Take me away. My heart is full to the brim.
And I haven't cried for so long!
- Prophecy
Friday, May 30, 2008
The End of Time
I had an insight.
What is Time?
Time is wanting or doing something - the better phrase is engaging with something - for some purpose other than that thing itself. There is then a distance between the End and Self, and Means are the Space within.
The opposite of Time must be Joy.
When we do something completely for itself, and not for something before it, and not for something after it, we enjoy it. We in-joy.
To release from Time, a method is to Be One's True Self. This ends the distance, the space within one's potential state and one's existing state. Be yourself. That will life the curse of time.
Prophecy, intend strongly, now, right now to release your Self from Time. Just do it.
Go!
(Go read That Which Ends Time. You know what it is. "The Event.")
What is Time?
Time is wanting or doing something - the better phrase is engaging with something - for some purpose other than that thing itself. There is then a distance between the End and Self, and Means are the Space within.
The opposite of Time must be Joy.
When we do something completely for itself, and not for something before it, and not for something after it, we enjoy it. We in-joy.
To release from Time, a method is to Be One's True Self. This ends the distance, the space within one's potential state and one's existing state. Be yourself. That will life the curse of time.
Prophecy, intend strongly, now, right now to release your Self from Time. Just do it.
Go!
(Go read That Which Ends Time. You know what it is. "The Event.")
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Enough!
Prophecy!
I must tell you I am extremely angry. This cannot go on.
Don't create explanations of how you feel or how you should feel. As long as there is a thinking gap between you and what you perceive, you are not there!
I am tired of you dragging on and putting your faith where you know it does not belong. It makes people dangerous when they are in a world they don't want to be in.
When the moment of truth presents itself to you, stop arguing and wondering. This is not the point! No one ever got anywhere by admiring a bus, but rather by taking it!
I understand you are in a shift - what I don't understand is your romance with the shift. Mind prolongs time, understand that. Whoever went about creating time never got to where they wanted to - because the only "thing" to get to is the Now. Miss that, and you will perpetually be indebted to your Past. Avoid that, and you will keep venturing into the Future.
This is a curse, Prophecy! This entangled the best of human potential and never allowed it to be manifested. DO NOT CREATE TIME. Do not believe even for a second that you can be or could be anything else than who you truly are at the moment.
Be you.
Apply what you have learned, or there is no need to go on.
Be you.
I must tell you I am extremely angry. This cannot go on.
Don't create explanations of how you feel or how you should feel. As long as there is a thinking gap between you and what you perceive, you are not there!
I am tired of you dragging on and putting your faith where you know it does not belong. It makes people dangerous when they are in a world they don't want to be in.
When the moment of truth presents itself to you, stop arguing and wondering. This is not the point! No one ever got anywhere by admiring a bus, but rather by taking it!
I understand you are in a shift - what I don't understand is your romance with the shift. Mind prolongs time, understand that. Whoever went about creating time never got to where they wanted to - because the only "thing" to get to is the Now. Miss that, and you will perpetually be indebted to your Past. Avoid that, and you will keep venturing into the Future.
This is a curse, Prophecy! This entangled the best of human potential and never allowed it to be manifested. DO NOT CREATE TIME. Do not believe even for a second that you can be or could be anything else than who you truly are at the moment.
Be you.
Apply what you have learned, or there is no need to go on.
Be you.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Footloose in SoHo
Prophecy-
I don't understand how and for what to build castles of permanency. My Self dreads any promise or imposition. I don't want to run to anything, nor away from anything. I am.
The quickest for me to destroy something is to feel attached to it, and to try to develop any attachment. I want every moment in my life to be dissolving, a self-destructive temporal, ethereal message.
Even though there is still some lingering pain in destruction, I'd rather have that gone-ness than a sticky residue. You know what I mean?
That reminds me - (oh memory, memory!) - my first ever proper website was titled "Footloose in SoHo" - a collection of teenage angsty poetry and agony imagery. Beautiful, though.
I like the footlooseness. I wonder if my feet hurt not because of wandering, but for the lack of it. Aye - that must be it! The invisible ailment that no machine nor scanner can pick. The ailment of not being who one is.
Anyhow. What a wandering little blog! But then - hasn't it been called A Quest for Beauty; a Lust for Life right from its inception? Names have meanings, Prophecy. You know that!
Love!
I don't understand how and for what to build castles of permanency. My Self dreads any promise or imposition. I don't want to run to anything, nor away from anything. I am.
The quickest for me to destroy something is to feel attached to it, and to try to develop any attachment. I want every moment in my life to be dissolving, a self-destructive temporal, ethereal message.
Even though there is still some lingering pain in destruction, I'd rather have that gone-ness than a sticky residue. You know what I mean?
That reminds me - (oh memory, memory!) - my first ever proper website was titled "Footloose in SoHo" - a collection of teenage angsty poetry and agony imagery. Beautiful, though.
I like the footlooseness. I wonder if my feet hurt not because of wandering, but for the lack of it. Aye - that must be it! The invisible ailment that no machine nor scanner can pick. The ailment of not being who one is.
Anyhow. What a wandering little blog! But then - hasn't it been called A Quest for Beauty; a Lust for Life right from its inception? Names have meanings, Prophecy. You know that!
Love!
To Not to Stress
Think of a pleasant warm shower that gives one relaxation. Think back to how its warmth is powered.
The water is warmed by a boiler, at the heart of which sits a tiny furnace, at the core of which is FIRE. Powerful, raw fire. This is what fire is: an energy that exudes power.
Should one decide to tear down a shower, expose the pipes, trace them to the boiler, piece it apart, reach to its core, and put their hands on the fire - THEY. WILL. BURN.
That does not imply that the fire is "harmful" or the boiler is "bad." They are what they are. The issue is that they are engaged by an external entity at the level to which the boiler ought not to have been engaged.
Our fire is meant to power us - no more, no less. How it's used in the world out there is based upon our intention, it's not the "fault" of the nature of the fire. We stand between our energy and the world, and that's where the transaction with the outer world takes place.
Don't be tempted to blame the fire within; it powers you. Don't prevent your fire from being channeled either - it creates pleasure, relaxation, and joy by transforming the energy of water into a warm shower.
You are you.
Transform a situation in which you are being pieced apart. And know that this tearing or this transformation is a process that takes only ONE: you.
This occurred to me during a meditation last night. 'The question that came into my mind was: how does stress 'peel us down to the animal level?' Why do we feel rage? Must the animal within be reigned in, or must it be liberated?"
This question arose in a conversation earlier.
The answer has helped me understand the stress situation I had been examining in my self (and my dear Karachi world) for the past couple of weeks - a situation that inevitably leads to moments where the whole world seems hostile and we react in a snap.
The Matrix of Life
"The Other is like our training program. The moment we (the Self) learn the lesson, and extract a beneficial understanding of the program, there is no need for that program to continue as it is. It ends.
But most of us seek to change that program, to correct it. Which makes the program run stronger, if anything.
Interestingly, we are the training program to the Other. If they too, unfortunately, try to fix us, the "conflict" escalates.
But we cannot control their process, so our focus remains us. Indeed, it's only us we transform, because the Other is a training program - even when they show grace in the face of our failures!
The moment we learn our lesson from the Other - that program - it transmutes into the beneficial, or may disappear altogether. Job done.
Another training program is then loaded."
This insight occurred to me just as I was loading my computer. Wow.
I attended two days of the highly transformative workshop on Personal Excellence by E Schuitema - and some profound insights are likely to rise from my consciousness.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Show Me the Truth!
"Lord, show me things as they are.
You show a thing as fair, and in reality it is ugly.
You show a thing as ugly, and in truth it is beautiful.
Show us everything just as it is,
So that we will not fall into the snare."
- The prayer of Prophet Mohammad, peace be upon him
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Violence Tablet Rising
May 18, 2008 - Note: This article is being published incomplete. Somehow I could not carry on writing it, just when I clearly saw "it" coming ten days before Karachi deadly May 12th, 2007 violence.
And still, I see violence rising, with more to come. This is no conspiracy, as the police or the people sometimes believe. This is self-organized chaos. One day, we will learn through a tragic lesson, how hearts are moves in unison. As I publish this article today - horrified and sickened by the images of the burned robbers of two different torching incidents - I hope that there is another group of hearts that moves in unison - the heart of the Ones Who Love. The Friends. Only in them is our hope. Not in cynicism, not in analyses, not in opinions, not in being smart. But in living a life of love.
Aameen!
----
From May 13th, 2007:
[I started writing this on May 2nd, 2007. Yesterday - May 12th- was an awfully violent day in Karachi. The situation will get worse - and it has got very little to do with the Chief Justice issue, but much to do with social justice. God speed!]
-----
There is a thing called a water tablet and another thing called a salt tablet - both are in the soil. These are primarily terms that are used in an agricultural or town planning context. These are names for the "levels" of water or salt in soil.
A Tale of Two Tablets
Water exists somewhere far below the surface in most areas - and all kinds of soil, particularly fertilized soil and soil by bodies of water, has salt. Water tablet rises due to land/sea or land/river level changes or seepages below the surfaces. When the water tablet starts rising in an urban area, it starts making urban architectural structures - buildings, and roads, etc. - "ploppy." Everything from cement damage to structure tilt may occur. You can see the water tablet in the cracks of walls, in the crumpling floor beds, in decaying plants.
In agricultural areas, when the sat tablet rises above a certain acceptable level, it first appears as specks of white circles in the land. As salt keeps accumulating, deposits become thicker and wider, and inhibit other elements of nutrition. The land is rendered gradually incapable of cultivation. The salt simply kills the produce. Too much salt is too bad.
The curious fact is that both the tablets have no specific source and no local cure. That is, the water tablet rises below a wide area not just a certain building - and the salt tablet also is independent of territories divided amongst owners on the surface. One local area cannot treat this at its own end. The tablets have to reduce universally - i.e. the entire larger area affected has to be treated together. It's not one person's problem, it's a community problem.
The Third Tablet
The human mind also has universal tablets which are connected deep down at a universal level - i.e. a single tablet exists under many minds connected below the surface. Group dynamics share these tablets. Neighborhoods share tablets. There is always a collective issue that affects us all, and there is no individual cure.
We keep a lot of thing much, much below surface, such as a feeling of injustice. Additions in those reservoirs push them up, until they start showing marks on the surface. Once the tablet has risen, it attacks the individual units above at varying degrees. Which might make it look like a "personal issue" - but it's not.
As a society, we also have a Violence Tablet, which I'd define as our exposure to, and experience of, violence. Physical, mental, verbal, social, emotional, communal violence.The violence reservoir in our minds increases with even second-hand exposure to violence, such as its reporting in media. Reported violence is becoming real-life in our world because of the immediacy and ever-presence of media in the modern life. Once upon a time not so long ago, the media could not print colored photographs of violent occurrences. Now, we must see the colorful dis-assembly of body parts.
The mind is a technology. It is wired to learn what it senses. It's very simple no matter what explanatory theory is concocted. The mind does not judge, it simply adds what it senses and perceives to its database. Based on the minds patterns, it also tags information. However, the mind develops patterns of its information - and too much information about violence leads to violent patterns in the head. For instance, the mind tags the words "protest" with pictures of a flagged march. It then begins to see that there is a pattern rising where protest = suicide bombing. The mind simply starts storing information.
Each time now that we "call" or "request information" on the word protest, it comes with a library of images of suicidal and murderous death. This "call" or "query" also becomes a pattern if we call such information again and again - until the mind simply learns to send back these images with the word "protest" together.
So if such a mind were to think, "I am going to protest against unemployment," the mind returns suggestions of bombing, threats, etc. that it has been learning. It simply works that way - only we can describe this phenomenon in more academic terms.
The mind does not know shouldn't and wouldn't. If we suggest to the mind that it "shouldn't" think this way, the mind, being a machine, simply adds this another command in its meta-structure, where it may stand in conflict with programs such as "protest by killing" or "protest in silence." The result is a consistent internal struggle where our morals are battling our learning.
Violence Tablet Rising
I am very concerned about something I am observing: I am seeing violence and distrust even at a very micro, personal level. What the mind senses, it accepts in terms of "adding it up" to memory patterns. Though we may not agree with violence or believe in it, consistent exposure to it makes us "internalize" it - until it becomes acceptance of a technical sort. I.e., we don't want to do it, but this is what our technology is learning. It's like a mal-functioning machine or a badly-programmed computer. They just do as told or programmed.
As individuals, we are now beginning to show the cracks and crumpling of this shared, universal Violence Tablet Rising. And these signs are appearing uncontrollably all over the surface.
You think the neighbor has yelled at you exaggeratedly for your badly parked car, but they have yelled too little at the image of world poverty that is now sitting in their head so clearly, they can hardly see you.
No longer is the boss in a bad mood because of an argument with the spouse, but because the news about possible wars and national attacks on TV last night has disturbed their proposal for company growth.
Solutions?
As I am writing, I am thinking: so what?
Since the Violence Tablet is universal, the cure ought also to be at a large scale. There are two things I have in mind that might work at some level:
-RA aka The Prophecy
And still, I see violence rising, with more to come. This is no conspiracy, as the police or the people sometimes believe. This is self-organized chaos. One day, we will learn through a tragic lesson, how hearts are moves in unison. As I publish this article today - horrified and sickened by the images of the burned robbers of two different torching incidents - I hope that there is another group of hearts that moves in unison - the heart of the Ones Who Love. The Friends. Only in them is our hope. Not in cynicism, not in analyses, not in opinions, not in being smart. But in living a life of love.
Aameen!
----
From May 13th, 2007:
[I started writing this on May 2nd, 2007. Yesterday - May 12th- was an awfully violent day in Karachi. The situation will get worse - and it has got very little to do with the Chief Justice issue, but much to do with social justice. God speed!]
-----
There is a thing called a water tablet and another thing called a salt tablet - both are in the soil. These are primarily terms that are used in an agricultural or town planning context. These are names for the "levels" of water or salt in soil.
A Tale of Two Tablets
Water exists somewhere far below the surface in most areas - and all kinds of soil, particularly fertilized soil and soil by bodies of water, has salt. Water tablet rises due to land/sea or land/river level changes or seepages below the surfaces. When the water tablet starts rising in an urban area, it starts making urban architectural structures - buildings, and roads, etc. - "ploppy." Everything from cement damage to structure tilt may occur. You can see the water tablet in the cracks of walls, in the crumpling floor beds, in decaying plants.
In agricultural areas, when the sat tablet rises above a certain acceptable level, it first appears as specks of white circles in the land. As salt keeps accumulating, deposits become thicker and wider, and inhibit other elements of nutrition. The land is rendered gradually incapable of cultivation. The salt simply kills the produce. Too much salt is too bad.
The curious fact is that both the tablets have no specific source and no local cure. That is, the water tablet rises below a wide area not just a certain building - and the salt tablet also is independent of territories divided amongst owners on the surface. One local area cannot treat this at its own end. The tablets have to reduce universally - i.e. the entire larger area affected has to be treated together. It's not one person's problem, it's a community problem.
The Third Tablet
The human mind also has universal tablets which are connected deep down at a universal level - i.e. a single tablet exists under many minds connected below the surface. Group dynamics share these tablets. Neighborhoods share tablets. There is always a collective issue that affects us all, and there is no individual cure.
We keep a lot of thing much, much below surface, such as a feeling of injustice. Additions in those reservoirs push them up, until they start showing marks on the surface. Once the tablet has risen, it attacks the individual units above at varying degrees. Which might make it look like a "personal issue" - but it's not.
As a society, we also have a Violence Tablet, which I'd define as our exposure to, and experience of, violence. Physical, mental, verbal, social, emotional, communal violence.The violence reservoir in our minds increases with even second-hand exposure to violence, such as its reporting in media. Reported violence is becoming real-life in our world because of the immediacy and ever-presence of media in the modern life. Once upon a time not so long ago, the media could not print colored photographs of violent occurrences. Now, we must see the colorful dis-assembly of body parts.
The mind is a technology. It is wired to learn what it senses. It's very simple no matter what explanatory theory is concocted. The mind does not judge, it simply adds what it senses and perceives to its database. Based on the minds patterns, it also tags information. However, the mind develops patterns of its information - and too much information about violence leads to violent patterns in the head. For instance, the mind tags the words "protest" with pictures of a flagged march. It then begins to see that there is a pattern rising where protest = suicide bombing. The mind simply starts storing information.
Each time now that we "call" or "request information" on the word protest, it comes with a library of images of suicidal and murderous death. This "call" or "query" also becomes a pattern if we call such information again and again - until the mind simply learns to send back these images with the word "protest" together.
So if such a mind were to think, "I am going to protest against unemployment," the mind returns suggestions of bombing, threats, etc. that it has been learning. It simply works that way - only we can describe this phenomenon in more academic terms.
The mind does not know shouldn't and wouldn't. If we suggest to the mind that it "shouldn't" think this way, the mind, being a machine, simply adds this another command in its meta-structure, where it may stand in conflict with programs such as "protest by killing" or "protest in silence." The result is a consistent internal struggle where our morals are battling our learning.
Violence Tablet Rising
I am very concerned about something I am observing: I am seeing violence and distrust even at a very micro, personal level. What the mind senses, it accepts in terms of "adding it up" to memory patterns. Though we may not agree with violence or believe in it, consistent exposure to it makes us "internalize" it - until it becomes acceptance of a technical sort. I.e., we don't want to do it, but this is what our technology is learning. It's like a mal-functioning machine or a badly-programmed computer. They just do as told or programmed.
As individuals, we are now beginning to show the cracks and crumpling of this shared, universal Violence Tablet Rising. And these signs are appearing uncontrollably all over the surface.
You think the neighbor has yelled at you exaggeratedly for your badly parked car, but they have yelled too little at the image of world poverty that is now sitting in their head so clearly, they can hardly see you.
No longer is the boss in a bad mood because of an argument with the spouse, but because the news about possible wars and national attacks on TV last night has disturbed their proposal for company growth.
Solutions?
As I am writing, I am thinking: so what?
Since the Violence Tablet is universal, the cure ought also to be at a large scale. There are two things I have in mind that might work at some level:
1. Regulation of Violence on Media: The "Family Friendly Channel" Tag
Media has gone beyond "the lounge" and entered our "ears". It's a "thing in our pocket." We all know the effects of media - don't the media ads admit by showing involved the users of media are? Then how, on the other hand, can it be denied that violence on media is increasing violence in real life? We don't need any study to determine that and if we do, here is a latest news story: Violence on TV?
As far back as 1974, Colman McCarthy rejected TV for the disturbance it brought in the family life.
....
[Article incomplete. If any readers wish to contribute any sane solutions, they are welcome.]Media has gone beyond "the lounge" and entered our "ears". It's a "thing in our pocket." We all know the effects of media - don't the media ads admit by showing involved the users of media are? Then how, on the other hand, can it be denied that violence on media is increasing violence in real life? We don't need any study to determine that and if we do, here is a latest news story: Violence on TV?
As far back as 1974, Colman McCarthy rejected TV for the disturbance it brought in the family life.
....
-RA aka The Prophecy
Meeting Amatullah Armstrong - a woman who answers her call
I met Amatullah Armstrong yesterday at the quietly peaceful home of my Reiki teacher, Firdaus. Finally. I meet the woman whose story, in some subliminal way, gave me the courage to undertake my own journey to South Africa on a quest for learning. A month ago, when I first met Firdaus, she somehow broached the subject of her friend Amatullah's visit to her place a day earlier. "Amatullah is your friend!?," I yelled in delight. I made Firdaus promise me that when Amatullah was back from her tour to Lahore, I would be invited to meet her.
Amatullah came into my life some two years ago when I bought her book Sufi Terminology (Al-Qamus Al-Sufi). The author's biography caught my attention: apparently this woman, an art teacher, had left her homeland, Australia, and started traveling the world on her personal quest.
She cycled 5000 kilometers from Paris to Tunisia, where an encounter with Islam awaited her. She welcomed Islam into her life in the Algerian Sahara Desert. Later, Amatullah - her name literally means "the (female) slave of Allah" - joined the famous African Sufi tradition, Shadhiliya. Amatullah married and settled in Africa, and went back to Australia to get a Master's Degree; her thesis was the first on Tassawuf (aka Sufism) in Australia. Later, intrigued by a dream that called her to Pakistan, Amatullah left all behind in Africa, and came to Paksitan to start a new life.
In short, she became a perfect inspiration for me.
I was trapped in an ordinary life that was at once falling apart around me, and yet enslaving me in a most dreadful way, when I found Amatullah's story. So. A women travels the world on a daring quest for Truth. Seemed like my kind of destiny, except I wasn't living it. Trapped by dogma, fear, and a great sense of loss and anxiety, I wasn't getting anywhere in my life. I am not even sure if it was my life at all, or some randomly scripted drama filling up a void that I had left.
Reading her biography reminded me of a future I had seen in my memories: of myself taking a journey - I didn't know when, to where, and exactly-worldly why.
Then a man entered my life the next year, in 2007, and I accepted him as my teacher as much as he accepted to help me learn and grow. This year, I was waiting for the fulfillment of a prophecy about "a journey [I] would take to a foreign land which would change [my] life forever." I usually do not set much stock by these kinds of things - prophecies and predictions, for I think the human themselves is a Prophecy. However, this one rang true with me. So while I was meandering through a few usual choices of immigrating? traveling for pleasure? traveling for learning? - I realized I had been most quietly invited to the journey I was destined to take. The invite had almost slipped under my attention that was so focused on my own expectations.
Yet finally, lucidity came. I left for Africa. I went to love, live, learn. That sojourn in a foreign land marked a point where the life before it completely died and I came alive in a life after that point.
When Firdaus called me on Friday and said, "Come! Amatullah is coming to my home!," I could not resist the invite despite being dreadfully sick. Indeed, in Amatullah's company, I forgot the terrible ache that was rendering my body unable to stay happy. Amatullah is that ray of light from this world of no-mind, no-care that we are fortunate to catch a glimpse of. She is famously seen in her photographs as this Sufi doll, all bedecked in dervish green clothes. When I met her yesterday, she was hip in her kurti and carpenters with a chic fuchsia ethnic scarf, looking ready to jump on the next adventure. In the course of the conversation, it was revealed she is finally going to move on from Pakistan.
Amatullah has always followed her heart. She trusted Allah before she became "officially" Muslim, she was never afraid to live on the world during her fantastic voyages. We have made a random plan to go somewhere else together. I think I may now have a truly eccentric travel partner - one I prayed for a few days ago!
How charming.
Amatullah came into my life some two years ago when I bought her book Sufi Terminology (Al-Qamus Al-Sufi). The author's biography caught my attention: apparently this woman, an art teacher, had left her homeland, Australia, and started traveling the world on her personal quest.
She cycled 5000 kilometers from Paris to Tunisia, where an encounter with Islam awaited her. She welcomed Islam into her life in the Algerian Sahara Desert. Later, Amatullah - her name literally means "the (female) slave of Allah" - joined the famous African Sufi tradition, Shadhiliya. Amatullah married and settled in Africa, and went back to Australia to get a Master's Degree; her thesis was the first on Tassawuf (aka Sufism) in Australia. Later, intrigued by a dream that called her to Pakistan, Amatullah left all behind in Africa, and came to Paksitan to start a new life.
In short, she became a perfect inspiration for me.
I was trapped in an ordinary life that was at once falling apart around me, and yet enslaving me in a most dreadful way, when I found Amatullah's story. So. A women travels the world on a daring quest for Truth. Seemed like my kind of destiny, except I wasn't living it. Trapped by dogma, fear, and a great sense of loss and anxiety, I wasn't getting anywhere in my life. I am not even sure if it was my life at all, or some randomly scripted drama filling up a void that I had left.
Reading her biography reminded me of a future I had seen in my memories: of myself taking a journey - I didn't know when, to where, and exactly-worldly why.
Then a man entered my life the next year, in 2007, and I accepted him as my teacher as much as he accepted to help me learn and grow. This year, I was waiting for the fulfillment of a prophecy about "a journey [I] would take to a foreign land which would change [my] life forever." I usually do not set much stock by these kinds of things - prophecies and predictions, for I think the human themselves is a Prophecy. However, this one rang true with me. So while I was meandering through a few usual choices of immigrating? traveling for pleasure? traveling for learning? - I realized I had been most quietly invited to the journey I was destined to take. The invite had almost slipped under my attention that was so focused on my own expectations.
Yet finally, lucidity came. I left for Africa. I went to love, live, learn. That sojourn in a foreign land marked a point where the life before it completely died and I came alive in a life after that point.
When Firdaus called me on Friday and said, "Come! Amatullah is coming to my home!," I could not resist the invite despite being dreadfully sick. Indeed, in Amatullah's company, I forgot the terrible ache that was rendering my body unable to stay happy. Amatullah is that ray of light from this world of no-mind, no-care that we are fortunate to catch a glimpse of. She is famously seen in her photographs as this Sufi doll, all bedecked in dervish green clothes. When I met her yesterday, she was hip in her kurti and carpenters with a chic fuchsia ethnic scarf, looking ready to jump on the next adventure. In the course of the conversation, it was revealed she is finally going to move on from Pakistan.
Amatullah has always followed her heart. She trusted Allah before she became "officially" Muslim, she was never afraid to live on the world during her fantastic voyages. We have made a random plan to go somewhere else together. I think I may now have a truly eccentric travel partner - one I prayed for a few days ago!
How charming.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Saturday, May 03, 2008
Why Am I Going to Work Today
Dear Universe,
There is always a larger reason why we are alive, why we get up every morning, why we do what we do in the day, and why we retire in the nights either joyfully tired or feeling a sense of existential dread.
Today, I formally start work on a project the beginning of which will be the culmination a long quest for healing. Today, when I start working to ensure that natural healing remedies are accessible to people of Pakistan and beyond, it comes from a deep, long engagement with dis-ease that I observed in my loved ones and myself. There was a time when I believed tat everything happens for good; then there came moments when I lost sight of this basic belief in the benevolence of being alive.... yet eventually that momentary loss of faith in itself became a reason for greater faith.
Now we're tested, and we're through. Now we know.
I am just reading the story of another woman, about her experience of acute dis-ease - including loss of voice and back pain. The story reveals how this dis-ease eventually became the reason why when choosing to do business, she chose to bring natural healing to her country's people. I am about to write to her, and others like her with similar stories. We will understand each other.
I am lucky that before any test, I had the tools. My mother is a life-long advocate of a natural lifestyle, toxin-free households, recycling, and aversion to synthetic fabrication. She's also a botanist. When she fell casually ill in the 1990's, it became a major event in our family's life as a simple condition was complicated by bad medicine. What doctors did to her and what they could not do has been very educative. Eventually life's quality is measured by its lived-ness... i.e. how fully have you lived it. It took years for the effects to re-bound, but today, we are stronger, more convinced of our values, and no longer in a world where we would be alternative.
Today, we are arriving.
There is a larger scheme at work in our being; it weaves many a yarn we see as "paths." But amongst the many paths the unfurl before us, we choose the one that answers in "yes!" the question: "Does this path have a heart!?"
Today, I say, "Yes!" Yes, the path that I am walking on has my heart on it.
So here is my intent:
That I help being healing to the people in pain, and that I help bring beauty to lives of humans, is the reason why I am going to work.
Bismillah i'l-Rahman i'l-Raheem
[I begin] in the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful...
There is always a larger reason why we are alive, why we get up every morning, why we do what we do in the day, and why we retire in the nights either joyfully tired or feeling a sense of existential dread.
Today, I formally start work on a project the beginning of which will be the culmination a long quest for healing. Today, when I start working to ensure that natural healing remedies are accessible to people of Pakistan and beyond, it comes from a deep, long engagement with dis-ease that I observed in my loved ones and myself. There was a time when I believed tat everything happens for good; then there came moments when I lost sight of this basic belief in the benevolence of being alive.... yet eventually that momentary loss of faith in itself became a reason for greater faith.
Now we're tested, and we're through. Now we know.
I am just reading the story of another woman, about her experience of acute dis-ease - including loss of voice and back pain. The story reveals how this dis-ease eventually became the reason why when choosing to do business, she chose to bring natural healing to her country's people. I am about to write to her, and others like her with similar stories. We will understand each other.
I am lucky that before any test, I had the tools. My mother is a life-long advocate of a natural lifestyle, toxin-free households, recycling, and aversion to synthetic fabrication. She's also a botanist. When she fell casually ill in the 1990's, it became a major event in our family's life as a simple condition was complicated by bad medicine. What doctors did to her and what they could not do has been very educative. Eventually life's quality is measured by its lived-ness... i.e. how fully have you lived it. It took years for the effects to re-bound, but today, we are stronger, more convinced of our values, and no longer in a world where we would be alternative.
Today, we are arriving.
There is a larger scheme at work in our being; it weaves many a yarn we see as "paths." But amongst the many paths the unfurl before us, we choose the one that answers in "yes!" the question: "Does this path have a heart!?"
Today, I say, "Yes!" Yes, the path that I am walking on has my heart on it.
So here is my intent:
That I help being healing to the people in pain, and that I help bring beauty to lives of humans, is the reason why I am going to work.
Bismillah i'l-Rahman i'l-Raheem
[I begin] in the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful...
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