Paradox!

By Golly!

It is not-doing that requires more struggle than doing.

Doing is obvious to the five senses, and it is expedient. It is witnessed by the other, it is a form of affirmation.

Not-doing is witnessed by the self alone. Only you know what you could do -- well or ill -- that you chose not to do. Not-doing is never manifest, never experienced by the senses, never registered by memory. It is a kind of hollowness that few can cope with.

Yet it is in not-doing that one's self truly grows to its full potential.

Adult

I've met people in the East, and people from the West. People who are educated, and people who are illiterate. People who are conservative, and people who deem themselves liberal. People born in caring families, and people born in disrupted environments.

And through all these encounters, one observation stands true: adulthood has got nothing to do with how one is born or raised. It's a choice.

"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!

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

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. 

Two Types of Plans: The Plan That Fails

Plans are of two types: space-based, and time-based. The first one is spatial - in a coherent and beautiful form, it is always growth outwards from a central point over space. It is organic in nature. The second one is based upon measurements of time - it grows from one point in time to another. It is linear in nature.  

The space-based plan is built inside-out, and its values are determined intrinsically. The time-based plan is built outside-in, and its values are established extrinsically. The first type takes its being from one. The second type shapes one.  

There is oft a warning about plans that fail, urging one to have no plans. This concept may also be known as a "goal-free life." On the other hand, awareness and meticulous planning are deemed a virtue.  

This is a contradictory situation: have no plans, have plans. What is the truth?  

The truth is that both statements are true - but each relates to one kind of plans. It is the time-based plan that is set up for (likely - and in this age, highly likely) failure. This is because Time is a product of our perception. It is a by-product of Space. The speed of the unfolding of Space is Time, and the unfolding of Space is the unfolding of innate Design. In terms of a human, Space is the unfolding of a human's design: their innate talent, preferences, personality - and their context.  

When a plan is set up in time, attention is taken away from the space-based plan - the kind that is demanded of one, the kind that is the able expression of one, the kind that succeeds when one commits. Though success here is not measured against any external variable, but is the fullness and the quality of expression.  

There are two kinds of energy described in the physical science: potential - energy at rest; stored energy - and kinetic - energy in movement. The total energy of any being is potential plus kinetic. When the being is at rest, almost all energy is potential (I say almost, because some is in movement within the system). When the being is in movement, the potential energy transforms into kinetic energy.

How to bring a plan to life?

Attention is a primary human energy. Being alive, in a sensory meaning of the word, is to have potential human energy. Paying attention is the kinetic, the moving, the active, the dynamic form of energy. Attention is life in movement. It is life, lived.  

When we give attention to a space-based plan we engage art, science, and every gift that is human. We bring energy to elements and arrange them in a space which could be conceptual, physical, or virtual (in the computer-world sense of the word). According to the level of innate energy and clarification of the intent of a person, the plan unfolds and "manifests" (materializes) at a certain speed. The higher the energy and the clearer the intent, the "faster" the plan unfolds.  

It does not matter what the timetable of the plan is. There are plans that appear to be fulfilled by a certain time but they have no innate quality. Therefore, they do not fulfill their purpose and are soon in need of repair or elimination or renewal. Of course, even the best-laid plans, the spatial kind, arrive at the same conclusion. Yet it is the life lived and the way it was lived that mattered.  

The question is: "Is a plan - for its entire existence, from conception to initiation to completion to end - a source of increasing fulfillment? Or does it increase a sense of emptiness and loss?"  

Of course, a space-based plan is also bound and often measured by time. Yet in this one, space comes first, time second. Time is determined after the space is established. Time is a slave to this, not master. This is how time must be lived: with a quality of presence, and fullness.  

And this is all I know of this matter so far. 

Image credits: Top - user ba1969 @ sxc.hu | Bottom - Eye Scapes @ Makezine Blog

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. 

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

Secrets of a Great Skin

Hello! This is my 29th birthday! Yes, I was going to write a more poetic blog about this beautiful incident, but that shall wait.
 
At 29, I sometimes get to hear comments about my skin. It's clear. Some people want to know how. In the spirit of sharing beauty with my fellow humans, here are my simple "secrets" in no particular sequence (or narrative style):

Fundamental principle: Our faces reflect the condition of our souls. As the condition changes, so does the face.

Now, the secrets that I practice:

0. Unconditional Gratitude.
1. Love people.
2. Spread courage, not fear.
3. Whatever trouble Allah gives me, I accept for Hu's love's sake.
4. I love life.
5. Negative things in our life are opportunities for us to transcend; I attempt to transcend them, and therefore negativity washes away from my face over time, though it may occupy the place momentarily.
6. I smile and speak of joy when my heart is splitting apart, which it often does. It is a transformative practice - it is living the truth, not telling a lie.
7. I wash my face with cool water often. Be careful on cold windy days! Do not expose face to cold if it seems to resist.
8. I say my prayers (at last 4 times a day), and this allows for an electrifying ablution each time. Salaat yoga and reiki give additional energy.
9. I think of light and love.
10. There is little if any grudge in my heart. If there is something I cannot tell people, I attempt to transcend it at my own end.
11. Our faces imitate others'. And we see others according to our beliefs. I have good beliefs about humanity. I acknowledge that I see the Face of Allah wherever I turn, and that in turn reflects upon my face.
12. When my heart is full, I cry.
13. I use natural ingredient to cure skin ailments.
14. When I have skin ailments, I do not worry about them.
15. I seek forgiveness when I do wrong.
16. Between virtue and vice, I choose virtue - even if it means sacrificing my self-interest, in fact particularly when the latter is needed. Now that was a principle I was defaulting on for the past few years. The result was a strangely aged look. Recently, I have worked my way back to the ageless principles, in as much as I could and then I gave up my development to the Will of Allah. Aging sings have started receding since.
17. This is one I have not been able to practice very well for a long time, but I'm putting this here so, may be, it will become obligatory on me? Here it goes: think well of yourself. Honor yourself. Respect yourself. In-joy yourself!
18. Etc.


When I was a child, I was fortunate to have read a few quality books, and to have been brought up in an environment where I believed what I read. The book said, "Eyes are the windows of the soul." And there were similar views about the Face representing our soul. The Face is a sacred part of our body, revered in human tradition. Humans are a form of energy, being represented by a physical form. To correct yourself, correct your energy. Everything else follows!

Be beautiful!

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!

.

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.

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.

.

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.

How I Learned The Golden Rule From a Strange Series of Events

"That which you want for yourself, seek for mankind."
The Ethic of Reciprocity (The Golden Rule)

So, yesterday was a strange day: I woke up feeling extremely tired and weary. There was no electricity all morning, and I ran late for a meeting I wanted to go to early. Mornings are just better to get work done. But power never came.

Finally, when I figured I don't need the ironing and the styling and can just step out of the house - it was already around 2 pm. I reached a client's office. Minutes later, the key person I was working with had to leave on account of an emergency. I said no problem, let's work when things are sorted out. People are important, not things and affairs.

Anyhow I sat there clueless and unable to get up and return or to do any meaningful work at all. After a couple of hours, I requested to have a cab arranged to drop me back home. The cab arrived. I packed up to leave. Seconds before I stepped out of the office, the cab meant to pick me basically just ran away. I was left stranded at the gate. "Nothing,"I took a deep breath, "is going to be on time today." Another cab was sought. Funny, the second driver gets a call from the first, they're somehow related; the first describes he just marooned a client. The second inquires why, to which the first reportedly replied, "My mind suddenly got confused; I didn't know what was I supposed to do, so I left."

I said nothing. I had seen the cat several times in the Matrix today, I was sure, and something was being re-loaded or unloaded. "If I am lucky," I reflected, "I am perhaps being saved from an accident. Or I am walking into one. Either way, I have no control over the events of the day." I reached home to find the gate locked, with no one home to attend, and me without a key. Actually my parents slept soundly inside, shaking off a jet lag, and the door bell was off due to load-shedding, again! I contemplated jumping in, but didn't want to give on-lookers fresh ideas on how to rob a house. Twenty minutes later, I was let in when my brother came home with a key.

I slept early but badly as my whole body refused to calm down. The best way for me to earth any negative energy is to sleep on grass or floor. I rested on the floor.

The events of the day had a parallel theme to them: that of my unplanned elopement with Fate.

I was tired the day before yesterday. I felt as if I had reached The Wall, and I had my nose pressed against it. I felt a dangerous feeling surge in me: I felt constriction, I felt death.

I checked my SMS's and found an invite to a trip to the mountain. I did a bit of research, and made up my mind that I was going to look into the arrangements next day. I then went to sleep during the night determined that I will run away without notice. Then I woke up yesterday morning, and experienced a truly fascinating thing: the Universe acting bizarre, and nothing happening on time. Yes - Time! That eternal curse of the human mind!

But I continued with my unplanning. As close as one can come to "leave the world behind," I did yesterday. There had been a great discontent in my heart - and I was ready to "give it" to a few persons. I kept repeating to myself: "I have reached the end of grace - I have reached the end of grace! No more!" I just decided to smash everything I built to bits - because I could not go on. Or so I felt. I could not go on like this!

I checked the trip details, and almost mentally prepared myself for what could be a taxing journey. I told my chiropractor I want to leave. I told my client I am just going away, and left them puzzled. I cut off contact from friends - retaining just the last bits of kind response. I tried calling Amatullah Armstrong, perhaps she would understand my condition? But her phone refused to connect, and my phone's battery ran out.

I've seen this kind of thing before: I am supposed to work out my situation myself, I know.

I understand I feel great anger, rancor, frustration. I almost want to finish off some "business." Strangest of all, I perhaps want to attract some attention by behaving oddly.

And I don't like that. I do not like my Self when it seeks attention. There is something going on here that I must figure out. After all, all events we don't want at least teach us something, thus becoming meaningful in our lives.

I knew if I write the whole thing down, I'll eventually understand what's happening. I need to observe the strange behavior of the Universe.

Today the strange streak of events continued. I woke up in the morning and remember I saw my grandmother in my dream. She signed some papers and showed some unusually assertive behavior, for which I was glad.

Upon waking, my parents informed me that my grandmother has fallen ill, and they are going to go attend to her. It is late night now, and my aged grandmother is being taken to the hospital. I knew what my dream meant. [June 23: She'd had a paralytic attack.]

Besides that knowledge, I also woke up to resolve I am not going to be like her in one respect: that of leaving the world to hide behind a strict devotion to prayer. My prayer is staying alive - so what am I doing now? Planning to go somewhere at once to be not known and to be noticed?

My heart finally gave me kind advice. It said, "Never make rancor or resentment with another the basis of your action. Go away wherever you want or do whatever you do if you feel the action is truly for you and by you."

My path is the path of love, of heart. My heart is not an evil heart, it is a heart that loves - and it is hurt for love, it gets angry about love like only a human heart could. I have always felt that people who take actions in fits of rage or despair only live to regret or avoid their guilt - and that love can be built stronger if we can control that rage that kills us within. Rage is not the answer, truthful decisions are. If someone or something hurts us by its very being, it is better to be kind, to let go gently and to free oneself kindly - than to remain in rage.

If I am enraged, I am supposed to take a decision or to calm the assumptions of my own mind - all the while honoring my true feeling: rage! To honor a feeling is to simply acknowledge that it exists, and from that understanding, work to a solution.

Strangeness continued as yet another time, my cab didn't arrive today to pick me up to take me to physical training & then work. The client canceled for today, and I kept changing my schedule of commitments. Finally I decided that there is one thing that stops the madness of time: sharing abundance with someone who is in need. Also, I must become present in the NOW. The moment I decided this, the foolish cabbie who had turned off his phone arrived at my door an hour after the call time. He almost ran away again as I went in to collect my things to get going. What madness! But I decided not to give in to any bizarre event any longer. I didn't ask him for explanation - I knew it was the Universe talking to me. I needed to talk to the Universe directly.

And then, suddenly, I figured out what was happening!

Had I expressed a wish to throw everything away, leave it all behind - had I expressed a living death wish? Did I say that I am going to be angry, take decisions based on sudden changes of mood?

Well, the Universe heard, and it answered right back. Forcefully. Clearly. It would NOT cooperate. It would run away from me, if I run away from it. So be it!

I learned several things at once:

• Decisions are not to be based on our relationships with others, but on our relationship with Being.
• Anger is no good, on Self or the Other. The best basis of action is to do the appropriate thing.
• If I hurt the Universe, or plan to, it will hurt me. I watched within a few hours how the Golden Rule works: I planned to abandon my Universe, my Universe showed it will leave me stranded.
• I am loved, but being ungrateful.
  
• I need to be truthful; and at the same time, stop imagining. If I am consistently led to imagining ill, then the key question is where is the discontent coming from?
• Perhaps I should remove myself from my circumstances. There is violence in the air, and I absorb illness from my surroundings. Yesterday, a couple of people expressed to me an almost similar discontent; that quite buzzing feeling. So I will go, but not at the cost of breaking hearts. If I break expectations, it must be for Allah's sake, not my private agenda. In taking action for Allah is blessing; in serving self's interest is hell.
  
• This is all for the good, and the better. I must align my perceptions quickly, for the Universe is under a great shift - the NOW moment is out to abolish the past and the future. The Matrix indeed is being reloaded.
• The Universe is really a mirror of my being. What I do to it, it does to me! This is very insightful spiritual lesson that I was meant to have.

Having learned these, my strange mental condition - "constriction" as its technically called in spirituality - nearly abolished. I feel an expansion of the heart, a calmness. Amatullah has prayed for me, and I have, of course, chosen not to run away.

Amatullah said, "Sometimes we try to move a giant tree, when Allah only expects us to plant a seed."

So I sit, I wait for the seed to show what it will grow into. If it dies, so it is by the will of Allah.

I am not at odds with my Universe anymore. May my heart be in peace!

---
Published on June 23, 2008. I will not edit it shorter!