Here There & - a poem

HERE THERE &

Here There &

You felt
and I felt
Eternity
in one instance.

Then step,
I step
You step.
I walk
you stop.
You run
I stand.

Here there &.

I sensed
and you sensed
Presence
in Eternity.

Then avert,
You avert,
I avert.
You revert,
I assert.
I explain
you demand.

Here there &.

This step, that step,
Right step, wrong step,
on-path, off-path,
full where, half there,
half here. Not aware.
When time will
still stand?

Here there &.

If could I
could you be
at one time
at place one ...
just meet!

It would be a moment – a full, present moment – in which we will see
all Eternity, together. Nothing will be out of place. Neither will be
looking away; searching, searching endlessly and never finding what is
right in front of us. Our hearts will be with us, not breaking into
bits & pieces over the fractured continuum of Time! All things will
flow, effortlessly. Here. Only Here.

--

A poem by
_RA
aka The Prophecy
July 31, 2008

Lack of Trust?

Dear woman!

Somewhere, deep down in your heart, you do not trust the world. Deeper than that, I like to believe, is an ocean of trust - but perhaps that is common to all souls. We humans have the capacity to cap the ocean within - and you may be doing that.

You know what it could be. Transform it.

There are two ways to look at the same thing: either you choose to blame it, or you make something out of it. The latter, actually, is the product of a grateful heart, they say.

The first approach is sometimes used for a dramatic effect. There is much in the media and social culture that nods to that one episode of screaming, shouting, laying the blame, shocking the other out of their wits. That seems to settle scores. That seems to put an end to life as it "happens." It stops the world in some way.

The other is a quieter approach which is less visible in outer machinations, but requires great maturity within. It is the way that seems to disturb nothing, but produces an infinitely more beautiful life to live in. It changes us - which is the key project for which we are created.

The purpose of life is to live your own life Prophecy. In addition to some broken trust - which, actually, is just an interpretation of an event - what may be ailing you right now is seeing your life through another's eyes, putting your reins in another's hands. Are they even asking for it?

No.

Don't set yourself up for automatic failure by making choices that are bound to be unrealized. Far more worthy of your trust is your own self, your intuition when it speaks. Ask yourself. In the smallest of matters, adopt a way of looking that is the Way of Allah. See things through Allah's eyes. Let things be, for they may be needed for the Story of the Universe to be written out. Don't dwell on the script, act!

You love, you know how to love, you must love your self. Not the base, animal, selfish self - but the Self Within. The deepest core of you. Remove the veils from the eye that sees the world with trust - it is the eye of the Source. This is not an abstraction, and this is not mere philosophy. This is a way of perception, which leads to a very real world.

Calm your heart, and drench it in remembrance of who you really are!

The, even the very question of trust or lack of trust will dissolve. Trust me!

What Next In Life!?

You ask for my advice on the next step of your life, and here it is:

Life, my dear Prophecy, is only a re-enactment of who one really is.

What you have been looking at is The Answer. The job at hand is for you to fashion yourself into a beautiful Question.

What question are you? That. Is. The question!

Thus Began My Journal: November 2005

It is time that my memoirs are shared, for on my Path I went through a valley that I crossed eventually, only to witness others struggling in it, after. It is the Valley of Darkness, for those who re-enter the Path through the side lanes of sin. Perhaps, my words will show light to those who need it.

***

One night in November 2005, as I lay near oblivious of my existence in my self-imposed solitary confinement in my room, wondering what was a soul like mine - so clear thus far, so fair, so faithful and patient with her own flaws - doing in a situation like this, I cried to Allah from the depths. Through illness, through heart break, through shame, through loss of worldly possessions, I had only gained one thing: the blessing to know these veils had been veiling me from Allah, for Whom I am created.

My seeking had been life-long, but just as it had intensified three years ago, tribulations came. Trials and temptations happened one after another - and I failed spectacularly over the years. A year before that night, my house of cards started collapsing. Truth revealed to me in dreams and reality, but like all doomed, I did not take heed. All through this, I asked myself, "Why am I going where I don't want to go? Why, when I want to say 'Yes,' I hear myself saying 'No!' and when I must say 'No!', I utter 'Yes.'" I was beyond me and beside me.

And so there I was that night, still in fog, still questioning, still crawling, still probing. A little realization had started dawning on me; and it puzzled me. It seemed that everything I was learning was everything I knew before. So what happened? Rather, what is going to happen as I lie here in absolute fear and darkness, but with determination.

Then I got up. The best I could do, I knew, was to record what was happening before I forgot it, because somehow, it was going to mean something, someday.

I reached out for a fresh new notebook I had bought. Its cover said, "Divine Beauty." It has for colored sections for no good reason, except at the bottom of each was a quote. First came the gray colored section with the quote: "You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore."

I then picked up my steadfast companion of loneliness: a copy of the Qur'an with lucid translation. I intended to seek an answer from it. I closed my eyes, and focused my attention on the question: "Why is this happening to me?" Then I opened at random, to find my answer. It opened at Chapter 29, The Spider. Here is a selection I copied in my journal:

Verse 002. Do people think that they will be left alone on saying, "We believe", and that they will not be tested?
003. We did test those before them, and Allah will certainly know those who are true from those who are false.
010. Then there are among people they who say, "We believe in Allah"; but when they suffer affliction in (the cause of) Allah, they treat people's oppression as if it were the Wrath of Allah!
069. And those who strive in Our (cause), We will certainly guide them to our Paths: For verily Allah is with those who do right.

The last line calmed my heart. For even in that dark period, loveless and possession-deprived as I perceived myself to be, I got the promise that I needed most in the world: that I am not astray; and that indeed, Allah will bring me Home.

But I was still unsure whether to all those people whose life path I was comparing mine with at that time, I was inferior in being loved by Allah? Was I, in short, indeed the "loser", the left-behind weakling I had been led to believe I was? Was I right in choosing to stick, weakly and barely as I did and by force of Allah's Will not mine, to the path I was on now? The path that I intuitively felt was right?

"Will I be (more) successful (than [the ones who left me behind]), or any other person who I envy is closer to You?" I wrote the next question in my journal a while later. Then I focused my attention on it, and opened the Qur'an again.

Chapter 41, Ha-Meem As-Sajdah: Verses 33-44.
Selection copied in my journal:

033. Who is better in speech than one who calls (people) to Allah, works righteousness, and says, "I am of those who bow in Islam"? [i.e. "I submit."]
034. Nor can goodness and Evil be equal. Repel (Evil) with what is better: Then will he between whom and you was hatred become as it were your friend and intimate!
035. And no one will be granted such goodness except those who exercise patience and self-restraint - none but persons of the greatest good fortune.
036. And if (at any time) an incitement to discord is made to you by the Evil One, seek refuge in Allah. Hu is the One Who hears and knows all things.

And with that was determined for me the shape of my engagement with the Other henceforth - until Allah chooses to change me again. My path cleared out to be a path of realizing who I am: a soul whose purpose is to call other souls to Allah, to remind them of who they are, to show them an example through her own practice of virtue, and to declare in the face of acceptance and adversity: "I submit!"

It confirmed that I am not a weak loser. But that indeed my way is the way of patience, of returning injury with healing, of returning illness with kindness, of forgiveness and of seeking Allah's refuge against the only real distraction from this practice that would come to me: my own voice of revenge, my own anger.

***

Note: Please refer to your own chosen translation of the Qur'an. The Qur'an I use in my daily pondering is Maulana Maududi's Urdu translation. The English translation above is Yousuf Ali's, with my tweaking of the old-fashioned gender-specific pronoun "he" to "they" and "He" for Allah to "Hu" - which is a name of Allah used as an Allah-specific pronoun by Sufis of, I believe, Turkish origin.

Your Ego is Making Faces

Ha ha ha ha ha! 

Dear, dear Prophecy! I am almost rolling in laughter! Bless me, but all sublime things are ridiculous! What is a matter of gravity to you is looking like an utter illusion to me! 

So, my darling. Who were you out and about to challenge, when you were careless to your training? You thought you figured it all out? Foolish woman!

Now, do you see? How subtle is the guise of Ego? You were fooled completely properly. The Ego, the subtle ethereal thing, it attacks us from where we are keeping our portals of fear and desire open.

Your Ego trapped you in your expectation of goodness. And what a trap it is! You fell, and other fools jumped in behind you, goaded by their own egos. And here you are, bruised at the knees, understanding it all, but not quite.

While your ego - bad thing it made me capitalize its name - your ego is standing aside and changing shapes again. Right now, it made you de-capitalize it. It is ever so subtle, ever so fooling.

I am your ego. I am here to teach you a lesson. I am going to be here, until you learn and transform me.

All right, I will stop laughing. The ridiculous is sublime again.

Listen.

Right now, the ego is changing shape again, Prophecy. It is going to tell you that leaving things behind is walking the walk of a saint. "Leave it all!" it is saying. "Walk away."

See, this is what Don Juan has to say:

"If you really want to learn, you have to remodel most of your behavior. You take yourself too seriously. You are too damn important in your own mind. That must be changed! You are so goddamn important that you feel justified to be annoyed with everything. You're so damn important that you can afford to leave if things don't go your way. I suppose you think that shows you have character. That's nonsense! You're weak, and conceited! In the course of your life you have not ever finished anything because of that sense of disproportionate importance that you attach to yourself."

From Journey to Ixtlan

by Carlos Castaneda

This is a lesson for the moment. Is walking away transforms you, do that. If staying is what you need to face the truth and transform you, then dismiss the ploy of the ego, and do the needed. And all the while, don't take this too seriously, or your mind will overtake you.

Practice faith.

Prophecy, there has to be a reason why Allah gave you faith. Why did Allah give you faith? So you can transform. However, it is true that it's your duty to be wise in application of your faith. Listen to your heart every moment. When it says stop, stop right then. When it says go, go right then. Waiting for the moment to pass alters the facts of a given situation, and by the time you make a late decision, it is not relevant any longer. Act without fear.

Nothing else annihilates the shape-shifting ego but submitting one's self to the Will of Allah.

What is the Will of Allah? It is your own true nature. It is the voice of instinct and rightness within you. It is your heart, when it is at peace. It is your Self, when it is connected with the Other. It is you, when you are you. That is all I know.

May Allah bless you. Revert to Hu.

The Soul's Longing

For you, Prophecy!

"Let your mind start a journey through a strange, new world
Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before
Let your soul take you where you long to be!
Only then can you belong to me."

"Music of the Night"
from "Phantom of the Opera"
by Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber

Love!

 

Lover's Problem

Oh Ilahi!

You know me. I turn to You, and to You, and to You, and to You. You know that I will put my head on the floor. You know I will not rise until Your Mercy, Your now-oft-veiled-behind-Your-Fury Mercy, is perceived more clearly by me.

But I am tricked by the outside of me. You know the sublimer wishes of my heart: You know that I care even not for Mercy... which is why my soul is going where it's going: beyond a concern for Fury, beyond a concern for Mercy, into the Beyond. You are my destination.

This is the essential problem of a lover: a determination that borders on the foolish. A destination, a determination, but hardly a deliberation!

This essential problem I remembered. I finally remembered. I have not forgotten, After All.

I love You. I'm in the sort of place where I can't care what happens to me - because Love is an overwhelming experience.

While Love claims evermore the living cells of my body, I have a very easy struggle going about my day to day affairs. It's easy for You have held me strong, and it's a struggle because I wish to return, and then not. There is a Joy in spending Time away from You, because I know it helps me see You from a pleasant distance. In a way, I enjoy the tease for to feel otherwise would be to spoil Your game.

But I digressed! I was reminding You of my determination in prayer. How pushy am I that I show off to You a gift You have given me? But You created me so I could hold up Your Beauty to You. So I in-joy this! And while I love You, I have a residual fear of You.

It is now for this fear, that little persisting fear, that I will pray to You. Until I see.

Yet You know - of course You do for I am but channeling Your words - that just as I write this, some old old feeling is leaving me. I cannot explain, I will attempt to:

How can Darkness stand in the Presence of Light? How can I pray to You with a nugget of self-interest in my heart when I love You, and I trust You!?

Fear departs in ever-faster bits.

I pray to You now because I love. Because I... love! I pray to You because I enjoy it. It's not an emotion that drives me to You, it's just the very act of being in Your Presence. It's for Love. Today, I want no more and no less than Love! That's why I will pray. No matter what happens in this world; I will not pray to change it. I will pray just to be with You. The World is an illusion, and You are the Master. When I am in Your Presence, I Am. There is no fear of Your creation. There is only an obsession with Your love.

Oh, You know me!

If!

Prophecy:

Any human's highest aspiration is to realize their own highest potential. Do you remember the method - that alchemical method - through which a person's heart may be changed?

It is to remind them of who they are.

This, Prophecy, was your method: reminding a person of who they are, reminding them of the essential goodness. It was no wonder that your work was never hard for you. What is hard for most, and for you at this moment, is to have the equanimity to see the essential truth of a person beyond their circumstances and situations. And to see the essential truth of a situation beyond what people make it to be.

Prophecy, it cannot be overemphasized that a person becomes a human by way of virtue. Virtue is not an accident, it is a choice. It does not "happen" to us. Universe happens to us, and we exercise virtue in response. Over time, a virtue that was exercised in the past prevents accidents and "responses" in the future that are actually the after-effects of our actions in the moment... thus we feel we are having to "react" lesser and lesser. We gradually become incremental master of our fate. Fate is character; mastering character is mastering fate.

Prophecy, I wish to remind you of who you are: You are a woman of virtue, character, and an ability to keep herself together when everything is falling apart. You way is not the way of succumbing to the reigning emotion. Too many, too-many-to-count fine, beautiful souls got stuck in that trap.

Prophecy, there is no rushing through the situations and lessons of life. You cannot short-cut the path to your own learning by swaying with emotion, and wishing that the results will be taken care of by way of some evaporation. What "evaporates" at one place "condenses" at another. As your perception grows, you learn that there is no "there" - it is all "here." In One Space. That's why what goes round, comes round.

Nothing goes away, because there is no away. Everything is here, it stays and matures and "comes back" into your story when its time has arrived. The running away, the killing approach never truly worked. You are blessed if the seeds of your action are maturing quickly so you can see for yourself what fruit springs forth from what seed.

I appeal to the goodness in you to let goodness prevail. You must acknowledge the progress you have made on your path - do not allow it to be destroyed by fear or greed. Do not speak words of anger or of sarcasm. Fear Allah. Be fair. Do not, also, be soft and appeasing. Speak the truth in whatever tone you have been granted with. Truth is a strength unto itself, it requires no shouting. It only requires the conviction and the honesty of the one speaking it.

Do not let Ego change its ever subtle shape and trap you in its ploy. Beware of the dangers on your Path. Awareness overcomes unconsciousness.

Trust yourself, communicate with yourself, stay rooted, and let nothing and no one sway you. You are your path. Find that fine middle way between staying firm, and being responsive to change. Between firmness and kindness.

Speak the truth, for nothing else liberated the human soul but speaking and appreciating the truth. Speak the truth.

If, and only if Prophecy, you can see that this is exactly where you are meant to be! If, and only if Prophecy, can you understand that this is also a test! If, and only if Prophecy, you can find the lesson and apply it! If, and only if Prophecy, you can be you while all goes to chaos... you will be a human.

Aspire to this.

.

To Have Light Within

Prophecy:

I have made an apparently obvious but significant decision, and since then, I am quieter. And my heart is lit up with light. I am feeling a phrase I intended 4 months earlier is now manifesting on the level of experience. When I first conceptualized "Love in Being" - it was just that: a concept. So many weeks and many heartbreaks-over-false-love later, I am now experiencing deep within me what Love means when it awakens. This is just the beginning.

Yet all this must mean my decision passes the Truth Test. Only Truth sets you free, my soul, only Truth sets you free!

I have no delusion, no hope, no fear, no nothing. Above all, it is the end of the seeking of happiness and excitement that has brought me to where I am. So this is how it feels.

I will tell you where I am: I feel as if for more and more extended periods of - I will not call it Time, but Concentration - concentration, I am here. In the Now. So this is how it feels!

How does it feel?

It at once feels as though I have no past to stay entangled in and no future to get hazy about, and yet - paradoxical as spiritual conditions are - I feel connected in these moments to my entire history... to my entire existence, rather, for history is history... and the Existence of... well, just Existence. And then Being. Do you notice how my vocabulary is changing?

I have felt calm, quiet, and within me. No longer stuck to the window, looking outside, losing a sense of self that has disturbed me for the past few months. I have felt just a very little pain, but it's sort of a gate: when I feel pain again, I know that I am still somehow at the threshold.

I have felt terribly betrayed in these days, and that reminded me, here I was, at the threshold, neither here nor there. Was it not I who was saying that it's living a lie - or not living the Truth - that keeps our souls in agony and consumes our energy? Did I not say that it's not making a decision that keeps up on the horns of Hell? Well, all words we say, we say to a Mirror that is this Universe. It talks back to us. Listen, we must.

I feel an increasing integration. This integration, this rooting back in the Now - it is familiar. Perhaps now I can start saying, yes, my soul used to live here before... but I will never pat my own back. For it will stop me form going further. Besides, who am I to reward myself?

Prophecy, having crossed a certain painful threshold with the help of a decision....
[INTERRUPT] OK, guess what? I am terribly sleepy and this is not the time to write. My heart is begging me to sleep. I still haven't got over the habit of abusing myself. The next question I must answer: why do I do this? Why, indeed, is this fairly "normal" behavior? Why are we humans driving ourselves against our own will in the pursuit of, pardon the paradox, happiness?

All things adults do to be happy are things that made them unhappy as children. And then we grow up to resist our own selves. Shame on the education ad nurturing of this world!

Or shame on those who mock those who passed away before them! What are you doing Prophecy?? Wake up! Remember, you never blamed! Remember yourself. Remember who you are!

Wake up. Wake up!

Reject Nonsense, Promote Healthiness

Prophecy:

"I am here to give, not to be snatched from."

This summarizes my review of the current scenario and the results of the applications of my principle. Once again, I was clearer on the issue as a teenager than as an appeasing adult. Other people's self-created dramas and nonsense are not my problem.

If I reject getting involved, it shows the health of my mind. I think all people should reject nonsense without guilt. It's just a social guilt constructed on these lines: "If one, in their clear head and sight, are rejecting some utter time-wasting (or time-creating) trash, they must do so with a heavy heart and a great deal of pity and empathy and understanding for the people who create the drama."

What, my dear, is then the difference between a sick and a healthy person?
Answer: Indeed in such a case the sick person at least is sick, it's the healthy person who requires a thorough self-examination - what's their excuse?

So my dear Fool, you have my complete, thorough, blanket approval for not approving of sickness and lack of attention and gratitude in others. Don't lie down with the unconscious and sleep out of some twisted understanding of obligatory service and love. Shake them up, wake them up, and by all means, leave if your heart is certain nothing is getting better, and at that moment you get no sign pointing otherwise!

The greatest and the toughest people in history could not handle this particular scenario - I mean think about it logically: who can handle the sick if they themselves are sick? Can a cracking pillar hold the weight of another pillar, let alone the structure they are to support?

When a healthy person fills in the shoes of a sick-minded person, there is now one more sick person in the world. It's the simple formula you knew as a child. How happy and light life was back then, eh, when the world could be full of illness, but you had no business to do business with it.

NEVER REASON OR JUSTIFY ON BEHALF OF SICKNESS. Don't get your sanity snatched from you, by no matter how abstract an entity - even a politician. Remember this principle from all relationships - intimate to global.

*Smack* the sick-minded back into their rightful place: a world of consciousness, of light, of awakening. Of end to human dis-ease.

The Impermanent

Prophecy! Prophecy!

Wake up! I have a warning for you.

God's justice is about to overtake Hu's Mercy- the attribute of "The Vengeful" is about to become operative.

There will be more deaths in the streets that you can keep score of. This is because humans did not collectively pay heed to the warning.

Seek refuge of the Lord, from the Lord, with the Lord.

The governments of the world are to vanish soon; people will migrate in great numbers. The victimized will reach the throats of the transgressors. This time has arrived.

Pay no attention to those who will not read the signs. Attend, you must, to your own affairs. Set not your hear on the temporary, the impermanent.

The Illusion is about to shatter. Hold on tight to The Rope. Help one another in good deeds, and refuse to indulge the unfair. Speak the truth - speak it loud, clear, and forcefully even if you are the last or only one to hold on to it.

From amongst human will and the Divine, choose to side with your Lord.
There is no other Way.

The Illusion is about to shatter. Look in to your heart, and you will See all past and future.

Give to people, treat them fairly, and learn wisdom from death. Train yourself in the skills of life and the art of war. Do not play with hearts.

This is a warning to you: events are about to unfurl on which you will have no control. But think! There is something you can master - master it!

Command the Universe to Be!

...And it will become.