What is the Means of Following a Way to Sainthood?

 

The two keys to, or means of, this spiritual journeying or movement, are repeating God’s Names and meditation or reflection. The benefits of this repetition and meditation are too many to count. Apart from the benefits for one’s afterlife and for the attainment of human perfections, just one of their benefits concerning this tumultuous worldly life is as follows:

Every person seeks some consolation or pleasure for relief amidst the turbulence and burdensome responsibilities of life; seeks some intimacy to relieve the solitude and gloom around him. Modern social gatherings can give to one or two out of ten persons the means of relief and satisfy the need for a friendly atmosphere, but only in a heedless and intoxicating way.

Eighty per cent of people lack true consolation and relief; they are also devoid of the relief possible through the sort of social gatherings mentioned, either because of modern attitudes and life-style or because of the struggle to make a living or because of other factors such as illness, afflictions and old age which lead them to turn their thoughts more to the other world than to this one.

Those people can find a true consolation and contentment, and a faithful friendship, by making their hearts work through meditation and remembrance of God, by repeating His Names and, turning to their inner selves for intimacy, by coming to understand that everywhere is full of God’s creatures, visible or invisible, so that they are not alone wherever they may be. Belief in, and remembrance of, God lead them to make friends with every creature and to live a pleasant, contented life. Besides, the feeling that they are always in the company of God, their Creator and Provider, gives them the greatest of pleasures and removes all the gloom and solitude, leading them to be thankful to God.

 

This article has been adapted from Risale- i Nur Collection.