Being & Belonging

I belong nowhere, therefore I belong everywhere. Smatterings of chattering in several languages help me shape-shift at will. I have a saffron-clad Swami to thank for learning as a child the taste of the company of the enlightened. I have the awliya' (awakened beings) of Islam to thank for compass-points on this journey. My heart is a light-detector - it works brilliantly if I keep it tarnish-free. So many relationships have helped me learn this art: my father (he is my 'country'), my mother, my grandmother, my husband, my kids, my siblings, my precious friends, the shayukh & the fuqara, strangers on a plane, the blind beggar two streets away, my saintly helpmates, my cat Sushi. Above all, the irresistible gravity of the soul's light is pulling, inviting me to fall...into oblivion's bliss.*

So much human endeavour is fraught with and fueled by the search for belonging and the need to belong. Books, films, poems, songs, art, buildings… thousands of items reek of this quest. We are all busy fulfilling this impulse and its sister impulse: the need to express this belonging.

Belonging is like a pendulum. It sweeps along an arc that is marked by many shades and textures that render each process of identification unique. Sometimes the markers that stick out are to do with place: the country of birth or childhood or chosen country of residence. Sometimes they are to do with profession: public service, creative arts, medicine etc. Other times they are to do with social constructs: class, tribe; or religious affiliation, or disability, or personality traits, or... The mind boggles at all the DNA permutations of how we envision our belonging.

As someone who has had her sense of belonging challenged by a peripatetic upbringing and lifestyle, I’ve been forced to look beyond static markers. Increasingly as I grow older, the signposts of belonging are becoming unmoored from time and place and circumstance. Even as the markers become more rarified – to do with beliefs, outlooks, affinities, self-deconstruction – they are still morphing ahead into undefined, fluid zones where the markers almost cease to have any form or relevance.

The Qur’an tells us ‘inna lillah wa inna ilayhi raj’iun’ —‘Surely we are Allah's and unto Him we return.' Often the only time we invoke this verse is when someone we know dies. Then it’s like, ‘Ah yes, there was nothing permanent or possessed about this life at all…’, and we sigh wistfully as the  hollowness of a life attached is revealed for the mirage it is. We keep forgetting, so we keep needing to remember.

When I read this verse I am reminded that we are more connected to the Unseen – the ‘alam al-ghayb – than we like to admit or realize. There’s a practical veiling of our consciousness that falls into place – a necessary one for without it likely as not we would unravel and lie there in a pulsating heap of cells, electrical impulses, whimsical fancies and viscera. The power of sight greedily gobbles up the chiaroscuro of waking life to persuade us that everything around us is real and huge and is filling us and our lives to bursting point. And this illusion is shored up further by the conditioned consciousness, individual and shared – all those neural pathways etched and grooved with commonly held truths and facts and factoids about our lives. But the blind lead the way in showing us that an immense world exists that cannot be ‘seen’. Through their other senses – often sharpened beyond the norm – they become more adept at perceiving nuances in tone, alterations in the vibrational energy of a room, maybe more prescient even.

When the power of insight starts to develop we can start to bridge the link between the Seen and the Unseen.  Not everything that we can feel has a form. Not every marker of identity can define us fully. We need to belong, but equally, we need to escape the confines of that belongingness.  We can begin to sense that belonging is not a goal with fixed goalposts. Through refinement of our inner senses we can tap into subtle resources that will begin to reveal to us a deeper awareness of belonging and identity. That can only come through switching off the outer senses. Quietening the mind. Turning inward. Becoming silent. Still. Plumbing the depths of invocation to a zone where no sound is recognized, though indeed a sound may be emitting. 

The Qur’an indicates the methodology or refining the inner senses in numerous places and ways: through reflection (tafakkur), through witnessing (tashahhud), through intellecting (ta’aqqul), and above all through remembering (tadhakkur).  ‘Ala bi dhikri’llah tatma’in al-qulub'  – ‘Is it not by the remembrance of Allah hearts are assured and made tranquil?’ This is the supreme technique to reach inner peace: remembrance of Source, of the One and Only Being. 

This by implication means abandoning attachment to any idea of belonging, certainly to any place or time, and more importantly, to the sway of the egotized self. Such invocation leads to an emptying of the small ‘self’, a stripping, a denuding of those illusory veils that enable us to play our part in the theatre of life. With the self made transparent, the soul’s light cannot but shine through.  If that itmi’nan is located – that reassurance, tranquility and peacefulness – then we return to Source as the Qur’an describes, ‘ya ayyatuha’n-nafsal-mutma’innah, irja’i ila rabbika radiyatan, mardiyyah’ – ‘Oh soul that is in inner peace, return to your Lord, pleased and well-pleasing.’

*After I had submitted this paragraph as a background story for IMOW, I was inspired to write the rest of this blog entry. Click here to find out more about this cool project International Museum of Muslim Women