How Can You Lose Your Way?

Just as Paradise is as wide as the heavens and the earth in a physical sense, the heavens above us and earth beneath us abound with signposts and markers to that very destination.

You would be excused if you needed directions to a house, a road or a town. For one to need directions to a cardinal direction, easily gleaned from the sun’s position or even the north star is less excusable. What then if your destination surrounded your starting location, its clear signposts bordered your every path and precise directions accompanied your every step? Unless you really tried, it should be impossible to lose your way.

As such, the broader your destination, the less likely you are of unintentionally losing your way. The vaster your intended place of residence, the greater a shame it is to not find anywhere to stay… The greatest failure therefore, is not to miss out on those discrete and specific few jobs fought for by scores of applicants or that opportunity for a monetary fortune, scarcely likely to succeed.

Instead, the greatest failure is to be informed that Allāh’s forgiveness surpasses sins, even if they reached as high as the heavens and yet to never be forgiven. The greatest failure is to hear of a Paradise, the width of which is endless, like the heavens and the earth, endlessly large, surrounding and apparent, and yet fail to find a place to accommodate your two feet…

“And hasten towards forgiveness from your Lord and a Paradise as vast as the heavens and the earth, prepared for those mindful (of Allāh).”[1]

Paradise is precious, but is neither scarce nor is the path leading to it obscure. For Paradise to have this description reflects the reality of the path leading to it. Just as Paradise is as wide as the heavens and the earth in a physical sense, the heavens above us and earth beneath us abound with signposts and markers to that very destination.

Paradise is not only wide and encompassing, but innate and natural. Everything in creation ceaselessly declares its divine origin, and thus provides as a guidepost to that final destination. It only needs one to open their eyes and ears. There are therefore no ‘disbelievers’, but either attentive affirmers of these signposts (the Mu’min) or obstinate and distracted deniers, purposely internally and externally blind (the Kāfir).

Every person is born with that intensely shining innate goodness, the ‘Fitrah‘ pulling man back to his divine origin. Guidance is not found in the wilderness of lusts and evil, that are the deformations of truth or baseless lies but guidance is lodged without one’s self, having been endowed at birth. It is either covered by the denial of one’s origin, distracting sins or endless diversions or discovered by submitting to the Creator’s natural order and focusing on returning to the destination from where we first originated.

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References:

[1] Al-Qur’ān 3:133