The Heart can be a whore in the Path
“Always follow what your heart says”, advises a grandma to her granddaughter in an Israeli movie that I watched in my early twenties.
That one dialogue defines my life till now. I have always intended to follow my heart, and in that journey I have had flowers of various hues and scents on the way, and blood that trickled when I walked on the thorns too.
And today after so many years, I still find myself yearning to listen and understand what my heart says. Years of conditioning, dogma and my fears form layers of hindrance between what it has to say and what I do listen.
And yesterday, as I allowed my heart to feel what it wanted to feel, after realizing that I had been restraining it from being truly free, free to feel, I was shocked. How could it sing of Love in times like these? I thought. And love with somebody who I hardly know? What kind of love is that? And what logic can explain the “connection” that seems to connect me to the stranger? No, no; that cannot be love. The Heart when left to its own nature, free, can be a Whore!
Hafez, in one of his poems, describes how Allah likes to turn his devotee inside out, pushing him/her to the extremes to test him/her, laughing at the confusion and disillusionment that besets His lover on the Path.
Allah, in Islam is neither attributed with the Masculine or Feminine Gender. As the default way of attributing a gender to a Being without gender is He, the Quran-e-pak describes Allah as He.
And now, Illah wants me to follow my heart while I feel ashamed initially. Shame comes out of conditioning. So if He so desires, let His Love flow freely through my heart for the stranger. Let this heart be a whore. Let it love another creation of the Beloved…as I wish to love the divine beloved Himself.
Allah… unknown are your ways, and unique are your commands! I choose to follow what you speak through my heart. I choose to love the one on whom you have set my heart. Amin.
