Posted by Pir Zia Inayat-Khan on June 21, 2009
Assurance is offered that as time goes by the world will become more united, that it will form itself into a brotherly communion by shortening distance and transmitting thought through the air. Alas, do not believe in such a unification of men. In construing freedom as the multiplication and speedy satisfaction of needs, they distort their own nature, for they engender within themselves many senseless and stupid desires, habits and most absurd inventions. –Father Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov (1880)
Is the Internet a force for good in the world? The wonderfully courageous democratic activists in Iran are using Twitter and other social networking media to powerful effect. At the same time, in the U.S. at least, the boom in electronic communication over the last couple of years has meant that families are spending less time together.
Facebook is a curious phenomenon. Most of my Facebook friends I have never met in person. Is our friendship really friendship, or is it a synapse in the self-organizing neural network of cyberspace? A bit of both, I suspect.
What I like about Facebook is that it is an apt metaphor for tawajjuh. Tawajjuh is an Arabic verbal noun derived from wajh, “face.” In Sufism, it denotes the practice of turning one’s spiritual face toward the face of another within the sphere of the heart.
These words of my grandfather’s may help to explain the underlying concept: “Each one has his circle of influence, large or small; within his sphere so many souls and minds are involved... The size of a man’s sphere corresponds to the extent of his sympathy, or we may say, to the size of his heart. His sympathy holds his sphere together.”
The Sufi mystic makes a daily practice of extending sympathy to all who occupy her heart by means of tawajjuh. The basic form of the practice is not so different from Facebook.
The Facebook user enters the site with a password. The mystic enters the space of the heart with the invocation of a Divine Name. The Facebook user scans the latest news posted by his friends. The mystic intuitively senses the condition of the souls that reside within her heart-space. The Facebook user sends messages and comments. The mystic sends emanations of peace and blessing.
The Internet can be, and all too frequently is, a vehicle for "stupid desires" and "absurd inventions." But, in my experience, it can also be a conduit for genuine love and service. When the heart is awake, whether online or off, wheresoever you turn, there is God’s Face.
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