A Mercy Case

I don’t want to write this, but I think I should.

This blog goes back to 2008. In the last 9 years, I could have written this post probably a hundred times or more.

This is about failure, weakness, and the desire to give up.

I don’t have anything profound to say, just the admission that there are moments when I feel empty. I usually write about trying to change my self and the world at the same time. That is where I invest my time and money. But alongside that narrative are incongruous moments, times when I just want to stop everything and embrace my self and the world as we are, warts and all.

I have written about specific personal struggles, the overwhelmingness of earthly injustice, hope for liberation, imperfect foundations, being overwhelmed by darkness, and so much more. What I have never mentioned is flirting with the final abdication.

It is not the Eternal Sovereign who can abdicate. Only we can do that. It comes from listening to the whispers of the egotistical self (nafs):

Stop trying to change.

Be who you are.

God does not need you to be perfect.

God is the Most Forgiving.

Do something you love.

Be happy.

For the self only says these words in order to get what it wants, whether it be halal or haram. To feel free from the demands of submitting to commands and prohibitions it finds distasteful. To live life on its own terms.

Revelation does not address the self, but the intellect (‘aql).

لَقَدْ أَنزَلْنَا إِلَيْكُمْ كِتَابًا فِيهِ ذِكْرُكُمْ أَفَلَا تَعْقِلُونَ

And now We have sent down to you [people] a Scripture to remind you. Will you not use your reason [ta’qilun]? (21.10)

The intellect comprehends ethical obligation (taklif) and responds accordingly. As the first hadith in al-Kafi states:

When God created intellect, he gave it the faculty of language and said, ‘Come forward,’ whereupon it came forward. Then he said to it, ‘Go back,’ whereupon it went back. Then he said, ‘By my might and my majesty, I have not created a creature more beloved to me than you, and I have not perfected you except in whom I love. Let it be known! You alone do I command, and you alone do I forbid. [According to you] alone do I punish, and [according] to you alone do I confer reward.” [trans. by Rizwan Arastu]

And so when the intellect is in control, one’s life is focused on obedience to God and the hope for eternal reward. One strives to attain servanthood (‘ubudiya) and submission (taslim).

But the self hates servanthood and submission. It hates it so so much. It hates it more than anything else. And so it rebels any way it can. And sometimes, the rebellion goes so well that the self rules for a time. It deploys time, health, wealth, and everything else at its command to get more of what it wants.

If the intellect does not regain its throne, disaster is inevitable. But it is not always easy to rouse its armies. Pleasure feels better than pain. Freedom is more enjoyable than enslavement. Experiencing something is usually more fun than sacrificing it. Peace is preferred to struggle. The possibilities of the material now are more intoxicating than promises for a metaphysical future. And so moments of discord and disunity emerge within our own being.

Right now, I am not going to tell you that my intellect has a plan to extinguish the rebellion. Rather, I am writing this at a moment when the intellect wants to give the self control of a province.

I am so tired of this seemingly endless war.

But I know the self, intimately. It is satisfied with nothing less than complete victory. It wants to live in a world where even God is a projection of its own desires. And so peace is impossible, even though at this moment I want more than anything to believe that God will forgive me even if I stop trying.

“Fight your self so that it obeys God, just as an enemy would fight an enemy. Overcome the self just as opponent would overcome an opponent. For surely the most powerful person is the one who has power over their self.” – Imam ‘Ali عليه السلام