Each Cup Yearns To Be Filled

In the heart there is a void that cannot be removed except with the company of God. And in it there is a sadness that cannot be removed except with the happiness of knowing God and being true to Him. And in it there is an emptiness that cannot be filled except with love for Him and by turning to Him and always remembering Him. And if a person were given all of the world and what is in it, it would not fill this emptiness.

- Ibn Qayyim Al Jawziyyah

Many folks ask me how Islam became my spiritual path. This question, though from someone yearning to be inspired, is often asked at the wrong place and the wrong time. A young man’s conversion process is a deep spiritual transformation to say the least and not something to be stated in a few sentences. In the past, the question frustrated me because I felt it belittled the transformation. Only after getting married and sharing the intimate details of my life with my spouse did I realize that my spiritual wayfaring could be a means of inspiration. And thus I begin, sharing the tale of a young man’s conversion.

Emptiness

Freedom was not an unusual idea growing up. I had two loving parents who gave me the opportunity to express myself. My parents, though raised Catholic, had foregone religious instruction and left me to my own philosophical wanderings. To spare so many details, my childhood was quite normal, though I had gone through the hardship of a divorce while entering my teenage years.

I discovered philosophy while in high school. I used to read, or at least pretend to read the likes of existentialist philosophy and beat literature. My high school days launched me in a search for meaning. This search, accompanied with all the mind-altering substances that would characterize the 60’s hippy movement, was the sole purpose of my adolescence. I didn’t care for grades nor did I care for success. I cared about figuring out why I have been placed on this Earth and why I must face death.

My first experience with God was when I was 16 or 17 years old. It was around Christmas time. My mother and I had never been the type to fully embrace the Christmas tradition. Of course, we shared a meal and gifts but the extravagance that was found in some families’ tradition was absent in our home.

I was spending the evening with a good friend and I began to feel a deep angst in my heart. It seemed that this feeling had been lurking within for quite some time and I had been able to suppress it by futile entertainment. An inexplicable emptiness overcame me. I felt as if life had no meaning whatsoever and this led me to a profound sadness. I started feeling restless and realized that I needed to get home. As I went home, I sat in my bedroom and began to contemplate my short life. I had relived the good moments and the hard ones. The emptiness I felt at that moment was unbearable. It was as though time had crushed the inner depths of my soul… and it was painful. I had gone into the darkest corners of my mind for eight excruciating hours. It was only until I decided to pray that I found sleep. When I woke up, I felt a mysterious peace.

Decree

It wasn’t until my late teens and 20s that I began to see the fruits of that peace. Life was beginning to be increasingly meaningful but the emptiness would still show up every now and again. I devoured On The Road and Dharma Bums by the Beat author Jack Kerouac. These inspired me to travel. I wasn’t interested in tourism though; I wanted to be a vagabond. Kerouac had romanticized the idea of forsaking the world by finding freedom on the road. I didn’t want money; I wanted Truth. And it was Truth that I would go seek.

In the summer of 2008, I had decided to hitchhike Eastern Canada with my dear brother Abdel Majid. In the spur of the moment, we left Ottawa and began hitching rides towards the East. When we were picked up, folks would ask us where we were going and we simply answered: “East.” This often baffled the generous drivers but it also piqued their curiosity. Here we were; two young men with great big smiles, hopes and dreams, yearning to travel towards the rising sun. Most of our friends travelled west, but we fell in love with the idea of going towards the Orient in the hopes of being ‘oriented.’

Hitchhiking taught me patience. It was after this trip that I understood that all moments are decreed and that true freedom is being patient with it. I remember the moment we felt the reality of decree as if it was yesterday. We were sitting on highway 132 just outside Sainte-Anne-des-Monts. It was a cold rainy day. Abdel Majid and I only had one pair of gloves so we decided it would be best to each have one glove to bear the cold. Cars were nowhere to be found. I’d say a car would pass every 5 to 10 minutes. The conditions were awful, we barely had any money and we didn’t know where we were going or where we would end up. But despite this, we were at peace. We were sitting on the curb and we knew that everything was going to work out. We watched each drop of rainfall into the puddle in front of us and contemplated the beauty of the perfect circle that appeared in the water for a moment. The soul is like a drop of rain yearning to return to its source. Our life is the resulting circle. We come, we go and we finish infused in the water. I had found peace.

The Unseen

On this trip, we had finally gotten to a town called Cap-aux-os. The name of this place is translated as The Cape of Bones; it was a place where whales went to die. We stayed there for two weeks. It was during this time that I came to know the unseen. We were walking on the beach that we were staying on and met a peculiar fellow by the name of Justin Mann. Justin had been on the road for over 6 years. He had travelled across the world and had spent time with Shamans in South America. He had studied natural medicine and indigenous spirituality. Justin taught me to believe in the unseen. I was convinced that this man was a sorcerer. He had the ability to convince people to the extent that it seemed he could bend space and time. Justin taught us how to control our dreams and to connect with nature. He brought Abdel Majid and I to a realm that we could never return from. He showed us that in this universe there is more than meets the eye. I now believed in spirits.

Spirit

I began to feel as though there was more to life than this material world. I was convinced that there are men and women who have access to a dimension that was beyond me. This is what some religious traditions call enlightenment, and this is what I wanted for myself. My studies in philosophy had not amounted to much. I had thought that it would help find the meaning of life but lo and behold, philosophy was simply a means to refine one’s rhetorical capacities. On the other hand, religion and spirituality began answering what I had sought to search since the epitome of my existential emptiness.

As most of us Western white people, I began with Yoga. I had become addicted to searching for truth in it. I would memorize the postures and the various deities associated to them. I studied chakra theory, kundalini, ayurvedic texts, the Vedas and was completely enraptured by this tradition and it felt great. Not only did I know Vedic eschatology but I also knew how to meditate in a handstand! I would memorize and chant various mantras to stimulate my spirit. This was my life for a year.

I felt spiritual but also hypocritical. Here I was telling people how to live while I didn’t know anything. I had embraced the metaphysical realities of the East but my personality was repulsive. I was overtly prideful, judgmental, ostentatious and arrogant. Spirituality became a means to get what I wanted.

Our society is plagued with an emptiness so easily filled with materialistic nonsense. Many simply find peace through brands, television, Internet, social media, food, alcohol, etc. Yet there are some who yearn for more. They are those who yearn for meaning, for love, for connection, for spirit and for God. I came to notice that I fell into this latter category. My issue though is that I had read so many works of ancient mystics that ambiguous spiritual aphorisms made me sound “deep.” I simply regurgitated the words of great men and women who had a glimpse of enlightenment with the hope that the people around me would see me as enlightened.

I was dead wrong. Spirituality needed to be contained in a tradition. It couldn’t just be free flowing. It needed to conform to a tradition that had a theological, ethical and legal foundation. The New Age spirituality has mistakenly appropriated to words of mystics as “daily inspirations.” No doubt, these quotes hold can tickle the soul. But no word or doctrine can ignite the spiritual alchemy of enlightenment. Tradition was needed.

God

During my spiritual search, I had become accustomed to fasting at least part of month of Ramaḍān, one of the sacred months of Islām. Fasting seemed like an effective way of self-purification, asceticism, and spiritual practice. I had been attempting to fast for three of the months since I had many friends who practiced. Abdel Majid was one of them. On a night in the later days of Ramaḍān, we had begun to question our intention behind the fast. We didn’t pray and I personally didn’t have complete faith in God. I believe, though, that Abdel Majid had a different relationship to our Creator. Abdel Majid came to me with a calm and serene look in his face. He announced that he had a profound dream. A woman came to him and took his right hand. On his palm, she wrote the name of Faṭima, the beloved daughter of the Prophet, may the peace and blessings of God be upon him. Abdel Majid was a descendent of Imām al-Haṣan, our Lady Fatima’s son. This was not something that he spoke of very often but it was clear based on this dream that his ancestral lineage called him back to God. From that moment on, he would never be the same.

Abdel Majid has begun praying and he developed a particular spiritual practice that seemed to some as strict. I, on the other hand, saw his transformation as a means to connect to a tradition he had lost. I began to yearn for the same peace. This led me to consider Islam as the possible tradition of our time: the spiritual tradition that confirms and conforms to our primordial nature. I dove into the many great saints that were produced by this tradition. Imām al-Ghazalī, Jalāluddīn Rumī, Ibn al-ʿArabī, Farīduddīn Aṭṭār, Manṣūr al-Ḥallāj, to name a few. I thought to myself, only a true path could produce men of such spiritual and intellectual caliber. These men had reached what seemed to be the goal of all religious and spiritual traditions: enlightenment. But it wasn’t an enlightenment of the ancients. It was one that mingled perfectly with the conditions of our times. I began to study the works of notable converts to Islam such as René Guénon, Fritjof Schuon and Martin Lings. Through them, I was introduced to the 20th century saint Shaykh Aḥmad al-ʿAlawī. I was now convinced that enlightenment was possible on one condition. That condition had to be a complete submission to God. I had to make taslīm (submission in Arabic) to become Muslim (submitted). I had to accept Islām.

Repentance

Conversion and repentance are two very different experiences. I converted at the end of 2009 but my first repentance (tawbah) happened in the summer of 2012, about a year and a half after accepting Islām.

Abdel Majid passed away. He had returned to Morocco to reconnect with his roots and had decided to visit Spain and France. On the first day of Ramaḍān, he was suddenly killed in a car accident. Following, the news of his death, I quickly decided to fly to Morocco and attend his funeral in the Atlas Mountains. During those days, I considered myself Muslim but to a certain extent had been nominally Muslim. I was interested in the spirituality of Islām but struggled with incorporating the practice as a whole.

One night, as I was contemplating the beauty of the Atlas, I fell asleep and had a profound dream. I was lounging in this wonderful rainforest-like place with extraordinary waterfalls, magnificently green trees, birds of all colors and the sweetest of rose and jasmine scents. I knew that I had made it to Paradise. I was in the Garden. I felt an immense joy and contemplated my life well lived. As the day ended and night appeared, I began to stargaze. If my surroundings could be so beautiful, one could only imagine how amazing the sky would be.

I noticed one particularly bright star right on top of me. As I looked at this star, it came to be that it was none other than the Prophet, may the peace and blessings of God be upon him. Suddenly, I began to feel a deep sadness in my heart. I kept noticing stars around him that were slightly dimmer and recognized that these were his Companions. And around them, I saw the martyrs, the pious and the saints. Amongst them, there was a particular star that caught my attention. It quickly came to me that it was Abdel Majid. He was in the companionship of the Prophet, may the peace and blessings of God be upon him.”

When my gaze returned to my environment, the sadness had intensified and the beauty around me no longer seemed so extraordinary. The yearning that appeared within me felt as though my insides were burning. I felt like I was no longer in Paradise. The fires of hell had reached my soul.

It was when I woke up, that I renewed my commitment to God and to His Messenger ﷺ. It was then that I realized the purpose of my life and that the final goal had finally been made clear. What else could be more desired than to be amongst those you love?