Life Increasing Light

Sir, in our previous conversation, we focused on eating less, and we tried to understand and enjoy it together with verses, hadiths and various masnavi couplets. In today's conversation, we will have a conversation on sleeping less, inshallah. But before we move on to the topic of getting less sleep, I would like to briefly present the effects of haram and halal eating on our bodies. Because, yes, eating less is very important, but whether what we eat and drink is halal or haram is much more important than eating less.

Therefore, I believe it would be very useful to dwell on this topic, even if only briefly, before we begin our conversation about getting less sleep.

Our Prophet said in one of his hadiths: "If a person does not care about what he eats and drinks and how and from where he earns it, Allah will not care which door of Hell He will let him enter."

At first glance, it may seem exaggerated to you, but the truth is that one of the most important factors that direct our lives, our feelings and thoughts, and push us to do good and evil deeds is the halal or haram bite of what we eat and drink.

See what Hz. Mevlana told us in the Masnavi about our subject: "The things we eat are like seeds, and our feelings and thoughts arise from the morsels we eat"

I will try to explain how important this issue is and how haram and halal food affects our emotions, our thoughts, and therefore our whole life, with various Mesnevi couplets and the words of other spiritual elders. I will start with the Mesnevi couplets.

Masnavi clt.1.1642- What increases the light and perfection in man is the food obtained with halâl earnings.

The forbidden morsel is like oil that extinguishes the lamp when it is put in our lamp. Don't even call it oil, call it water, because it extinguishes the light of our lamp in our hearts.

Knowledge, love, affection, compassion are born from halal food.

If envy, deceit, ignorance and heedlessness arise from a morsel you eat, know that it is forbidden food.

Have you ever seen a sower of wheat reap barley? Have you ever seen a horse give birth to a donkey?

What we eat and drink is like a seed. Our thoughts also come from it. From the halal food we take in our mouths, the desire to serve Allah and to go to the next world is born.

From forbidden food comes hatred, envy, ignorance, ignorance, deceit and ignorance.

Sir, there is no need to comment on these couplets. It is clear that what we eat and drink affects our feelings and thoughts, and therefore our whole life. If we see ourselves in an ignorant life far from the Truth, if we see ourselves in a life of ignorance, if we do not like the state of our children, the first thing to do is to question what we eat and drink. Of course, not only Hz. Mevlana, but all our spiritual elders have warned and guided us in such a very important matter.

Hadrat Abdulkâdir Geylâni said to a person, "When you stand in prayer, you are busy with shopping, eating and drinking, who you are going to marry, your body is in prayer, but your heart is busy with various worldly desires, how is this prayer?

When the man said; So what is the remedy for this situation? How can we correct ourselves? "The first remedy for this situation is to make sure that what you eat and drink is halal".

That is to say, even our wafaas, peace, and hoolûs in prayer are closely related to what we eat and drink. We should not be too surprised by this situation. Just as what we eat and drink affects our body health positively or negatively, we should take it for granted that it affects our emotions and thoughts to the same degree.

I would like to share with you some different passages from Abdulkâdir Geylâni's book titled "Conversations" that are relevant to our subject. "O son, forbidden food kills the heart. Halal food, on the other hand, revives it. There is food that enlightens the heart. There is food that darkens it. There is food that only makes you busy with worldly affairs. There is Lokma that directs you to the meaning. Lokma makes you leave the world and the hereafter. Lokma makes you seek the Creator of both the world and the hereafter.

Eating haram only makes you busy with the world. It makes sins seem pleasant to you. Halal food, on the other hand, brings your heart closer to Allah.

There are four things through which the salvation and peace of the heart can be achieved. The most important and the first condition of these is to eat halal food, to be very careful about what you eat and drink. All that you eat and drink must be halal. Do not eat forbidden things even for medicine. Then you will have a change of temperament.

Yes sir, as it is seen, Hz. Abdulkâdir Geylâni expressed the same things as Hz. Mevlana. It has been said that no matter whose language it is said, the truth is one and does not change. His Holiness Geylâni says that even the forbidden things we eat as medicine affect our character. In the couplets I have just presented; Hz. Mevlana: "The things we eat and drink are like seeds; our feelings and thoughts come from them. Of course, our feelings and thoughts determine our characters.

In the past, they used to keep people who were harmful to the society who could not settle down for forty days in the lower floor of dervish lodges and dervish lodges and tried to discipline them by making them eat the food cooked there. The basis of this behavior is the belief that the food cooked in such places is halal food. It was believed that the halal food that would enter the body would cleanse the haram food inside and the person would turn towards good, which is a very correct idea. In today's terms, in the face of high positive energy, the negative thoughts inside will have no effect and will melt away over time.

A certain group of people outside the Islamic faith believe in the effects of food and drink on the human body, and accordingly determine their lifestyle accordingly.

As you know, some people are vegetarians and do not eat meat. They have their own reasons for this. But one of the most important reasons is that some Buddhists, and also some Muslims who emulate them and try to do the same thing, believe that when they eat meat, their animal feelings come to the forefront in the body. So they try to tame and control their animal feelings by not eating meat. In essence, this is a very good idea. However, we should also take this into consideration. What we eat and drink has a positive or negative effect on our bodies. There is nothing to deny about this. But I believe that if eating meat were to animalize human beings, Allah Almighty would definitely forbid His servants to eat meat and consider it forbidden. If this situation is not riyazah under the control of a murshid, shouldn't we contemplate how true it is to consider what the Almighty Creator has made lawful for His servants as forbidden for ourselves, or shouldn't we ask a person of the heart? As you know, eating meat is not forbidden in the Qur'an, and animals that can be eaten and animals that should not be eaten are mentioned in verses such as Maide, Enam, Believers and many more. The important thing here is not to overdo it, as in everything else, whether it is meat or grass, but to try to find the middle way.

As a result, what we eat and drink affects our whole life. This is indisputable. But we need to broaden our horizons a little bit about eating, drinking, haram, halal.

We have talked about it at length before in our masnavi conversations. There are two kinds of tables. One is the earth table. The other is the sky table.

The ground table comes from the earth, it nourishes our body, which will go to the earth. We receive this food through the mouth. There is also the heavenly table, which enters our body not through the mouth, but through our ears, emotions and thoughts. There is a Masnavi couplet that we repeat many times. "The animal feeds through the mouth, the human feeds through the ears." I would like to reiterate that the food we take through the mouth is related to our nafs, it only feeds our mortal body. It has nothing to do with our soul, which is our real being. That is why it is said that the animal feeds through the mouth. In other words, the food we take through the mouth only nourishes our animal soul. What did Hz. Mevlana say: "You will never find your soul strong as long as you feed your ego with fatty, honeyed things." Since our human side is fed by the ear, not by the mouth. Then, just like the food we take through the mouth, the things we listen to through the ear, our feelings and thoughts have haram and halal morsels.

Again, I would like to quote from Hz. Geylâni: "If your ego is at the forefront of something, then you are eating forbidden food." In other words, if we prioritize our own nafsani feelings and egos, or rather our material interests, in the face of a job or an event, then we are eating forbidden food through our feelings and thoughts.

If we are gossiping about someone, it means we are eating forbidden food. Even more than forbidden food, we are eating the dead flesh of our brother, as the Prophet Allah said. Haram morsel is not only when meat and bread are earned through unlawful means.

When we eat our halal earnings, which we earn with a lot of difficulty, with haram feelings and thoughts, we are haramizing our halal food. Therefore, dhikr, thought and gratitude are very important while eating.

"Anything that has a heart in it, then you are eating questionable things"

Something that means that there is a heart; that is, there are suspicions and doubts in our hearts, we are not sure of what we are doing or what we are thinking. In this case, it means we are eating suspiciously. Because in a hadith, our Prophet says, "Stay away from what you suspect and do not eat suspicious things".

We can doubt whether a bowl of food in front of us is halal or haram. We can also doubt whatever we listen to, whatever we do, whether it is right or wrong. Since our Master says to stay away from what you suspect. Then we need to stay away from the food that we doubt, the word that we doubt, the work that we doubt the truth of. Until we are certain about that thing.

But I would also like to present this: Sometimes we have to go to places we don't want to go in the conditions of life and eat food that we don't feel comfortable with. In such cases, our spiritual elders used to give alms to a poor person equal to the value of the amount they ate when they ate a bite that they were not comfortable with, and they would make that food eaten with their own halal earnings. This is a different perspective.

"Even if you are presented with food that is absolutely lawful from your own earnings, think about it. It may have been mixed with haram during its preparation."

How is the food adulterated during preparation?

An unlawful ingredient may be added to the food intentionally or unintentionally during its preparation.
The person preparing the food may have mixed unlawful emotions into the food.
How do unlawful emotions and thoughts mix with food?

Through energy. In the past, the most important and important place of Tekke and Dervish lodges was the kitchen. In fact, the kitchen was so important in Mevlevism that it was called Matbâh-ı Şerif, which means kitchen, not just Kitchen. The cook grandfathers in the dervish lodges are very valuable sultans of the heart who are closest to the sheikh. Not everyone can work in the kitchen. They cannot stir the soup. The kitchen is considered the heart of the dervish lodge. Why can't everyone work in the kitchen in the dervish lodge? Because the energy of the person who cooks somehow passes into the food he cooks. Whether negative or positive.

Every word, every state has an energy. We cannot deny this because we do not see it or know it. Hz. Mevlana; If words have no energy. Why is it that when you hear a bad word you are devastated. If there is no invisible energy of states, then why does the state of a cheerful person and a grieving person affect you differently?

There was a subject I have just presented. "Some people were kept in the lower floors of dervish lodges and tekkes and tried to be treated by feeding them the food cooked there." Here, one of the most important factors, along with the food that is thought to be halal, is that the high positive spiritual energy of the cook passes into the food during the cooking process.

Why do we put a container of water or salt in the middle of the Mawlid, Qur'an recitation, dûa, niyâz, and then eat and drink it as healing? Where is the healing in this? In the spiritual positive energy that passes from the recited Qur'an, Mawlid, dûa, niyâz. This means that feelings and thoughts, sounds and words also have a negative or positive energy.

As a result, when a person is cooking in the kitchen, if he mixes the food with anger, ambition, negative thoughts, it is not possible for positive emotions, states, to manifest from the person who is eating that food.

You will cook and feed your family with greed, anger, negative emotions and thoughts. Then you will expect a smile, a smiling face and positive behavior from your spouse and child. It is anger and anger that will arise in those who eat food cooked with anger and anger. I would like to repeat once again that what we eat and drink is like seeds and determines our characters. For this reason, I would like to suggest, especially to mothers who cook, that if you expect sweet language, smiles and pleasant behavior from your spouse and children, the first thing you should do is to cook with love and love, even with prayer and supplication. A meal made with negative emotions does nothing but haramize halal food. Having briefly summarized the issue of haram and halal food, let's talk about getting less sleep.

Greetings, love and respect from the heart with the wish that every breath is against good.