Soul Stories #31: You Can't Find What You Never Lost

One year the majority of Nasruddin’s little village decided to go on a pilgrimage across the world to find God. Almost everyone was on the trip, except for Nasruddin. As the pilgrims were trekking through the desert they heard Nasruddin on his donkey trotting toward them screaming, “Wait! Wait! Someone help me, I haven’t been able to find my donkey?” The pilgrims started laughing, and one of them said, “Nasruddin, you foolish man you are riding your donkey!” Another pilgrim said, “You can’t find something you never lost!” Nasruddin grinned as he said, “Really? So why have you all gone looking to find God? Is He not closer to you than even the breath of life inside of you?” The pilgrims were speechless and now Nasruddin was the one laughing as he trotted back home on his donkey.

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The pilgrims in this story were sincere in their search for God, but had forgotten the essential truth of His omnipresence. While hunger finds its satisfaction in bread, and thirst is quenched with water, our soul’s longing is a “God-shaped” hole that nothing in this realm can satisfy, but Allah. When the villagers felt that inner longing, they didn’t know what to do so they packed their bags and set out to find God. Nasruddin being the sage disguised as a fool, created a humorous scene to show the villagers that just as you can’t mount a successful search for something you actually haven’t dismounted, you cannot find a God who is already with you. The Qur’an doesn’t describe God as a distant and inaccessible Creator, but describes Him as intimately close to you.

“We are closer to them than ˹their˺ jugular vein.”
— Qur’an 50:16

Allah is not close to you like a father, or like the shirt on your back, He is closer to you than your breathes, the pulse of your heart, and even your very life itself. And the Qur’an reiterates this by saying, “And He is with you wherever you are.” (Qur’an 57:4) All of existence, from a stone to a star is a reflection of Allah’s beauty and majesty. It is not in what you see, but in the turning itself that you arrive. While scholars debate around its train of transmission there is a powerful Hadith Qudsi that narrates God saying Kuntu kanzan makhfiyyan fa-aḥbabtu an uʿrafa fa-khalaqtu al-khalqa li-uʿrafa or "I was a treasure hidden, so I desired to be known, thus I created creation in order to be known." If these beloved words are true, then we were not created and then sent out into the world as an afterthought to find God. We have been created with a longing to find God, but this search is not a geographic one, but in the recognition of His omnipresence from the East to the West, from the outward to the inner. The Prophet ﷺ reiterates that the search of the Divine is intimately connected with knowledge of the self.

man ‘arafa nafsahu, faqad ‘arafa Rabbahu
“He who knows himself, knows His Lord.”
—Prophet Muhammad ﷺ

The villagers could laugh at Nasruddin’s theatrics because they had not yet seen themselves in him. Once they could see that what they were looking for was already with them, it changed the orientation of their search from an outward one into an inward one.

The power of Nasruddin’s wisdom is that it comes through the mercy of laughter. When an insight arrives without direct correction, but through comedy it has a way of softening the mind’s defenses making it easier to receive what the heart already knows. The awakening of our souls to the truth doesn’t always happen like a thunderous realization, sometimes it’s a grin slowing spilling across our face as we become aware that we have been longing for a key that has always been in our very hands. Or as Nasruddin might say, “ You do not need to cross a desert to find what you are riding. You only need to notice you were never on foot.” ✨

Oh Allah, open the eyes of our hearts so that we may always be in a state of witnessing You. My beloved Lord, remind us that we do not need to find You because You are with us wherever we are. Oh Allah, make Yourself known to us through darkness and light. Unveil the light of Your Divine Names across time and space. Oh Allah, guide us on the path of truth and awaken us to the Love that has always been You. In Your beautiful names we pray, Ameen.

In prayers of light upon light,