Intellectuals and Idiots

I have seen little difference between intellectuals and idiots.

The little difference is that intellectuals know that they are being idiots, while idiots are sincere.

In my life experience, I vouchsafe, I have gained more from the sincere quality of the idiot than the contrition of the intellectual. The first is purity; you can dismiss the fluff of idiocy from around it. The latter, at its core, is mal-intent. Evaporate the content of intellectualism, and you shall be left with something ill, distracting.

~

.ra

Grace

While it does not say much for our character and fortitude if we have to get things out of our way before we can start living, it does say something of the way we have been living our lives thus far. Admittedly, the moment we become present and realize that we ought to "correct" something, we cannot suddenly break into a new life situation in terms of things and people.  

However I like to believe we can. And that we do, eventually. Still, it depends upon our fortitude and indeed upon the larger will of Being. There are, of course, essentials that never change such as blood relations. To attempt to sever our very foundation leads to a very quick death, remember that. People who break ties too often, die.  

Let there be no admonishment of self for the past. That is guilt, too often sold as a virtue. Being your true self in the first place would ensure you do not enroll yourself into a situation where you eventually cannot get along. Know that I am not suggesting we attempt to eliminate unfavorable situations - or that what we perceive as unfavorable - and make our lives a pursuit of ill-defined pleasure. I am suggesting that we consistently choose to flow with our life. That's it. We all know when and how we choose to go where we don't want to, and don't go where our heart calls us.  

As it is said there is no right or wrong path - rather a path with your heart in it, and everything else. The difference is not of right or wrong, but what you want to live and what you won't. A far more crucial matter is of acceptance and non-acceptance. The Land of Right and Wrong is for those with lesser vision. Let them be.  

If you are glad that your path is clearer in any way, for God's sake and for your own, be thankful and happy. It is not what happens that matters as much as our attitude towards it. Do not laugh at people even in your privacy. Have compassion - have absolute compassion even if you are not meant to associate with a person, event, or idea in your life. Choose not to see them as much as you see yourself - for you are the fundamental constant in the changing equation of your life.  

Teach yourself compassion, and practice it! There are matters that do not even need our actions. They appear to us, and then they dissolve. We do nothing more than observe them. Let them come, and let them go. Do not think that you are the lord of every bit of your life. There are other people in this space where we co-exist. Let them be. That is your freedom. Do not choose the version of freedom that enslaved minds envision: a situation where they face nothing. That is the vision of freedom of one who is essentially a captive of their own entity.  

In this space, there will be rise and fall and growth and perishing. Observe more than you interfere. Grace is the engagement you allow yourself - of course you can opt for the inappropriate and then get to see the results.  

Acceptance is of two kinds: 

First, you accept yourself.  
Then, you accept the moment. 

The acceptance of self is in the form of ever -evolving knowledge. The acceptance of the moment is to do the appropriate thing. Over time the two build on each other, but if there is a first move, then it's the one that you make by choosing to accept yourself. For you are the source. You are the fundamental integer of Being. 

Prophecy, do not read as much into the story as in your outlook towards it. The message in the moment if for you to just be. You feel happy. Feel it deeply. Feel gratitude even if there is no reason. Make compassion your way. For the next few days, make it an active practice to behold a situation or person that you hate in Love. 

Perhaps to begin with, hold yourself in Love. I must practice the same? I feel there is too much ordering of you.... How parental!  

All right, let compassion begin at heart, shall it? "I forgive my own self!" 

This is Christmas Eve - the world is commemorating Christ, peace be upon him. In his spirit, let there be overflowing love and light within!  

Let there be Love! Let there be Grace! Amen, amen! 

Be the Change. How?

On my birthday, someone wished me and said I had the spirit "of wanting to be the change." 

All spiritual practice puts a great emphasis on NOW, on BEING. Somehow the word "Be" in this oft-heard axiom struck me afresh as it addressed me more personally.

"Be The Change." Not become. But be.

Be. As you are.

Curious!

In a flash something connected in my head. I was struggling a bit in letting go some associations, a bit of (physical) baggage (all my stuff!) - and it seemed that a birthday, especially as it occurs in the last month of the year, is a good time to "close." I was sorting through my head and thoughts too when this came about.

Be the change.

How often do we try to become the change! Altering ourselves unnecessarily. There is a subtlety in BE THE CHANGE.

It suggests that we are the change. And in just being ourselves, we live out the change.

There is a letting go implicit in this phrase, for it acknowledges that every new human is a change unto themselves. That truly our highest purpose is to live out who we are, as individual selves - yet live collectively.

Human knowledge is at a rather advanced stage today. We have mapped several natural systems in the mathematical, chemical, physical, biological sense. We can see how each system contains individual elements that behave true to their own nature,yet co-exist in the system. They are at once individual and collective.

Living this way is not just possible, it IS. We do not do anything with this knowledge, we just come to know it.

We are the change. I am the change. My highest task is to unlock my own code and to live it. This is my highest service to myself and to collective humanity.

Now this simple notion helped me de-clutter my mind of the various to-do's, un-do's, and undones. It has lent me focus again. Meanwhile I am clearing out my stuff, journaling much more extensively and just being. And somehow, in being just my true self, I am being all the change I am!

P.S. Life is funny. It is exactly 4 years ago that I learned the secret of happiness during a meditation. Now, I see the lesson in me. 

Winter, 2008 [free verse]

Winter, 2008


It is this December, of 2008,
that I have truly rested after years. 
When I have separated rest from the constant need
to do something.
Fearing that if I won't be
doing something -
one or another -
I will perish as a person.
 
That I owed something to the world
the need to stay afloat, to stay in touch,
to, in short, constantly do something.
 
That I had, somehow, the weight of the world
upon my shoulders.
That I must carry it across.

Perhaps, to a degree, this was all right.
Of course the past, anyhow, is all right.
It is the Present that matters.
If at all!

Yet it is not our actions, but our intentions
that are our true life.
Or the value that we derive from life.
 
It is this winter of 2008  
that I have truly
had a free intent in a long time.
Partly, as I feel that there are more shoulders
shouldering the world. That we now have
more able people, more dreamers
living their dreams. And that indeed
the world that will come later is better than
what we have seen before.

Partly, because not just my universal soul
but my individual self has come to rest.
A rest as absolute as we can have
in a relative world.

I have stopped conversing compulsively; 
answering every bit of flake that flew
in my direction. I have stopped
honoring the trivial. I have come to value
that which is valuable, in truth.

It is this cool winter - that is still warm enough
to inspire a bit of free poetry -
that I feel no fear, no obligation, no compulsion.
That whatever I do comes from my own
deep wish to be. Therefore, right now,
I do nothing and just be.

And all this has led me to poetry and writing....

There is a quality about winter
that we lose in our resistance against
what we perceive to be the
inconsistency of seasons.
We want everything to be permanent.

Only the essence of anything is permanent,
eternal, timeless. Its doings are not its being.
Being is still. 
Doings shift. So do seasons. 
The beauty of winter is that it is still.
When we are used to running, pursuing a dream,
we can hardly appreciate the glistening, clear, icy
stillness of winter and a full moon night.

When we just are, neither running nor reclining,
we are.
We are still in the midst of all that goes on,
we are aligned with winter. It is a season to rest.
It is cool, restive, reflective. It allows moments of
gatherness within: that precious art of self-collection.

If we lived with season, with winter as it is,
perhaps we would experience that which I,
this winter, have been blessed with:
not doing, but being.


By Ramlas
aka The Prophecy

Doing No-thing - III

Continued from part II

The Gestalt of No-Thing

So. I have been a rather driven spirit all my life. This particular period in my life which has stretched over several years is a bit of a swamp in terms of activity compared to the previous ones. It is a rather bigger nebula than those I previously attempted to make stars out of.

For the past four years in particular, I have had no definition or description of what I am doing. Where am I going. I have no idea.

I have only the vaguest of ideas that everything I want to do is one that a young woman in my society, from my background, does not typically do. There are women much more fashionable, rich, and outgoing than I am. Yet I have only rarely encountered one who is free, as a human. One whose freedom is based on who she is, not what or who she depends on.

I want to travel independently, investigate news and phenomenon, talk to strangers, and spend nights and days alone in far out places such as seas and mountain tops. Wilder than that is the notion that I want to be a human who has an independent consciousness. One who is essentially free.

This simple wish has taken me into an entire Universe of shapeless dust and cloud, one that is waiting to be formed through human will. It is an enormous task, and one that can hardly be named. How do you describe something new with old words and concepts? Often the quest has been to find those very names. What a quest! It has taken me to dig deeper and deeper to lay a foundation of being.

Contemporary society is so high on individual achievement, it holds no concept of generational achievement. From very early on in my life, I have been comfortable with the notion that all dreams that occur to me are not necessarily to be lived out by myself. Perhaps, I shall dream and another shall get to fulfill! Then I won't need to live old enough, and they would not need to start from the scratch and grow old laying the foundations. I am not afraid to lost interest in ideas that spark in my head, to let them just lie around after they effused through me. Perhaps, I am just the bringer of the idea, and another is the designer, yet another the executor.

We are all inter-linked.

And so it is that the only valid suggestion that occurs to me, completely intuitively, is to write my life story.

I have always wanted to write a book - everything from a text of history to books of religion and occult, to science to romantic novels. Textbooks of English and tomes of poetry. Books on business. Even film scripts. Yet what I am doing now, at this God blessed hour late in night, is to write my story. Much as this task absorbs me, I have an intuition that this is a book that is asked of me to be written. I simply obey the command.

The more I write it, the more the memory and strength that had fleeted me in the past ten, seven, three years return - these years arranged in this very magical sequence that marks "cataclysmic" events: my enrollment in a mind-altering, confining graduate business school (1998), the complete abolishing of my family's wealth one night (2001), and the end of my last significant relationship (2005).

What can I say? I only write.

Gestalt means, simply, whole. The applied principle also suggests that the whole is larger than the sum of its parts. A definition occurs to me: Gestalt = stuff + space. Space is where stuff is created, and kept.

I see and sense this space. It has no name - for names are limitations, and limitations are for stuff, not space. It is in this space where I live.

It may appear to observers, and even to my self at occasion, that I do no-thing. It is, however, a state to which I have arrived partly through deliberation and partly by forced inevitability. As of right now, even though I feel I may not be living up to any "goals," I know this non-doing and just-being is something in itself. This halt is a journey. What matters not what happens to us, but what we perceive and what we learn.

The only goal that has, thus, occurred to me at this moment is simply this: clear out your life. Live Lighter. Most people do this at a time of a transition that they have planned. Me, I always was unable to bring myself to get lighter because I did not know what I would do with the space, and I feared my space would be filled with another's commands, not my dreams. Yet my fears have come to pass, I have conquered something I am unaware of. I am shedding of the weight of being for no particular outcome, except that this particular lightness must be experienced - what happens thereafter will reveal when it will.

I have spent this entire day addressing this particular subject partly because it matters so much to me, partly to encourage myself, and partly to affirm another who may relate to these circumstances.

We are inter-connected. I have no idea how my dreams, my work, my writing, my working on my own self, my thus far impatient and henceforth gentle removal of blocks may weave into the life story of another. It does not even matter, for all stories beyond me.

I found this beautiful verse in a lovely note by Irving Karchmar, it makes for an apt closure now:

Your task is not to seek for love,
but merely to seek and find
all the barriers within yourself
that you have built against it.
- Rumi


~ The Prophecy

The Surrender That Almost Was Not

What a terrible and frightening 40 days and nights I spent in September and the early October! There were nights when I felt a void so huge in my heart, I did not know where I was. I felt outside-in, inside-out. Like a sock being turned inside-out.

My self revolted against me, and I thought I was either going to die, or end my own life. Either way, someone I deeply care about would not be around much longer. 
 
That was not a happy thought. 
 
I wanted to run away. To go elsewhere. To start another life. 
  
And yet the calm internal voice said, "If you persist, you will arrive." It's just one of things that you know. You just know.

I knew I was under great metamorphosis. I also knew it was all for the great better. I knew it would "end." I knew my ego was putting up a great resistance, killing me from inside. And I also knew that if somehow I could not manage this state, I could end up dead or dangerous. So I briefly reverted to medicine to calm my mind - and then even gave that up. Let the pain do what it's meant to do: LEAVE ME!

"Surrender!" said my wise friend, Afie. I knew I must, but my ego roared in anger. After all, it had served me for a long time, but I have grown now. I walked that thin line between surrendering to what is, and surrendering to another's ego - and could not remember how to FORGET to see the difference between the two.

How to see One? How to see that all things come from and return to One?

I decided to surrender, not knowing how to, but knowing that responsibility of self is the only true choice of the free.

To be specific, I chose to control what I could, and let go of the rest.

I also realized that there are many things I have to take control of in my life, and I decided to do that, step by step.

But it was all such a toil, and I realized that I cannot go ahead with myself if I keep denying myself as the basic unit of my existence. What does that mean? That means that I am not to give up shaping my life - and enjoy the beauty of this very work. But that I cannot deny my essence. Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil I had eaten the fruit. But my soul no longer accepts the enslavement.

When Tashika said to me, "You are a free spirit!" it was as though a lid lifted off, and my soul steamed up and up!

I surrendered first to my hardship, and then to my essence. My hardship came to me for my essence is free.

When I started writing this, I thought I was going to write something short, lyrical, and mysterious. But now I am going to write the story - plain and simple as it is.

So. Well. This is I am. Right now. Comfortable with ambiguity. Certain of my unsureness. Yet in command.

I have surrendered to my condition, and in return, I am given what I was promised: my true self. I cannot explain my joy at this simple freedom: the freedom to choose my response, and to act it out.

But it is not a theoretical or worse - a delusional freedom. The results are immediate. In my work recently, I could see that I was not attracting energy. This is very unusual for me, for I have always had a verve for life and my project that others have found infectious. I know it, so I am neither shy nor humble - it is as it is. Yet I sensed that I was no longer projecting this love for life, but a darkness.

The simple act of me accepting myself has given me the freedom to love my life and work again- and that has once again attracted energy. Above all, after a long time, I have learned to say, "No."

No. No one else defines me. I know who I am. It does not matter if I do not know where I am going. Do you know where you are going? No. That's not the point at all. The point was to know WHO. I. AM.

The surrender that I was not making was my acceptance of who I am. It was the ego's insistence to stay involved in the little and the old. It sometimes seems fair, and it could very well be a part of our story. This is not a matter to be negotiated with the Writer of our story, for if we trust Hu, there is a better story for us than one we write for ourselves - because this latter one fails.

How liberating to be who you are, independent of others' definitions and demarcations of you!

And it is in this state that one enjoys true freedom and responsibility.

~~~

Life Lesson: Honor Your Feelings

The world outside is infinite, if we were to take account of its permutations and combinations. Then there are events related to us that are never taking place in front of our eyes. Then, there are truths, half-truths, and lies.

How does one see the reality?

Perhaps, with vision and hearing, reality will sometimes never be perceived in totality.

But there is another way, a much close-at-hand and honest way, in which we know everything in the world. It is through inspecting one's own heart. It is knowing one's own feeling.

I can now imagine the world very clearly as a beam of light projecting out of the heart. Like heart, like the image projected. But while mastering the projected image is worth an entire journey, when we need to know what's going on, we don't need to examine the entire projected image at the screen outside.... we can only examine that narrow source. It's simply our feeling. From the heart.

What's happening out there in the big, vast world can easily be known at this source because feeling is the metric of what we have projected out. WE KNOW. Whatever.

I think most people don't let their feelings flow. At its core, it's NOT bad to feel even things like anger, jealousy, fear, greed, anxiety. Let them be, what are they doing? The trouble is what are we doing. Of course, there are feelings that we feel; and thoughts that we create. The first is inwards, the other is outwards. Thoughts are another subject in themselves, but feelings never lie.

Are you feeling down? Suspicious? Happy for no reason? Mischievous? Hungry? Full? That's fine. There is no "reason" - actually there is, but can you actually sit down and take a blood test each time you feel hunger and decide exactly what food the chemical balancing would require? Reason is too much calculation, and the world is too vast for us to hold all information together in our mind. At any rate, the information is dynamic; so what you're calculating is changing as you calculate it anyway, perhaps because you're calculating! (Enough to make a soup of one's head already, isn't all this? No wonder we are automatically positioned to be trumped when we think too much.)

Honoring one's feeling, though, is understandably a matter of (re-)training one's self to honor our feelings. The keyword is OUR. OWN.

If I and you feel, "But I can't feel truly what I ought to feel!" or "I am not in touch with my feelings!" then that's the Honest Feeling of the Moment! The feeling is not something we order (to begin with). We can't ask our feeling, "How long shall I run on the track today?" when the feeling says, "I'm feverish." The truth of the moment is NO RUNNING - forget 3 or 5 miles, and that is it! Honoring this feeling, at this moment, leads us to possibility ahead. Rest today, run longer tomorrow. Crack today, give up tomorrow.

I believe, eventually, by honoring one's feelings consistently, the invisible truth also becomes clear. Sometimes the projection outside is out-of-focus. And cleaning our feeling, and focusing it eventually brings the whole picture into focus.

The truth may not reveal if we keep up a tradition of over-ruling our feelings with our "ought, should, must, what if?" thinking - if we derive our sense of self from not who we truly are (and we always ARE)... but who we desire or fear to become.

Shed these, and the feeling that is always there becomes clear.

No it's not a disease, it's not going to go away when we grow up. It is a constant friend and a mentor, and not a sign of weakness.

Peace!

.

Let God Be

I want to remind you of a truth that you knew:

That to ask oneself, "What if?" is not only futile, it's destructive. There is no "What if?" There is nothing that you could do better, worse, more, less, happier, sadder that what you did! All Existence exists as is! At once! Anyone who looked at a satellite map of the world should be able to envision this. It's not an airy spiritualism. It's the truth as it is!

Everything exists at once! You are in Eternity! You are connected to it! You are within it!

Now, please know, should you insist upon knowing: NO YOU COULD NOT HAVE DONE ANYTHING DIFFERENT IN THE PAST! What kind of a futile imagining it is? How could you be anyone other than who you were? Whether you make your decisions blindly, lovingly, foolishly, gallantly, happily, absentmindedly, under influence or threat - the thing is that you made them in a position where you were who you were at that time.

You live with yourself. That is the key for you to understand. You live with yourself. There is no heaven or hell out there, it is in your heart. What does that mean? Consider this statement not as though you're still thinking of a place, and now that is a little microscopic Disneyland in your heart. The truth is that it's not a Disneyland at all! It is your heart!

A heart at peace is Heaven, a heart at constant disagreement is Hell.

But I must tell you the larger Truth: which is that whoever concerned themselves with Heaven or Hell will always find themselves in these places. The master of their Self does not even bother. Do you understand?

Here is the key to the Truth: DO NOTHING. Which means, do not go on creating new circumstances. When circumstances arise of Divine Will, respond with a graceful Human Will.

Can I tell you an even larger Truth? Forget about what I just told you! Remember Me! Remember who you are!

Resist nothing, and you will see what is to be seen. Wish for nothing, and the Divine Wish, of which your soul is aware, will fulfill. Let God be.

How to Change Other People

Well Prophecy, I can at least share my heart's secret with you?...

I wish to be liberated from non-listeners.

And now - hah! - now that means that if somehow, somewhere I do not listen, then I must. The Universe will then remove non-listeners from around me.

It's very curious, this spiritual method: we cannot change others. But we can do something very interesting... we can change in us what we wish to change in others. So, for instance, if we think other people are rude, we can remove the corresponding attribute from within ourselves. It can either be rudeness or excessive politeness. Removing that from within us corrects our Universe outside.

The Universe is a system of dynamic energy... its operations can also be understood by observing how chemical reactions work. (Pause: Why are they called reactions?) Notice how some elements are programmed to attract others. Or in thermal dynamics. Notice how if air turns too hot by contact with heated earth, it must rise, and cool air will rush in to take its place. There is a dynamism in relationships in the world.

We master the dynamism from our own end; from deep within ourselves, by gaining the correct perception that our Universe extends outwardly from US. Think of yourself as a shiny crystal ball with a lamp inside, radiating rays outwards in a very dark room. What you see in the room is what is coming from within you. Keep your internal fire alight, keep the surface of your crystal polished. And to change the scenery outside, modulate the display of the light within.

Closure

Dear Kind Soul:

You deserve peace. You deserve gentleness in your world. It will come from within you.

The time to shake off the unenlightened has passed. Now is the time to pick them up again, for you have gained your strength again by distancing yourself.

Overall, this is a time for closure and completion to begin. You shall clean your heart in preparation for its worthy Resident.

To start, you must intend to go through the process with commitment and joy.

Then you affirm that you are kind and open and giving. Then, I suggest, you must write. Write letters. Communicate to seek closure with people. Worry not about the outcomes, do your bit. In seeking closure with situations, take quiet time out. Rest your attention on the matter, and ask yourself for a resolution. It will come, simply because it's meant to.

As for that which you cannot handle, seek closure through Allah. Do your bit.

It's important to tie the knots now in order to move on. The Universe needs to come together, so it will boldly conspire in your favor. Actually, may be it's you who are conspiring in the Universe's favor. Do so by submitting to the Design, and to help any other soul that seeks closure through you.

Arrive at where those who choose to arrive must arrive!

Counting the Beans

My fearful Prophecy:

Counting & counting & counting is an attitude. It does not matter whether what you are counting is a virtue or a vice. What matters is the essence of your action.

Counting, my dear, closes things. Close things do not grow. This stage is of opening. Open!

To those with the first degree of sight, counting is limited to material. So they conclude that it's counting such things as Money which is an obsession and a flaw of character. Those who perceive subtler things frown upon counting Time.

You, Prophecy, should now remember the even subtler deception: counting of Virtue.

Do not, my worrisome self, concern yourself with Eternity, for you already exist within it. Do not calculate the ramifications of your actions. Surpass that stage where you think you are accountable to the blind who insist upon de-fabricating everything. Or rather, do not pander to your own internal bean counter, and all such people will vanish from around you. They are simply your road signs, your warnings, your reflections. Honor them.

Don't ponder upon your own inability to understand what good are you? Who knows? Hu knows!

This is the world of impermanence. This is the space of shift. Everything alters too quickly for you to calculate every thing. And there is no use. What are you going to do with your results? Will you certify yourself? Or will others, who have the uncanny knack of being very timely dis-interested in such matters?

Shed off making meaning. Perceive the meaning there is. In-joy the process!

I love you; and wish you the Best.


[Written on August 28th, 2008]

Presence

:-)

My darling! You have all the hints of approval from Being. There is no need to work out how things work. Rather, to stay with the process.

Ponder not the infinity of choices. Worry not about others and others. Stay in the moment and choose.

Trust yourself. That is the key. Trust yourself. You live with your Self, not with the Other. Understand this. You are exactly where you need to be. Let go of where you are not, and you will arrive in a state of arrival.

I trust you to be present.

*Smile*

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.

.

A rounding education

My little life has been affected – and for some while I thought, tragically so affected – a great deal by the limited literature I have read. Once upon a time when I was a small child, I read this story about a young man who went with a caravan to another town. There he saw other young people getting a variety of education. And he decided to stay and get educated.

I do not remember the beginning nor the end of the story. What did stick around was that each year, the young man took a new lesson. First, it was playing chess. Then it was music. And then… well I forget what then. But this little story determined forever the course of my academic career. One thing this year, another thing another year.

When I grew older, I learnt that the best description of this kind of a scholar was a renaissance woman.

I do not know. I usually do not prefer to tag things.

But tags are satisfactory, because without them, we might find ourselves a little lost, especially when in very unfamiliar territory. For years, I have found myself in an unusual academic pursuit: trying to learn as much about life as I can. I have found regular academic institutes including schools and universities dreadfully boring and constrictive. And while I had no name or description for taste in education, renaissance proved useful.

Now, where does one get such an education? The closest choice has been a liberal arts degree – which has, when we are making education choices as an adolescent, a fabulous notoriety for not leading up to a guaranteed career path. (I know in five years’ time, some might wonder what am I talking about? I was an adolescent before 2000. Then the world changed for sure.)

To be honest, I wanted that coveted liberal arts degree. To be really honest, when choosing a degree, I was temporarily insane to assume it to be a ‘loser degree’ (not that I have ever, ever actively used this silly term ‘loser’). To be stark naked honest, after not pursuing that line of education anyway, I feel hyper-practical enough to assume that a liberal arts degree from a very decent college in Pakistan or abroad – at the end of the day it doesn’t matter where – produces a peculiar combination of a stiff neck holding a very naïve, impractical mind.

In simpler words, the way education is designed in the world today – and I concerned only with today – is inhuman. The passion-education-career chain for a person is composed, usually, of three distinct chains. Whatever that means.

In much fewer words, my view is that at least as adults, we should have the option to educate ourselves the way we want. We should be able to buy our education and choose the length of education that suits our unique needs. If we want to grow up to be farmers, fine! Let our education be lesser than 16 years. Umm, yes, that would push the choice in the zone of childhood or adolescence, but you get the drift. There must be schools that allow us to buy the education we want without the hassle of prerequisites and educational competition.

When I am rid of my flu and in lesser hurry, I will explain this more. To conclude, a person needs many things to round off their education – and there are many things that we can do without. While the latter needs a more sensitive handling with a lot of clarification and ifs and whys and buts and hows, the former is much easier to explain. Get the education you want. Particularly, the rounding off education. Now most regular schools and universities have that nasty little competitive structure where only the kings and queens and “only the best” are ahead in class, in societies and clubs, and in sports.

If I had my way, I would set up an old-fashioned school where a teacher would arbitrarily read up a talib’s personality and match the student with the kind of education that would suit the student. No structure. No competition. No GPA. No crying suicidal idiocy. Just plain completion of being.

Now. I have found one such school. It is like a prayer answered. The reward of years of search! Years of quest for beauty! Years of lust for life! And while I am tempted to reveal all about the school, I think this kind of a destination deserves that each man or woman travel to it themselves.

One day I will make such school myself. It’s a promise!