Reclaim Your Heart

T
HIS IS
 A
WAKENING
It’s hard to describe the feeling. Imagine living your entire
life in a cave and believing it was your whole world.
Then suddenly you step outside. For the first time in your
life, you see the sky. You see the trees and the birds and
the sun. For the first time in your life, you realize that the
world you once knew was false. For the first time, you
discover a Truer, more beautiful Reality. Imagine the high
of that realization. For a moment, you feel you can do
anything. Suddenly, nothing from your previous life in the
cave matters. You become empowered, fully awake, fully
alive, fully aware for the very first time. It is an
unexplainable feeling. This is the spiritual high that comes
with newly discovered Truth.
This is Awakening.
A convert to Islam knows this feeling. A born Muslim who
comes back to the deen knows this feeling. Any human
being, who lives their life away from God, and returns,
knows this feeling. This state is what Ibn ul Qayyim (RA)
calls ‘yaqatha’ (awakening) in his book ‘Madarij Al
Salikeen’ (Stations on the Path to God). He describes this
state as the first station on the path to Allah. This is the
state sometimes referred to as the “convert zeal”. When a
person first converts or starts coming back to Allah they
are often full of motivation and energy that others do not
have. The reason for this energy is the spiritual high,

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characteristic of this state.