Reflection

I love this quote, mashallah! Rumi has amazing poetry to begin with, and this is one of the best. The person who gave me the quote also sent along an explanation.

''Once the mirror of your heart is clear and pure, you will see images
beyond this world of water and clay. You will see both the image and Maker
of the images, both the carpet of the kingdom and Him who lays the carpet."
- Jalaleddin Rumi

The dusty veil of accumulation in our heart
prevents the reflection of purer presence. When we look at a mirror, what do we
see? We see an exact reflection of ourselves, it doesn't conceal anything. When
we look at the mirror of our heart, we see many defects we don't like about
ourselves -- egoic feelings of pride, envy, desire, arrogance, judgement about
others etc etc. Only when we are able to clean ourselves from such inner
pride and purify our souls, we can move closer to Allah (SWT). Only then, our
hearts will discover the lights within it, the purer light of Being will be
reflected. Our hearts will be filled with remembrance of Allah.

Funny thing is, just the other day in class, my Communications teacher was
talking about self reflection, and how a bit of introspection is just what
the doctor ordered -- keeps us on track and in touch with reality. He
gave us a tip: Try stepping outside yourself for a moment and ask how am I
doing? Where am I? Is this where I want to be? How/What should I change to
get to my destination? (Mind you, do this when your alone...otherwise others might think your a bit strange...)
One can apply this to anything in life: academics, spirituality, relationships, etc. I remember a lecture from Sunnipath where the Shaykh said the exact same thing: Life is like a train. You are the traveler on it. Your going along, trying to get to your final destination, but there are alot of stops along the way, things to get you distracted. So you have to keep asking yourself, Am I on the right track, the right train? Something along those line anyway. :)

Ok, now that the creative juices are flowing, I will push myself to go fill up that empty Word document, which will, inshallah soon, be my paper. Wasalaams!