Seeking Higher Meaning
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ
In the Name of Allah Most-Compassionate, Most-Merciful
As Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala says in the Quran:
مَن كَانَ يُرِيدُ الْعِزَّةَ فَلِلَّهِ الْعِزَّةُ جَمِيعًا إِلَيْهِ يَصْعَدُ الْكَلِمُ الطَّيِّبُ وَالْعَمَلُ الصَّالِحُ يَرْفَعُهُ وَالَّذِينَ يَمْكُرُونَ السَّيِّئَاتِ لَهُمْ عَذَابٌ شَدِيدٌ وَمَكْرُ أُوْلَئِكَ هُوَ يَبُورُ
“If any do seek for glory and power, to Allah belong all glory and power. To Him mount up (all) Words of Purity: It is He Who exalts each Deed of Righteousness. Those that lay Plots of Evil, for them is a Penalty terrible; and the plotting of such will be void (of result).” (Qur’an, al-Fatir 35:10)
The Power of Meaning
The meaning of this ayah is clear enough and relates to a hadith of the Prophet (s) when he said, “Anyone seeking a hand in this affair will be cut off from it”. ‘Affair’ in this case referred to ‘power’ and ‘authority’. In other words, power should not be sought for its own sake, and thus anyone seeking power for its own sake or through the claim of helping others will be far removed from ever being in such a position. The simple reason for this is that one never knows the motives of the self which can seek to mislead a person though claiming power only to help others. In reality we can know we whether we have spoken the truth in this claim, which doesn’t mean we stop seeking to help people, but on the contrary we do not seek power in order to help others, but rather pray to Allah for whatever is best for our religion. This will ensure there is no possible selfish motive, hidden or manifest, in what we desire. Seeking power also represents love of leadership which in Islam is considered one of the diseases of the heart because it denotes ignorance and arrogance. Ignorance because one may not actually be fit to be a guide for others, may not possess the requisite humility or sincerity and yet is seeking to guide others, and arrogance for the same reason, because one considers oneself as possessing such qualities as to lead the creation of Allah and not fear the consequences of misguiding them. There is much that has been written on love of leadership as a poor sign of character. (See purification of the heart by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf).
Power and Meaning
The third issue related to power is meaning. In other words one of the primary reasons why the Qur’an warns us against seeking wealth and power is because both of these two pursuits represents meaning for the people that pursue them as their sole endeavour. Again, because no one has been given an insight into their hearts we have been consistently warned to avoid seeking them even though we might think we’re seeking them for a good purpose. The reality will be quite different. Instead both wealth and are accorded by Allah out of His will and according to His plan, in which we must trust and also trust in Him that only He knows what is best for us.
Another reason for not seeking wealth and power related to meaning is because both have the ability to stop a person dead in their tracks on their quest for meaning. In other words if we seek meaning through wealth and power then once we’ve acquired those things we’ll have achieved both meaning as well as our material needs and hence be content. If we add religious practice to this then we’ve arrived at a point of major self-contentment and yet potentially we couldn’t be further from the truth. The point here is not that there is a problem with wealth, but the problem is the potential for wealth to cause a person to feel content with what they have and its ability to prevent a person from pursuing a path of meaning. In other words seeking wealth as a means of gaining meaning cannot be compared to seeking meaning only with Allah, making Allah our sole pursuit, and if Allah then so wishes to bless us with wealth then Alhamdulillah. But the pursuit of wealth should never be our primary aim.
Meaning and Sincerity
Another aspect to this is to consider the purpose of sincerity. Sincerity exists for two purposes. One is for its own sake. In other words, our primary aim in terms of character is to possess sincerity because it is the mark of a truthful person. But sincerity is not something that can be prayed for which Allah will grant as a result of a dua’a. Sincerity is gained through a consist pursuit of truth and consistently doing and seeking to do good deeds. Hence over time a person begins to acquire the traits of sincerity because he ceases in trying to be sincere and becomes sincere because what he knows he should desire is actually what he desires, and what he knows he should act upon is actually what he acts upon and is happy in this regard. The other aspect of sincerity is related to meaning in that one cannot seek meaning unless one is sincere in its pursuit. In other words seeking meaning requires a consistent effort over quite a considerable period of time. Meaning does not arrive overnight and requires considerable patience and forebearance particularly in the face of difficulty. Hence, unless a person possessed sincerity he would give up in his quest for meaning. Sincerity also ensures that the one seeking meaning does so with sincerity and does not pursue it for worldly gain. Again, of the obstacles that will remove those that are seeking higher meaning for worldly gain, whether through their knowledge or not, is difficulty in pursuing this path. The one who is not sincere or has not attained a certain level of sincerity will not progress any further on the path of gaining higher meaning. And hence this is how by degrees Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala separates people and how by degrees Allah subhanhu wa ta’ala teaches people.
سَنُقْرِؤُكَ فَلَا تَنسَى
“By degrees shall We teach thee to declare (the Message), so thou shall not forget” (Qur’an, al-A’la 87:6)
The higher meaning to which we have consistently referred here relates to two questions. One fundamental question is what does our life and all its experiences mean? The questioning of that question, and its subsequent answers lead to the second aspect, which is Allah. Allah is the meaning to everything because in reality there is only Allah, and everything else is contingent on His existence. So for those who do not seek a meaning behind their existence or do so only on a limited basis will be separated from Allah according to their effort. Whilst Allah guides all those He chooses to His path, He must also be sought. The reason for this is the reason for our creation which is to test and separate people according to their truthfulness. The more honest we are the greater will be our effort to gain closeness to the truth, gain greater meaning and hence seek closeness to Allah. If we accept the reality we are born into or accept the version of reality filtered to us through culture or tradition, then we become to a large extent a product of the environments we are born into just as Imam al-Ghazali observed. And thus if we do not endeavour to seek those answers through exertion, despite being given the intellectual ability, we are denying the very truth written into our souls, that God exists and must be sought through none but Him. And the one that sincerely seeks Him will being to percieve His reality everywhere, both outwardly in the universe and within himself as the Qur’an states:
سَنُرِيهِمْ آيَاتِنَا فِي الْآفَاقِ وَفِي أَنفُسِهِمْ حَتَّى يَتَبَيَّنَ لَهُمْ أَنَّهُ الْحَقُّ أَوَلَمْ يَكْفِ بِرَبِّكَ أَنَّهُ عَلَى كُلِّ شَيْءٍ شَهِيدٌ
“Soon will We show them our Signs on the horizons, and in their own souls, until it becomes manifest to them that this is the Truth. Is it not enough that thy Lord is witness all things?” (Qur’an, al-Fussilat 41:53)
