RAMADHAN, FESTIVAL OF RELIGIOUS RITUALS
Do not make Ramadahan an eating festivities, do not make Ramadhan a month where sleeping is the daily rituals and do not make Ramadhan when after a short prayer at night, the activities to follow on is the casual endless chatting. After the seeming endless chatting, everyone returns home to sleep, forgetting to get up during the night to be close to God.
Ramadhan is not only to revive the night or to suffer from hunger during the day and being under exhaustion. Ramadhan is meant for us to revive our minds, our hearts and souls with the feeling of being with God. Ramadhan is the joyous times for our souls to feel subservience towards Him, to feel low down with Him, to have the feeling of weakness towards Him, and to have the feeling of being small towards God the AlMighty.
Ramadhan is the time to revive our hearts to feel humble, to fear God, to love God, to feel being with God always. Ramadhan is the time to make our souls have the feeling of compassion towards others, loving and caring for others, to sympathise with those in hardships and those unfortunate ones.Ramadhan is the time to deepen our feelings of being sinful towards Him, having fear to do anymore wrongdoings. Ramadhan is the time to feel God's Supremacy, to feel His Awesomeness and His Strength. Ramadhan is not just actively doing the physical rituals which seem good on the exterior while the inner aspects are neglected and in darkness.
What is important is to keep our souls alive, having an inner enjoyment. God does not see the exterior or the outside but He sees what's inside.God wishes to see what's inside the human soul as to whether his soul has the feelings of being with God. Fasting during the day, night prayers being performed, Quran being read all to enlighten the soul which has been in darkness. Reciting the zikir should not be just an utterance but it comes with inner feelings. To do zikir is not just at the tongue but the heart is saying it as well, felt in the heart. To do the zikir is not at the tongue but what's remembered inside the heart.
The arrival of Ramadhan is for the purpose of reviving the heart which has been dead all this while. Hopefully, with a month of Ramadhan to revive the heart, it will last for another year. Then as the next Ramadhan appears the same thing happens again where the dead heart is revived to last for another year. This is for the normal person who is indifferent and negligent. For someone with taqwa where his soul is always alive, the coming of Ramadhan is the time for him to upgrade his position with God.
But if Ramadhan comes without any effort to revive the inner souls, the exterior seems joyous, the exterior being lighted up with various physical rituals while the inner rituals left unattended, during the times outside the month of Ramadhan, sad to say, the heart will be left in darkness for the whole year.
