Alchemy of smile

[1]

Muzaffar Ali [1]

A smile wields the greatest power over human beings. But to reach that smile you have to be guided by a divine power and be cleansed of all your self-interest. The smile has to be pure and innocent. The smile should not ask anything of anyone. It should be a smile of acceptance and surrender, of giving and gratitude.

A story goes that a very ordinary man went to Hazrat Ali and said, “O Master, I am good for nothing, useless at what I do. I know of nothing to which I can add value. Pray, what shall I do?”
To which Hazrat Ali replied, “Just smile from your heart.”
Smile, therefore, has to come from a divine command and from the soul. When a smile is received and acknowledged, that moment lifts the universe and changes the meaning of life. We are constantly looking at changing the meaning of experiences. We want to illuminate our self with a presence that elevates oneself. We want our ordinariness to become special for all those around us.
In every faith and philosophy, art and culture, the smile has paid a vital role. In Tao, smile empowers the breath to heal oneself by making one self aware. It produces a sensitive and relaxing energy field that relieves one of unhealthy tensions and attitudes. In the process, it cleanses and detoxifies the metabolism. Through the inner smile we smile into our organs, tissues and glands. The sages say that your smile releases a honey-like secretion which nourishes the whole body. Thus, a smile is an equation, a balance and a relationship. You smile for yourself as you do for others.
Smile connects you with your inner self and a sense of limitless peace. It joins you with the primordial forces of creation and changes the concept of time and timelessness. It changes meaning to meaninglessness, place to placelessness. It removes duality of being and replaces it with oneness of existence. It becomes a bridge between physical and metaphysical through a process of surrender to this most powerful gift given to man to bail him out of conflicts and stresses of daily life.
The most interesting part of this gift is that like the sense of smell you can judge the purity of a smile. A smile can endear and betray you, too. We are, therefore, judging and being judged all along, all the time and the nature of a smile is the only yardstick. We, therefore, start from where we left — the purity within, i.e. the innocence of a child that we begin to lose as we grow up to become people of the world.

Muzaffar Ali is a filmmaker and painter. He is the executive director and secretary of the Rumi Foundation.