Question regarding Jinn and "evil spirits"

[stranger]

How to be sure?

As l see it, we are destined to fail but how we do it is what matters. In other words: self critique - did you do your best?

I like it.

Also, look at people labouring away in slums or , i don't know, a dead battered baby that turns up in a bin. Those poor souls just do what they do in the short time they have in this life. In other words: just get through your day without harming others.

Sometimes that's all we can do, it's a good approach and can lead to bigger things (IMO). When I'm out, more and more I like speaking to people. Not a burdensome conversation, but just a kind word. It's kind of like saying "I see you, you are important, I'm glad you're here". This can make someone's day. I must be turning into some kind of softy or something.

Beneath all this, l would say: we have an inner criterion (telling us wrong from right), wordless, formless, written on our hearts, it's a miracle because there's no biological mechanism for it.
As we age we do bad things without saying sorry, and so we gradually overthrow the inner criterion and so our hearts die and we become sociopaths. But we have it at the beginning at least.

The language is not too strong. When seen with spiritual eyes, that cuts pretty close to it. I like this reply, good job. Or at least I think it is, but it's not like I'm in any kind of position to grade anyone else's work or anything.

 

[SufiPhilosophy]

Thanks.

I think we are each doomed to failure in this life because success would mean we would only be pleased at attaining infinity, anything short of that would be disappointment.

Satan had success after success and it ended in envy, greed and hatred of the infinite God. So that's envy greed and hatred of epic proportions.

I wonder if we'll be disappointed in the afterlife if we reach paradise but are not God? Well, if we submit to God in this life maybe it will be okay. We won't be allowed to enter paradise with even an atom's weight of pride anyway

(“No one will enter Paradise who has pride in his heart equal to the weight of a grain of mustard seed, and no one will enter Hell who has faith in his heart equal to the weight of a grain of mustard seed.”
Sunan Ibn Majah 4173
In-book reference : Book 37, Hadith 74)

i guess that's what purgatory is for.


So once that pride is gone, we won't mind being not-God for an eternity in paradise. We won't be jealous. Besides, we'd have infinite power by proxy - by our infinite existence being contingent on the infinite everything of God i.e. co infnity sustained by God.

In our theology l guess Satan just broke too soon and ended up making a colossal power grab whereas as you say, the meek inherit the earth.

 

[SufiPhilosophy]

Going back to the original topic: Jinn that became believers are meek and keep away from us. It's the evil Jinn, whom we call Shayatin (satans, plural), that get unchaste and reveal themselves to us and meddle with us. Again, it's about meekness versus all the vices. We all got an inner criterion but some of us overrule it and eventually lose it and turn evil like Satan and the satans.

 

[muhammad_isa]

I like to think there's an inner dimension and an outer. It's not just messing with our minds, i like to think there's a cosmic game being played too, like, in the physical universe.

I get that. We are being tested. It is to do with our God-given nature of free-will.
Will we succumb to evil or not?

The answer for mankind to avoid evil, is in remembering Almighty God.
That is the main lesson we learn from the account of iblees and the fall of mankind.

 

[SufiPhilosophy]

Interesting. How does Islam see 'fire'?
Interesting, I didn't realise Islam was so dualistic. That's a clear break with the Abrahamic heritage.

For an angel to converse with man it must possess intellect, it has the ability to hear and understand what man is saying, and compose a response?

Jinn = "Smokeless fire" Sorry for being picky with my translators, sadly not all of them picked up on smokeless fire:
Quran 15:27:
Yusuf Ali: "And the Jinn race, We had created before, from the fire of a scorching wind."
Mohsin Khan: "And the jinn, We created aforetime from the smokeless flame of fire."

This to me is a clear reference to electricity / plasma (space electricity, star wind, it doesn't actually cause combustion, it is a scorching wind).


My friend, we are the opposite of dualistic, if you mean Gnostic dualism, which is anathema to us. But if you mean, as you probably do, the dualism of corporeal and spiritual yep cool, but l believe all other Abrahamic faiths are onboard too.


Very interesting point about angels shouldn't be able to converse freely if they have no free will. As l see it, a person who is entirely in sync with Allah, will not have their own free will as such, but think about: they will actually be better, more nuanced, more interesting, than a person with free will.

A person with free will is slave to lusts, and thus narrowband.
A person enslaved completely to Allah, as angels are, has all infinity flowing through them. Broadband doesn't even begin to describe it.

 

[SufiPhilosophy]

I'm on sabbatical now, to get some real work done. Bye for now, everybody! May return in a few days give or take a few. Insha Allah.

 

[muhammad_isa]

I'm on sabbatical now, to get some real work done..

Huh?
What is "real work" ? Surely, any work that is not done to please God, will fall by the wayside.
I am not referring to earning one's living when I say that. That should also be undertaken in order to please our Maker.

Perhaps you are referring to reading Qur'an .. that is real work, I would agree