Understanding Salat — Page 230
Understanding S al A t 230 search for Allah Almighty with a sense of urgency, knowing that if we fail to find Him in this grave, we will be lost in that grave. The mystics have often said, ‘die before you die’ ( موتوا قبل أن تموتوا ). We all eventually enter the solitude of the grave where we will have left everyone in the world behind forever. If we never experienced communion with Allah Almighty, then our grave will be filled with unbearable loneliness, and the punishment of hell begins there. Our time in our grave will be miserable, similar to how our time on our prayer mat in this life was miserable. The misery we experience in S al ā t is a taste of the misery that likely awaits us in the punishments of the hereafter. One of the purposes of S al ā t is to prepare us for that solitude of the grave. When we raise our hands and begin our prayer, we should imagine that moment of death and we should leave this world. Everything outside the rec- tangle of our prayer mat should be left behind, and now there is only Allah. If we can die before we die, we can achieve immersion in S al ā t. When we find our Allah in the solitude of our prayer mat, we can look forward to communion with our Allah in the solitude of the grave. The pleasure we expe- rience in communion with Allah Almighty in S al ā t will be a taste of the pleasure that likely awaits us in the rewards of the hereafter. At the end of S al ā t , when we say ‘peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah’ ( ِ اَلسَّالَم ُ عَلَيكُم ْ و َ رَحْمَة ُ هللا ), we should ask ourselves if we are now coming back to a world that we had left, or if we were here the whole time.