Your Soul as a Trust
“God gave to us in this environment a lifespan in which we can achieve whatever is possible of good actions – or bad – that is up to us. When this time-frame for achieving that is finished, there is no longer any need to stay. Then they say “Come, God is calling you.”
That is why the Prophet (S) said, “The deeds of man will be cut off except for three: a flowing donation, knowledge from which people benefit, or a pious child who prays for [the person who died].”
So when your actions are cut, what happens? You die.
God gave you that soul as a trust in a time prior to this worldly existence, in the World of Souls (Alam al-Arwah). It is like when you want a loan. You say to your friend “can you loan me this?” He says, “Yes. Just return it to me as you got it.” You take it and at the end you return it. You agree on how long and the condition. It is a trust.
So God says, “How long do you want? I am giving it to you for seventy years. I will see how you do.”
The other one is given twenty years, another seventy years, another sixty years, another ten years, another is given five years. When that allotted timeframe is finished, you go.
That is a separation. Separation from your achievement. You go to another meeting, the life of the grave. That will be in a different style and a different condition. You will be living and the Prophet (S) described part of it: “Either your grave will be a ditch from the ditches of Hell, or a piece of Paradise.”
It depends whether you kept that soul that God gave you clean or not. If you kept it clean they send it to a clean area. Do not think when they put you down, underground, that narrow trench is the area you will inhabit. No, God will change it completely.
Just like the mirage in the desert; you see water, and for you it is water. You need strong eyes to distinguish a mirage from real water.
Because we are in this world, God does not show reality to us for these eyes are fake and cannot see. You need strong vision, good eyes to know the reality of what you are seeing.
You see the grave as a hole in the dirt. In reality if God wants to change it to a Paradise, He will change it. If He wants to change it to a pit of fire, He will change it.
It depends on how we carry the trust that God has given us – and all of us are falling into that ditch of Satan, running after Satan and not running after God and his Prophet (S), because of the bad desires our ego is dragging us into. That is why the Prophet (S) was always saying to the Companions after they returned from fighting in a war of self-defense:
[box_light]“We are returning from the lesser struggle to the greater struggle (against our selves).”[/box_light]
If we are not going to be fighting our ego’s bad desires we are never going to reach a successful moment.”
– Excerpt from “Symphony of Remembrance“, a book by Shaykh Hisham Kabbani.