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The Testification of Faith

The Holy Prophet Muhammad is reported to have said:
“If the seven heavens and those who dwell in them are put into one pan of the scale and ‘la ila ha il Allah’ was put into the other, ‘la ila ha il Allah’ would be heavier.’
Do not consider this in terms of reward. In the words of Imam Al Ghazali, the spiritual path is not about doing business with Allah. The spiritual path is about seeking excellence in everything we do. It is about personal growth. It is about nobility of character and treating the universe with the utmost respect and love. Your personal excellence or ‘ihsan’ is measured by the extent to which you uphold the reality of ‘la ila ha il Allah’. There can be no creator but Allah, and therefore everything in your life was created by Him, every person in your life was created by Him, every experience in your life was created by Him, every challenge in your life was created by Him, from His Eternal Love and Concern for you. That is why ‘La ila ha Il Allah’ is worth more than everything in this existence, because it is the key to personal excellence. Articulating the expression ‘la ila ha il Allah’ is the beginning of the path, but the end is found, according to the Holy Prophet, when an individual is able to see Allah Almighty in everything, recognising that there is no Creator but Allah Almighty, there is no power but Allah Almighty, so how can anything in your life be other than what the All Knowing Lord of All desires for you? How can anything be going wrong right now? Indeed, there may be severe challenges and difficulties in our lives, things that we struggle with, that we can’t understand, and it is during such times that the true value of ‘la ila ha il Allah’ becomes evident. In the darkness, in the moments of hardship or pain, when circumstances become extremely difficult, the light that guides us through is ‘La ila ha il Allah’. Know that pain and struggle are not a sign of disbelief or weakness. Never believe that your tears or your broken heart are signs of defeat. Allah Almighty explains to us in the Holy Qur’an:
They encountered such suffering and adversity and were so shaken in spirit that even the Messenger and those of faith who were with him cried ‘when will come the help of Allah?’ Verily the help of Allah is always near.
But we should not confuse the help of Allah with ‘getting what we want’. The world is the way it is for a reason, and even though sometimes that is extremely difficult for us to understand, the help of Allah is always within us. A change of perspective, a change of narrative, a change of viewpoint. When supplicating to The One, the person of excellence doesn’t ask for her desires to be fulfilled. ‘Oh Allah make me rich, and powerful, and make me live in a mansion.’ The person of excellence recognises that the world is perfect as it is, and supplicates just as the Holy Prophet did, ‘O Allah, let me see truth as truth, and falsehood as falsehood’. O Allah, grant me the capacity to see through the prism of ‘La ila ha Il Allah’, that everything is beautiful because it was created by You for my benefit, to fulfil my needs, not to satisfy my ego or make me comfortable. The truth is that happiness and peace are not products of changing the universe around us, but rather the products of being changed by our experiences. Learning the lessons of the moment, changing the way we think about things, conditioning ourselves to see the magnificence, to see the Divine Love and Kindness in all that we experience. Not just ‘thinking positive’, pretending that everything is tolerable, but rather knowing that truly the universe is the handiwork of the Loving Creator, and therefore every experience we have is beautiful if we are able to see the reality of it.

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