Friends Say 'Do More'

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Wish: One Week of Peace. Absolute Peace.

One week, when no one asks me for anything -- anything! -- that I haven't given already out of sheer joy.

A week when I am in communion with myself. Giving out of love and joy, not compulsion and extortion.

Enough of this extortion, this manipulation! Enough of my patience with the self-centered ways of the world!

Enough! Enough!

All I want is stillness. All I wish for is Peace ~

Within, Without: Peace ~

"No further Shall You Go!"

What a moment it is when one realizes that at the end of the path, they meet none other than one's own self.

That one's self is vulnerable, open, truly bewildered, and utterly not-in-control. That one is sustained in a fascinating way with a threadbare yet potent connection that grants one all life.

There is no mastery of the affair, and no end to further comprehension. At the end, one is only left in a state of not-knowing. "I know that I truly, really, do not know."

Answers vanish.

Notions dissolve.

There is no mastery of the future. There is no way that the past can be erased such that it is not a living part of one's self. One comes only as far as the Present.

Where one is one. One is whole. One is complete. One is as one is.

One is brought back to the center, to the self, to a state of necessary obligation and acception, for beyond that circumference is a raging fire -- a friend that defines the parameter of one's being.

One is no one.

Thus far one comes, and no further shall one go.

And Allah knows best.

Alhamdolillah!

Honor -- Part 2: What is Honor?

So, if honor is nothing more than our fragile attempt at earnestly, carefully holding the flowing waters of life in our hands ... watching them slip and flow on and on as we manage to lift our hands up every now and then to our parched lips and take a few sips of that water of life -- if this is all that this is, then I wonder why my heart is aching at all?  

 

If I have just witnessed someone I trusted with a confidence, behaving somewhat dishonorably, perhaps I must have sympathy. Their hands are trembling, grappling at what water must flow and belong to another... and this shows the insecurity of their inner state of affairs. Who snatches water from the hands of another without, ultimately, coming to the realization of the futility of it? Can you pinch water? No. It is a flow, it is held in our hands only when they are still, and bound together in humility. Never otherwise. 

 

Whosoever attempted to snatch the flow harmed themselves first, and then, to an extent, harmed another -- eventually never ending up with anything themselves. What shame!  

 

I am, therefore, not a snatcher. If I snatch from another, I snatch from my own right to hold. I snatch moments from my own life that could have been beautiful. 

 

Of course I only manage it to the best of my flawed ability. I have been tempted, I have doubted, I have washed my hands of my own affair in order to find another.... but I have always been returned to the condition of my own humility.  

 

As these words get written themselves, I am realizing what I have always felt honor to mean. 

 

Practicing honor is one's ability to withhold oneself from behaving in any way that harms another, that takes from another. 

 

Only I can truly withhold myself from the desire to take what rightfully belongs to another, for even if my body is chained, my heart can keep an evil intent. And if I am put to death, I would have died in a state of holding that desire. 

 

Now what is evil? 

 

Evil is to act as though one is separate from the rest of existence.  

 

It is only this which enables one to behave in any of those innumerable ways that humans identify as "evil." It is not the action itself that is evil, rather the thought that went behind it. Which is why, when someone gets in an accident because their car slipped on ice and killed a pedestrian, they are not held accountable. One who sped past red lights and ran into oncoming traffic, that one is held accountable for behaving as though they were not a part of the traffic. 

  

Honor -- Part 1: How to Live With Life

A few moments ago, the idea of "honor" grabbed my attention. A reel of thoughts and stories from my life played in my mind, and I was able to look back at a few incidents through the lens of honor, or, its evil twin, dishonor.  

In no certain order, I thus blog what came to my mind.  

I don't know what honor really means, but I know that I treat myself with it. Closely linked to the word "honor" in my mind is an image of holding something up in outstretched palms, holding it delicately like we'd hold water in our hands, preventing it from falling. And now as I write this analogy I realize that none can prevent water from slipping between our fingers. Perhaps, honor here is not water -- that flow of events -- but the act of honor itself is to hold your hands together in this humility.  

So truly, I realize, I cannot hold flowing water in my hands. What I can do is to earnestly put my hands together, and lap up whatever water that is ordained for me. Only that is what matters, and that is what is honor and honorable: the intent with which I cup my hands together. Only in this way I know how humble my existence; how tremendously it is at the mercy of everything; how fragile is it nobility.  

I am glad I am writing this down, because my heart was aching. I experienced the evil twin, dishonor, a few moments ago. 

And now that I see how fragile honoring the flowing waters of life is, I can write -- perhaps with some necessary detachment -- about what I feel. I want to write down a few random stories. 

My Other Way

Only to say, I feel alone, separate, and desolate. Because I think not like them.

~~~~~~~

OK dear blog, you must know. I just want to howl. Bloody well climb on a rooftop and ROAR my throat stupid. 

GHAAAAAA!!! AOOOOO!!!! HAOOWWWW HAOOWWWW HAOOWWWW!!! GRRRRR!!

Phew! Ok, that was good. Two animals inside me needed to GET OUT. The one, a fierce Lion. And the other, a desolate Wolf in the wilderness.

I feel two things at once. One, an intense sense of being alone. Of traveling with a pack where I am an outsider - because my heart is different; its nature is different; its song is solitary.

The other, a satisfaction. In the knowledge that indeed, my path is divergent in some fundamental way.

I could have been rebellious, except I am not rebellious against the situation, just because of it. There is something in the situation that tells me like a wise teacher to go away. Go my other way.

I somehow remember this feeling; it was mine since I was a child. This essential voice in the heart that gave up more and more of the given, and diverged, diverged, traveled its own path just to discover another land.

Such is the nature of discovery. It has a great deal of aloneness in it. 

I have, though, persisted.

And you know, I am profoundly and emptily (of intent)-fully (of heart) grateful that I persisted - until the Truth I saw in my heart, and they all saw in theirs, was finally revealed. And when it was, we were all, at once, at the same place. 

Except that I had come to that place the other way. 

Stayin' Alive!

I don't care if I myself thought it sacrilegious a mere few weeks ago, but George Sampson helped me rid myself of my religion. I am dancing - and it's all for God! 

*dance* 

The Healing

The year that just passed yesterday, 2008, brought me that which I had not experienced in a long time: rest. Sleep. And ultimately, healing.  

Almost exactly a year ago, I underwent a secluded meditation that aimed to empty the self out, amongst other objectives. Days later, on the New Year night, I woke up in shock from a dream - only to feel a great deal of something leave me. I had just read excerpts from Eckhart Tolle's book Power of Now, with my attention drawn in particular to the phenomenon of the "pain body" - an unconscious entity within the self that thrives on suffering and, of course, unconsciousness. It is that part of the egoic self that thrives on pain to further its illusion of separation.  

At this point, I will go on a small tangent suitable for the strong-nerved. It is this "pain body" (by any other name) that some believe possesses the human - "possession" here referring to that paranormal/extraordinary phenomenon that is described variously in clinical and spiritual literature but essentially refers to the same condition. In movies on the subject, it is shown in its extreme form, within the extraction of the pain body referred to as an act of exorcism. That, of course, is literal truth to some and a commentary on the condition of the individual or collective psyche to others. 

Yet everyday people are overwhelmed by strong emotions that would seem utterly absurd should one be able to step back from and out of the context and just see the situation and the characters within. The greed rampant in the world, for instance, has led to more destruction and chaos than an individual in a scary movie possessed by distorted, horrific, growling demons. We are faced with a crumbling planet and collapsing social-political-economic systems with staggering monetary and intangible costs. We are perfectly used to a media that brings murder, insanity, vulgarity, crassness, and abasement of all kind a mere few inches away from our body. And we engage in this theater. 

By the end of 2008, many, many people and societies around the world have become acutely aware of this phenomenon that may go by any other name. There is a hue & cry for self-restraint, and an active global shift towards "doing good." Entire communities have sprung up around causes of goodness such as care for the environment, promotion of values of motherhood, and paying-it-forward. At the same time, a process of individual and collective purge continues, with very visible effects. 

A year ago, on the night of December 31st, 2007, I woke up a start from a dream where I was being shown into a hospital. Within that swaying state of consciousness within sleep and awakening, I sharply felt something leaving me. I thought I heard a scream and I let out what I considered a sharp yell, but what came out of my lips - as I felt like dead weight - was a faint whispering addressed to my roommate. She thought I whispered in my sleep. As I lay in panic, I felt... empty. After a spike of fear that had lasted only a few seconds, I thought the subject of my roommate and my discussion that eve before we retired to bed - the pain body - had indeed suddenly dashed out of my system. My roommate had been reading through the book Power of Now and had brought the passage to my attention, as part of my work on cleansing my Self. 

Later, I picked out Eckhart Tolle's book and found that he himself had experienced a much more intense version of the same experience. The cleansing of his self from the whirlpools of past and future were spontaneous and sudden. 

My route remained more academic - I was thinking about it, and thinking about a thing makes it grow - and therefore it took me an entire year to proceed with a further "clarification of my intent," as my spiritual method puts it. Certainly, thre were no rituals like we see in the movies to drive out the egoic self - rather a very contemporary approach that involves an opening to life while gently cleansing the heart of malice, envy, fear, greed and other such ailment of the self. 

The result has been a revelation of my life purpose - the meaning which emerges after our inner resistance dissolves. Yet I have not obsessed over outcomes. I have - after a long time in my life, after spending a great period in the academic and corporate world as a "Type A personality" - honored the journey more than any destination that I could preconceive. I have, therefore, rested, slept and wept a great and unprecedented deal the entire year of 2008. 

To have honored myself and to have accepted my own condition, even as the world around me experiences its own painful ego shattering, has been a tremendously liberating, rewarding experience of my life. 

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

Image credit: "Saturday Afternoon" by Edson Campos - from Art.com

Bond of Trust: Two People, One Encounter

Last night, half an hour past midnight, the doorbell rang. It startled me.

I was writing - the windows of my room, that faces the gate, were lit up. I could hear people in the streets, playing winter night sports perhaps. I could hear the laughter of the watchmen though I was not sure whether it was the street watchmen indeed? For a bare month ago, they were driven out of the city amidst tense ethnic strife. I hadn't caught up on whether they had returned, for I have been hibernating deep in the bowels of my home for weeks, oblivious to the world.

I thought I'd check.

With a woolen shawl wrapped around me - both to protect from the cold and to appear imposing to any possible intruder - I stepped out and asked, "Who is it?"

Through the wide slits of our gate, one can see outside-in, inside out from quite a distance. A young boy who appeared scruffy from his hair replied in a broken voice: "Help me! My mother has just died in a hospital!" He did not specify what did he need.

For anyone who lives in highly insecure urban areas such as Karachi - and for myself, whose family has faced a good deal of violence and robbery the memories of which still manage to disturb my sleep - this is ample for alert and suspicion. This is how would-be robbers trick one into opening doors. This is how "they" gauge whether there is a tender-hearted fool in the house who can also produce money at slight prompting. This is how we are used to thinking in Karachi.

I briefly considered the inconvenience of unlocking the door to our terrace upstairs, peering out from the balcony on to the street, look out for accomplices, read the boy's face and body language, and then proceed with a moral analysis of how much money should I give him.

And then I considered the state of my own mind: addled with fear.

For the past few weeks, I have been in a retreat - secluded in my house and mostly in one room - allowing myself to turn out and throw away the conditioning by others from within me, along with the much more dangerous conditioning by my own mental constructions. To just be. To be closer to being a purer human.

If, indeed, this boy who was probably still awaiting an answer outside as I stepped back in after replying with a vague, "Hmmm... OK." (which in my language can also mean, "OK, wait there!") needed help - if he was telling the truth - what would I do?

I sometimes see images of myself... consoling the desperate, putting a hand to their head, and sharing the gifts of God with them: food, comforts, and other rights that humans have over one another. My cowardly turning away was not in conformity with this image.

So I said to myself: this boy, whether a liar or someone who tells the truth, obviously is a person in need. Secondly, his exact story may be true. And if there is indeed a soul out on the streets in the night, looking for consolation or support or charity as his family died perhaps in very desperate conditions, who would help them? Who would be the keeper of the brothers and sisters in desperate need? That there were people in the street and indeed children cackling somewhere in the laps of their young fathers celebrating a late night playing outside on the weekend, gave me some comfort.

I decided: liar, mugger, or truly in need - one thing is for certain. This person has come from God, from within the vastness of this Universe to my door. I do not know what is in his heart. But I can master what is in mine. And my heart choose to believe. To trust. To honor the guest of Allah no matter what his character. For a man might intend to hurt me, but not my God. I do not have the power to help or not help a person. Who am I give or withhold? I have only the power to choose the state of my own heart, and act accordingly. I have only the power to serve from that which is given to me, or to let fear or greed prevent that.

And so, I made the decision: I will choose trust over fear. Love over division.

I went and took a little cash - for my newly faith was weak and still tainted with fear - and stepped out in front of the gate again. The boy, partially covered by the gate's design, appeared to be leaning against it. I asked again, just to make conversation and to gauge the quality of his soul through his voice: "What do you want?" He repeated something broken but made no specific demand. I think he repeated that his mother had died. Some flashbacks of being held up at gunpoint flashed through my mind. My mind whispered that I was a fool who let other people believe they have lots of spare cash. I half expected see the barrel of a gun pointing in my direction through the slit.

I took a deep breath. What a shame that my mind lives in such imaginary violence as if it is really happening! I inched closer to the gate, taking cover behind the adjacent wall, hastily shoved the money through the slit near the wall, stepped back and said: "Take it. Take it!" His fingers slowly pulled out the money. I walked backwards closer to the door of my room, keeping an eye on him - for a diminishing fear for myself, and a growing concern for this urchin. Then I turned back, and so did he.

Believer's Refuge

"Take refuge in the Cave
God will spread Hu's* grace over you, and will endow you -
whatever your outward condition -
with all that your soul may need."

-Qur'an, Chapter Al-Kahf (The Cave), verse 16

...And so, because this verse has affected me deeply, I remain hidden, in my refuge, in the proverbial cave... until times are rendered anew. Until I am ready to emerge, as WHO I AM.

* "His"

Seeking Cover

These words, found in the beautiful book Women of Sufism a few nights ago, spoke so strongly to me. 

Take refuge in the cave:
God will spread His grace over you, and will endow you --
whatever your outward condition --
with all that your soul may need.

Chapter Al-Kahf (The Cave) 18:16

I have somehow picked up the book again to read at bedtime nowadays. This passage glowed and attracted me as I was reading about the Sufi spiritual practice of khalwa (the secluded meditation) - that I have also undertaken. What a practice!

I undertook it for two nights spent alone in a room; the meditation that is essentially a replication of the experience of death emptied me first, and then filled me with Divine Presence. These days, as I have secluded myself to empty myself, as I seek stillness, and I seek cover for my own heart, perhaps nothing cold have resonated so strongly with me as this Qur'anic passage about a group of young believers and their dog who seeked refuge in a cave.

May my heart be blessed with Grace! 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

¤ Live Lighter! ¤

How does a person who sees space and perceives things as whole rather than as parts attempt to 'streamline' their life?

I have had a long-term habit of keeping things. It turned into hoarding, which yielded stuff and has ended up in clutter.

Now anyone with a basic know-how of the art of space (feng shui, for instance) can testify that clutter creates blocks in life. It's true. Not only is stuff overwhelming in itself, but it get in the way of our change - and change is Life by another name.

Even if our stuff/ clutter is organized and clean, it is taking up our time and energy. There are people who clean and fold and unfold the same un-needed clothes again and again.

So I'm in my room right now, clearing stuff. I must confess that it's already been four years since I had a stark realization I should straighten things out. Yet back then, I was supremely distracted by career & life, not too well, and did not know how to let go.

I've done many things since then, changed the world in my own ways, started my consultancy, enhanced my social circle, trained myself in new disciplines, engaged in conversations, and inspires change along the way. I've overcome a chronic pain condition, taught people, and started writing. I have undertaken a spiritual pilgrimage.

Yet I still feel a kind of stagnation. Something keeps my external situations just the same. Without a doubt, I can say: it is Stuff. Too much stuff; I only use less than 5% of it. 

Early in 2008 I started an experiment: how little can I survive on? My entire income for year has been less than Rs. 100,000. True, I've drawn on my savings, but not much. All I did was to dramatically reduce consumption. And I have survived rather well. (The experiment wasn't very well focused, it may have social costs; I intend to be more middle-of-the way starting 2009.)

So. A chance encounter with a techie somehow dissolved my resistance about putting my life online. I have been wary of Google having all my data, but I worry no more. 

1. I'm used to it now. 

2. I don't have things to hide.

While I started unabashedly putting stuff online, I also got time to think: why am I holding on to stuff? Let's keep psychological explanations out. Most of my stuff includes books and papers, and
there is one single reason I held on to them: I wanted to share the knowledge within!

As I have been journaling, and writing my memoirs with a rather specific objective of sharing them (OK, publishing! I admit!), I have felt a great flow of energy within.

Now, the two streams are joining into one flowing: my attempt to live lighter, and my sharing of my story.

In other words, the more I share my gift, the more I don't feel the need to hold on. And as I reduce stuff, the more I have the unblocked energy to grow!

GIVING OF OUR GIFT GROWS US, AND OUR GIFT!

I must go over one thing again though: one must have enough assets to be able to operate well, though. My consumption starvation has not been entirely healthy. It may have prevented me from sharing more. Yet I was spending time in spiritual reflection, and many across the world were dramatically cutting back on our consumption just to compensate for the over-exploitation we've done as a specie - and to become desperate enough to find another way... and I joined that experiment.

I believe the year 2009 would bring a balance to the journey, and I shall explore the middle path as advocated by my faith!

Amen!

Doing No-thing - I

So last night I realized, fabulous! I am so well behind on most of the goals I had set myself. Actually I had not even bothered to set them - which I think is rather an act involving motor skills: actually picking up a pen and setting your goals on paper. (Pen and paper here could be digital, of course.) 

In my life,I have often transcended my situation by setting myself goals.

How to Learn a Language
 
I have done things like teaching myself O-Level English back in 1990 when I came to Karachi from Faisalabad, and found myself woefully inadequate when it came to the knowledge of language. In Faisalabad, we read English even though I went to the top school, that being Faisalabad Grammar School. Yet the culture of Faisalabad was a culture of Faisalabad, it did not even venture as far as emulating Lahore, the more metropolitan neighbor. People did not speak English in Faisalabad.

When I came to Karachi to live with my parents, having lived previously in a large joint family headed by my paternal grandmother, I faced a different world. People were decidedly more shrewd, savvy, and calculated here. The pace of life was faster. I was a quiet, observer kind so I did not break ice with people for a few years to come - but I did embrace my new life.

So one of the early challenges that I faced was in school. First, schools here had a more pluralistic demographic of students: children came from multiple ethnic backgrounds. The society was more open. Girls and boys were not separated and certainly did not have gender issues on their mind - rather they were focused on personal achievements. We were only in 6th grade, and already, the people were quite savvy in getting along independently in the world. One of my first challenges was with language, or rather speaking at all. I was not talkative, and often adamantly refused to join the chatter. The other part was a bit embarrassing to me. I was a top student in my previous school. Here, I was challenged with a more sophisticated level of education, the high point of it being the English Language. Now, schools in Pakistan make a great deal out of English. It is a matter of status and distinction. And in 1990, when Pakistani society still did not have open media, I'd say we still saw English through the lens of a colonial mentality. That was the awkwardness part.

However, a language itself is a language and English, without denial, is a useful medium that gets one to connect with the people of the world. Period.

I had, now I realize upon reflection, a healthy approach to the issue. It was simple: "I have to learn."

Thus began my personal learning campaign. I picked up text books, an Oxford Dictionary, and a notebook. I underlined every word that was unfamiliar in the textbooks, checked the meaning and the pronunciation in the dictionary, and copied the word and meaning in my notebook. Then I constructed sentences. I read aloud passages from the textbooks. When I was gifted an electronic dictionary four years later, I searched all the idioms, copied them in a notebook, and learned their meanings. I practiced them (unnecessarily) in conversations and verbose essays. My teachers could not get through my writing which was often a string of big words, antiquated idioms, and olde spellings.

While many find it embarrassing, I can assure this: the fastest way to learn a language is to copy the accent. It is a delightful activity. Besides, there is a kind of gestalt effect in it. Copying the accent not just teaches us words and meanings, it somehow reverse-engineers the culture behind that language.

I have only visited two countries so far in my life: Saudi Arabia for pilgrimage, and South Africa for pilgrimage of a spiritual kind. But my knowledge of the the world is wider and deeper than this limited exposure. The key is to understand language and tone - and television and the Internet are my media to language.

And so, 19 years later, after enduring critique for fake accent, big words, and other bizarre experiments in learning languages - I think I have ended up fairly well. When I write or speak now, people find it compelling enough.


~~
Continued in part II

Don't Turn Around!

Well Prophecy!

What did I tell you? Listen to your heart EXACTLY at the moment when it speaks! :) Do exactly as it says! You missed again, woman! How unlearned!

You did not pay heed again, right? None of your signs shall come from the outside. You *must* live your principles NOW and in entirety. DO. NOT. BE. FOOLED. BY. THE. RELAXATION. THAT. IS. GRANTED. TO. YOU. You will end up amongst blind fools, banging their heads against walls within which they shall find themselves confined! Do not be fooled at all. This time calls upon your highest ethic, your sacrifice of self-interest, your avoidance of that which is convenient and tempting. Do not be fooled at all. All lies are to come to an end. Very soon, you shall see.

Listen. Listen closely. What did I tell you? You must see the flaw: you are asserting the principles that you are not living. The key is to live your principles! For your own sake!

Listen! The doors of the Source are closed to those who do not integrate. In fact, the door is created out of dis-integration! Layers of your SELF are the thresholds! Do not split, do not scatter yourself over space and time. Fear not, desire not! Do not be amongst the fools. Do not be misled.

Listen! Hold on to the rope of Allah. Hu alone is the One Who shall not disappoint you. Do not forget Hu as your purpose of being.

What did I tell you? I told you, look not to the back. There you shall see a closed Universe and finished business. It is sometimes helpful when wants to reflect, but this is catastrophic as a habitual perspective. Look, rather towards the vast, unformed Universe that is waiting for you to become a question for it is your answer! You felt comfort and liberation in the thought, but then there you went off to the familiar!

You have very little time left. Have sense, have foresight, and quickly move away from here. Trust Allah, trust Allah's Benevolence, and open your heart up to reception from The Source itself.

Have fortitude. Have greatness of heart. Let things and people be. Let the Truth be as it is and wish not against which Allah has ordained for you. Have conviction in the benevolence that has so far guided you. Trust yourself. Love your self. Honor your self. Leave, and do not turn around or else you will become the mythical stone forever etched in pathetic misery. What is to happen behind you is not a matter for you to indulge in!

This is a gentle but last warning. The signs around you are so quite you shall not know what happens, how fast, and when. Do not play with Hu's limitations. Hold on to the rope, and distinguish the rope from the long leash that the fools are on.

Be wise!

And yes, Happy Birthday!

Wilderness

An unspeakable restlessness has gripped me.
 
And within it, the slightest shimmers of comfort.

I feel as though I am walking alone in a wilderness... in an utter aloneness... bewildered, but not quite. Sad, but not deeply. Moved - and yes that I am!

Sometimes I doubt if I am really grounded in reality. The world does something else, and I see something else. What I see then eventually comes true. The distance between my seeing and its realization, though, sometimes seems to stretch.

I will be more honest now. First, what does it mean to be honest and to be not honest? To me, it just means this: the more quickly I accept myself, the more I am integrated, there are no spaces within me.... and that makes my word honest, and my action, integrated. Until the thought, word, and action are the same.

I am at such a point of acceptance of who I am that at once feeling true, and at another level: lost. Alone. Disconnected. I have grown rapidly over the past few days, and it is my mission to continue to achieve certain goals by the Saturday - when it will be my birthday.

Dear me! Listen to how I command myself!

I am so tired. I am restless. I am aware of something much larger than I have known before. I feel desperately alone in this new world. I wish I had another to relate this to - yet it is my choice to sacrifice that wish in order to be closer to Hu.
 
I believe I shall see the end of this temporary wandering, this bewilderment, that I shall find what I'm looking for - or rather, it shall find me.

You Are Laughing!

Dear Allah!

I am feeling terribly sad at the moment. OK, the word terrible overdoes it, not that sad really, but enough to have forced out a tear.

Yes, yes, alllllllll I want is to get your affectionate attention. I mean my only passing solace is this that I have at least started feeling closer to You again, and not as distant and cast outside as I had thought myself out to be.

I talk too much.

So. How do I make fun of my situation? I mean there's this urge in my heart to petition You, to communicate with you in my human wordy language. to draw Your attention, even though it's already there. And somehow, not to do it such that it is ungrateful.

You are You, You change not, the only one who changes is I with respect to you! I am the only one really learning to dance here, for You are already in Your pre-determined glory!

Well.

So I feel like a mouse, who has been caught stealing stale cheese. And while the cheese was being whisked away, I manage to stuff a bite so big in my mouth that I can't swallow nor would spit. It's too big to let go, and too much to digest. This bit of stolen stale cheese! This desire that is stuck in my throat, that I am not spitting out! You know it's stuck in the mouth of this hapless mouse. You are laughing, for Your benevolence always plans something far more interesting and rewarding than a stale piece of cheese. But I am a mouse with a limited capacity for intelligence, and I think I better hold on to my ill-benefiting loot!

You have turned me out empty like a wallet full of forgotten knick-knacks, but there is a coin still stuck in.

I am astounded at the tenacity of my own desires! How absurd!

So this is my situation currently. Are You laughing? For I am near tears! I believe In You, and I am in tears.

I cannot laugh at this any longer Allah! You have created me and Your knowledge of my being is subtle and all-pervasive. You have known me.

I know You too. It could not be that You give me an improbable stone and I can hammer it into shape. This is an improbable stone. Because it is Desire, and I am not meant to have it.

You alone are privy to the pain that I have felt for my plans. Those perfect, fixed plans. Those ideas, notions, concepts. It all seems so right, but it all goes so wrong. I am not going to blame the whole scheme of things. I am going to accept that what I put my heart after is not what is meant to be achieved this way.

I am going to accept that You have an infinitely better idea for this mouse, dangling as of now from Your fingers by the tail, wailing in misery. Laugh! Humor Yourself! I am a clever enough mouse to smell the abundance I haven't yet seen.

Yes, I am miserable at the thought of giving up, but it's momentary. I want to share something with You. My heart is in considerable sadness, but I am thinking, I should trust You.

After all, for all the other things that I have given up, I have always found that which is far more permanent and indestructible, right in the middle of the chaos of this world. I have found security, depth, and joy.

I am really miserable Allah. I am miserable for my desire. I thank You for the growth You have given me through this trial, but I am thoroughly done with this. My heart tells me that it is time for me to have learned enough.

You know I have decided to dedicate these next few days entirely to myself. (Well, this has not happened quite the way I imagined, but I am content that I am following an emerging plan.) I have decided to let go of both physical materials and the desires of my heart. This could be temporary insanity, but it's something I am going to do to lighten myself enough to be ready for the massive transitions You have set in motion.

And so, I had started giving things up - things that I love, but things that I wanted to give away to enrich the lives of another. Yet there is this thing that remains: my plan for human love.

This is hard for me, and then again, not so completely. I am hapless in or out of love. I have had to speedily transform so many of my relationships - transforming them into something benevolent, something that allowed my growth also.

Yet there is this one that remains.

I am helpless, I am truly tired. I am blessed, and in gratitude. I am floating, and I am not alive.

I will, in short, to hand over to You. To let go. To give up. Utterly. Completely.

I want to empty myself out to You. Fully empty.

Where I am empty, You are Filling - and I will not even ask for this fulfillment. Have with me as You may Your way. I am not frightened of You anymore. I trust You. May be I pretend it is hard for me to give up, but my heart is so full of grief for withholding from You, that I wish, at some level, for this emptiness... for this Surrender.

Take me! Take everything I possess! Turn it to dust, and blow it all away! Free me from my enslavement! Grant me the freedom of complete surrender, of annihilation, of death before I die!

Release me from my desire!

Take my eyes, mouth, hands, feet! Finish the I off, and Be You! In all Your glory!

Amen!

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.

~~~