall into three categories. One, our thoughts; two, our emotions and feelings; and three, our sensory perceptions and experiences. Sensory would be the five senses: what we see, what we hear, what we smell, what we taste, and what we touch.

Now, if we take this discussion a step forward, when we look at humanity today, we find that most people are unhappy. It's amazing how some people don't even realize this, but the moment you ask them, Are you happy? And they think about it, they say, No, I'm not happy. Why is it that Allah creates us with so much love and sends us to this world to find Him and promises us Jannah and gives us such beautiful role models, but we are still miserable? Life is not happy. We seem to be just endlessly struggling like a donkey tied to a mill going round and round endlessly. There doesn't seem to be any purpose to life. The reason why we are unhappy, we have found a reason and someone to blame. Usually, we have found a reason. We either blame our parents because when we were young, they didn't give us opportunities, they didn't realize our potential, they didn't send us to university, they didn't do this for us because it's easy to blame someone. Don't realizing our children will blame us as well. Or we blame our spouse. If I wasn't married to this person, I would have gone far in life or this would have happened.

Or we blame our children. If I didn't have children, I would have so much free time. I could have done this, I could have done that. Or we blame our boss. Or we blame the country we live in or we'll blame the system or we blame the community or we blame or we blame. In the end, we don't get anyone then we blame Allah. We don't say it, but there is a resentfulness that if Allah wanted me to become such a great person, why did He not give me the opportunity? We are constantly looking at immediate reasons and cause and effect and looking for someone who can take the blame for why we are unhappy and why we have not succeeded in life and attain that great ideals that we had from the time we were youth. But I want to suggest that the reason we are unhappy is not the apparent reason. Even if you've just had a fight with someone and you think that is the cause of your unhappiness, that is not the reason we are unhappy as human beings. The reason we are unhappy is because we have lost that connection and that touch and sense of connection to our origin and our source, which is Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.

I have said this before that because we cannot exist without Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, it is impossible to disconnect from him. But it is possible to be in a state of ghafla so that you are not aware of that connection that already exists. Because we have lost that sense of the presence of this origin and source, the presence of Allah constantly in our lives. He says himself, He is with you constantly, wherever you are. Call me, I will answer you. When my servant asks you about me, I am sitting right beside him. I am with you. We are closer to you than your jugular vein. We cannot be any closer to you than what we are to you, [Subhana Allah]. Allah says: "qalb ul-mu'min Arsh ur-Rahman. The heart of a mu’min is the throne of Allah. The heavens and the earth cannot contain me and hold me, but the heart of a mu'min can contain me. He is so present with us. He loves us so much. He is constantly giving us attention. We think of him, he is with us. But we are asleep. We are in a state of ghafla.

And because of this state of heedlessness, and that is why Allah constantly tells us in the Quran that if you forget me, I will not lose anything, but you will harm yourselves. They never did any injustice to us when they disobeyed us, but they were doing dhulm on their own selves. "La ta quunu kallathin nasu Allaha fa ansahum anfusahom" (Surah Al-Hashr 59:19). Do not be like those who forgot Allah, so.. not he forgot them, no. So they forgot their own selves. "Wa mai ya’shu ‘an zikrir Rahmaani nuqaiyid lahoo Shaitaanan fahuwa lahoo qareen"(Quran 43:36). Whoever turns away from the remembrance of Allah, we immediately appoint a Satan for him, he becomes his companion. Then he keeps you occupied with the world. That is where all the root of the unhappiness comes. That the moment you turn away from this remembrance of Allah. The problem again here is that when we talk of Allah being present in our lives, we think of Him in physical terms. Most people who say they believe in Allah, if you ask them who is Allah, they don't understand Allah. It's just an abstract concept of some being who created us.

But who is Allah? That deep sense of realization that He is The Only Reality and The True Consciousness and The Origin and Source of everything and nothing exists without Him. He is present in every particle and everything that exists even at a beyond subatomic level. The total consciousness that everything cannot escape Allah is missing in our lives in a very active sense. This connection to wake up to this reality so that we see when we put aside our mind-made egoic selves and we don't identify with our thoughts and emotions and senses and we look at it from the outside and we wake up to the beauty of this world, then life is beautiful. The universe is beautiful, death is beautiful, calamities are beautiful. You see the miracle of Allah in everything. You see the miracle of Allah when someone dies. You see the miracle of Allah when someone is born. You see the miracle of Allah when someone is rich. You see the miracle of Allah in poverty. You see the miracle of Allah in health. You see the miracle of Allah in sickness. This is the maqam that Ibrahim had reached. That is why you see in the Quran, when he talks about it, he attributes everything to Allah.

And when I am sick, it is he who makes me well. He knows it is medicine that he eats, but he sees Allah even in that medicine. At every level, he surrenders to him. And when we lose this identity, then we are always unhappy, then we are always upset, then we just need an excuse, then everything irritates us. We are unhappy because of the mosquito that is buzzing around us. We are unhappy because there is traffic. We are unhappy because it is humid and hot today. We are unhappy because the stock markets fail. We are unhappy because the gas prices have gone up. We are unhappy because the wife doesn't stop telling us things and jabbing and making us, annoying us and irritating us. On the flip side, when we find Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, then nothing annoys us. As we draw to a conclusion, what we're saying is that as mu'minin taking inspiration from all this and from the Ayas of Quran, it is important that we stay focused. First I said to myself and then to all of you that we should not be fooled by those who are driven by this world and who whisper into our ears these desires to excel and go far in life and in career.

Certainly we should do that, but they make us forget the hereafter. We live in a society where death is not only hidden, but God is hidden. You will attest to this most of you who live here, who work in corporate world, who work in societies, can you openly and comfortably talk about God at your workplace? What do people think of you if you start talking about God or Allah? So Allah has been removed from the workplace. Look at the TV, look at the radio, look at the commercials. Religion has been made a private affair. You want to talk about God? Go to your mosque, go to your church, go to your private place of worship and talk about religion there. You cannot talk about it. The moment you talk about religion, you are seen as being someone who is odd or weird or backwards. This is what the world has become. It promotes. You talk about atheism, you talk about sin, you talk about wrong, you talk about human independence, you talk about pluralism. Everybody listens to you, puts you up on a pedestal. The result of this is that now humanity is not only asleep, but they are unhappy and they look at everything from a material, physical, and mind only.

They ask questions, they say, If there was a God, why does he allow earthquakes to happen where millions of people died? If there was a God, why does he let a woman have a miscarriage? What was the point of her carrying a child for eight months and then losing the baby? If there was a God, why does a four-year-old child have cancer? If there was a God, then this old man who is in the hospital who is suffering endlessly, aimlessly, why doesn't Allah take him away? Everything is determined in a physical, material sense. These questions people struggle to try and answer, the maulvie, the priests, everyone is trying to explain to it. For a moment, supposing we change our perspective and we see life as not a place we have come to stay, but a place where we have come to develop our souls, a place where we have come to find higher consciousness, a place where we have come to chisel and carve this soul so that when we die, our bodies that are pregnant with our souls give birth to our souls. And a beautiful creature, a butterfly emerges from that cocoon. If we were to look at life for a moment from this perspective, none of these questions become irrelevant.

Why? Because as a human being, from the time I am born, I am driven to be materialistic, I'm driven to be selfish. I'm driven to fight for survival. I'm driven to go ahead of others so that I can survive. I am not patient when I don't get what I want. When I see danger, I flee and run like a coward. Now, what is it that will change these attributes in my soul and change me from being a coward to being courageous, from being impatient to being patient, from being selfish to being selfless, from being materialistic to being non-materialistic? The only things that change it is suffering and pain and affliction. It is when I have to give away what I love that I learn to be non-materialistic. It is when I have to prefer others over myself that I have to be selfless and not selfish. It is when I have to face danger and not run away that I learn the meaning of courage and not to be a coward and overcome my fear. It is when I can't have what I want right now that I learn to be patient. So now suddenly the earthquake becomes a means to avoid materialism, to witness the power of Allah, to help others, to extend compassion for humanity, to come together and overlook their hatred for each other.

Suddenly that miscarriage becomes an opportunity to surrender to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, to turn in submission to Him, suddenly everything becomes a miracle and everything becomes an opportunity to grow the soul. If it wasn't for all these calamities and suffering, we would all die as materialistic, selfish, impatient cowards. But it is because of sufferings that some of us grow and become the followers of those who gave their lives in Karbala. I haven't come to maasaib, but when you look at the history of Karbala, we always glorify this, how the mothers sacrificed their sons, how they went into sajjda and did shukr to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Where did they get all this from? They got it from their Self and their development of their souls from before. But if Karbala had not happened, if that calamity had not happened, then the opportunity to do that Sajjda ash-Shukr wouldn't have been there. So the calamity becomes important. Ya ayyua al-Insan, innaka kadiun ila Rabbika kadhan famulaqih" (Quran 84:6). O human being, O insan, you are constantly struggling and you're constantly working very, very hard and striving. You don't know this, but your struggle and striving is to find Me, is to find Allah. "Innaka kadihun ila rabbika kadhan". Extremely, your soul is struggling to find me. Famulaqih, and they will come a day you will meet him.

Now this Mulaqih is Liqa'a of Allah. Liqa'a of Allah is not in a physical sense because Allah is not a physical being. What is Liqa'a of Allah? In a word, it is this higher consciousness and awareness which can be attained to some degree in this world. That is why in a final verse of Quran from Surat Al-Jathiyah, Allah says that on the Day of judgment, those who turn away from this, those who avoid the dhikr of Allah, those who only occupy themselves with this world, those who do not care about developing their souls to come to this point where they will meet Me, they will not meet Me. They will not get this Liqa'a Allah.

"Wa qila lyawma nansakum kama nasitum liqa' yawmikum hadha" (45:34). And it will be said to them, This day you shall be forgotten the way you forgot this Liqa'a of Allah. And they will be told, 'Wa maawakum al-naar wa ma lakum min naasireen' (45:34). And now, hellfire shall be your abode and destiny, and there shall be no one to come to your help.

This is essentially the message to myself and to all of us that, yes, we struggle with life, we live in a world where Allah is not promoted, but we must never forget this message from Allah through His messenger, through the Imams to the Quran, that our primary purpose in life is to find our Creator. The Imams and the Prophet are the best teachers and guides for this. We have lots of role models and examples by which we can change some priorities in life initially and then all of them eventually so that everything we do in life is driven towards finding this higher consciousness towards Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.