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Thinking of Heavenly Days

The Lead Article
Embracing knowledge from the Divine and “morality of love” was a gift of faith; however, the true worth of this gift was not grasped well enough, thus, at certain times, it failed to shine forth as bright as it could have.
| M. Fethullah Gulen | Issue 146 (Mar - Apr 2022)

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Thinking of Heavenly Days

In This Article

  • The signs that emerge with every new dawn are heralding the years ahead to be more heartfelt, more sincere, and brighter than the days that have come and gone.
  • We can shape our lives according to our faith and hope in eternity. With our faith and hope we can soar on the wings of love and zeal and will experience a hundred, maybe a thousand, times over the timelessness we once lost.
  • After a certain point, the souls that rise to their feet through their own power and prosperity, the feelings that gain their freedom of expression, the logic and judgments that view creation as a thousand and one doorways leading to Him, will reach such a transcendence that matter will cease to stand as a barrier or an obstacle in front of the metaphysical.

Thinking of the heavenly days …

Days promised by the Prophets and dreamed of by the saints…

Days testified by the truthful witnesses of the sun rising…Thinking of those days with full confidence in the eternal power of the Sublime Creator, we imagine a future with its true colors and form. Our hopes are revived again, and we feel as though we are soaring towards the heavens that we once lost, our beings interwoven with the spirit of nature, and our hearts knitted closely with the mercy and embrace of faith.

Indeed, the signs that emerge with every new dawn are heralding the years ahead to be more heartfelt, more sincere, and brighter than the days that have come and gone. Supposing that a poisonous wind does not blow our way, and that the dawns whose signs have already started emerging are not shrouded by the dust and smoke of our own faults, our society will soon become more prosperous, the world will become more enchanted, life will be more magical, and existence as a whole will exhibit a more divine appearance. They will be what we call “days of God” which arise every so often in the cycle of historical recurrences—the exceptional days when, we hope, our souls will flourish to their fullest and will be colorful enough to have our hearts feel the spirit of eternity.

Some may disagree, yet whenever we observe the past and present from atop high towers, we feel like we are experiencing those days with our own eyes and ears—as if we are living in them. What we hear are the echoes of becoming anew. What we see are the glories of our civilizations embroidered on the canvas of the past. We witness collecting ourselves together and our self-esteem restored. We see a magical period of time that bursts into color as we find ourselves in the midst of global matters discussed and pondered by all nations. We sense the delicacy, air, inspirations, and wonders of such a period, or maybe the feelings of faith, hope, perseverance, and intuition that seep into our hearts and effervesce in the form of excitement.

Think of the spring: it comes with the colors, aroma, tastes, and warmth unique and special to itself. Roses, all kinds of flowers, the grass … they empty their meanings into our souls and leave their magnificence to the appreciation of our hearts. In the same way, the days to come, nurtured in our feelings, thoughts, and behavior, present us with all their flavors and take us on a journey beyond our imagination.

Alongside this faith, hope, and perseverance, the most powerful harbinger of these heavenly days is, without a doubt, the pain and enthusiasm during the days of suffering. Such suffering is tantamount to the crushing of the seed in the heart of the soil, helping it to come into leaf and existence. The suffering of these days is how this time will be remembered and celebrated. Indeed, the cheer, the joy, and delight of the future will always be remembered as a warming air, a lively dancing light, and a colorful bud opening with grace, over and against the suffering, agony, and hardship of the past. We will remember as our hearts will palpitate with their immensity.

Since we can feel in our consciences the signs of an emerging dawn for such a spring, then we can, from this point on, experience it in the depths of our souls as if it has already come. We can see it through the windows that open into our hearts and welcome it in. By way of such a welcome, we can do away with the most heartbreaking events and survive with joy.

This brilliant world is a colorful mirror reflecting the Divine names and is considered the mysterious corridor leading into the eternal world. We will not be able to sample all the beauties of it, nor will we remain here forever to experience its most magnificent periods. Yet we can shape our lives according to our faith and hope in eternity. With our faith and hope we can soar on the wings of love and zeal and will experience a hundred, maybe a thousand, times over the timelessness we once lost.

Through such a spiritual state and a mindset that is centered around belief in the eternal, we will be able to feel and experience many things: our every expectation, our collective ideals, the strategies through which we will achieve those ideals, the cause and purpose to which we devote our lives, the happiness we always long for, and our pleasures that we are always after. If we are going to experience all this bliss in the form of beautiful scenes and flowing heavenly waters projected against the hillsides of our hearts, then what more do we have left? Such a promise of bliss—is it not better than the thousands of foggy blessings we now have? It seems to me that if we were to sacrifice all our current pleasures and delights in exchange for the profound bliss that emerges in our hearts and encompasses our scope of expectation, it would certainly be worth it.

In fact, if those who live with the love of the All-Merciful and are troubled for His cause, forgot all other troubles and fill their hearts with a desire to unite with Him, they would feel the sense of eternity deep within themselves. They would reach endless pleasures of the soul and would say that one lifetime is not enough to hold such delight.

Indeed, our love and zeal towards Him, our gaze that searches for Him everywhere and at all times, our tendency to convey a tenderness towards our surroundings through that gaze, our compassionate embracing of everything through this spirituality, and our loving with kindness are such profound pleasures of human existence that I believe those who have tasted them once will not bear any other pleasure in their souls—apart from the desire to reach the genuine state of these pleasures in eternity.

Nowadays, as our lives take a different route compared to past times, the love and zeal flowing from believing hearts and the frenzy of revival felt in every soul are almost always side by side.  As such, thousands in every valley are breathing life into petrified thoughts with their breaths of flame, and the world is gliding into an atmosphere radiating with light. As long as these breaths of Khidr keep breathing life like this, and the world continues on its course, every heart in need of light will, sooner or later, see these bright faces and hear their heart-penetrating words. Just as the moths that dwell in the darkness run to the light when they sense it—and as the flowers that always turn towards the sun—they will run to this light whose source is as old as eternity but is at the same time made anew through its transformation through the eras. As time goes by, every heart will overflow with the same excitement, all souls will revive once again, and the world will turn into a carnival with windows open to the worlds beyond.

Amidst the silence and approval of the millions who either surround them or run towards them from afar, these saintly ones will always shout out the feelings they have nurtured in their hearts open to divine light—not only on behalf of themselves but with an effervescent and profound feeling of responsibility. It is as if they were expressing these feelings on behalf of all holy beings that have come and gone and who are yet to come, wanting to have their voices heard from a higher pitch crying out at the tops of their lungs to announce the meanings coming from the depths of their souls—even to those who are lying in their graves.

Indeed, these people, who have awakened to spirituality with their inner world as a whole and have been satisfied with the benefits of the spiritual realm, will break through even the most rigid feelings, will open the rustiest of locks, and will soften even the most hardened of hearts. They will do this by means of a characteristic derived from experience coming from the voices that rise from their souls, the love flowing out of their words, and the feelings overflowing from their inner realms. They will soften those hearts, and through the spiritual and profound melodies of the divine, they will whisper the harmony of their own souls, the tunes of their love and enthusiasm and will, on behalf of all humanity, bring to voice their faith, hope, excitement, longing for the eternal home, and desire for reunion once again. It is as if their every call, every turn, their every hope and prayer for the future is an invitation to eternity—the expression, the voice, the interpretation of things that we have wanted to say up to this day but have not been able to. They are the things we have wanted to announce but have not been able to, as well as the matters we have left unfinished.

Surely, the people of that era will turn towards each other with deeper feelings than we have. They will speak to each other with transcendent voices and will express the same love and enthusiasm, all together. After all, ever since the past and into the present, in such holy and divine times, there have always been those who have loved and those who have been loved. During those times, when lovers were all Majnun and the loved were all Laila, every love, beauty, zeal, and order were all shadows, having passed many curtains of the shadows of the Eternal Beauty. Thus He, the true source of everything, was loved before all else. Then according to their degree, everything that followed behind was loved, breathed in, embraced, and sanctified with His seal. And the fortunate people of such periods lived their lives filled with the feeling of love and being loved, and by accepting all hardship as a spiral staircase to be climbed in order to attain eternal bliss, they breathed with relief and comfort. And with the drive of certain motivations—knowledge of God, love, and excitement—awakened in the hearts their souls took wing, as if setting sail into eternity, and with a state beyond time and place, they became like Fuzuli, saying:

O, how much I wished I, a heartbroken lover, had a thousand lives,
so that I could sacrifice each one for Your Sake.

After a certain point, the souls that rise to their feet through their own power and prosperity, the feelings that gain their freedom of expression, the logic and judgments that view creation as a thousand and one doorways leading to Him, will reach such a transcendence that matter will cease to stand as a barrier or an obstacle in front of the metaphysical. It will refine to become more lucid and will virtually become an accessory to meaning itself.

The feelings, thoughts, hopes, expectations, joys, and comforts that we seek to express are—just like the single drops of water within an ocean—merely a few drops from a new era of light in which many of our ideals will come true. Indeed, faith will deepen through knowledge and wisdom, knowledge will transform into love and zeal, and love and enthusiasm will turn into pleasures for the spirit... They are merely a few drops that represent the vast ocean. Though the realm of dreams may seem far away from where we stand today and which may seem different from person to person according to the individual's ability and capacity, there is no doubt that it is emerging within the frame of a collective feeling and understanding. Let every individual keep to this formation in accordance with their own perception, understanding, and depths of heart. The days in which faith and perseverance will turn the impossible into the possible, straighten out the curves, lower the hills, and turn the pathways into avenues…Those divine days are close.

It seems to me that, even those primitive souls who have been turned into banal beings through materialistic thought—so long as they do not hand over to their obstinacy the humanistic values blessed unto them by God—will, in this period of faith, love and zeal, comprehend the refreshing power of connecting with God. They will let themselves go into the drive of this collective formation and will drink these heavenly days in as the water of life.


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