The Curtain of Awakening | Part 1

The envelope addressed to me arrived with a cryptic, cursive sender’s name. It read ‘Monsieur De Nabi’ in the top left high corner. Intrigued, I swiftly opened the envelope, took out the sheet of paper inside and unfolded it. Holding it up in front of me, I saw it was blank before it transformed into pure light before my very eyes. No longer a material object, it shone in all directions. I bathed in its glow for some time, before awaking to the feeling that something momentous had just happened. Opening my eyes and staring up at the ceiling above the retro rose-painted walls, I took a few long deep breaths in an attempt to sustain the ethereal vision. My prayers and depression had not been in vain then, I thought, inviting a shy smile to my face. At breakfast, I drank my coffee, ate slices of my favourite whole grain walnut bread with honey, and reflected on the dream while sitting on the living room’s small, blue two-seater couch. In 1995, my dream life was extremely rich and I often had trouble deciphering its hermetic symbolism. But here, the message was so clear-cut that anyone –including myself— could grasp it. The Divine Creator was sending me a clean slate and the light of spiritual transformation. I was elated, both tearing up and smiling more assertively as I watched young children play outside in the blessed light of morning. Fun had always seemed to me to be part of the sacred life. It was not only all silence and sobriety or the brilliant wonder of why our Lord has created beautiful butterflies and birds, and hardwired all species, including cats, chimps, and humans, for joyful play. My mind then pondered the details. That the sender’s name was French was not surprising as I had been schooled in French in Canada and was still living in a largely francophone context. I thus understood ‘Monsieur,’ of course, and the nobiliary particle ‘de’, but ‘Nabi’? I poured myself another cup of coffee, returned to my place, and let my mind wander. And suddenly I remembered. ‘Nabi’ meant prophet in Arabic. The only reason I knew it –consciously, at least— was because I was fond of a French modern art movement called Les Nabis whose artists had wanted to reintegrate the spiritual and the mystical into art. Recalling artist Maurice Denis’ magical landscapes and scenes of veiled Catholic women, everything clicked into place in one of those short flashes of illumination that we live for. The dream transpired to be the culmination of incomplete strands of my life. For years before this dream, I had been searching and studying different religious and mystical traditions— Buddhism, Shamanism, Judaism, Hinduism, esoterism, and, of course, Christianity. The point was not to create a smorgasbord, but to find a spiritual method that would allow me to root, free, and better myself. It was part of a personal quest for well being; my desire was and remains to connect my spirituality and everyday life. At the time of dreaming of the letter of light, I had been reading, in addition to the Gospels and Psalms, a French translation of the Qur’an. Two or so years earlier, Laleh Bakhtiar’s “SUFI, Expressions of the Mystic Quest” had beckoned me from the window display of a spiritual bookshop. I bought, devoured, and continued to reread it and contemplate its healing images of Islamic art. In the first few pages, I discovered the shahadah and, on a quiet evening in the days before computers, cell phones, and social media, I read the words aloud in both French and Arabic transliteration: “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is His Messenger.” I believed them and they did not, at least for me, contradict my Christian faith or my love for Jesus. In the following days, I began looking for a Sufi mosque. Making my way to a largely Muslim neighbourhood, a halal butcher gave me directions, telling me to go on Friday at noontime. When Friday came, I made my way there, venturing on foot into unknown parts of the city. I walked in with my boots on and did not at first understand why the imam kept pointing at my feet as I stood at the door in embarrassment. A woman came over and gently explained to me that I had to take my shoes off in a mosque, something I had forgotten in the nervousness of the moment.  I unlaced and shed my footgear before she took my hand, leading me to the women’s half of the mosque. I listened to the sermon on how men are responsible for their gaze upon women, regardless of what the latter were or were not wearing. I then followed the movements of the few rows of girls in prayer as best I could. Everyone was exceedingly nice. I was offered a ride home and, saying good-bye, I told my new friends that I would be back next week. But I never returned, being undoubtedly under the wily spell of human forgetfulness. Mundane life took over, leaving unfinished business behind as I was to discover through that fateful future dream two years later. But that morning after the dream, alone on my blue couch, all of these events were only a subconscious conversation, further facilitating what appeared then to be a spur-of-the-moment decision. Inspired by the dream, I went over to the bookshelf to get the Yellow Pages and looked up mosques. Finding one in the city centre, I phoned and was told there was an introductory class on Islam on Saturday. Three days later, unbeknownst to family or friends, there I sat in an Islamic religious class surrounded by practicing Muslims. At the end of the class, the teacher asked if anyone wanted to take their shahadah. Having understood Monsieur de Nabi’s letter as a personal invitation, I timidly raised my hand and then walked up the front of the class. I don’t remember what I was wearing, but I know that I didn’t have a headscarf. I recited the Arabic words with difficulty, but with ease from the perspective of my soul. Afterwards, many women and girls came up and hugged me, some crying out of happiness. One gave me a hijab. I also received a little booklet on how to pray. And that was it. A single moment and pronouncement had changed my life irrevocably and a long journey had begun. No words can describe how I felt in the coming days. The closest I can come is to say that I felt purified as if light had washed and penetrated my whole being and body, including my eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. I often wish now that I could time travel to relive and maintain that blissful state, free of the tedious weight and tricks of the ego, ever seeking power, drama, and the centerstage role. The transformations brought about in my daily life emerged not through any draconian ideology or self-imposed force. Instead, the shifts occurred mostly naturally, aligned as they were to my desire, although the struggle to understand and improve myself remains, of course, ongoing. I continued to go to the mosque on Saturdays and I began to fast when the Holy Month arrived around the corner. My first Ramadan was odd because I had no idea what to do. Some days I would just have a few dates and a glass of fermented milk and then wonder why I would get dizzy at work. I had never had much interest in cooking, and I was probably not eating enough protein to properly sustain me until sunset. One night, I was woken up by a presence in my room. I looked to my right and saw a man sitting watching me in a motherly kind of way. His dark hair was not short, his hands were on his knees, and I just knew in my heart that it was him, the Prophet Muhammad. An intense calm came over me. Not speaking or even looking again directly at him, I relished a lengthy moment of blessed serenity before falling back asleep. This was another huge gift for a soul long suffering from a lack of love and support. Some people are carried into Islam by the beautiful music of the adhan or the Qur’an, others by the religion’s embracing of science and logic. The Divine Creator knows each soul and therefore which language it speaks and understands. A detail of the Prophet had intrigued me. He was wearing a ring with a unique design I couldn’t decipher. I don’t remember how I discovered that Muhammad, Peace Be Upon Him, wore a silver signatory ring. I took it, however, to be a confirmation of his identity. My conversion or reversion as it is often called has brought me so much that I could never begin to repay the benefits or find adequate words to describe these. Perhaps the easiest thing to voice is the increased self-confidence Islam gave me, enabling me to undertake and complete projects that would have been unthinkable beforehand. However, my story is not the linear happily-ever-after near-hagiographic “I saw the light, and everything worked out beautifully” convert tale. There have been and continue to be countless bumps along the road, some big enough to test my faith. But no matter how much I have dissented, doubted, or stretched myself, Islam has always been wide enough to contain me. I increasingly see the Divine wisdom in that the religion is not named after a people or person, not even a prophet, but instead denotes a spiritual state of being. Islam simply means submission, explaining why in the Qur’an, Jesus’ followers are called Muslims. In our increasingly violent and inhumane world, Islam’s universality should be better recognized, first by Muslims themselves, but also by followers of other faiths, agnostics, and even atheists; human beings’ actions are always ‘subject’ to some form of power, whether God, fate, a political or philosophical ideology, the subconscious, social pressure, the superego, and so on. Freedom lies in recognizing, testing, and consciously choosing those paradigms or realities which we feel best guide us. Many of the external challenges of conversion, like for many converts, came from the community itself. It was very confusing to navigate so many well-meaning people offering so many interpretations of verses or the ahadith, meaning the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh), with each person insisting on the correctness of his or her version. The multiple, sometimes-conflicting views I heard on Islam’s prescriptions regarding women, other religions or even daily practices, could be attributed, I discovered over time, not only to different schools of thought, but also to culture. Culture -like the ego- can be so extremely tenacious that we rarely question or verify what we believe or were taught. I also encountered difficulties with my family. Worried about me, they could not read the brail of my soul, overpowered as they were by distorted media depictions of Islam and the behaviour of some Muslims who, unfortunately, confirm the stereotypes.  I understood their concerns as I did those of relatives who considered changing religions to be a betrayal. They couldn’t hear that in my heart I hadn’t really left Christianity, only taken what appeared to be the next logical step in my spiritual life. In fact, many converts express the feeling that Islam has made them better Christians. With time, things eased. My family saw that I was happy, and we simply avoided certain discussions. That I can still also self-identify as being originally of Christian heritage, however, may perhaps be more difficult for my fellow and sister Muslims to fathom. It took me over two decades of conversion zealotry to get there myself, having realized that I can’t truly advance if I repress where I come from and the depth to which it has shaped me. But I am fully Muslim now, the cure in my life which makes me so grateful to our Lord, Allah. He tells us positive things about the Prophet Jesus, his mother Mary, and many other prophets.