How to love Allah?

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Love for Insects and FlowersLove or ishq is the extreme form of inclination or hubb which consists of the soul’s liking for pleasant and beneficial things. Hub can be either good or bad; if one likes good and beneficial things, it is a desirable trait; but not so if one likes evil things.

The point worthy of notice is that hubb must essentially be directed only towards God and whatever is associated with the Divine. This is the highest form of hubb. It should be kept in mind that the Real Beloved is God, and it is only when man loses his Real Beloved that he mistakenly adopts other objects for his love, such as wife, children, wealth, status, or any other worldly thing.

If man were to find his True Beloved again, he would also achieve deliverance from his endless, aimless wanderings. In order to find the True Beloved, first we must know all the various forms of hubb. Basically hubb may be directed towards nine different things:

  1. The human being’s hubb for itself; which is one of the strongest forms of hubb.
  2. The human being’s hubb for things outside itself for the purpose of deriving physical pleasure from them, such as various kinds of foods, clothes, and other things which serve to satisfy physical needs and desires.
  3. Man’s hubb for another human being on account of the kindness or service that the other has rendered him.
  4. Man’s hubb for something on account of that thing’s inherent goodness, such as beauty and righteousness.
  5. Man’s hubb for another individual without his being able to find any particular reason for it; not because that individual has beauty, wealth or power or something of the kind, but simply because of the existence of some invisible spiritual link between them.
  6. Man’s hubb for an individual who has come from a far-off place, or whom he has succeeded in meeting during a long journey.
  7. Man’s hubb for his colleagues and fellow professionals, such as the liking of a scholar for another scholar, or a merchant’s for another merchant, and so on.
  8. The hubb (affinity) of the effect for its cause, and vice versa.
  9. The hubb of common effects of a single cause for one another; such as the love between members of a single family.

If we give some thought to this matter, we shall reach the conclusion that since God is Absolute Existence and all other things depend on Him, whatever other things man may love lack any independent existence of their own.

In other words, since God is the Ultimate Reality, He is in fact the ultimate object of true love, and all other kinds of love directed towards things are figurative and imaginary. Thus it is that you must sublimate your love and discover its real object; and this is not possible unless the following conditions appear in you:

 

  1. You should have a fervent desire of meeting God (liqa’ Allah); in other words, you should have no fear of death. Your actions must be such as to reflect your assurance that you will meet God after your death.
  1. You should give priority to God’s wish over and above your own wishes and desires; since this is one of the requirements of love.
  1. You should not forget God for even a moment; just as the lover is not forgetful of his beloved for even a second.
  1. You should not be happy when you gain something, or be sad when you lose something; since if all your attention is centered on God all other things would be unimportant for you.
  1. You should be kind and loving towards God’s creatures; since whoever loves God will certainly love His creatures also.
  1. You should have fear of God at the same time that you love Him; since these two states are not contradictory.
  1. You should keep your love of God a secret.

Under such conditions God would also love you as His servant and fulfill His promise:

Say ( O’ Muhammad), `If you love God, follow me; God will love you and forgive your sins.’… (3:31)Love for Insects and Flowers