May these final days of Ramadan find you swimming in the infinite Ocean of Allah’s Mercy, Kindness, Compassion and Grace.
“Ar Rahman [The Compassionate] is like the ocean of infinite kindness and beauty. Ar-Rahman is the tide, overflowing in its mercy, all-embracing in its nature. It is the gate through which all the Divine Names flow.”
– from Divine Names: The 99 Healing Names of the One Love
by Rosina-Fawzia al Rawi
We all need to be reminded of our connection with Allah’s Compassion from time to time. Compassion is the Divine container in which we live, the cosmic soup in which we swim.
The earth might not always feel like a compassionate place, but as a whole, the earth and all of its inhabitants exist within a Divine Ocean which is too big for us to see. We are completely contained and embraced in its love.
Just as a baby in the mother’s womb cannot see his mother with his eyes, we cannot see that which holds and contains us. Once we are born, we can see her and feel her in a different way.
Similarly, we cannot gain visual perspective of the air that surrounds us when we are standing in the space where we have the ability to breathe. However, pictures from satellites that orbit the earth can give us perspective on the atmosphere that surrounds our planet.
The same is true of the journey of the spiritual seeker. We exist within an ocean that we cannot see with our eyes, but compassion can be known through the eye of the heart.
Sidi Shaykh Muhammad al-Jamal reminded us many times –
“You think you are a small star,
when in fact you contain the entire universe.”
When we travel through the heart into the ocean of love and compassion contained inside, we can experience the Divine Ocean. We recognize that it’s much easier to breathe from this ocean, that we are held and supported and loved.
In her book, Divine Names, Fawzia gives us a way to become aware of our connection with Compassion, ar-Rahman:
“Repeating this name induces the feeling that one is enfolded in the gentle clouds of mercy, and starts to dissipate the isolation, the feeling of separation that so often accompanies us human beings.”
“Kindness in one’s heart means to carry a gentleness in one’s heart which opens the eye of the heart and induces a deep feeling of connectedness to all the beings of this world which we then truly understand.”
Compassion returns us from a world of separation to a state of oneness and love. Ar-Rahman is the attribute of Allah through which all the other qualities flow into existence. It is a key to healing, to returning to wholeness, to experiencing the qualities of Allah.
May you carry kindness in your heart, and have a beautiful weekend of kindness, compassion, mercy and grace.
Mastura Graugnard on behalf of all your friends and family at UOS
P.S. Want to learn more about healing through the Divine Names of Allah? You are invited to join Dr. Robert Ibrahim Jaffe, MD, for a FREE Teleclass on Advanced Spiritual and Medical Healing. Click here for more information.
Photo credit: © zhengzaishanchu #159581723
