Spiritual Holding Patterns
Expounding on a pleasantly nostalgic memory of a fishing trip I went on with one of my teachers, this article explores the plateauing phases of life that I call “spiritual holding patterns.”
Introduction
A few years ago, I was blessed to go on a deep-sea fishing trip with one of my teachers. I was excited the day before the trip. For years, Shaykh told me about his passion for fishing, and having done some with family members as a teenager, it was a dream come true. My bag was packed the night before, and my alarm was set well before dawn; I made coffee and arrived at the meeting location early (ensuring I arrived on time), and we drove for an hour to get to the docks. After we loaded our gear onto the headboat, awaiting the hour-long ride to our fishing spot, we went to the upper deck and prayed Fajr (pre-dawn prayer). As we watched the sunrise, resting his arms on the boat’s railing and gazing off into the horizon, Shaykh noticed a bird soaring over the water a great distance from the shore. He said, “SubhaanAllah (praise God),” and in a very calm, non-melodious tone, recited, “Have they not seen the birds above them, spreading and folding their wings? None holds them up except the Most Compassionate. Indeed, He is All-Seeing of everything.”1
This verse also comes to mind when I see airplanes. They are two hundred thousand-pound glorified flying buses that, if it were not for the windows and TV screens telling us where we are, teleport us to new locations. We board our planes with essentially zero risk of crashing,2 and are confident that our journey will end at the destination we chose at the time that we agreed upon when purchasing our tickets.3 Still, every so often, for many reasons, our planes get stuck in a holding pattern—being at this leg of our journey’s end, the pilot engages in a delay tactic until landing becomes possible.4 Allah, who holds the planes in the air, also decrees when and how we land. The pilot is responsible for communicating with air traffic control and being wise with the plane’s fuel, but everything else is up to Allah.
Our lives are similar. Perhaps more frequently than airplanes, we find ourselves stuck in a spiritual holding pattern—where we feel close to the end of a life’s chapter, yet circumstances prohibit us from landing forward to the next phase of life, and turning around is nonsensical (if not detrimental). Although we pilot our journies, Allah (exalted above all examples) is aviation control. Sometimes, things we could never imagine happen, and all of our plans come to a halt. We must ask ourselves: How do we manage our thoughts and emotions when this happens? What do we do to earn Allah’s pleasure during this inevitable occurrence?
Time
In Martin Nguyen’s beautiful book, Modern Muslim Theology, the second chapter is on time. He emphasizes how we now live in a “postdomestic” society,5 the effects of which have cut us off from the natural rhythms of life and death.6 For Muslims, “The Qur’an repeatedly raises the intimate relationship between human life, time, and the created world to emphasize the workings of God underlying it.”7 Islam obligates the submission of our desires to particular time constraints—our prayers (five times daily), fasting Ramadan (from sunrise to sunset), paying of Zakat (once yearly), and the occurrence of Hajj (during Dhul-Hijjah)—all determined by Allah’s creation. But now, with the invention of the mechanical clock, “time is no longer connected to what we witness or where we live. We have instead devised means to keep time that is free of experience and relationship.”8
Our modern experience of time is mechanical—so long as the inputs remain consistent (i.e., our actions), the product will respond in tandem. In reality, Allah is the controller of time itself,9 and we experience time in many different ways. As the adage goes, “Time flies when you are having fun,” indicating that there are times (e.g., when we are not having fun) when time is experienced at a different speed. It is not that an hour today has fewer minutes than it did during the time of the Prophet ﷺ; instead, because of the ease and consistency with which we typically can accomplish things, our expectations have distorted and arguably become narcissistic.
We can use coffee as an example. My wife is Ethiopian, and they have coffee ceremonies to prepare bunna (traditional Ethiopian coffee). The coffee is roasted by hand over a fire (beans tossed back and forth incessantly) to reach the desired color before it is ground into powder and boiled in a jabana (clay coffee pot). Then, the host pours small cups for everyone, adjusting the water-coffee-sugar ratio to each person’s preference. No two cups of bunna will ever taste the same, and everyone’s process will differ slightly. Nonetheless, accepting an invitation to drink coffee always becomes a thirty-plus-minute social extravaganza, where the host will start by burning frankincense and finish by catching up with you about all the personal information you did not want to share. Juxtaposed with today, making someone coffee might not demand more than the minute it takes to use a Keurig machine, and as long as the pods are the same, every cup will taste the same. It can also be devoid of any social interaction. Though coffee is just one example, today’s culture prioritizes consistency and mechanical practicality.
We have lost the ability to figuratively tell time, often deluded into associating consistency with necessity. Things typically repeat consistently and we believe they are necessarily that way. In truth, the only reality that necessarily exists is Allah, Al-Haqq (The Real Truth); everything else is in the realm of possibilities.10 If Allah necessarily exists and “nothing is like Him,”11 then “everything in the world will come to an end.”12 Thus, we set our expectations accordingly—nothing will remain stagnant, not our emotional states or our ability to interpret them. Furthermore, our moral compass for interpretation has been re-magnetized even if they perceivably did.
“The new mentality is more important even than the new science and the new technology. It has altered the metaphysical presuppositions and the imaginative contents of our minds; so that now the old stimuli provoke a new response.”
–Alfred North Whitehead (d. 1947)13
Life oscillates between a spectrum of experiences and the emotions attached to them; joy and pain are just like we have sunshine and rain.14 How do we interpret them? “Perhaps you love something, and it is bad for you, and perhaps you hate something, and it is good for you”?15 Therefore, what metric do we use to objectively tell (i.e., understand) the time? Could this be something, whether it be joyous or painful, that gets us closer to Allah? Something that, through this experience, we will grow stronger both emotionally and spiritually?
Ibn Ataillah Al-Iskandari (d. 709/1310) said, “One of the signs of relying on one’s deeds is the loss of hope when a downfall occurs.”16 This does not mean we should not feel upset or disappointed when displeasing things happen either. The Prophet ﷺ wept when his son, Ibrahim, passed and said, “The eyes are shedding tears, and the heart is grieved, and we will not say anything except what pleases our Lord.”17 When we find ourselves in a season of difficulty, we must not despair of Allah's mercy.18 “Whoever places their trust in Allah will not be harmed,” as Imam Al-Shafii (d. 204/820) said, “And whoever puts their hope in Allah is where they will find it.”19
Our responsibility is to be, as some of the righteous of the path have put it, “[Children] of the moment.”20 Children—little people without authority or wisdom derived from life’s experiences and at the behest of their parents—respond with whatever is required of them, however appropriate, and ideally without insolence. Humanity is Faqir (spiritually impoverished) to Allah,21 Al-Ghani Al-Hamid (Self-Sufficient and Praiseworthy),22 and therefore respond to whatever is required of us at the moment, be that Qabdh or Bast (contraction or expansion).23
Untroubled is the life of he who is ignorant or
Oblivious of what has elapsed and what remains.
And of he who deludes his own soul about reality
And lures it into craving the impossible.
– Al-Mutanabbi (d. 354)24
Muraqaba (Vigilance)
Early that morning, nowhere near the boating dock, Shaykh asked me, “Did you take some Dramamine?”25 I responded the first time by saying, “No, I’m good,” and the second time when we had just got on the boat. I was confident in my childhood charter and head-boat fishing excursions, utterly oblivious to the impact on motion sickness a twenty-year hiatus had. I could not have been more wrong. When we arrived at our fishing spot, the water quickly turned rough—the sixty-foot fishing boat began to sway up and down, back and forth, atop six-foot waves; at times, the horizon disappeared, and the only thing in sight was the sky—and immediately after dropping my sinker in the water, I became unbearably seasick.
It is common for spiritual holding patterns to be disorienting; perhaps by the time we recognize we are in one, much time has passed. Like in an airplane, when we realize something is awry and the metaphorical oxygen masks fall, we must secure our own before assisting others. If we cannot breathe, we are useless to ourselves or anyone else. Our intention is the metaphorical breath that lets spiritual oxygen into our hearts. Unlike our physical hearts, our spiritual hearts do not have autonomic regulation (where they can maintain a pulse unconsciously); our spiritual hearts require continuous attention. As the Prophet ﷺ told us, “Indeed actions are based on their intentions.”26 So, every breath (physically and metaphorically) is precious and must be cared for.27 True self-care, in the Islamic spiritual paradigm, objectively requires Muraqaba (vigilance) to do what pleases Allah, down to the inhalation and exhalation of our breath. Imam Al-Qushayri (d. 465/1072) said, “The noblest of all acts of worship is to count one’s breaths with God – glory and blessings to Him.”28
I spoke more extensively about Muraqaba, albeit not by name, in a previous article on Presence.
Muhasaba (Self-reckoning)
The Prophet ﷺ said, "The clever person is the one who subjugates his soul and works for what is after death. And the incapable is the one who follows his desires and merely hopes in Allah."
The meaning of his saying: "Who subjugates his soul," is the one who reckons with his soul in the world before he is reckoned with on the Day of Judgement. It has been related that 'Umar bin Al-Khattab [d. 23/644] said: "Reckon with yourselves before you are reckoned with, and prepare for the Greatest Inquisition. The reckoning of the Day of Judgement is only light for the one who reckoned with himself in the world." And it has been related that Maimun bin Mihran [d. 117/726] said: "The slave (of Allah) will not be a Taqi [God-fearing] until he has reckoned himself, just as he would account for where his business partner got his food and clothing."
–Imam Al-Tirmidhi29
Our Muhasaba is concerning the past, especially when in spiritual holding patterns. My seasickness was utterly my fault. Had I listened to Shaykh, been humble, taken the Dramamine, and perhaps I would have brought fish home from the trip? Have we made choices that led to today’s condition? While we may have lacked the information we currently have, and our decisions were the best we could have taken at that time, proverbial hindsight is twenty-twenty. If we analyze our past experiences, what can we learn to benefit our present and future selves? And the more details we can scrutinize, the better. Were there specific conditions, healthy or toxic, that contributed to our decisions? Understanding this will give us insight into what we must do moving forward.
Muhasaba is challenging. But, for us to be successful, it cannot be done passively.30 It is the humbling process of analyzing oneself—internally (beliefs and feelings) and externally (actions of the heart and limbs)—to prepare for the inevitable future.31 On the boat in the middle of the ocean, I knew my situation was finite, and the time was subjectively short—just five hours. But, with our souls, the Angel of Death’s ETA is unknown. Our negligence of Muhasaba disenables us from benefitting from previous experiences and repenting from sin. Thus, we must stand guard patiently and with perseverance.
Its purpose is to conjure positive change, not to make us feel guilty. Guilt alone, without being paired with any action, is a toxic emotion because it is a hyperfixation on the self and blinds our ultimate goal—to earn Allah’s pleasure. But, when feelings of guilt or shame (that we have done something worthy of Allah’s displeasure) motivate Towbah,32 that is a blessing and an extremely healthy action we can take when stuck atop a plateau. Our responsibility then becomes holding ourselves accountable and working towards redemption with Allah.
Mujahada (Renewed Striving)
When I was on my fishing trip, and the seasickness started kicking in, I retreated to the gally (in the middle and most stable part of the boat), hoping this would improve my condition. I quickly realized this would take time to pass over. I lay there with my eyes closed, stuck in the ocean with nowhere to go for the remainder of the trip. Had I not been so sick, I might have laughed, but this spiritual holding pattern was no laughing matter. So, in gut-wrenching pain with no other options, I had to figure out how I was going to bear the rest of the trip.
We have to work. When circumstances are less than ideal, Mujahada33 requires more effort, yet we push on—vigilantly seeking Allah’s pleasure and nothing else. Mujahada, rooted in Tawakkul (reliance on Allah), is where faith and action are married. The Prophet ﷺ said, “If you were to have Tawakkul upon Allah with the reliance He is due, you would be given provision like the birds: They go out hungry in the morning and come back with full bellies in the evening.”34
Righteous action does not always produce material things either. On my fishing trip, my only option was sleeping as much as possible. One could argue I “wasted” my time, but everything else was unbearable. The ability to sleep, particularly during difficult and uncomfortable circumstances, is a blessing and gift from Allah. Had I not had this option—which is the case so often for so many of us—the remaining five hours would have been excruciating. If we can be mindful of Allah and His blessings, our inaction is considered worship.
This spiritual paradigm resets expectations. The primary focus is on Allah, the Al-Razzaq (the Sustainer), working in search of his rizq (sustenance) through a process of loving surrender to His decree. Our feelings are only a secondary factor in the equation; we intentionally work to process them through the primary focus. Imam Al-Hadad (d. 1132/1720) said, “Remove from your heart the fear of poverty and the expectation that you will need other people. Beware to the extreme of worrying about provisions and trust in your Lord’s promise and His taking charge of you. He said, “Nothing on the earth but that God provides for it.”35
Mujahada is hard, and sustaining it is even more challenging. This is why we must ensure we have fuel to aid us along the journey. One of the most important means of sustenance is good suhba (companionship).36 When we feel incapable of striving, we should surround ourselves with people striving in their worship. We can follow their way by paying attention to what they do, noticing the ethical standard they set for themselves and what motivates them. This becomes even more important today, where nearly half of the US population rates our moral values as “poor”.37
Another means of sustenance Imam Al-Ghazali mentions is looking at those above and below us.38 We have a plethora of biographies and hagiographies of the righteous detailing their lives and the context they live in. There are those above us, with their righteousness attested by other saints and scholars of their time and afterward, that set a bar for us to aspire towards. Also, some people may be considered below us socially due to being less fortunate or physically weaker than us. In defiance of social assumptions, these people strive to worship Allah in genuinely remarkable ways if we are honest. We often do less with far more.
Life handed him a lemon,
As Life sometimes will do.
His friends looked on in pity,
Assuming he was through.
They came upon him later,
Reclining in the shade
In calm contentment, drinking
A glass of lemonade.
– Clarence Edwin Flynn39
We typically find spiritual holding patterns at inconvenient times. But Allah decreed it to be so in His infinite wisdom and mercy; thus, we must focus on Him. As challenging as it may be, we push ourselves to recognize, as Ibn Ataillah said, “The best that you can seek from Him is that which He seeks from you.”40 Our responsibility is to have Muraqaba with our current situation while having Muhasaba of what has happened in the past and Mujahada as we move into the future, regardless of what people think or what materializes. We do not judge our connection with Allah based on how we feel or perceive things to be going in our lives; instead, on our level of commitment to struggling to earn His pleasure.41
My fishing trip was an utter flop by all material measures. I wasted half the day going and coming, unable to enjoy Shaykh’s (or anyone else’s) company and went home without catching a single fish (compared to Shaykh and the other non-seasick brothers who bought home trash bags full). Despite that, this story remains a beautiful memory, InshaAllah, forever engraved in my heart. It is not about the time spent or the amount of pain I was in, but the lesson I got from Shaykh. Now, I view the entire trip as a gift from Allah through Shaykh, and it was all worth it.
Quran 67:19.
“Flying High: The Real Odds of Experiencing a Plane Crash”. FlyFright.com. Accessed December 27, 2023. https://flyfright.com/plane-crash-statistics/.
In 2023, only 1.62% of US flights were canceled. See “On-Time Performance - Reporting Operating Carrier Flight Delays at a Glance”. Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Accessed December 28, 2023. https://www.transtats.bts.gov/homedrillchart.asp.
“Holding Pattern”. SkyLibrary. Accessed December 28, 2023. https://skybrary.aero/articles/holding-pattern#:~:text=Holding%20patterns%20are%20flown%20as,of%20abnormal%20or%20emergency%20checklist.
Nguyen takes this concept from Richard W. Buillet’s Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers. Bulliet defines a postdomestic society by two categories: 1) “far away, both physically and psychologically, from the animals that produce the food … they depend on,” and 2) “Continues to consume animal products in abundance but psychologically, its member’s experience [negative] feelings … about how the products come to market.” See Buillet, Richard W. Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2005. 3.
Nguyen, Martin. Modern Muslim Theology: Engaging God and the World with Faith and Imagination. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018. 30.
Ibid., 34.
Ibid., 36.
He is Mudabbir Al-Umoor (arranger of affairs). Allah tells us about Prophet Ibrahim (‘alayhi salam) debating with King Nimrod and saying, “Allah causes the sun to rise from the east. So make it rise from the west.” (2:248). Throughout the Quran, Allah swears by time, in of itself (103:1), and different aspects of time—e.g., the sun (91:1), moon (54:1), dawn (89:1), morning (93:1), night (92:1), etc.—in ways that none can but He.
This is a fundamental point of Islamic theology. Sh. Allie Khalfe breaks it down beautifully in his translation and Imam Al-Bajuri’s (d. 1276/1860) explanation of Jowhar Al-Towhid, “There are three kinds of existence: Necessary existent (Wajib al-wujud). [Allah] exists always. He has never been non-existent, nor will He cease to exist in the future, eternally. Only Allah is Wajib al-wujud. That which is impossible to exist and which will never exist (mumtani’ al-wujud). An example of this is a partner to the Maker (shari al-Bari). This is impossible because any likeness to Him can never exist. That which is possible to exist (mumkin al-wujud). This includes the world and the universe. The opposite of existence is non-existence (‘adam). All of creation was in a state of non-existence before they were brought into existence.” See Khalfe, Ali. An Outpouring of Subtleties upon the Pearl of Oneness. Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Sunni Publications, 2019. 204–205. While somewhat of an advanced text (for people who have never studied Aqidah (Islamic theology) and should ideally be studied with a teacher, I could not recommend this book more.
Quran 42:11.
Quran 55:26.
Whitehead, Alfred North. Science and the Modern World. Brooklyn, NY: Angelico Press, 2021. 3.
Maze and Frankie Beverly. “Joy and Pain.” Track 9 on The Greatist Hits: Lifelines Volume 1. Columbia Records LLC, 1989, Spotify.
Quran 2:216.
Al-Askandari, IbnAtaillah. Al-Hikam (Aphorisms). The Matheson Trust. Accessed December 30, 2023. https://www.themathesontrust.org/library/al-hikam-aphorisms#:~:text=Click%20here%20to%20view%20the%20English%20PDF.
Quran 12:87.
Al-Shafii, Muhammad b. Idris. AlDiwan. Accessed December 30, 2023. https://www.aldiwan.net/poem114202.html.
The full original quote is, “A Sufi is a son of the moment.” See Al-Qushayri, Abu ‘Al-Qasim. Al-Qushayri's Epistle on Sufism: Al-Risala Al Qushayriyya Fi 'ilm Al-Tasawwuf. Trans. Alexander D. Kynsh. Suhail Academy Lahore, Pakistan: Kazi Publications, 2011. 76.
Although the linguistic meaning of faqr is poverty in the literal sense, that is only its external form. Spiritually, it is an essence of contentment with Allah alone. Someone asked Yahya b. Mu’adh (d. 258/871) and he said, “Its True Reality is that the servant of God is independent of anything except God and its mark is not being in need of any provisions.” See Al-Qushayri, Al-Qushayri's Epistle on Sufism, 282; Al-Hujwiri, Ali b. Uthman Al-Jullabi. The Kashf Al-Mahjub: The Oldest Persian Treatise on Sufism. Translated by Reynold A. Nicholson. Lahore, Pakistan: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 2018. 19–29; IbnAjiba, Ahmed. The Book of Ascension to the Essential Truths of Sufism: A Lexicon of Sufic Terminology. Translated by Mohamed Fouad Aresmouk and Michael Abdurrahman Fitzgerald. Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2011. 27–28.
Quran 35:15.
For more on this, see Al-Qushayri, Al-Qushayri's Epistle on Sufism, 79–81.
Al-Haddad, Abdullah ibn ‘Alawi. Knowledge & Wisdom. Alburtis, PA: Ihya Publishing, 2017. 31.
Dramamine is a common medicine to prevent and combat motion sickness.
Imam Al-Ghazali said, “For, every breath of life is a precious gem that has no substitute. One may purchase with it a treasure the felicity of which is everlasting.The expiry of these breaths, when they are forfeited or wasted on what only procures ruin, is a great and stupendous loss which no reasonable soul can permit.” See Al-Ghazali, AbuHamid. Al-Ghazall On Vigilance & Self-Examination. Translated by Anthony F. Shaker. Cambridge, UK: The Islamic Texts Society, 2015. 6.
Al-Qushayri, Al-Qushayri’s Epistle on Sufism, 106.
Imam Al-Tirmidhi’s collection of Hadith is called Sahih Al-Tirmidhi. It is often considered the third most authentic collection after Bukhari and Muslim. See Tirmidhi 2459.
Quran 3:200.
Quran 59:18.
I did not translate the word “towbah” because the technical religious meaning is far more comprehensive than “repentance”. Imam Al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111) said, “Know that the meaning of Towbah consists of sequentially dependent conditions: knowledge, emotional state, and actions. Therefore, knowledge is first, emotional states are second, and actions third; the first necessitates the second and the second necessitates the third.” Feelings alone do not suffice. In fact, Imam Al-Ghazali goes into great detail—the chapter on towbah is nearly 200 pages long—breaking down the multiple nuanced feelings required to have a sincere repentance. Nevertheless, I think it is sufficient for us to remember something my middle school principal taught me, the three Rs: remorse, repentance, and resolve. In order to feel remorseful we must truly acknowledge the deed was displesing to Allah. Without remorse we are not actually sorry and, therefore, our repentance is in vain. Then we have to actually repent, begging Allah to forgive us, coupled with the resolve to never return to that thing. What is key is that we disdain for the act. Fearing to repeat the infraction is fine, but intending to is indicative of a lack of remorse for it. If in the future we unfortunately do fall into the sin again, we start over and repeat the process. Allah knows best. See Al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid. Ihya Ulum Al-Din. Jeddah, KSA: Dar Al-Minhaj, 2013. Vol. 7, 13.
“Renewed striving” is Anthony F. Shaker’s translation from the Ihya. See Al-Ghazali, AbuHamid. Al-Ghazali on Vigilance & Self-Examination. Translated by Anthony F. Shaker. Cambridge, UK: The Islamic Texts Society, 2015.
Quran 11:6; See Al-Haddad, Abdullah b ‘Alawi. “Good Manners”. Three Treatise. Translated by Dr. Mostafa al-Badawi. Alburtis, PA: Ihya Publishing, 2017. 74.
Suhba is a subject of great importance to me. Imam Al-Qushayri mentions that it is in three levels: with masters older and wiser than you, with mentees that are younger and need your help, and peers who are with you on the path. Each of these levels requires a different disposition and perspective. Please pray I am able to expound on this more thoroughly in the future, InshaAllah.
Saad, Lydia. “Stable U.S. Moral Ratings Obscure Big Partisan Shifts.” Gallup. June 16, 2021. https://news.gallup.com/poll/351140/stable-moral-ratings-obscure-big-partisan-shifts.aspx.
Al-Ghazali, Ihya Ulum Al-Din, Vol. 9, 174–175.
Flynn, Clarence Edwin. “The Optimist”. The Rotarian, November 1940. Vol. 57, 62.
Al-Askandari, Al-Hikam (Aphorisms), 14.
Ibn Ataillah said, “If you want to know your standing with Him, look at the state He has put you in now.” See Al-Askandari, Al-Hikam (Aphorisms), 13.