A. Helwa > Quotes

“When the world goes to sleep, God is the One who is awake with you. God sees the tears you hide with smiles and He embraces the pain you think no one would understand. “Not even an atom’s weight in the heavens or the earth remains hidden from Him” (34:3).”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“Awakening to faith is not a one-time event, but a continuously unfolding reality. The journey of faith is not a race, but a marathon of love that each person walks at a different pace.”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“You are not a small star, you are a reflection of the entire cosmos. Can you hear the big bang in your heart? Eighty times a minute God knocks on the doors of your chest, to remind you that He has never left, and that He is closer to you than the jugular vein in your neck (50:16).”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“God does not love you just because of who you are; He loves you because love is who He is. So never stop praying. Even when the pain is too much to bear, even when you have broken a thousand promises, even if all that comes out is a silent whisper that only God can hear. No matter what storms you are facing, no matter how bad you mess up, no matter how painful life becomes, the door to prayer is always open for you. After all, as Imam Ali said, “When the world pushes you to your knees, you’re in the perfect position to pray.”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“As the mystics say, “Before you speak, let your words pass through three gates. At the first gate, ask yourself, ‘Is it true?’ at the second ask, ‘Is it necessary?’ and at the third gate ask, ‘Is it kind?”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“Words have power, which is why Imam Ali says, “Speak only when your words are more beautiful than the silence.” After all, everything in existence sprouted from the vibration of the divinely uttered word “Be! And it is” (36:82). So remember, your tongue is like a knife; it can either kill like the sword of a samurai or save like the scalpel of a surgeon.”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“God’s mercy is greater than your sins or circumstances. His compassionate love embraces the cactus parts of you that you swear no one could hug. His grace celebrates the parts of you that nobody claps for. God loved you before you were even created, before you even knew of Him. As the Qur’an says, “It is He who sent down tranquility into the hearts of the believers, that they may add faith to their faith for to Allah belong the forces of the heavens and the Earth and Allah is full of Knowledge and Wisdom” (48:4).”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“Your blessings, your trials and triumphs, your journey of falling and rising, your gifts and talents—they are all connected. Your true calling is held in the arms of your deepest wounds. God only breaks you to remake you, because breakdowns come before breakthroughs. Everything that God has written into your path was meant to prepare you for this exact moment. God wants you to come as you are, not as you think you should be.”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“Love. It is the reason there is something instead of nothing. It is from the soil of love that all of existence blossoms into being.”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“We are all born with spiritual wings, Islam simply reminds us how to fly.”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“As long as your heart is beating, you have a purpose. God is intentional, so He does not keep anyone on Earth that doesn’t have to be here; if we are blessed with more life, it is because someone in the world needs us. If we are alive, it means that what we were sent to this Earth to create has not yet been accomplished.”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“The principles of Islam teach us to be messengers of peace—to be like water, gentle enough to wash away tears and strong enough to drown hatred. To be Muslim is to protect the weak, the orphan, the beggar, the disabled of all races and cultures. To be Muslim is not to be color-blind, but to see the differences between people and to celebrate that diversity as a product of the free will that God chose to give us. As the Qur’an says, “And of His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth and the diversity of your languages and your colors. Indeed, in that are signs for those of knowledge” (30:22)”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“When Allah makes us aware of a sin we committed, He is not punishing us, but rather inviting us toward His presence. In this way, the moment we are drawn to sincere repentance, we are in effect unveiling the forgiveness that Allah has already written for us to experience. Someone asked the great eighth-century mystic Rabia Al-Adawiyya, “I have sinned much; if I repent, will Allah forgive me?” She profoundly replied, “It is the opposite; if Allah forgives you, you are capable of repentance.”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“The worst thing we can do is think that something we’re feeling is so wrong and horrible that we isolate ourselves from God, thinking we’re not worthy of being in His presence. We must remember that Allah doesn’t expect us to be perfect; after all, our sense of self-worth is not dependent on us, but on God. When we bring our poverty, our neediness, and our nothingness to God, He meets us with His generosity (Al-Karim), His ability to satisfy all needs (As-Samad), and His richness (Al-Ghaniy). Just as if you want light in your room you must open the blinds, if you want the shadows and dark places in your being to dissolve, you have to open your heart to the light of Allah. In essence, all of existence is just a reflection of the light of God’s grace manifesting into different forms.”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“We do not worship God because God needs it, we worship God because we need it. Prayer is not you reaching out for God, it is you responding to God, who first reached out to you.”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“Allah is the forger of time, the molder of space, the weaver of souls, the turner of hearts, the One who creates everything in stages yet is beyond the limits of time. Life is created from His breath, the cosmos forms from the vibration of His speech, and love is birthed from the womb of His mercy. He is the One who said, “Be!” to the vast nothingness, and existence sprouted into being. His words inspire light to break the darkness of nothing into the dawn of life.”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“Even if our doubts span an entire ocean, the light of God’s wisdom can rise beyond the furthest horizons and illuminate our hearts with a deep sense of contentment.”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“In Arabic, the word fitna, meaning “hardship,” stems from the word fatanah, which means “to test gold, burn with fire.” Just as gold is heated to extract valuable elements from the useless surrounding material, it is through the fire of our trials that our golden essence is unearthed.”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“You do not need cell towers to reach God, you just need to plug into your heart because “He is with you wherever you are” (57:4), from the closest atom to the farthest star.”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“It suddenly became clear to me that the whole purpose of faith is not to be “good enough” before we begin on the path to God, but to come with all our deficiencies to God, knowing that only He can fill in our gaps through His mercy.”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“What is meant for you, will reach you even if it is beneath two mountains. And what is not meant for you will not reach you even if it’s between your two lips.”
IMAM AL-GHAZALI, 11TH-CENTURY MYSTIC”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“Mystics throughout time have said that they believe in God like they believe in light, not because they can see light, but because through it they see everything else.”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“Allah sees the black ant on a black stone in the darkest night. So how could He not see your pain?”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“REMEMBER: Prayer is not about punishment or reward; it is about cultivating a genuine connection with God. The deep purpose of prayer is not to obtain a certain outcome; rather, it is about having an intimate conversation with your Lord.”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love Journal: Insightful Reflections that Inspire Hope and Revive Faith

“The God who made the stars, the seas, the mountains and its peaks, the universe and its galaxies felt this world would be incomplete without you and without me. Do you see how you are a puzzle piece in the whole—how without you here, there would be a hole? Your body is not just a clay tent that you live in, it’s a piece of the universe you have been given. You are not a small star, you are a reflection of the entire cosmos. Can you hear the big bang in your heart? Eighty times a minute God knocks on the doors of your chest, to remind you that He has never left, and that He is closer to you than the jugular vein in your neck (50:16). Every moment is divinely blessed, for this very moment God is blowing the breath of life through eight billion different human chests. You are not just star dust and dirt, you are a reflection of God’s beauty on Earth. You are not this mortal body that death will one day take. You are an everlasting spirit held in the mortal embrace of clay. You are not a human being meant to be spiritual, you are a spiritual being living this human being miracle.”
ARU BARZAK, POET”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“In my early twenties, I was traveling through a small town in Turkey called Cappadocia, when the divine spark of faith reignited within me like lightning. All it took was my eyes to fall upon a woman who was drowned in her worship of God. I watched her pray in an old seventeenth-century animal barn, as if nothing in the world existed but her divine Lover. She did not robotically repeat words of prayer like a formula; rather, every word she uttered came with a silent “I love you, my beloved Lord.” Her words were like synchronized dancers swimming in unison in the ocean of love that poured out of her. She was the first person I had ever seen in my life that not only prayed but she herself became the prayer.”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“Enlightenment is when a wave realizes it is the ocean.”
THICH NHAT HANH, ZEN MASTER”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“If we pray only when we feel like it, then we are not praying for God, but for our egos to feel a certain way.”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“You are a palace of hidden gems and the greatest treasure you could ever find is already within you. Gold will melt, money will burn, but you carry the everlasting and mysterious breath of God inside of you and that can never be taken away.”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“To every cry of, 'Oh God'. He answers a hundred times, 'I am here'.”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam