Colossians 2:17 Meaning Which Are a Shadow of the Things

Ẓāhir and Bāṭin: Outward and inward The pair names the visible side of a practice and the meaning living inside it. A duty can be carried out flawlessly for years and still be held at arm's length, kept because it is kept, with nothing behind it. Someone who has met what that duty was pointing toward keeps doing it, and now the same actions carry a weight they did not have before.

Ẓill: Shadow Ibn Arabi describes the whole world as God's shadow, cast by a light it does not own. A shadow shows the shape of something and where it stands, then slips away when a hand closes on it. Someone devoted to an observance can spend years like that, holding an accurate outline of something the observance was never able to give.

Ḥijāb: Veil The word covers anything standing between a person and what they want, including good and holy things. Al-Ghazali wrote that some veils are made of light, which makes them much harder to spot. An observance becomes one of those when keeping it correctly turns into the whole point, and the person stops expecting anything past it.

Sharīʿa and Ḥaqīqa: The practice and the reality it serves The first is the daily discipline, the second is what the discipline was built to reach. Al-Ghazali had no patience for people who taste a little of the second and then treat the first as beneath them. A ladder keeps its worth after someone has reached the roof, and the practice stays worth doing once it is no longer confused with the destination.

Dhawq: Tasting Al-Ghazali used the word for knowing something by having it rather than by hearing about it. He liked the example of a doctor who can define good health while lying in bed sick. A person can keep every observance, explain what each one means, and still be waiting for the thing itself to arrive. When it does, the explanations matter less, because the person is no longer living on them.