How Is Your Soul? - Turning The Tide

Has anyone asked you how your soul is recently?

‘How are you?’ comes as easily as breathing, and just as easily, even thoughtlessly, we reply ‘I’m fine.’ We repeat this formula a dozen times a day and if we were half asleep it wouldn’t make much difference! But how is your soul? Now that takes a bit more thinking, and the first person we really need to ask is: ourselves.

Turning the Tide is essentially asking this question the whole way through the book in one way or another – directly, or indirectly, it is getting at the same question:

• How is your soul in the fast lane of youth?

• How is your soul informing you when you’re pursuing knowledge?

• How is your soul as you enter the sacred contract of marriage?

• How is your soul as you embrace the role of an ‘elder’?

Whatever stage of life we are at, it helps if we can reconnect with our inner purpose, our core, our soul. Here’s an extract from Chapter 1, where I introduce some basics about our soul before the translated ayahs of Qur’an and ahadith shed light on this vital part of our existence.

‘Your soul in its original, pure state made this covenant. It agreed to worship none other than the One God. Now, in the soul’s earthly stay, it has an innate draw towards God and His wondrous signs. Every soul searches for inner peace, to be in harmony with its nature; it was designed this way. In today’s world, with its fixation on meeting physical and material desires alone, the soul is starved and seeks refuge in a variety of ways to ‘forget’ its emptiness. Still, the longing remains – the longing for a connection to the One greater than our selves.

You were entrusted with your soul, and the covenant it made. In your care, the soul needs to be nurtured on the remembrance of God. It needs to be fed on the contemplation of His innumerable signs in the vast cosmos and within the human self. It needs to be sustained by the grace of God and by seeking His guidance and forgiveness.

As water is the source of life on earth, our soul is the core of our being. It is unique and subtle like the ineffable clearness of water. It is free from anyone’s grasp. When our souls are valued and strengthened, then will we find our capacity and our worth, as deep and expansive as the widest ocean. Our soul, like the ocean, has a delicate balance where it’s ‘health’ is vital to humanity’s survival. A thriving ocean’s chemistry is best measured by its unseen floor, where it absorbs everything around it. How similar to the health of our invisible souls, in need of protection and investment if they are to be the life force they were created to be.’

Excerpt is from Turning The Tide by Suma Din