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"Verily only through the remembrance of God do hearts find peace." [Quran 13:28]

 

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Everyone of us wants peace, whether we realize it or not. 

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The question is are we truly seeking that peace?

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"This calm is what the heart seeks out and gravitates to. It yearns always to remember God the Exalted. But when God is not remembered, when human beings forget God, then the heart falls into a state of agitation and turmoil. In this state it becomes vulnerable to diseases because it is undernourished and cut off. Cells require oxygen, so we breathe. If we stop breathing, we die. The heart also needs to breathe, and the breath of the heart is none other than the remembrance of God. Without it, the spiritual heart dies. The very purpose of revelation and of scripture is to remind us that our hearts need to be nourished" (Shaykh Hamza Yusuf).

 

All humans with a heart, love & desire love, to love and to be loved and that is because we come from The Source of All Love, The Most Loving [الودود].

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We were created pure, but a pure soul entering a dunya that has unpurity, is bound to be affected, until the heart is firmly set on and fed what it needs to live in purity.

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The purification of the heart is a constant journey.

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The Real Love is what we need to fill our hearts with.

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The disease of the heart is what we must focus on to fix.

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(Some of the references & teachings in this page are from Shaykh Hamza Yusuf's 'Purification of The Heart' book available online for purchase)

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"Almost all universally religious traditions have stressed the importance of the condition of the heart. In the Muslim scripture, the Day of Judgment is described as,
"a day in which neither wealth nor children shall be of any benefit [to anyone], except one who comes to God with a sound heart [QUR'AN, 26:88-89]."

The sound heart is understood to be free of character defects and spiritual blemishes. This "heart" is actually the spiritual heart and not the physical organ per se, although in Islamic tradition the spiritual heart is centered in the physical. One of the extraordinary aspects of the modern era is that we are discovering aspects about the heart unknown in previous times, although there were remarkable insights in ancient traditions. (Shaykh Hamza Yusuf)

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In nearly every culture in the world, people use metaphors that directly or indirectly allude to the heart. We call certain types of people "hard-hearted," usually because they show no mercy and kindness. Likewise, people are said to have "cold hearts" and others yet who are "warm-hearted." We speak of people as wearing their "hearts on their sleeves" because they do not (or cannot) conceal their emotions from others.

 

When someone's words or actions penetrate our souls and affect us profoundly, we say that this person "touched my heart" or "touched the core of my being."

 

The Arabic equivalent for the English word core (which originally in Latin meant heart) is known as lubb, which also refers to the heart, as well as the intellect and the essence of something.

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The Unders defines three types of people: al mu minin (believers), al-kafirin (scoffers or atheists), and al-munafiqun (hypocrites). The believers are described as people whose hearts are alive and full of light, while the scoffers are in darkness: Is one who was dead and then we revived faith faith; and made for him a light by which to walk among the people like one who is in darkness from which he cannot exit? [QUR'AN, 6:122].

According to commentators of the Qur'an, "the one who was dead" refers to having a dead heart, which God revived with the light of guidance that one may walk straight and honourably among human beings.

Also, the Prophet Muhammad ‎ﷺ I said, "The difference between the one who remembers God and one who does not is like the difference between the living and the dead." In essence, the believer is someone whose heart is alive, while the disbeliever is someone whose heart is spiritually dead. The hypocrite, however, is somebody whose heart is diseased.

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The Quran speaks of certain people with diseased hearts (self-inflicted, we understand) and, as a result, they were increased in their disease [QUR'AN, 2:10].

The heart is centered slightly to the left of our bodies. Two sacred languages of Arabic and Hebrew are written from right to left, toward the heart, which, as some have noted, mirrors the purpose of writing, namely to affect the heart.

 

One should also consider the ritual of circumambulation or circling around the Ancient House (or Kaba) in Mecca during the Pilgrimage. It is performed in a counterclockwise fashion, with the left side of the worshipper facing the House-with the life of humanity.