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Ibn al'Arabi
Man is the form of God. Man is temporal, yet eternal.
Man is God’s mirror as Man sees God when he turns inwards in contemplation. In
this act God looks back upon himself and we contemplate God as Man. In this we
find a path of deification.
The idea of deification, of becoming divine, is
subject to a host of understandings mediated by religious affiliation. The sufi
saint Said al’Kharnlz as well as Ibn al’Arabi understood themselves as temporal
fluctuations on the body of God. It was the temporal that drove man to
contemplate the various parts of God’s body in himself as stations of life,
mind and heart were attained. All of God’s names are beautiful, they hold,
death, wrath, joy or blessing. Each state, it is deemed benevolent or
malevolent invites an exercise in contemplation where we strive to understanding
the inherent unity in what we see as paradox and oppositions. Faith,
contemplation, reason and heart are the four pillars that will bring stillness
to the reflective faculties and finally enable transcendence. Transcendence is
a state of beauty where we touch truth in awareness. In this we realize who all
opposition is united – and this unity of opposition is the Godhead.
This means that we will find divine particles and rays
in everything manifested and thus it is possible to worship God in a star, a
plant or an eidolon of reverence. But we need to be mindful that these are
solely parts and portions of the Godhead. God is limitless, which is why he
made Iblis to serve as his limit, hence Iblis is the power that bring form to
all things, material and immaterial. Iblis is the warden at the utmost
perimeter and we notice his effect in the world where everything gains it
shape, form and identity as much as he is the force that restricts our
unfolding and imagination.
It does follows that religion does limit God and show particular
facets of his body only and in isolating the hand from the eye parts of a
beautiful truth is presented in limiting ways that exalt one part of god’s body
as more important than other parts. In this we find the seed of separation and
hatred and we find blindness for the unity of opposition the Godhead is. As
religion is by virtue of its structural dynamic limiting it is only natural
that the boundaries of religion is questioned, tested and rebelled upon. But
the pilgrim of truth will never do this, rather, he or she will recognize the
worth and values a given religion gives and retracts in contemplation and allow
God to shine upon the mirror and provide understanding. Quite simply, if
something is, it is because it can serve as a mirror of contemplation in
manifesting a divine possibility, no matter how infinitesimal.
The path of contemplation is the radical opposite of
an eclectic path, and in spite of this much mysticism has been used to explain
eclecticism. Eclecticism means to elect from available systems, beliefs,
faiths, paradigms and dogmas what ones finds functional on a personal and
social level. The path of contemplation, what I have called the Traceless path,
is not occupied with electing what is functional on a personal or social level,
but to understand every plant, beast, planet, human and situation as the rich
variety of possibilities springing from God’s unity. There is no favouring of
the sinister or dexter, the higher or the lower- rather there is an emphasis on
understanding how all shades between darkness to splendour belongs to the
unfolding from the source.
Man is the form of God but deification is not found in
emerging oneself in matter and social conflicts where ambition and hunger for
power kindle a desire for enfleshing our godhood – this is surely to limit
it...
Deification was, is and will always be rooted in a
profound understanding of the divine signature all over the manifested world,
visible and invisible, that encourage us to ascend, through contemplation, so
we can gain a deeper and more complete picture of the divine landscape and
understand the importance in the distinction between the temporal and the
eternal.
Alas, today, when you take the word God in your mouth
it is like taking a dump in a cathedral... So many of us want to accomplish the
Great iconoclasm, to kill the God Nietzsche tried to burry just to find him
staring back at him from the abyss. God is source, it is the beginning of
wisdom, it is origin, it is not something we can describe. God is not what he
seems and is and will always be the supreme mystery that moves us to question ourselves
who we are and why we are here. Perhaps the
greatest problem is that God has become anthropomorphised into ridicule - and
perhaps the mirror of ridicule is what we often use when we contemplate
ourselves as God - and God as Man...
Salaam Aleikum!