ou are an intentional creation of a perfect God. You are not a product of chance or luck. As the Qur’an says, “We did not create the heavens and the earth and everything between them playfully”
(21:16). There is no accidental life. Allah wrote your story with the pen of mercy, poured His love into every cell that dances and twirls inside of you, and blew His spirit into your mold of clay, making you a bridge between Heaven and Earth (15:29). Like a gentle breeze, God breathes the light of His love within your soil of dirt, bringing to life what was once dead earth (30:19).
You are far more beautiful than mirrors can sing about, you are far too intricate for language to weave into words, because you are the product of a divine love that is so holy and infinite that finite hands fall short in painting your truth. The love of God purposely overflowed to create you and everything in existence.
“The God who made the stars, the seas, the mountains and its peaks, the universe and its galaxies felt this world would be incomplete without you and without me. Do
you see how you are a puzzle piece in the whole—how without you here, there would be a hole? Your body is not just a clay tent that you live in, it’s a piece of the
universe you have been given. You are not a small star, you are a reflection of the entire cosmos. Can you hear the big bang in your heart? Eighty times a minute God knocks on the doors of your chest, to remind you that He has never left, and that He is closer to you than the jugular vein in your neck (50:16). Every moment is
divinely blessed, for this very moment God is blowing the breath of life through eight billion different human chests. You are not just star dust and dirt, you are a
reflection of God’s beauty on Earth. You are not this mortal body that death will one day take. You are an everlasting spirit held in the mortal embrace of clay. You
are not a human being meant to be spiritual, you are a spiritual being living this human being miracle.”
ARU BARZAK, POET
Who You Are to God
You are not just the sum of your success, subtracted by your failures. Your worth is not just an equation of how much you can offer to the world. Your value does not just come from what you give, say, or do; there is more to you than just output. The sun doesn’t have to run laps around the horizon, the days do not have to pass to purchase your worth, you are not worth it in some future plane. You are not worthy only in the innocence of your past because it is not what you have done or do that makes you worthy. Your worth does not come just by your doing, it comes through the perfect God who created you.
Stop calculating your worth with finite numbers when you were created by an infinite God who brought you to life with an everlasting spirit of light. Stop dividing who you are by the denominator of other people’s opinions. Remember, infinity divided by any number is still infinite. Remember forever cannot be reduced no matter how much you subtract. Remember you are not currency to fall and rise in value.
You do not own yourself to dictate what price you are worthy of being sold. Stop pricing God’s merchandise.
Like a flawless emerald would not require a beautiful setting to dictate its worth, the value of your spirit is intrinsic because it belongs to God. You are not defined by the opinions of men, by mirrors or by compliments.
Although your sins can veil your heart from fully witnessing God, nothing you do can change how God sees you. Your sins and scars can never remove God’s presence from your heart, because regardless of who you are or who you have been, God’s mercy will always encompass you. Your value is not defined by worldly labels, because although God created this world for you, He says, “I created you for Myself” (20:41).
Our work on Earth is not to become something different, but to awaken from the illusion that we are separate from what we seek.
We already carry faith within us; our spirits are and always will be in communion with God. The human soul was not created to become perfect, but to be aware of its completion and its connection with a higher power.
“Enlightenment is when a wave realizes it is the ocean.”
THICH NHAT HANH, ZEN MASTER
It is not only through our striving that we spiritually progress, but when we surrender everything that prevents us from seeing that beneath the dust of forgetfulness, we already are what we seek to become. We already are loved by God.
“You wander from room to room, hunting for the diamond necklace, that is already around your neck.”
RUMI
It is not a surprise then that in Arabic the word for a human being is insan, which many scholars suggest is derived from the root words nisyan, which means “forgetfulness,” and unsiyah, which means “intimacy, to love, to be loved, and to become close to.” At the very root of being human we can see that we were not created to find God, but rather to remember and return to the intimate relationship we already have with Him. Our journey on Earth is not
just to God, it is from God, with God, and into the love of God. The path to God is less of a spiritual path and more of a spiritual undressing of all that prevents you from seeing that in this very moment God is with you wherever you are (57:4).
The Infinite Faces of God
Everything on Earth points to God. Everything here has a divine fragrance. As the Qur’an says, “We will show them Our signs in the horizons and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that this is the truth” (41:53), confirming the idea that a divine signpost resides at the core of all creations, and an underlying unity exists among all manifested multiplicity. As Allah says, “the heavens and the earth were joined together as one united piece and then we parted them” (21:30). The Qur’an says that you were united with all of humankind within the embrace of a single soul before you were ever given a separate human existence (39:06).
In essence, God is telling us that everything seen and unseen in existence comes from a single origin. Just as the iron in your blood was made from the fusion of stars and your bones carry the dust of galaxies beyond, you were not only made in Heaven, you were made from the heavens. You are not merely living in the universe, you are living as a part of this universe.
“Just how infinite colors blossom from the light of a single sun, call it an atom or an Adam, everything was once one.”
ARU BARZAK, POET
The human being is the microcosm of the macrocosm, the bridge between Heaven and Earth, both with a mortal body and an everlasting spirit, both inclined to goodness and inclined to evil (91:7- 10). It is the dual nature of man that allows for him to be the perfect receptacle of God’s qualities, which is why Allah has chosen us to be His representatives of love upon this Earth. Even though the angels are in constant worship and witnessing of God, their perfection and lack of free will prevents them from experiencing the entirety of
God’s qualities. After all, how can you experience forgiveness if you never make a mistake?
“If you did not sin Allah would replace you with people who would sin and they would seek the forgiveness of Allah and He would forgive them.”1
PROPHET MUHAMMAD
We human beings were given the trust of free will and intellect so that as a result of that freedom of choice we could come to know and experience God’s love. Allah says in the Qur’an, “We offered the Trust to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, but they declined to bear it and feared it, and the human being undertook it.
Indeed, he was unjust and ignorant” (33:72). Our ignorance of God, coupled with our ego’s inclination toward greediness, makes us humans often unjust and unwilling to rightfully bear the holy responsibility of being God’s just representatives on Earth. The status God has granted the human being is not something we should feel entitled to, but a gift we should feel grateful for being given the opportunity to manifest.
The Honor of the Human Being
The Qur’an begs us to reflect on how respected we are by God by asking, “Don’t you see that Allah has subjected to you everything in the heavens and in the earth and made complete to you His favors [bestowed His grace upon you] outwardly and inwardly?” (31:20) Despite all that we are given by God, there are still days that our freedom leads us to despair, as we attempt to swim against the current of God’s will, feeling the friction between what we want and what Allah knows we need. Despite all our achievements and successes, we still ask ourselves, How come I never feel good enough? How come no matter what I accomplish I am never fully satisfied?
We often do not feel good enough because we cannot reach true peace, contentment, and satisfaction, separate from God. It’s not through our actions, but through returning to God that we
become enough. The hole we carry inside, that we so desperately long to fill, comes from the experience of once being unified with all of existence. After all, how can you long for oneness if you have only ever been a separate body? How can you long for perfection if you have never experienced it? How can you long for an all- encompassing love if you have never tasted it?
“If a prisoner had not lived outside, he would not detest the dungeon.”
RUMI
Our longing for something that this world has not been able to fulfill is the greatest evidence for a world beyond this realm. The Qur’an reminds us of a subtle reality where God planted the seeds of faith, love, and unity in the fertile hearts of all humankind, known as the Covenant of Alast. In a pre-eternal realm, before this world as we know it, every soul that would one day manifest into an earthly form was asked by Allah, “Am I not your Lord?” This soup of souls vibrated into a symphony of affirmation as every single being replied,
“Yes, yes, we testify” to the singularity of God. As a result of this covenant, it can be said that at the soul level every person, regardless of conscious belief, is fully aligned with the Divine (7:172).
As a result of God’s unconditional love, faith is your divinely gifted birthright. Just as we cannot control our heartbeats or when our cells divide, our spirits are planted in the soil of God- consciousness whether or not we choose to water the seeds. Islam sees belief in the singularity of God as an innate part of what it means to be human. This is why the declaration of faith is seen as the beginning of our journey to fulfilling our purpose on Earth.
The Fitra and the Innate Goodness of Man
The innate alignment with the Divine that resides at the heart of being human is often called “the primordial essence” or referred to in Arabic as the fitra. The word fitra comes from a root word meaning
“to split or bring forth.” This implies that our work on this Earth is to split the shell of our ego and bring forth the divine seeds God has
already planted in the garden of our spirits through the generosity of His love.
The fitra is the innate disposition to believe in God, worship Him, and believe in His oneness. The Prophet Muhammad said that all children are born with the inclination to worship God and live a life in surrender to the Divine.2 If left alone, a child’s natural inclination to believe in God will continuously manifest. When someone follows a path rejecting divine love and instigating evil, it is not as a result of his nature but because of the influence of his parents or the environment in which he was raised. Despite the Qur’an consistently telling the believer to respect their parents, God also says that “We have commanded people to honor their parents, but if they urge you to associate with Me what you have no knowledge of, then do not obey them. To Me is your return, and I will inform you about what you used to do” (29:8).
Regardless of what our parents or any other person chooses to believe, the fitra or belief in God’s oneness (tawhid) is part of the hardware of all human beings. While the software of our minds can be encoded in different ways based on life experience and environment, the hardware of the fitra cannot be changed. As the Qur’an says, “Stand firm and true in your devotion to the religion.
This is the natural disposition (fitra) God instilled in humankind”
(30:30). In our natural state of being, we recognize God’s light, because we carry an imprint of this light within our spirit. In essence, faith is not setting aside rationality, but rather returning to who you truly are and have always been. This is why many mystics have said that our goal on Earth is not to summit a metaphysical mountain of spirituality, but rather to return to our original childlike state of fitra and purity.
Rumi describes the importance of blossoming our innate faith and manifesting our purpose on Earth through the following metaphor:
“One thing must not be forgotten. Forget all else, but remember this, and you’ll have no regrets. Remember and be concerned with everything else, but ignore this
one thing, and you’ll have done nothing. It is just as if a king had sent you to another country to carry out a specified task. You go and perform a hundred other
tasks, but if you have not performed that particular task, it is as though you have done nothing at all.”
RUMI
Our task is to become a holy tree of loving kindness and to share the faithful fruits of our fitra with the entire world. It is only when we truly believe in God and submit to Him that we are able to manifest our greatest potential as representatives of God’s love on Earth.
Adam and Eve and the Devil
The story of Adam and Eve is not an ancient myth; it is our story. We were created from dust and water, and sent to this world not only to love and worship God and return to Heaven, but also to become a manifestation of Heaven on Earth by reflecting God’s qualities of love and mercy upon all creation.3 As the Prophet Muhammad said, “Adorn yourself with Divine Qualities.”4
Both men and women are called to be mirrors of God on Earth and to work together to create harmony and peace for all people.
Just as a pomegranate seed cannot grow into a tree without soil, and soil cannot birth from itself pomegranate fruit without a seed, the divine masculine and divine feminine complement one another on the path of blossoming the soul.
Men and women are not physically identical, but they are equal in value in the eyes of God, for the soul has no gender.5 As the Prophet Muhammad says, “Verily, women are the twin halves of men.”6 In fact the word for “Eve” in Arabic is the same as the Hebrew word Hawwaah, which comes from a root word that means “source of life.”7 In essence, every time we reference Eve, we are reminded that although the prophets of God that were mentioned in the Qur’an were men, without women there would be no prophets born into this
world. This is why women are seen as the bridges of creation between Heaven and Earth.8
The Qur’an does not just honor the holiness of both men and women as the chosen representatives of God on Earth, but also teaches how to overcome our greatest enemy, the Devil. The Devil or Satan, in Arabic is called Shaytan, and may also be referred to as Iblis. The word Iblis is considered to be the Devil’s actual name and originates from a root word that means “to give up hope, to despair, to be hopeless.”9 In essence, Iblis is the one who incites hopelessness by attempting to deceive us into believing that we are bad and unlovable based on our actions. In traditional Islamic theology, Iblis is not seen as a fallen angel, because angels do not have free will and so they cannot sin or disobey Allah.10
The Qur’an describes the Shaytan as a jinn, a creation of God made from smokeless fire that is part of the ghayb or unseen realm.11 Although we cannot physically see the jinn, similar to human beings, they have been given free will; in other words, there are both good and bad jinn. The Shaytan is not the opposite of God, but a creation of God. Whereas some spiritual paths suggest there are separate gods of light and darkness that balance one another, the Qur’an states that Allah is One, has no equal opposites, and possesses infinite qualities of pure goodness that perfectly complement one another.
The Shaytan has no power, except for what Allah allows him to have (38:82-83). Even though the Shaytan is considered a “clear enemy to man” (17:53), his creation still has a holy purpose. Just as finding the hole in a leaking boat is a blessing because it shows us what needs to be patched, the divine mercy behind the existence of the Shaytan is that he shows us where our hearts are not in alignment with God. In fact, the twentieth-century spiritual master Sheikh Sidi Muhammad Al-Jamal refers to the Shaytan as “the fire at the gate of the garden” because his purpose is to confront and purify our base qualities. As the Qur’an says, “Satan threatens you with poverty and orders you to immorality, while Allah promises you