Dustin Craun: Breaking the Chains of Modernity | Adbusters

http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/100/breaking-chains-modernity.html

Similar to Gloria Anzaldua’s concept La Facultad, a form of inner knowledge, is the Islamic concept of Al Basira, the eye of the heart, which is the center of spiritual perception if properly developed. As the great Mystic philosopher Al-Ghazali put it in his masterwork of the inner sciences of Islam, Ihya’ ulum al-din, “Creation refers to the external, and character to the internal, form. Now, the human is composed of a body which perceives with ocular vision (basar) and a spirit (ruh) and a soul (nafs) which perceive with inner sight (basira). Each of these things has an aspect and a form which is either ugly or beautiful. Furthermore, the soul which perceives with inner sight (basira) is of greater worth than the body which sees with ocular vision.” In seeing with the eye of our heart we can begin to differentiate between form and meaning, as the outward forms of things are not always their internal and spiritual reality.

The vision of our hearts has become blinded by the poison of base materialism. In the verse poetry of the early female Sufi saint, Rabi’a al-Adawiyya: “O children of Nothing! Truth can’t come in through your eyes, Nor can speech go out through your mouth to find [God], Hearing leads the speaker down the road to anxiety, And if you follow your hands and feet you will arrive at confusion. The real work is in the Heart: Wake up your Heart! Because when the Heart is completely awake, Then it needs no Friend.”