Spiritual Foods for the Journey of Life

22 Ways of Nourishment for the Soul

Dear reader, do you remember a time in your life when you were just running and rushing through your life with barely enough time to sit and eat; a time when you just grabbed this or that to "chow down on" and then just kept at whatever you were doing? Remember how you felt? How quickly you were drained and ran out of energy. Then you started eating healthy again and right away you started having more energy and began feeling good again. The same is true of our spiritual lives. As with the lack of nutritious food, the lack of spiritual food quickly makes you feel off-balance and ungrounded. You become easily irritable, restless, hopeless, and emotionally down, miserable and/or generally unhappy. You begin having problems sleeping or trouble focusing and it gets hard to concentrate on critical tasks; all leading to the disruption of the overall quality of your life.

As a remedy to this issue, in today's Soul Booster, Mawlana Faizani educates us about the range of spiritual nourishments available for your Soul. Through these spiritual nourishments, we come to eliminate our spiritual hunger and grow our Soul to reach ever and ever higher levels of growth and development in this life and in the hereafter. Mawlana Faizani empowers us to adopt a new spiritual lifestyle so that we may start reaping the benefits of increased energy, alertness, peace, love, joy, and nearness to Exalted God: in short a freedom from our illnesses (spiritual and physical) and a dramatic improvement in our overall enjoyment of life in both worlds.

Here is a summary of the actions that strengthen (nourish) the Soul which are based on the sound guidance of the intact Quran of Islam and the Hadeeth of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh):

Conditional Worship

• Shahadah: The sincere affirmation to God's Oneness
• Salah: Prayer (the five daily prayers)
• Zakat: Charity or concern for the needy
• Saum: Fasting during Ramadan or self-purification
• Hajj: The pilgrimage to Mecca
• and following all required Islamic (Fiqh) laws

Unconditional Worship

VISIBLE WORSHIP in front of individual or society

• Remembrance of Glorious God (Dhikr / Zikr)
• Observing the world's exhibition (tafakkur), seeing the Glorious Artificer's Magnificence and Perfection through the artifacts.

INVISIBLE WORSHIP at all times and everywhere in Presence of God

• Humbleness at all times and everywhere at Presence of His Holiness Supreme Being
• Thanksgiving for the favors of humanity, Islam, health, knowledge and the rest
• Relying on Glorious Exalted Lord with the necessary plans to expanding Oneness and peace
• Patience in the event of encountering hardship in this cause destined by God, and not getting carried away in such circumstances and the like

Additional Ways for Soul's Nourishment

• Restraining from evil acts while having the capability
• Respecting the rights of God and parents
• Respecting sober intellectuals, sober elders, sober authorities
• Being merciful on inferior and weak people
• Other good words and deeds such as in Our Tradition:
  

  a. All kinds of goodness accomplished toward ensuring peace for God's creatures, merely for God's sake, is our tradition.

  b. All efforts endeavored toward the development of society, carried out under the banner of monotheism is our way.

  c. Physical, financial, or verbal beneficence and assistance done anywhere, to anyone, for the pleasure of Glorious Him, without ulterior motives, is our tradition.
  
  

• Pious struggle against egoistic, satanic powers and other injustices according one's capability
• Learning beneficial knowledge hence becoming truth spoken, scholastic, struggling pious personality (i.e. during your lifetime)
• Reading the books of the University of Insight into God

Soul's Station Towards Perfection After Death

• Beneficial knowledge: Leaving behind beneficial literary works for humanity's guidance and other useful religious publicity
• Remaining charity: such as publication of books, foundation of schools and institutions, municipal works such as building of streets, canals, lakes and etc.
• Pious descendent: a productive offspring who endeavors to the best of his/her capability in the path of uplifting monotheism and serving God's creatures for the sake of Will of Exalted Him. (The parents who besides guarding and taking care of their children, if they also put efforts in their children sound education based on Oneness of God and sincerity, then they will receive double rewards or even many recompense.

The Soul's Cooperators

Soul's Cooperators:

• Personal Angel
• Pious* human beings (man/women) and
• Other angelic natured people

*The pious human beings that are monotheist, scholastic, practical, and strugglers within their capability based on full understanding. They cooperate in two ways:

• Regular cooperators of the soul
• Irregular cooperators of the soul

Regular Cooperators of the Soul, are those people who are regularly guiding and assisting you in fortifying your spiritual powers:

• Parents
• Family elders
• Relatives
• Community friends
• All instructors (teachers)
• Other related and non-related benevolent people, provided they are knowledgeable of their position and are not heedless of anything.

Irregular Cooperators of Soul are those who occasionally draw your attention towards good words or acts. Consequently you act upon the benefit, or at least at that occasion you were prevented from those impermissible deeds and words and thus you were distanced from sin.

Practicing the Soul Booster:

In our day and age, no matter how high the standards of living reach or how physically comfortable we try to become; true peace of heart still does not exist. On the contrary, each individual feels some kind of fear, a deep seated restlessness within him or herself.

Why does this happen?

These are all indications of the Soul's pressure on the body, warning the person of the wrong path that he or she has chosen to follow. Hence, some kind of grievous depression or anxiety makes the person worry and feel sad, but without a clear reason. Right at that moment, Satan perceives the situation. Right away he tries to keep the person busy, with singing songs or melodies, with 'illegalities,' and/or by grabbing one's attention with this or that story. At the very least, he gets the person to hum or whistle a song. If the person happens to be alone, then Satan, one after the other, tries to bring to the attention of the human being sensual, grievous, or worrisome matters and thereby keeps the person busy. These are all signs of the Soul's distress and the effect of the Heart's discomfort in a person, due to his/her not paying attention to the Soul's nutritional needs and instead focusing on inhuman (i.e. satanic-colored) matters.

Furthermore, many of us today are deceived into thinking that more material things actually give us the strength to satisfy that cry from within us; that cry that says, "If I could just get others to like and accept me, I'd be happy …" or "If I could just get someone to say something good about me, tell me I look better, or am better than so and so…" or "If I were rich and had power or influence it would be enough…" Do you hear and allow yourself to be burdened down by that inner cry for strength? If you had all the wealth, power, position, favor, or publicity, would it ever be enough? No. And neither would you possess the inner strength or real joy that your soul craves. Even if you should become King or Queen of the entire world, without satisfying the needs of your Soul, it wouldn't be very long before you'd again be asking, "Is this all there is…?" "Is there any more?"

Material things are never enough because they do not strengthen your inner being (i.e. your Soul) or satisfy the craving within which causes people to reach out for possessions, fortune and fame, drugs, alcohol, self-gratification etc, all in an attempt to satisfy the Soul.

The Soul is something that in the end does not depend on material things.

When in an attempt to gain a level of comfort, people become excessive in any area of their life, be it excessive jewelry, clothing, purchases, habits, etc. they only receive a temporary calm to satisfy and soothe that inner cry for real joy which originates from within. The next day, the next week, or some other time later, that cry starts over again. Only this time a bit louder and a bit more urgent…

Become a practicing member today and take the first steps towards your spiritual recovery. We will provide you with a powerful and comprehensive Zikr and Contemplation program which includes the repetitions of Divine names, supplications, sincere repentance, illuminated with aphorism from the Holy Quran and the tradition of the prophets. These programs compiled by Mawlana Faizani have been designed to eradicate our weaknesses, clear out the blocked channels of our belief, and reform our mental, spiritual and intellectual faculties by embracing and transforming the whole life of a person, one person at a time!

Dear friends, people are drowning in an ocean of debt trying to satisfy the need within and are becoming mentally and emotionally bloated and overweight trying to feed the need with "material junk food" diet instead of spirituality. They try to feed their Soul through their eyes, mouths, and wallets and it just can't be done. Joy is the only thing that can quench and satisfy that cry from within and it only comes from developing a real and close relationship with the One and True God, our Exalted Creator and Sustainer.

Note:The point of our discourse is not to suggest that you must abandon the world or avoid engaging in the necessary business of life. The point should not be confused and misinterpreted like some narrow-minded ones. Rather, our goal, aiming for the soundness of Heart and Soul, is to achieve the method of "Hands to work and Hearts to God."

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