Daniel Thomas Dyer
As we enter the last ten days of Ramadan, my thoughts turn to Laylatul Qadr, the Night of Power. Reflecting on what Muhammad (peace be upon him) experienced on this night – the receiving of the first revelation (and perhaps the seed of the entire Quran) – it strikes me how deeply mystical Islam is. In fact, it seems to me that to really understand and embrace Islam, one necessarily has to be a mystic.
Yet many Muslims regard mysticism as something “dreamy”; some even react to it with vehement condemnation. Mysticism seems to me to be the opposite of dreamy; it’s the pursuit of the Real. We might define the mystic as someone who senses that God is not some external authority figure separate from His creation, but a Reality living within it, and especially within the human heart; and that we can learn to dissolve our own hard-hearted selves into this greater Reality through spiritual practice.
This seems to be clearly borne out by the experiences of Muhammad on the Night of Power. Meditating silently in a cave, Muhammad was not presented with a physical book from which to read by an external authority figure.
More here https://www.patheos.com/blogs/livingtradition/2019/05/the-mystical-heart-of-ramadan/
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