“And if Allah touches you with hurt, there is none who can remove it but He; and if He intends any good for you, there is none who can keep back His favour; He brings it to whom He pleases of His servants; And He is the Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.”
– Qur’an, surah Yunus; 10:107
Dear Readers,
Many sufferers have spoken about experiencing a sense of disconnect from God or people… or both. This feeling of disconnect results in innumerable panic attacks for many, especially during the month of Ramadan. Last Ramadan was a challenge. Many people had per-conceived notions about Ramadan, about recovery and healing. They didn’t expect the mental battle to intensify and the Demon of Eating Disorder to exercise so much control over their minds and spirits. I’ll cover this topic of Eating Disorders in Ramadan soon in detail Inshallah.
Please find below an answer to Question, Where Can we Find God?
“I’m so trapped in my ED I no longer know how to look for happiness. I don’t know where to find God’. I feel God is so distanced. I soothe myself with food all the time. I look at scales and the number on scale for reward. It sounds bad, but I feel God favors my sister over me, she’s everything I’m not, smart, thin, popular. I get so angry with her and everyone around me. Recently we went through a major crisis. My mother said it was a miracle we survived the crisis. She says God was very favorable to us. I agree with her. It made me feel so guilty. I started to look for God. I just wish I hadn’t deliberately disconnected from Him. I try to pray but it’s an effort. I want to let go off the ungrateful attitude ‘I’m fat and my sister’s thin’, but it’s a struggle. I want to rediscover God. I’ve joined a support group for my BED, it’s a start but what I really want is to feel God is there with me and loves me.”
17 year old BED sufferer Lancashire
First We must address the question, how do we become disconnected from God?
Disconnect’ is either a deliberate choice or an accident. Sometimes we deliberately disconnect from people we feel don’t like, or don’t understand us. We say to ourself, ‘I will never let them that close to me again’ and emotionally we disconnect. We even do it to God. If we suspect He favours others over us or that He has let us down, we can inwardly disconnect from trusting Him like we once did. That’s deliberate. It happens deep inside us. Others may never see it but we feel it, and it changes us as people.
Then there are times when we suddenly become aware we feel disconnected from God or people and don’t immediately know why! We suddenly feel outside the group. However your disconnect got there, it must be fixed. And fast! Your ‘disconnect’ is slowly killing you both spiritually and socially.
Why Because We Start to Question the very existence of God and rely more fully on our addiction and behvaiors to make us feel complete- It takes patience and practice to connect with God. God communicates with us all the time—through the beauty of creation, the love of friends and family.
Innumerable changes of moods are yours,
and they are uncontrolled by you.
If you knew their origin,
you would be able to dominate them.
If you cannot localize your own changes,
how can you localize that which formed you?
– Jalaluddin al-Rumi
[Fihi Ma Fihi]
In this video Ihsan Alexander gives us a brilliant answer on where to find God?
SO WHERE CAN WE FIND GOD?
The direction is internal and in many cases we think about the travel or the journey and we imagine that we have to travel outward even on the profound way we start to compare the adventure to God as some kind of voyage, however the truth of the otherworldly way in it’s an excursion inside of, a trip profound within us and God’s otherworldly vicinity can’t be discovered anyplace in paradise or on earth yet must be discovered just in the heart and the spirit of the devotee. Things being what they are, how would we achieve God? Which way we go is inwards, not outwards and this is the reason in Islam, it is so vital to comprehend why there is a direction for request to God, a direction to which we confront. When we ask, we should face Mecca the main heavenly place. Each Muslim on the planet should be confronting in that direction to beg.
Additionally, what is a Kabah?
It is the place of God. It is known not the place of God. Obviously, God doesn’t physically live in the Kabah. It is a spot, an image, a point of convergence for each devotee to understand that they ought to be confronting is towards God however where can God truly be found?
In spite of the fact that another person has likewise said in the hadith articles that the prophet SAW additionally said something related that “neither the heavens nor the earth can contain me, I can be found in the heart of a true believer”. So where is God? He’s not out there and not in the Kabah. The truth of God must be seen inside, down somewhere down in your spirit, in your heart.
What’s more, this is the acknowledgment that Rumi stirred to when He started to spin. We have all known about the whirling dervishes that have started with the memory of the request and it is an extremely lovely move where the dervishes are basically doing this whirling move around their own particular circles, support or turn. It is a standout amongst the most intense and otherworldly practice there is, and the truth that came to Rumi when he understood that God was inside of himself, in his spirit and he understand that a central mentally as well as really experience the awesome vicinity at a manifestly obvious and essential level, he started to Ṭawāf (طواف), he started to make a transformation in circum-copying around the center of his extremely being; he started to spin more than once until he actually move around the hub and focus of his own being, at the mystery of the whirling dervishes.
That is a mystery of the whirling dervishes and on the otherworldly way known as the force of sophism in Islam. It is intended to lead a man to the most profound acknowledgment – which they genuinely are and that most profound experience of Divine Presence so that is the genuine motivation behind the heavenly vicinity.
So this is the genuine motivation behind meditation.
A thoughtful profound practice is to pull back from the universe of formal appearances which ordinarily involves all our consideration and afterward to be available inside, to be still and to become observant.
A Simple 3 Minute Exercise to Reconnect
As we put ourselves more and more in His presence, we grow in familiarity with Him, then Inshallah we will be better able to hear Him, feel He really cares and how truly blessed we are. Allah”s love is 70 times more than a mother’s love to her children.
Each time you are falling in a cycle of ED behaviors, negative thinking and you feel a disconnect;
STOP! Reflect on What your feeling.
Remove yourself from your setting.(I find being outdoors a great therapy. A small walk.)
Close your Eyes, Look deep into your heart, do a Dhikr, Allah Allah Allah and feel Him in air, in creation, in your every heartbeat.
And then Release Everything in His care. Your worries, your disconnect, your anxieties.
You must do this – prayer is a way to re-establish your connection with God. Prayer puts us into a day-by-day, moment-by-moment relationship with God. It allows us to get to know him. It’s how we communicate with him.
Soon you will realize that you have been sabotaging yourself by believing God is not with you. The truth is you need to trust God. Change happens one decision at a time. No matter what your emotions tell you, listen to truth, God is omnipresence and He has been that way for all eternity. If you continue to apply this key thought, you will begin to feel the connection and will feel a sense of calm take over.
My prayer for you is that you praise God for His presence, ask what He wants from you, slow down, and allow Him to transform you.
If you make intense supplication
and the timing of the answer is delayed,
do not despair of it.
His reply to you is guaranteed;
but in the way He chooses,
not the way you choose,
and at the moment He desires,
not the moment you desire.
– Ibn Ata’illah Iskandari
[Al-hikam al-‘Ata’iyyah]
