Hee Munjo Deen Ai post 3 - one soul

O mankind! Be conscious of your Lord Who created you from a single soul and  from it created its mate and from them twain hath spread abroad a multitude of men and women. (Qur'an 4:1)

I have loved this verse of the Qur'an since it was chosen as the motto for the Aga Khan's Golden Jubilee in 2007. In choosing this verse, the Aga Khan (the spiritual leader of the Ismaili tradition to which I belong) was, I think, making a powerful statement about the unity of human beings across those frontiers which traditionally divide us: race, gender, class, religion, language, our own sense of superiority and inferiority. That year, as in previous years, he emphasised again and again that the so-called "clash of civilisations" was really a clash of ignorance. He underlined over and over that the diversity within the Ismaili community - global and local - was a source of strength, and urged us, his followers, to come together as the brothers and sisters we claimed ourselves to be.

I always associate this verse with a ritual that takes place at the end of the Du'a, our set prayer. We turn to the person beside us, whether we know them or not, take their hand, look into their eyes and wish them "shah-jo-didar." It's hard to translate that wish - it's essentially wishing for the other person to be blessed with Divine Light, to which no worldly joys can compare. It's the highest thing you could possibly wish for someone. In that moment, no matter how different we are, we share that same deepest longing - for love, for light, for freedom, for something beyond all of this - and we wish it for each other as we wish it for ourselves. It's over in a flash, but sometimes I am shaken by the stark openness of that connection.

Some days I feel the weight of this verse lay heavy on me. Can I look Donald Trump, or Muhammad Emwazi, face to face, eye to eye, and feel in my blood, in my heart, that we come from a single soul? My ego screams "no," it wants to assert its difference, its distinctiveness. They are not like me. I would not be like them. And yet, and yet, the Qur'an is so clear, so strident. Who am I to argue with the Divine Word?

And if I'm honest, I sense it, too, our common humanity. These actions that are so different from my own probably stem from the same fears and needs that I have, that are part of the human condition, that we all know (but would rather not admit to). The need to be seen, to be valued, to be loved, the need to make a difference, the need to be right, to be known to be right, the need to feel safe and secure, the need for control and power. And the fear, the deep irrational all-consuming fear - fear of loss, fear of the unknown, fear of seeming less than I am, fear of isolation. I have no choice but to come face to face with my own darknesses in the darknesses of others. To quote the science-fiction author Orson Scott Card: "sickness and healing are in every heart. Death and deliverance are in every hand."

This also crops up closer to home. I notice my tendency, when I am in conflict with someone, to be dismissive of them "he's just a jerk, a dickhead, an idiot, a narcissist. She's just a bitch, she doesn't know what she's talking about." But the vision of the world that I have, centred on this verse, doesn't let me do that for long. If I'm going to take this world-view seriously, if I really believe that we're created from one soul, I can't just toss people aside like this. I have to stop, and breathe, and recognise their humanity, and that they may be as right in their own eyes as I am in mine, and try and find some understanding, some compassion. It slows me down. I'm less invested in being right, when I take this view, and more interested in finding common ground.

Funnily enough, I've found the Buddhist loving-kindness (metta) meditation practice the most powerful way of connecting with the sense that we are created from one soul. It takes it beyond an intellectual proposition into something experienced and deeply felt. I resist doing it (that ego again) but I notice that when I do, I can relate more openly to people. My experience of relational meditation practices, sitting face to face with a partner or in a circle, and sharing what matters, bringing openness and kindness to listening and speaking, has also put me in powerful and immediate contact with the otherness, and the single-souled-ness, of another person. Sometimes it's as if all the barriers melt away and we are just there, in all our complexity and rawness and vulnerability, face-to-face and heart-to-heart, and I know with absolute and unshakeable certainty that we are of one essence. Any my eloquence is simply not up to putting the beauty of that into words.