The Spiritual Approach to Waiting in Ayatollah Khamenei's Thought and Novel Spiritualities

Spirituality today refers to an independent field of study that deals with issues related to the inner world of man and the internal relationship between the general public and God. Ayatollah Khamenei is one of the thinkers who considers spirituality in the literal sense and evaluates it as an important factor in human life and future developments in the world. Hence, the spiritual approach to the waiting is the subject of this paper. The research was conducted by qualitative content analysis method and the realm of data collection is the speeches of the Supreme Leader of Iranian Revolution about the waiting. The sampling method was purposeful and sequential. So that the search began with the keyword "waiting" and continued with commonly used and related concepts such as "justice" and "spirituality" and the statements from the speeches of the Supreme Leader that contained the most epistemological data were analyzed. The findings of the study include describing spirituality from the perspective of the Supreme Leader of the Revolution, explaining the relationship between justice and spirituality, the relationship between spirituality and the waiting, and defining and analyzing the concept of the waiting into three categories: protest, religious democracy, and readiness. From the viewpoint of the Supreme Leader of the Revolution, the relationship with Imam al-Zaman (as) is a heart relationship that forms a kind of spiritual experience and is a personal and living relationship during which a person understands the presence of the Imam with his heart and feelings. Rival views are categorized into two categories: old-fashioned spirituality and novel spirituality.