~ Emptiness ~

Truly in the heart there is a void that can not be removed except with the company of Allah.
And in it there is a sadness that can not be removed except with the happiness of knowing Allah
and being true to Him.

And in it there is an emptiness that can not 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 al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya )

~ Loneliness and Aloneness ~

Loneliness and Aloneness .........



When you are alone you are not alone, you are simply lonely - and there is a tremendous difference between loneliness and aloneness. When you are lonely you are thinking of the other, you are missing the other. Loneliness is a negative state. You are feeling that it would have been better if the other were there - your friend, your wife, your mother, your beloved, your husband. It would have been good if the other were there, but the other is not. Loneliness is absence of the other.

Aloneness is the presence of oneself. Aloneness is very positive. It is a presence, overflowing presence. You are so full of presence that you can fill the whole universe with your presence and there is no need for anybody.

This has been said again and again, down through the ages. All the religious people have been saying this: "We come alone into this world, we go alone." All togetherness is illusory. The very idea of togetherness arises because we are alone, and the aloneness hurts. We want to drown our aloneness in relationship....That's why we become so much involved in love.

Try to see the point. Ordinarily you think you have fallen in love with a woman or with a man because she is beautiful, he is beautiful. That is not the truth. The truth is just the opposite: you have fallen in love because you cannot be alone. You were going to fall. You were going to avoid yourself somehow or other. And there are people who don't fall in love with women or men--then they fall in love with money. They start moving into money or into a power trip, they become politicians. That too is avoiding your aloneness.

If you watch man, if you watch yourself deeply, you will be surprised--all your activities can be reduced to one single source. The source is that you are afraid of your aloneness. Everything else is just an excuse. The real cause is that you find yourself very alone.

Aloneness .....


Loneliness and aloneness
they are not the same

for the shell of the mind
hears echoes of many seas

it hears the calling of gulls
from this savage sky

and an ebbing tide
lapping the small white stones.

~ The Divine Being.~

The Divine Being .....


If a person goes through his whole life most cleverly judging others, he may go on, but he will find himself to be more foolish at every step. At the end, he reaches the fullness of stupidity. But the one who tries, tests, studies and observes himself, his own attitude in life, his own outlook on life, his thought, speech, and action, who weighs and measures and teaches himself self discipline., it is that person who is able to understand another better. How rarely one sees a soul who concerns himself with himself through life, in order to know! Mostly, every soul seems to be busily occupied with the lives of others. And what do they know in the end? Nothing. If there is a kingdom of God to be found anywhere, it is within oneself.

And it is, therefore, in the knowledge of self that there lies the fulfillment of life. The knowledge of self means the knowledge of one's body, the knowledge of one's mind, the knowledge of one's spirit; the knowledge of the spirit's relation to the body and the relation of the body to the spirit; the knowledge of one's wants and needs, the knowledge of one's virtues and faults; knowing what we desire and how to attain it, what to pursue and what to renounce. And when one dives deep into this, one finds before one a world of knowledge which never ends. And it is that knowledge which gives one insight into human nature and brings one to the knowledge of the whole of creation. And in the end one attains to the knowledge of the divine Being.