Our essence, at the core of each of us, is not static and fixed for all of life. It is transformed through our daily experiences, every joy, every grief we suffer, within a context of awareness of divine presence, mercy, and guidance.

As our spiritual awareness grows so does our awareness of our own limitations and helplessness, yet we must not allow that awareness to separate us from God. The advice of the Qur’an, Ibn Abada, Rumi and all the saints of this path is that our primary jihad (struggle) is to remember God, to trust God, to call God’s presence and see God as our companion in all our states — in our weakness and in our strength. That becomes our abiding awareness of the Mercy that is the essential characteristic of the universe and will not leave us in a state of helplessness forever.