Allah is near, very near. He is closer than our jugular vein. Closer to us than our own selves.
He is always watching over us and He is there, waiting for us to call out to Him, to speak to Him, to ask Him and to cry out to Him. We just have to submit ourselves and hand over our hearts to Him.
Allah loves our tears. He loves when we cry out in love and yearning for Him. He loves when we cry over our sins and out of awe and fear for Him.
If we truly want to become the beloved of Allah, we should try to make our heart soft so that it is easier for our tears to flow down our cheeks and attract our Creator’s mercy.
Our beloved Prophet said that one who weeps out of fear of Allah will not enter hell and those eyes that cried out of fear of Allah will not be touched by the fire.
There are many instances related that the Prophet also wept on different occasions. How can we cry more for Allah?
Fill the Heart With Love for Allah
Our spiritual heart is the center and core of our soul. We can fill it with whatever we want. We should try to illuminate it with the shining and glowing love for our Creator.
Let’s make our heart a bright shining star. Allah wants us to love Him and His Prophet more than ourselves, more than our spouses, children or anything in this world.
Do we find this all-encompassing love in our heart? As soon as we open our heart to Allah and remember Him, we will become more connected to Him. Allah says in the Quran:
Remember Me and I will remember you.
That is amazing! Imagine, the moment we remember Allah in our heart, He will also remember us. We should always remember Him! Isn’t it a beautiful feeling to know that Allah remembers us?
When we feel closer to Allah, we will be able to open our heart. We will develop a loving relationship with Allah. We will trust Him more, we will be able to speak to Him more and we will be able to cry because we want to be nearer to Him. Because we miss Him or because we are overwhelmed by our feelings for Him.
Feel the Blessings
Allah has bestowed so many blessings on us. Being able to breath the nice, fresh morning breeze or being able to see the beauty in Allah’s creation… Try to feel those blessings and give more space in your heart to that amazing Being who granted them to us.
We can read more Quran because reading Quran softens and cleanses the heart. Pick one or two verses and ponder on them.
Look at the mountains and remember what Allah says about them in the Quran.
See the little ants in the street and remember that they are also Allah’s creation and that He mentions them in His wonderful book.
We can sit for dhikr or contemplation about Allah. Try to feel His closeness, His intimate nearness. This will fill our heart with love for Allah and will slowly take out the love for this world and creation from our heart. And once our heart is filled with love for Him, crying becomes easy.
Getting to Know Allah
What do we know about Allah? One way to fill our hearts with feelings for Him is to learn the 99 beautiful names of Allah as He has revealed in Quran and Hadith with a knowledgeable scholar of Islam. And if we cannot find a scholar, then we should try and learn from books.
Imam Al-Ghazali wrote a beautiful book with the title The ninety nine beautiful names of God. It is available in different languages and can be downloaded as pdf. We should try and learn how calling Allah with Ar-Rahman (The All-Merciful) or Al-Quddus (The Most Pure without any blamish) or Al-Malik (The King of Kings) should make us feel.
Listen to the beautiful recitation of Allah’s names and concentrate on the feelings in your heart. And once we know how our heart should feel when we call Allah Al-Ghafaar (The All-Forgiving; The One that veils our faults) or At-Tawwab (The One that accepts our repentance), crying out for Him to accept our repentance, weeping on our prayer mat will become easier.
Make Dua in Your Own Language
Another important point that my Shaykh, Shaykh Mufti Kamaluddin Ahmed, raised is to make dua not only in Arabic but also in our own mother tongue. Of course, it is Sunnah to make dua using Arabic and to recite the duas by our beloved Prophet.
However, it is also Sunnah to speak to Allah in our own language because that is what the Prophet did. He spoke to Allah in his own language.
When we do this, it is easier to feel emotions, to let the words flow, to actually speak to Allah. And once we speak to Him and open our heart to Him, the tears will flow naturally, inshaAllah.
Remember Death
The scholars of Islamic spirituality also recommend us to remember death as an effective tool that can help us to cry in front of Allah.
In our modern life, death is often removed from our everyday realities. Feel the first breeze of spring, see the gentle snowdrops and hear the lovely melody of the birds celebrating the first warm sun-rays. And ponder on it.
It is all a reflection of the circle of life. After winter where everything seemed dead, Allah awakens nature to life again. It will be the same with us. After Allah gives us death, He will raise us to life again.
I found Imam Al Ghazali’s book Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife extremely helpful. This book is also helpful in instilling more love for our beloved Prophet Muhammad in our hearts besides reading about his life.
Martin Ling’s Muhammad: His life based on the earliest sources, is beautifully written and can also help us to develop more love for this special human being in our heart.
If you can take some useful information from this article, this comes from Allah SWT. Alhamdulillah. And if there is anything unclear, wrong or expressed in an impolite way, I ask Allah SWT for His forgiveness.