So how do we express our inactive dormant qualities, strengthen the weak ones, and balance the deficiencies to allow new expressions to take place?
How to become moralized with the morals of Allah?
There are two ways:
1. From the outside in
2. From the inside out
The first is relatively easier to achieve. The most effective way is to find someone, a master, who has already achieved this, and submit to him. Constantly following his orders, doing things that go against your comfort zone, conditionings and egoistic tendencies allows one to move to a higher more refined level. Consequently, new meanings will begin to reveal and express themselves.
“The hue of Allah! And what can be better than being colored with the hue of Allah?”[1]
The second way is much harder to achieve. One must have a very comprehensive and deep contemplative intellectual ability. So that through extensive research and study he can discover the meanings within his essence and take their hue and hence be colored with the hue of Allah.
In order to know thyself, one must first discover and understand the meanings of the known names of Allah and then the infinite unknown names within his own essence…
Any and every action done without consciously knowing why, how and for what purpose it is done, is the outcome of your ‘nature’, based on your ‘program’. And every counter action of a behavior you put forth as your nature, will lead to suffering.
The individual Hell is nothing other than the state of being stuck within the stifling boundaries of one’s nature, temperament, conditioning, personality, ego-identity! These constitute the fuel of hellfire. When you act according to someone’s make up and temperament you are only fueling their hellfire. Yet due to their programming, they will actually take pleasure in it!
On the other hand, when you invite them to an area that is outside their comfort zone - their deeply ingrained identity program- and ask them to accept certain things that go against their set ways, even though they may at first be extremely discomforted by this, eventually when they start accepting it with tolerance and grace they will have entered the state of paradise. For when one reaches the station of acceptance all suffering will end.
Anything that gives one a sense of internal burning, leads them into a state of suffering or depression is undoubtedly conflicting with their ego-identity and nature, that is, the essential reality of the person is overshadowed by and repressed by these programs.
If and when he can overcome these limitations, he will be free from all suffering and classify as one of “those who are freed from hell while in this world”. Otherwise his suffering will not end for a very very long time, neither in this world nor in the hereafter.
The grace and blessings of Allah and the intervention of the Rasul of Allah (saw) is the progression from the state of being the “servant of one’s Rabb” to being the “servant of Allah”. That is the evolution from the dependency on one’s compositional limitations, the restriction of his personality and programming, to reaching and experiencing his infinite limitless Self. It is the divine invitation to be freed of one’s illusory restraints and experience his authentic reality.
If Allah wills for his servant to taste the grace of infinity, He will allow him to be freed of his captivity to his ego-identity conditioned self, i.e. annihilate his illusory personality (“die before death”) and allow him to unite with his essential Self! Thence the servant will unite with Allah!