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enthusiasm

Enthusiasm

  • “Heart’s need to meet the beloved.”1)
  • Enthusiasm is the ecstasy of the heart when it remembers the beloved.”2)
  • “Love that affects and invades one’s feelings is called passion; love that is so deep and irresistible that it burns for union is called fervor and enthusiasm.”3)
  • “The course of action of those who are in this service of faith and the Qur’an is contemplation and their vision is compassion. If these two main lines are maintained, the meaning of helplessness, neediness, enthusiasm and gratitude become clear.”4)
  • “The heart should be so ecstatic with Divine love that all other considerations are replaced and lost. This love leads to a yearning for reunion with God. Joyful enthusiasm and yearning…”5)
  • “Now, as for the perfection of your life, it is to perceive the lights of the Pre-Eternal Sun which are depicted in the mirror of your life, and to love them. It is to display ardour for Him as a conscious being. It is to pass beyond yourself with love of Him. It is to establish the reflection of His light in the centre of your heart.”6)
  • “After each group has completed its turn of parade and the desired results have been obtained, the All-Munificent Maker, the All-Compassionate Creator, causes most of them, by His Compassion, to feel weariness and distaste for the world. He grants them a desire for rest and a longing to emigrate to another world. Thus, when they are to be discharged from life’s duties, He arouses in them an enthusiastic inclination to return to their original home.”7)
  • “This is why the universe’s obedience to the Divine Command of ‘Be!’ and it is (36: 82) does not differ from that of a particle. Creation obeys this Divine Command, coming from the Creator’s Eternal Will, via the same forces of inclination, need, yearning, and attraction. All of these are urged to operate on all creatures by the same Divine Will. Delicate water, which cracks or even shatters iron when ordered to freeze, shows the power of this obedience.”8)
  • “When you look at lifeless things, you see that the potentiality in them moves in order to be realized. It is almost as if they feel pleasure in that movement. Do you not see how a drop of water opens its heart enthusiastically when its Originator commands it to do so? Despite its weakness and tenderness, when it hears its Lord command: ‘O water! Turn into ice and expand,’ it ‘feels’ such intense zeal that it can crack hard iron.”9)
  • “Human senses are not restricted to the five known ones. Each person has many ‘windows’ opening on the Unseen, and many other senses of whose nature he or she knows or does not know. For example, drive and enthusiasm are two other senses that do not lie.”10)
  • “God, the Necessarily Existent Being, in conformity with His essential independence of creation and absolute perfection, has infinite sacred compassion and infinite sacred affection and love. Such sacred compassion and sacred affection and love cause an infinite sacred enthusiasm, which engenders a limitless sacred joy that is the source of infinite sacred pleasure.”11)
  • “The beautiful forms of bounties, their tastes and smells, are invitations to thanksgiving. By arousing desire in living beings and thereby directing them to appreciate and respect provision, they urge animals to give thanks through their disposition, and people to do so with their tongues and actions.”12)

Absolute Enthusiasm

  • “There are four pillars of the way of being a worshipping and (thereby) beloved servant of God, as stated in the following: In the way of depending on awareness of one’s impotence before God, four things are essential; They are, O beloved one, acknowledgement of one’s absolute impotence and poverty (before God), and absolute thanksgiving and zeal (in God’s cause).”13)
  • “… a believer equipped with a consciousness of helplessness and poverty is blessed with special favors from God Almighty, and they come like a bolt out of the blue. Everything is in its proper place, so there is no need for someone to intervene in order to save him in the flow of worldly events. Individuals who recognize this situation act with enthusiasm and see no reason for hopelessness. He says, ‘Why shouldn’t I keep running in His path with feelings of thankfulness!’ and rears up with enthusiasm. Before the blessings that come showering down, they feel energized and thankful; they proceed on, not losing speed for a lifetime. This is the Master Bediüzzaman’s consideration of helplessness and poverty, which refers to an acknowledgement that leads one to attain the feeling of absolute enthusiasm and absolute thankfulness. What is meant by ‘poverty’ and ‘helplessness’ is not material poverty. This is the Honorable Sage Bediüzzaman’s consideration of helplessness and poverty, which refers to an acknowledgement that leads one to attain the feeling of absolute enthusiasm and absolute thankfulness. When individuals can do that, they fully sense the point of reliance, and they seek help in their heart, and thus set foot on this path that will lead them to God and deepen their relations with Him.”14)

See Also

Other Languages

Footnotes

1)
Ali ibn Muhammed es-Seyyid eş-Şerif Cürcani, Tarifat: Arapça-Türkçe Terimler Sözlüğü, tr. Arif Erkan, İstanbul: Bahar Yayınları, 1997, p. 131.
2)
Abu’n-Najib Abdulqahir as-Suhrawardi, Kitabu Adabi’l-Muridin, ed. Menahem Milson, Jerusalem, 1977, p. 304.
3)
M. Fethullah Gülen, Kalbin Zümrüt Tepeleri, İstanbul: Nil Yayınları, 2008, p. 196.
4)
M. Fethullah Gülen, “Şefkat Yâ Hû!”, Bamteli, 24 Ocak 2016.
5)
M. Fethullah Gülen, “Aşk Yolunun Âdâbı”
6)
Bediüzzaman Said Nursi, The Words, New Jersey: The Light, 2013, p. 141.
7)
Ibid., p. 222.
8)
Ibid., p. 546.
9)
Bediüzzaman Said Nursi, Al-Mathnawi Al-Nuri, New Jersey: The Light, 2007, p. 226.
10)
Ibid., p. 376.
11)
Bediüzzaman Said Nursî, Mektubat, İstanbul: Şahdamar Yayınları, 2010, p. 91.
12)
Bediüzzaman Said Nursi, The Letters, New Jersey: The Light, 2014, p. 372.
13)
Ibid., p. 374.
enthusiasm.txt · Last modified: 2022/11/21 07:31 by Editor