Explore the transformative power of pilgrimage in various religions, especially Islam, and how it shifts perspectives on daily life. Personal journeys reveal that stepping into the unfamiliar can awaken a deeper awareness of the divine. Discover how the metaphor of a king and his fortress illustrates the journey from conflict to peace, emphasizing gratitude and support for inner tranquility. Experience astonishing revelations that redefine existence as monumental events unfold, leading to profound personal growth.
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question_answer ANECDOTE
Umrah Trips Spark Radical Perspective Shifts
Musa Muhaiyaddeen recounts leading annual Umrah trips and observing how pilgrims' automatic routines shut off in Mecca.
He describes evenings where travelers shared profound experiences that transformed their perception of everyday life.
insights INSIGHT
Every Action Can Translate The Divine
Musa argues the world and our actions can act as translators revealing God's presence.
Awareness of each action lets us perceive divine support sustaining existence every instant.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Use Breath To Remember Sustenance
Notice your breath as a constant reminder of God's sustaining presence and vulnerability of existence.
Use this awareness to become cognizant of divine support in each instant.
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One of the five requisite duties of Islam is pilgrimage, the hajj. However, the other religions also have pilgrimage. And besides the hajj in Islam people also do smaller pilgrimages known as umrah, which is a pilgrimage to Mecca not during the month of hajj, but at other times during the year.
For about ten years I took people on this smaller pilgrimage called umrah every year. And found a lot of interesting things. One was when everyone went to Mecca it was a place very much outside of their normal experience to the point where they didn’t know what to expect. They didn’t know what was going to happen next and it altered their daily routine to not a small extent, to a huge extent. It made their physical surroundings so entirely unfamiliar and so entirely different that that part of them that was automatic in their reaction turned off for a while. It turned off to such an extent that they began to view things in an entirely different way. All of a sudden people who went through their lives as if it was normative were now going through their lives as if astonishing events were occurring to them on a regular basis. Monumental events that had consequences on their existence were happening to them regularly, events that they could recognize as having impact on their being and impact on the status of their life, and the degree of their consciousness.
About the third or fourth trip that I took I really understood that this was a regular occurrence for people and I expected it to happen. I knew from previous experience that it happened to me, but now I expected it to happen to other people. And one of the things that also happened to them simultaneously was their absolute need to share this with other people. So I created a space for the ability to share and in the evening we would have a meeting with the people and they would then describe what they had gone through and the impact it had on them. And it was really interesting because nothing was normative anymore, everything had consequence. And each action within the day had some sort of purpose and some sort of meaning.
The Witness Within