Sukoon
Yes, it is not only our knowledge that becomes artificial, but also our very state of being. We allow ourselves to be slowly pulled out of our natural state.
Let's call our natural, default alignment: Sukoon (Tranquility).
True Sukoon is not merely the absence of movement or a fleeting moment of relaxation; it is the structural harmony of the fiṭrah—the way Allāh created each of us.
Temperament, personality, interests, skills, so on and so forth.
Allāh built this beautiful variance. He, Exalted is He, willed this:
﴿ وَمِنْ آيَاتِهِ خَلْقُ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ وَاخْتِلَافُ أَلْسِنَتِكُمْ وَأَلْوَانِكُمْ ۚ إِنَّ فِي ذَٰلِكَ لَآيَاتٍ لِّلْعَالِمِينَ ﴾
"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" [Ar-Rūm: 22].
Al-Imām as-Saʿdī notes a deep deep wisdom behind this individual differentiation:
«وَمن عِنَايَته بِعِبَادِهِ وَرَحمته بهم أَن قدر ذَلِك الِاخْتِلَاف لِئَلَّا يَقع التَّشَابُه فَيَحْصُل الِاضْطِرَاب وَيَفُوت كثير من الْمَقَاصِد وَالْمَطَالِب»
"And it is from His care for His slaves and His mercy upon them that He decreed this variation, so that uniformity (total likeness) does not occur—which would result in disruption (chaos) and cause many of life's purposes and objectives to be lost".
When we are aligned with this, our internal environment is at peace. It is a quiet, steady state where the pieces of the puzzle naturally fit.
Modern life excels at meddling with the business of reality and how things function in their default state. Of course, it will attack this aspect of that. It demands that we ignore our individual proportions to fit an artificial machine.
But the human mechanism has strict structural limits. It was created to operate within the bounds of ease and proportion, not the frantic pressure of an artificial mold. The Prophet ﷺ warned us about the nature of our design.
عَنْ أَبِي هُرَيْرَةَ، عَنِ النَّبِيِّ صلى الله عليه وسلم قَالَ:
"إِنَّ الدِّينَ يُسْرٌ، وَلَنْ يُشَادَّ الدِّينَ أَحَدٌ إِلاَّ غَلَبَهُ، فَسَدِّدُوا وَقَارِبُوا وَأَبْشِرُوا، وَاسْتَعِينُوا بِالْغَدْوَةِ وَالرَّوْحَةِ وَشَىْءٍ مِنَ الدُّلْجَةِ".
From Abū Hurayra, from the Prophet, ṣallallāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam, who said:
"Religion is ease, and no one overburdens himself in religion except that it overwhelms him. So aim straight, draw near, embrace glad tidings, and make use of the morning, the afternoon, and a portion of the night". [Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (39)].
We look at the momentum of the surrounding current, and we give in to that possibility, treating it as if it were the only one available to us.
We stop looking for alternative doors.
We convince ourselves that this uncomfortable compromise, this slight twisting of our values or our lifestyle, is a mandatory tax we must pay to move forward.
And with each minor concession, the system is quietly re-coded.
Bit by bit, you are brought out of your natural state and ushered into an artificial one, while completely oblivious.
Eventually, the low-grade inflammation begins to manifest as a distinct, structural friction. It starts as a vague, haunting feeling—an uneasiness that settles deep inside.
It feels like entering a new phase of life, yet you can still vividly remember your old self. You remember what clarity felt like. You remember what unburdened Sukoon felt like.
That memory does not comfort you; it acts as a hollow, pulling ache. Right there in the center of your chest, as though your skeleton is out of place.
Your framework is misaligned.
You can still walk…yes.
You can still fulfill your daily obligations, and you can still smile when expected…*grin*.
But, every single movement carries a dull, radiating friction because your very core is fighting against itself. Your fiṭrah is rejecting the artificial code you have forced upon it.
Yet, because adults cannot easily show this friction to the world, the conflict remains entirely internal. It does not leak out as loud complaints or dramatic outbursts…or crying for mommy, like toddlers do. Instead, it becomes a frantic, exhausting, inner silent dialogue.
As the pressure builds and the dread of an inevitable collapse approaches, the mind works overtime to maintain the illusion.
"Just a little further"…the inner voice whispers…"You have to bear this. This is the only way".
You find yourself trapped in the paradox of justifying the very weight that is crushing you, spending your final reserves of whatever energy you have left to defend the lie that this artificial path is your only option.
Your system can only sustain an artificial code for so long. The friction eventually becomes too high to ignore.
Does it then explode?
No. There is no energy for that. You've been sucked out of that.
What happens is: total depletion.
Limbs can no longer be lifted. You have been carrying something incredibly heavy for a looooong time, holding it up with sheer willpower, until your muscles simply give up. Your limbs go entirely soft. They cannot be held back up, no matter how much you command them to move.
"Please, just a little further…".
"Nope!".
The internal justifications finally run out of fuel and fall completely silent.
And then?
Nothing. You just stop moving. Not because you chose to stop, but because the engine has seized.
A forced surrender. A white flag waved by your biology because you refused to wave it yourself. So, you just drop the weight.
It feels like a stop.
Just…just a stop.
Not relief yet — that comes later. First, there is only the strange, disorienting absence of the thing that was organizing your entire existence. Your nervous system does not know what to do without the pressure it had been bracing against for so long. It was built around that weight. It does not immediately know how to simply...be…without it.
So you sit in it. The heavy, unmoving deaf quiet of total exhaustion and saturation.
Inner dialogues, justifications, "what's the next step?". None of that.
Just the unfamiliar texture of thick silence where the noise used to be.
It is unsettling before it is anything else. Like a room you have lived in for years, suddenly emptied of all its furniture. The same walls. The same floor. But everything looks different when nothing is occupying the space. Oh…and that echo…
And then — slowly, without announcement — it begins to return…like circulation quietly coming back to a limb that had been compressed for too long. A faint, almost tentative, numbing warmth.
It is the fiṭrah. Reasserting its signal, now that the interference has finally cleared.
This is the Sukoon you began with — not restored dramatically, not arriving in full — but present again. Quietly. The way dawn arrives. You do not see the moment it begins. You simply look up and realize the darkness has thinned.
And it is only there, in that returning stillness, that you look around your life — not with the frantic eyes of the inner dialogue, but with the calm, unhurried gaze of someone who has simply stopped — and notice:
The doors were always there.
You were just moving too fast, under too much weight, too committed to the one narrow track to see them.
The current did not lie to you with cruelty. It simply moved, as currents do, and you forgot you were not obligated to follow it.
The movement stops. The artificial code clears.
And the fiṭrah — patient, persistent, unchanged — begins, quietly, to…
*deep breath*