The Vertical Escape: A Transit through the Year of Sadness

The thing about the Isra’ and Mi’raj is that it didn’t happen when everything was fine. It arrived during the "Year of Sadness"—a divine response to a heart that was physically and spiritually suffocating under the gravity of human loss. We’re so obsessed with "leveling up" in this material cage, yet the Buraq reminds us that spiritual ascent requires a certain kind of lightness, a shedding of the ego’s heavy luggage. There is a quiet, intellectual ache in realizing that we often fail to rise simply because we are too attached to the noise.

When the Prophet ﷺ led the previous messengers in prayer at Baitul Maqdis, it wasn't an act of replacement, but a "theology of inclusion." It was a profound, minimalist "yes" to all the truth that came before, a cosmic gathering proving that we aren't meant to be islands, but part of an unbroken lineage of light. This gathering in the dust of the earth, before the ascent into the stars, serves as a reminder that our history is not a series of erasures, but a continuous unfolding of the same divine signal.

But for me, the most haunting part isn’t the ascent; it’s the return. After reaching a station of proximity to the Divine that defies language, he chose to come back to the friction and the cruelty of this world out of pure, radical compassion. He brought back the gift of Salah—not as a legalistic burden, but as a daily sanctuary where the world’s volume is finally turned down. Every time we step onto the mat, we are accessing a fragment of that celestial journey, a chance to shed the "heavy things" and find a springtime for the soul.

This vertical escape is not about leaving our lives behind, but about bringing the perspective of the heavens back down to the pavement. It is the realization that while we are tethered to the earth, we are not owned by it. We carry the capacity to transcend our own 'years of sadness' every time we choose to breathe, to pray, and to remember that the horizon is never the end. We are travelers in a temporary skin, gifted with a map to the infinite just so we wouldn’t forget how to rise.

A distilled reflection from Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad’s session last night.