The Work of Ramadan

We are coming to the end of another month of Ramadan. For me, I believe it is the 38^th! Alhumdulillah .But I am still working on the process, getting better year by year I hope –in small increments.

Nevertheless, I am still investigating the inner dimensions of this holy month, as the discourses I hear from the scholars rarely give me satisfaction. What is really going on? Yes, I know it is the month of patience and self-restraint. And I believe the rewards are from Allah himself. And I know it is from the order of Allah, to the religions before Islam as well.But what else is happening?

Here are some analogies that I have been entertaining:

• It is like the churning of butter. You keep turning the cream over and over again until you have a sweet material that you can spread on whatever you like or use in other cooking
• The alchemical process where base metals (our nafs with its desires) is converted into gold (the pure soul)
• Panning gold-where you have to go through tons of material( the idle thoughts or ‘khawatir’) to find tiny amounts of the desired metal(hal) and
• the process of producing maple syrup where the liquid sap coming out of the tree tastes quite neutral and only through boiling it slowly for long periods of time do you get the sweet syrup that we love so much.

Each of these metaphors has a particular appeal to my heart. But what they have in common is that there is a lot of work that needs to be done for a seemingly small result. But don’t be confused by the quantities. The product is sublime and the result may well be a lot more substantial then we can ever imagine.

So what IS the work? The work is all those moments of discomfort that you experience during the month. For myself ,I think I have experienced almost every ”minor “ symptom known to man lol- headaches, gastric distress, exhaustion(several times a day), weakness(often) difficulty concentrating and remembering, fever(only once this year) etc.,etc. Sound familiar? Don’t say: ”no” or you will be classified amongst the deniers lol.

N.B. When you say “fasting’ to most people they think hunger and thirst”. Actually those are the easiest to overcome .It is the other physical and mental symptoms that one has to struggle with and struggle it is. Ramadan is jihad-a-nafs. No doubt in my mind. But ,with a firmness of intention and a desire to submit one’s ego to a Higher Power ,our Lord gives us, at least most of us, the capacity to do it and the support to carry out this project to the end.

And what is the gold or sweetness referred to in the metaphors? At times we will feel the “nafahat”(sweet breezes) of a hal in which there are no thoughts and worries but only peace. At other times we will experience openings-to other people, to what the Quran is really saying, to words of wisdom we have heard in the past. And then there are  the hidden blessings-barely palpable but real nevertheless. And only Allah Himself knows the extent of them. So benefit now from the last few drops of this potent elixir and Eid Mubarak until next year. Salaams,Ibrahim