The Beautiful Eyes, God’s Gift to the Martyr

‘Beautiful Eyes’ is the gift promised by God for the martyr, one who dies in the service of God. There are different interpretations of the original arabic word Hur’In from the Koran but they are most commonly related to this translation of Beautiful Eyes. I put a photo of beautiful eyes on my desktop to contemplate the meaning of this curious promise and have come to my own conclusion about this promised gift.

For the sake of PC culture I must ask you to forgive my use of the masculine and let go of any fixation on words. He, she, it, is all the same, they all mean humans.

The gift to the martyr is not something he gets as in a gift from outside which is now a possession, but rather a change in his being, his eyes become beautiful. But what good are beautiful looking eyes in heaven where all things are beautiful? That seems a bit redundant.

And so the gift is something one can use, eyes that see the beauty in all things. In religious terms, what is that beauty, nothing other than God. This vision differentiates a normal person from a pure of heart enlightened being.

In our normal state of consciousness, or rather we should say unconsciousness, the seeker of Truth or God, whatever name you give that which you seek, may intellectually know that all things are essentially God and from God, but the cluttered heart does not see God in all things at all times. The rare occurrence in which a person does see God in the essence of another person or in nature for example, is such a profound experience of pure love that the rest of their life is spent trying to return to that same experience.

Imagine a life in which that was permanent. You see everything as God, knowing it is God and that you yourself are also a part of and therefore, God. Unity is no longer a concept, hope or dream, it is the reality in which you exist.

When one attains that state, your individuality ceases to be your illusion. You no longer see yourself separate from anything or anyone else, your heart is pure. What this state or rather level of consciousness is like, I cannot say, but that is not the point of this article. The point is in the meaning of the promise of God and how to attain that from our current position in life.

From my brief experiences, I can say that the consciousness is aware of itself as an individual and at the very same time its unity with all things throughout all time. I have no idea what analogy would adequately explain this but let me try. Imagine that if you hurt your finger, it would hurt and your whole hand would feel pain, perhaps even your whole arm and body depending on the injury. In this way we can see how an individual is connected to the whole as the whole is connected to the individual.

The true pure hearted martyr gets eyes that see the beauty of God in all things at all times, he becomes One with All through his clear vision. I am certain that this is not the most profound meaning, however it is one that we average humans can understand and work towards which would make life quite wonderful. This also is not the whole point of this article, so let us now move on to the meaning of what a martyr is.

A martyr is a person who dies in the service of God. This is a discussion of a religious nature and so does not mean a whining person looking for sympathy. Now, any reasonably intelligent person must question the purpose that God would have in creating a human being, sending him to earth with great strength of spirit, then wanting him to get killed. That is not terribly logical to put in a system in which God sends souls to earth to perfect themselves so they can reach a higher state in heaven. I wonder, why cut the opportunity short?

This made me ponder what is supposed to be killed, and it is clear in all religious teachings it is the ego which must be subdued, or killed, in order for a person to reach a higher level of spiritual awakening or unity with the Divine.

What then is the ego? We can discover it by its actions and traits. In this case, we are looking at the ego as a barrier to spiritual awakening and so must examine its negative qualities. The list can be quite long as anyone would agree, so let me bring it down to an essential trait which is at the bottom and root cause of virtually all other negative aspects, your opinions.

Take some time to review any conflict, belief, prejudice or unfulfilled desire you have and consider if you had no opinion about the subject, would that negative state exist? Everything is based on your opinion that something is bad or good.

Is there anything in the universe which is solely one sided with no opposite and balancing side? Is it possible that for any person, condition or thing in the world, that there is not even one single person on the planet who would have an opposite view? Is it not also true that it is our opinion of what is good or bad that makes us do the things we do, be it for our benefit or detriment?

Your opinions are the root cause of all your actions, good or bad, and that means they are also the cause of all your feelings and emotions. Using an example that is very common and has been scientifically tested, if two men stare at an attractive woman, she may be repulsed by one and call him a dirty dog, while she will feel flattered and excited by the same actions of the other man. It is all based on her opinion of each of the men, if she finds one looking successful, attractive and interesting to her while the other is dirty and looks like a worthless street bum.

Please take some time to review your own experiences. Consider the same event in which one day you got very upset but when it happened at another time, it did not bother you. Your mood or who was involved changed your response, based on your opinion of the intentions of who did it. It must come down to your opinion of some of the conditions at the time.

We have seen that;
The Beautiful Eyes are those which see beauty in all things.
The Eyes are given to the martyr.
The martyr is one who dies in the service of God.
We are deeply identified with our personality and ego which separates us from everyone and everything else through its opinions.

The conclusion is that when we give up our opinions, our lesser self-centered ego will die, as that is all that keeps it alive, and we will attain the Beautiful Eyes and see God in all things and all people. Now we must move on towards how to attain this state by seeing how opinions are maintained.

All things must eat to stay alive. Based on their ability to change, we can determine that opinions are living entities. If something can change, grow or diminish rapidly, then return to its previous state, it must be some form of organic matter. Anything organic is a living organism, and therefore must eat. Opinions eat when they are expressed and get attention.

We can test this, and I hope you will, by voicing an opinion on a regular basis and fighting to defend it. Be determined to fight and maintain your opinion about something and you will find that it gets stronger and stronger, even in the face of being proven wrong, simply by exerting more effort to maintain it.

However, if you have an opinion and are open to it being wrong, you may express it and then faced with a valid opposing view that you can and are willing to understand, you will not repeat and enforce your opinion, and it will die off, probably transforming into a different opinion.

The original opinion has died because it did not eat by expressing and maintaining itself. A new opinion was born through repeated expression. This is good for changing opinions, however it is replacing one poison with another. We must stop eating poison in order to be healed from our current blindness and get the Beautiful Eyes.

And here we find the successful path of the living martyr in modern life, one who endures suffering in the service of God but despite what appears to be suffering, he lives in happiness and gains joy from what others deem painful. We must simply grow up by opening our mind and accepting reality as it is.

Our world is a place in which we have been taught to take care of ourselves, look for pleasures, find what you love to do, have fun, avoid pain, etc. That is all fine, if it helps cure your ills, but what about if this perpetuates your pain by living a self-centered life?

Life on earth in the modern world is simply not all fun and games. There are bills to pay, food to buy, jobs to be done, cloths to wash and toilets to clean. We may all have goals and dreams of how we would like to live, the free life of the wealthy, and perhaps that is possible, but now comes suffering and the consumption of the poison. How will you get that wealth is the first question and the second is will wealth get you the Beautiful Eyes.

I believe that it is far better to be wealthy than not. Money is not vital but does make so much more possible in this world, both for yourself and for others. I heard a good line in a movie, The Razors Edge; “Spiritual pursuits are a luxury of the wealthy”. Indeed it is true, it is much easier to spend your life in meditation when you do not have to go to work and tend to the normal chores, but how will you get rich?

This is where you have the chance to gain both wealth and the Beautiful Eyes. As a business coach and mentor, I help people attain wealth, and some have succeeded to a level anyone would have to call miraculous. One personal example is a young man who went from nothing 4 years ago to earning $130,000 last year and expecting $200,000 this year, at the age of 28. His success is built purely on his Adab, an arabic word from the Sufi tradition loosely translated as ‘correct conduct’ or ‘respect’.

We all need money to live, the amount each person wants or needs is individual. Since money is unavoidable in our world, and with it comes work to get it even for the purpose of freedom when we have enough of it, this is the training ground for the seeker of happiness as well as spiritual knowledge. What goal could be achieved if the requirements are deemed distasteful or unbearable? By objectively accepting what it takes to get what you want without any resistance, your goals will be attained without any negative emotions in your life and your heart will become purified at the same time.

Adab would require a hundred words at least to even begin to convey its deepest meaning, but this principle alone is responsible for not only this young man’s financial success but a complete transformation in his personality and character, which is the real reason for his financial success. What is relevant to this article is that he is not concerned about money, he is devoted to his spiritual growth and is working on his Adab using his business as his battlefield fighting his ego and opinions to achieve a higher state of spiritual awakening. His progress is clear in both aspects of his life as the money is a side effect of purifying his heart through eliminating opinions by improving his Adab.

Your opinions and lack of willingness to do anything are the poison which maintain the life of your lesser ego and keep you looking through blinded eyes, preventing you from attaining the Beautiful Eyes which are the gift of God to the martyr who sacrifices his ego and attains the Truth of Certainty that All is One.

Do not just think you know who you are and what you want.
Find the truth about your real goals and then accept whatever is required to achieve them without resistance.
Deal with what is in front of you as it comes without opinions of good or bad, like or dislike.
All is useful because all events give you an opportunity to see and remove your opinions which are the dirt that clog your heart keeping it from having the clear vision of the Beautiful Eyes.