MIND PATHS
Our brain is an incredible landscape of highways and byways, but not all lead to the best destinations.
Some of our neurocircuitry runs deep. A high frequency of repetitions carves deep canyons, which leads us to become automatons of these practices. Every action reinforces the practice, and we repeat it because there is some payoff. The payoff may be good or bad. Regardless, to our mind, it serves us in some way. Allah warns us about things in this life with a dual nature even though it may help us to a degree: “They ask you about wine and gambling. Say (Prophet), in them are great sinfulness and benefit for people. But their harm far outweighs their benefit” [2:219].
We may find insight by comparing similar concepts in our world. Then, through introspection, investigation, and dialogue with others, evaluate whether the potential harm exceeds the benefits.
When ‘trail-braining‘ (my coined term) pathways that diverge from the consciousness of the brain’s Creator, we risk habituating ourselves away from His remembrance.
The following example provides a helpful illustration of how neural pathways develop in the brain: A man walks an uncharted course through a field because he is late for the bus. Although the new route is quick, it’s also more dangerous. But because the brevity appeals to him, he repeats it daily until a well-worn path emerges. It now becomes difficult for him to return to his original route, even though the alternate thoroughfare may have betrayed him and yet do so again.
At first, his only motive was to make for the bus, which the new route solved but has since become treacherous.
I believe we all struggle with this issue to varying degrees. Bad habits that seamlessly slide down the grooves of well-worn paths diminish our lives.
Rewiring our neurocircuitry is difficult yet possible, but we can never fully erase a pathway. Simultaneously, disinvesting from old hatted platitudes and reinvesting in healthy, new-found ways of being is essential in the rewiring process.
The mind is unbelievably powerful and the genesis of our thoughts and behaviour. So, how do we use the same mind to rewire that which it so powerfully created? By making it even more powerful. And we do so by making it conscious of God and remaining steadfast to God-conscious husbandry.
A POWERFUL OATH
Philosophers have taught for millennia that we cannot slake our thirst with material things. And that the ethical life is one for others, not objects.
Unfortunately, our violent love for worldly things has caused us to sacrifice people at the altar of our desires.
In a beautiful and poignant scene, the Prophet Muhammad (s) addresses the Ka’bah, the first House of God, built by his great progenitors, Prophets Abraham (as) and Ishmael (as), while circumambulating it.
The Prophet (s) dearly loved the Ka’bah, but his love for humanity was dearer to him. So, to impress that truth within him as a constant reminder, he (s) took a mighty oath: ‘How good you are and how wonderful is your fragrance; how great you are and honoured is your sanctity. I swear by the One in Whose Hand is the soul of Muhammad, the sanctity of the believer is greater before Allah than your sanctity, his blood and his wealth, and to think anything but good of him’ [Sunan Abu Majah 3132].
The Prophet’s conversation with the Ka’bah illustrates three profound lessons: 1) the dignity of a believer surpasses even the sanctity of God’s House, 2) relationships between people and inanimate things exist, and 3) through dialogue with these objects, we can harmonise that our relationships with it occupy their proper places.
What does it mean to love one’s country?
Does it mean I love a flag, the government, am a party loyalist, or a fervent fan of the national sports teams?
What I do know is that I love the land. I connect to its past, present and future. I live in and grow up in it. I respect and feel a deep gratitude for it.
I breathe its air, swim in its oceans and rivers, and climb its mountains. I run on its roads, walk in its forests, and pray in its open spaces. I connect with the ancestral lands and the human, animal and floral communities. I till the soil. I grow food in the sweet, rich earth. I am part of the sum of its people. Some are good, others less so, with a wide range in between. I accept the good and the bad and continue the struggle to be a better person.
The land, I know, is real.
But a country, a flag, a government, and its institutions, often born from the treachery of men, are extraneous.
Mark Twain, the great author and playwright, taught us that these things are the land’s mere clothing, and just like clothing, can become tattered and torn, worn out, cease to be comfortable and beneficial, and cease to protect.
It is thus folly to remain loyal to such things.
But to stand guard for that which is real and fight for that which is just, even if you are a lone voice, is to love your country.
That is patriotism. And it is our duty.
Until next week, InshaAllah
Zaahied Sallie
Author of The Beloved Prophet – An Illustrated Biography in Rhyme
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