The Weight You Were Never Meant to Carry
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Welcome. Have you ever lain awake at night, planning every possible outcome, trying to control what has not yet happened? This book was written for that heart.
Its author is Ibn Ata’illah, a great scholar and spiritual master of Alexandria and Cairo, who died in the year seven hundred and nine. He called this book, Illumination, on letting go of self-direction. In Arabic, tadbir. That restless managing of your own life, as if everything depended on you.
He says, the most important thing to leave behind, for anyone who wants to reach Allah, is this anxious planning, and quarrelling with what He has decreed.
He opens with three verses. By your Lord, they will not truly believe until they make you judge in their disputes, and then find no tightness in their hearts about what you decide, and submit completely. And, your Lord creates what He wills and chooses. The choice is not theirs. And, does a person get whatever he wishes for? To Allah belong the last and the first.
And the Prophet said, he has tasted the sweetness of faith who is content with Allah as his Lord, Islam as his religion, and Muhammad as his Prophet.
The people of knowledge used to say, whoever does not plan for himself, is planned for. And his teacher’s teacher, Abu al-Hasan al-Shadhili, said, if you must plan, then plan not to plan. And he said, do not choose anything for yourself. Choose not to choose. And flee from that choosing, and from your fleeing, and from everything, to Allah.
That is the whole book in a sentence. Let us open it slowly.
