Rabi' al-Awwal literally translates to “the first spring” or rather “the original spring”: the spring that preceded all other springs, the one that became the source of all springs, or the source that became the source of all sources, the flowering season that brought about all flowering... It is in this month that The Divine Intelligence has chosen to be the month of the birth of the Prophet Muhammad (may God continue to nourish his being, his light, his spiritual legacy and our connection to him and his blessed heirs and family), the Spirit of Guidance who has come to teach us who we are truly, and how to connect authentically, and genuinely to the Origin of our beings. 

Why do we celebrate the Mawlid and what is our quest? 

When it comes to this special birth and how it is celebrated, a recurrent question that keeps coming back to mind every year is; What is the purpose and need of Mawlid celebrations? To celebrate the anniversary of the Prophet's birth? To what extent do Mawlid celebrations contribute to building in us the personality of an authentic lover of the Spirit of Guidance? If this is our quest, our goal, our objective... To what extent do these celebrations help us build a healthy personality, a personality characteristic of the lover who lives with intention and attention, who lives artfully and beautifully for his Beloved...?

These questions I often bring to the discussion in a more general way when asking: to what extent do our ‘acts of devotion/worship’ (which I prefer to call by their deeper reality ‘exercises in consciousness development’) help develop in us the being that the Supreme Being wants us to become? This Great Self that He wants us to embrace, the one who is the inspiration for our creation in reality... 

We need to reactivate or induce this birth and rebirth of guidance in our spiritual life, and even in our collective life. That's our need, and that's what our focus and cause should be. it shouldn’t be just about celebrating in and of itself with drums, songs, and showing that ‘we're parading our flags, and singing for the birth of the Prophet’... This cultural and artistic way can be beautiful, and these celebrations can have their place, but they will only be relevant if they reactivate and bring about this rebirth of guidance in us and if they enable us to build a real relationship with guidance, a real connection with the Spirit of Guidance... If they lead us to be part of and become a member of what I call his ‘guidance initiative’ or his ‘prophetic project’, his cause (‘noubouwa’)...  

We must look at and consider the Spirit of Guidance as a cause, as a message, and not as a static image... Unfortunately, many of us in popular Islam or pop Sufism, are looking more for a connection with the image of the Prophet than anything else... We are looking to ‘see the Prophet in our dreams’... But that's taking the wrong approach; that's not the way we're going to succeed in ‘seeing’ him... If you don't see him in front of you, you don't need to see him in your dreams! That's not the point... 

Obviously, seeing someone in our dreams can take place as an expression of love, but our quest should be to see the Spirit of Guidance's Message, not his image. Moreover, his image was actually part of his message... In reality, he was the message, the Grace of Universal and Unconditional Divine Love personified and sent as a Gift to the whole universe (‘Rahmatan lil-’alamine")... He was completely melted, dissolved and annihilated in his cause... So much so that even his image became his message. 

We must therefore develop a connection with the message of the Spirit of Guidance. But how can we do this? 

The four pieces of advice my teacher gave me

One day, I asked one of my teachers: ‘I want to see RassoulAllah in my dreams, can you give me some advice?’, and he gave me four things to work on, four things to focus on to achieve this, four things that I would like to share with you in this month of his birth. 

These tips will benefit everyone, those whose desire is to dream of the Messenger of course, but also and above all those whose aim is not just to ‘see the Prophet in a dream’, i.e. those who don't just want to connect with his image, but who aspire to connect with his message, his reality (haqiqa), the living, the present, and not the past Prophet, the historical Prophet who lived 63 years in the Arabian desert... Those who seek the present and eternal Spirit of Guidance who is always there, who can be seen in a playful child, in a faithful husband, in a loyal wife, in a caring teacher. ... That eternally present Spirit of Guidance that is all around us... 

So here are the four pieces of advice my teacher gave me: ‘If you want to succeed in seeing the Prophet - may God continue to nourish his being and our connection to him - then you must : 

 1. Develop more ‘Rahma’ (i.e. more love, more commitment, more concern, more acceptance) towards the ‘Ummah’ of the Prophet

And who is this ‘Ummah’? Many people think that the ‘Ummah’ is made up only of ‘Muslims’ in the sense that we understand it today as a religious group... Yet, The Divine Intelligence does not say that the Spirit of Guidance was sent to earth for ‘Muslims’, but rather says, when addressing him: ‘We have sent you only as a manifestation of our Grace and our unconditional Love for the whole universe’ (S.21 - V.107).... ‘For the whole universe’, meaning for everyone... For all humans, all conscious beings even. 

So it's a matter of developing more love, more commitment, more concern, more capacity to welcome everyone, as well as the will to serve others, all others.  

 2. Develop more concern for ‘the Da'wa of the Prophet’

What is ‘concern’?

We need to redefine terms because we have this tendency to romanticize words... Take the example of ‘worry’ which often becomes ‘fear’ for us: Thus, ‘I worry about someone’ becomes ‘I'm afraid for them’ and sometimes results in becoming an additional source of stress in their life... But that's not what worry is.  

This reminds me of a comment a physiotherapist made during a treatment for back pain. I had a pinched nerve that was hurting. The PT offered me such beautiful advice that made me think and understand a lot about how we function... He told me to talk to my muscles, to tell them not to worry anymore, that the message had been conveyed, and they had played their part well, which was simply to feel the pain inside and send the message to my brain so that I would become aware that there was a problem, and take action... That now their duty was done, they could relax, and they didn't need to keep nagging and poking at me: ‘You've got a problem! you've got a problem!’

In the end, it's because of this that we suffer so much, sometimes to the point of not being able to sleep. What was supposed to sound the alarm becomes a bigger problem in our lives than the original issue... In this way, we also risk becoming the biggest problem in the lives of those we love, and in particular in the lives of our children. We will do so by using the pretext of ‘I care about you, I feel concerned about what you're going through’... When our role was simply to be a messenger, to make them aware that something may be wrong or could go wrong in their lives so that they start looking for a solution... Our role should never be to harass the person in any case or to become more problematic than the initial problem. 

‘Concern’ is neither harassment nor fear. Being concerned for someone is caring and wanting the good, and therefore meditating, praying, and studying the issue at hand that is cause for concern... And when I say ‘studying’, I don't think we need more people with degrees in ‘Islamic sciences, contrary to the popular and trendy recommendation ‘If I want to invest myself in the “da'wa”, I must study the “Islamic sciences”’... I strongly believe that the tools we need most today are found in the careful study of psychology, sociology, economics, or even personal development... Let's equip ourselves if we really want to take this advice to ‘develop a concern for the da'wa of the Prophet’. It means taking an interest in people, the difficulties people go through, what are the problems we face, and how can we help where people are at now.

What is ‘da'wa’?

Now we have to define the term ‘da'wa of the Prophet’... Did his ‘da'wa’ really consist of merely recruiting people to join a club or group called ‘Islam’? This very ‘da'wa’ was also defined by The Divine Intelligence in His Letter to Humanity so let us look at what was said: “Say (Mohammed): ‘This is my path: I invite to Allah' “(S.12 - V.108)... I invite to Allah... to Allah: to the All and One, to the Source of all existence, to the Supreme Being, and not to a club, nor a sect... To Allah, and not to any group, be it small or large... He invites to Allah, and only to Allah, and it is for this cause that we must develop a concern... 

But is this really the concern we have for ourselves, for our children, for our neighbours, for everyone? Is our real concern to invite everyone to embrace the Truth, to encounter the Real and Eternal Present, to encounter Allah? To wish that everyone could find a connection with ar-Rahman, ar-Rahim, the Creator of all things through Love, the Mother-Loving Grace and Force of Love who is Closer to us than we are to ourselves, the Creator and Nourisher of the bonds of Love and all relationships on earth?

I think this is at the heart of what we need to work on if we want to develop a strong and authentic connection with the message of the Spirit Of Guidance who is this ever-present present and gift... 

 3. Multiply the ‘as-salat wa salam aleyhi’, known as ‘salat “ala nabi”

Our first reflex upon hearing this advice is most likely to want to multiply the prayers for developing our connection to the Prophet verbally. However, asking our tongues to communicate to our brains the message that we desire a greater and deeper connection to the message and the essence of the Spirit of Guidance, to this ‘prophetic initiative’, to the cause and the light of the Universal Messenger, is only one way among others of investing ourselves in this process... 

Salat ‘ala nabi’ can take many different forms. It can take the form of actions. It can take the form of expressing and cultivating sincerity through giving (sadaqa)... It can take the form of offering help to others without expecting anything in return... It can take the form of really connecting with others, of reaching out (which is what salat is all about, reaching out, touching, connecting) to those in need, whatever the need may be and whoever they may be... 

All this is an expression of ‘as-salat wa salam ala nabi Muhammad’! 

 4. Contemplate the ‘Shama'il’ and the ‘sira’ of the Prophet

The ‘Shama'il’ are the stories that depict the personality of the Prophet, his qualities and his beauty, and the ‘sira’ recounts his story, his past. 

It is very important to contemplate the Messenger's life story and past, those few years during which Reality and the Spirit of Guidance manifested in human form... And we are all in this same situation of having a short few years which we can call our story: We are born on a certain day and will die on a certain day, but this is only a short phase of our lives. In our reality, we are eternal beings. This mortal physical life that we have in the cosmic realm is noteworthy, and this is what the study of the Prophet's ‘sira’ is all about, contemplating the mortal aspect of the Universal Guide of humanity, admiring how this soul manifested itself in this body and observing the movement of this body on earth... Seeing how he gave, how he received, how he smiled, how he spoke, how he walked, how he looked, how he embraced people, how he invited them into the Truth...

This is important, even though reading and contemplating the ‘sira’ comes with many challenges today, we need to do it intelligently and with intelligent people so as not to fall into the extremes of over-romanticization on the one hand, and demonization on the other... We also need all this to understand what really happened, what was added, what was inauthentic, what was authentic, how we can read things... How we can learn to read between the lines or fill in the missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle... 

The best biography books on the Prophet we have today are indeed like jigsaw puzzles passed down to the youngest sibling... You know how the youngest siblings often get hand-me-downs from their older siblings? You can imagine a little brother being given a jigsaw puzzle with 160 pieces missing out of 200! Now, it's up to him to try, with the remaining 40 pieces, to imagine and somehow conjure up the missing pieces, perhaps by drawing and colouring some of the missing pieces to make up a somewhat complete puzzle. 

And to be fair, and humbly realistic, I think this is the case for maybe the best of the biographical books on the Prophet. Generally, we are down to 40 pieces available out of a 500-piece puzzle at most when it comes to most biographical accounts. With 460 missing pieces, we must try to imagine, read between the lines of what happened here and there, become spiritually intelligent, surround ourselves with intelligent people during our apprenticeship and above all else, we must adopt the posture of the student rather than the judge who wants to place himself above everyone and especially the people of the past by assuming he is somehow more evolved and developed. 

In any case... I pray that this month will be a month of developing your connection with the Message of the Spirit Of Guidance...

May this month be a month of developing and strengthening our love for all humanity...

May this month be a month of contemplation of the personality and life of the Guide and Messenger Muhammad...

May this month be a month of seeking ever more actively to develop a stronger and deeper bond and connection with him...

And may this month be a month of developing genuine concern for his mission of inviting humanity to this reconciliation with their Creator...

Ameen

Thank you for taking the time to read, dear friends... If this sharing has helped and inspired you, remember to leave a comment, and share it widely ✨

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Article taken from a sermon at the Great Friday Assembly given on Friday 22 September 2023, in Ottawa, in English