True Fana fi'llah

I posted the below earlier in the comments of an earlier post, but I thought it worth presenting in its own right:

My personal favorite analogy of a proper perspective of concept of Union with Allah is the description given by the great Sadhu Sundar Singh nearly a hundred years ago. He wrote:

Seeker: Is the goal of prayer to lose our individuality and dissolve into oneness with God?

Sadhu: We have been created in the image of God. Our destiny is to be restored into that image. God came to us in the Master to restore us to God’s divine nature. In this way, the Master transforms us into flames of spiritual fire. To become spiritual fire means to become like God. Even the smallest flame of fire is fire and has all the qualities of fire. This does not mean that our spirit is God’s spirit, as some pantheists and philosophers suppose. We are not fragments of God’s spirit. We are not God. God is distinct from us, but our souls can only find peace in oneness with God.

A sponge lies in the water and the water fills the sponge, but the water is not the sponge and the sponge is not the water. It is the same when I immerse myself in God. God fills my heart and I am in complete union with God, but I am not God and God is not I. We are distinct though not separate.

People are very different from one another – in character, temperament, and abilities – even though we are all created in the image of God. Indeed, if all the flowers in the world were of the same color and scent, the very face of the earth would lose its charm. When the sun’s rays pass through colored glass, the color does not change, but the sun highlights and reveals its varied hues, its true charm. So the sun of righteousness shines through the varied characters of spiritual men and women, revealing God’s boundless glory and love." (Sadhu Sundar Singh, The Wisdom of the Sadhu (E-Book)(Kim Comer, ed.; Farmington, PA: The Bruderhof Foundation, 2003), pp. 121-123)