The question we need co ask ourselves is: ‘Is Allah One in my life? Do I direct everything to Him - from fears and hopes to needs?’ Realizing that He is One is to know that there is no love like His love，that there is no One who gives like Him，and that there is no One else who can fill the void — only Him, the One. Knowing that He is al-Wahid al-Ahad reminds us that this life is about Him. He is our ultimate goal. This life is temporary; its joys and pains will disappear, and this knowledge should negate our worldly attachments and our submission to them. Allah tells us in the Quran: ‘Our God is One, so devote yourselves to Him. [Prophet],give good news to the humble， whose hearts fill with awe whenever God is mentioned, who endure whatever happens to them with patience, who keep up the prayer, who give to others out of Our provision to them.”[22:34-35] This is submission to the oneness of God in action.
Sayfa 151Kitabı okuyor
We live in a world where we want things immediately. But, all around us, Allah teaches us a profound lesson, again and again: everything is a process and takes time.
“Success is dependent upon patience.” {3:200}
The Paradox of our Time in history
We can list the Paradox of our Time in history as follows:
* We have taller buildings, but shorter patience.
* We have wider highways, but narrower perspectives.
* We spend more, but have less.
* We buy more, but enjoy less.
* We have bigger homes, but smaller families.
* We have more household supplies, but less time.
* We have more education,
Perhaps a great maternity lies over everything, as a shared longing. The beauty of the virgin, of a being, who, as you put it so well, 'has not yet achieved anything', is maternity divining and preparing itself, anxious and full of longing. And the beauty of a mother is maternity at work, and that of the old woman a great memory. And in the man too there is maternity, as it seems to me, physical and spiritual; his engendering is also a kind of giving birth, and it is an act of birth when he creates out of his inmost resources. And perhaps the sexes are more closely related than we think, and the great renewal of the world will perhaps consist in man and woman, freed of all sense of error and disappointment, seeking one another out not as opposites but as brothers and sisters and neighbours, and they will join together as human beings, to share the heavy weight of sexuality that is laid upon them with simplicity, gravity and patience.
Lie down, then, on the soft couch which the analyst
provides, and try to think up something different. The analyst has
endless time and patience; every minute you detain him means money in
his pocket. . . . Whether you whine, howl, beg, weep, cajole, pray or
curse—he listens. He is just a big ear minus a sympathetic nervous
system. He is impervious to everything but truth. If you think it pays to
fool him then fool him. Who will be the loser? If you think he can help
you, and not yourself, then stick to him until you rot.
Sayfa 13Kitabı okuyor
That is the nature of people who are convinced of some truth, but have no patience for a different perspective or for dealing with someone else's psychology. These types are bullies, and in the short term they often get their way, particularly among the less aggressive. But they stir up a lot of resentment and unspoken antipathy, which eventually trips them up. People see through their righteous moral stance, which is most often a cover for a power play—morality is a form of power. A seducer never seeks to persuade directly, never parades his or her morality, never lectures or imposes. Everything is subtle, psychological, and indirect.
Sayfa 144Kitabı okudu
These are the main types (of Anti-Seducers).
1) The Brute: If seduction is a kind of ceremony or ritual, part of the pleasure is its duration—the time it takes, the waiting that increases anticipation. Brutes have no patience for such things; they are concerned only with their own pleasure, never with yours. To be patient is to show that you
Sayfa 133Kitabı okudu
He is left powerless to realize the transcendent, incapabable of plumbing the depth of experience, and conscious of
that universe upset by failure. Will he advance or at least draw the
conclusions from that failure? He contributes nothing new. He has
found nothing in experience but the confession of his own
impotence and no occasion to infer
