The Digitalmehmet Content Ecosystem

𝑾𝒉𝒚 𝑰 𝑫𝒆𝒇𝒆𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑺𝒑𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒖𝒂𝒍 𝑬𝒈𝒐

Where I have always spoken against the ego and written about confronting it, today I found myself tempted to write in its defense.

I had always thought of the ego as an enemy, something to be fought and subdued.

Yet today, the weather is remarkably pleasant. It feels like the onset of spring; neither the harsh bite of winter nor the weight of summer’s heat can be felt.

Sitting inside the room, I was immersed in Medium, absorbing people’s minds, their stories, their writing, and their labor.

Suddenly, lightning flashed, and a sudden jolt stirred my heart.

I wondered: how did the weather shift like this?

Instantly, the atmosphere pulled my entire attention toward itself.

Here, I am not talking about the weather, but about a sudden thought that emerged—or perhaps descended upon me; I cannot quite tell.Yet it was as sharp, flashing, and roaring as lightning; luminous, so much so that I could not simply look away.

It felt like time to get in the saddle. People would call me mad, since lightning is dangerous, yet I felt this was the moment to run toward it, not away.

It felt like the hour had arrived. Those who ignore the call of time spend their lives in its prison. Those who heed it will surely hear it call them out.

Now that the hour of freedom is here, why fear the crashing of thunder?People go to great lengths for freedom. All I had to do was pick up the pen and become a slave to the command. That is why we are called bound servants, yet we still put on a farce of self-respect.

The one who knowingly becomes a servant is deeply clever; they know exactly what they are doing. But the one who is a servant yet remains oblivious to it is misapplying their cleverness in all the wrong places.

My friends, as I was writing this, a hoopoe appeared in the garden. It was so breathtakingly beautiful that a sudden spark ignited in my heart.In this, it even surpasses some humans: it knows its servitude.

It accepts its servitude; whatever way it is created, it carries neither grief nor complaint because it understands its subjection.

It is only man who raises objections: why is he dark-skinned, why poor, why disabled, why childless? In fact, there is not a single human who does not harbor some grievance.

This hoopoe is so magnificent, yet it has no awareness of its own beauty.But we can see how stunning it is.

What use is a beauty when you possess no consciousness of it, when it requires the eyes of others to bear witness to it?What use is a beauty that relies on a gaze possessing awareness just to feel beautiful?

In those chirping voices, there is neither a desperate wish to live nor a dread of death. Death only draws near to them when the decree of liberation from servitude is granted.

Unconscious of their own mortality, they remain content with their servitude, whereas man, fully aware of death, remains a rebel against his.

Yet what must be? Can we ever truly break free from it?

I had originally set out to unravel the ego, but I let the pen write whatever it desired.

What was I supposed to unfold? The ego wanted to manifest itself through my pen, and I am simply serving that servitude. Even that is an ego—the one I wish to offer for the sake of my Lord.

If He wills, He can turn to dust that ego which stands between Him and Me, and manifest instead the spiritual ego that comes to stand between me and the world.

He created everything in pairs: there is an ego, and there is a spiritual ego.

To put it plainly, when I act for the sake of my Lord and His religion, that is the spiritual ego.What I do for my own sake is merely my own ego. As long as my ordinary ego lives, the spiritual ego cannot ascend.

Paradise and Hell cannot occupy the same space.

Either I will follow the dictates of my self-serving ego, or I will surrender to the spiritual ego.Even if one attempts to balance both, or tries to nurture them side by side, it remains impossible. In a universe where balance is the ultimate measure, every human strives to approach it, yet none can truly achieve it by accommodating both.

Uprooting and casting away one of the two is the only true balance.

Whatever turmoil has wandered through the world has always served as fuel to pamper the ego.The Divine, however, has eternally nurtured the spiritual ego.

Without it, the one who kills is merely a murderer.Without it, a good deed is just a good deed, never a virtuous one.Without it, love is merely physical gratification, devoid of divine reward.Without it, retaliation for a wrong is nothing more than revenge, never true justice.

My friends, I have an uncle—not by blood, but close nonetheless. His married daughter was involved with a married man. When her father discovered this, he conspired with his daughter to lure the young man in.Late at night, when the boy arrived to see her, her father caught him, bound him, and subjected him to such horrific torture that when my mother recounted it, tears filled my eyes, and I could barely bear to listen.After the torture, he was buried alive right in the courtyard of their own home.

We are reluctant to surrender our loved ones to the earth even after they pass away, yet a living human being was handed over to the dust.

This is our spiritual ego—willing to bury someone alive without a shred of logic, even though our minds and our raw egos would never consent to it.

Today, the daughter is safe, sound, and living a pleasant life. Astonishingly, she has even remarried, living as though nothing ever happened.

The ego wanted to think purely like a protective father rather than a servant of divine justice.

Here, the taking of a life was imperative for him, and the daughter’s transgression was forgiven; yet this was neither retribution (qisas: equal and just retribution under due process) nor justice it was sheer murder.

Retribution is only possible when there is justice, and justice is only possible when there is retribution.

Where there is no true justice, where the spiritual ego bound by the commands of the Lord is absent, such an act is nothing more than murder.

How the human ego longs to turn another human being into a heap of dust!

Had the spiritual ego been present here, perhaps justice would have been done, an equal justice.

Both would have been punished. This was not retribution; it was murder. This was not retribution; it was hell.

Had the spiritual ego been present, this would have been a matter of qisas, and this would have been paradise.