Page 290 - Quranic Wisdom - New.indd

The Process of Purification

It is a demonstration by nature of how we can purify ourselves.
By following this natural pattern, we have to process things
around us through contemplation, and then make this serve as a
tool for the purification of the soul (tazkiya).
Nature’s reservoir of water has a certain salt content. But
nature separates the water content from the salt content and thus
makes the water useful for man and agriculture. This is true of
all other things. Everything around us, big or small, has material
content as well as spiritual content. We have to dematerialize
these things in order to extract the spiritual content. And then
we take the spiritual content as our food for tazkiya.

Everyone should learn the art of dematerialization; everyone
must learn the art of extracting the spiritual content from the
material content. Only through this process can we develop our
faith.
Water is our physical food, but physical food is not enough. At
the same time we need spiritual food. And the way to have that
spiritual food is to separate it from the dross of material things,
just as salt is separated from sea water to give us fresh water.
We receive water by a natural process, but spiritual food can
only be obtained through an intellectual process. Without this
process, we will certainly face spiritual starvation and finally
spiritual death.

For example, everyone can speak. Yet the verbal exchange of
dialogue is a rare phenomenon peculiar to human beings: no
other creature of this world shares this capacity with us. Speech
apparently is a physical phenomenon, but it also has spiritual
content, in that it reminds us of the special blessing we have been
endowed with by God.
And this discovery enables us to acknowledge God in elevated
language—something that cannot be done by any other creature
in the physical world.

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