To be and to become are synonyms.

Otherwise, I'm frozen which means I stop growing. I put myself in a cage, in a box, like a lifeless statue without evolution. I'm no longer a being, I become a possession. A cultural, religious or other possession; a relic. I'm being “had” literally: I'm becoming an asset of my own ego.

 

To be is necessarily to  become. So the question the conscious being asks himself is: In what sense am I evolving? What am I becoming?

 

Becoming can also be read “be-coming”: to be in the process of coming to the right place. To come to the meeting place that our higher consciousness has given us, there where we are in a state of reception. It's about coming back to the right address, to the true self, to that identity that the Prophet Issa claimed as a child in the cradle: “I am AbdAllah”... Or, in other words, “I am on the Path of searching for Allah, the Unknown Absolute who is Greater than all”. Only Allah defines me: I remain in his image: evolving, elusive, always expanding.

 

Even the “Name” Allah, is not an identity, it's not a “Name”. “Ism” in Arabic means: address or path not a name in the way we know the word to mean in English. Allah would literally mean “who are You?” (All-ah). So it is a question, a quest. A continuous wonder. A never-ending quest.

 

When my mind wants to freeze, I become aware that Allah is Greater, that He transcends all things and that He is the All There Is that transcends all culture, all form, all experience, all religion.

 

To be an Abd-Allah, then, is to walk in the Way without end. It’s very important that the soul's finality should be the Infinite, that this should be its natural tendency. It's very important to be defined by the Infinite!

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Excerpt from the introduction to the seminar on The Art of Being and Becoming, Saturday August 31, 2024