I should have called them to Love!

Not that I can do much about (lost) time now, but here is the thing:

Around 2008, I thought I had finally tired of the world. I'd packed my (virtual) bags. I was ready to depart, to leave. 

Where to? 

The home is where the heart is, and the path is the path of the heart, too. 

And then, violence occurred. 2008. Murder, mayhem, chaos. I knew nothing would be saved -- nothing! -- and yet I had this sad urge to put down my bags and call people to reason one more time.

I think I did wrong. 

I  should not have called them to reason. What is there to be reasonable about, to be patient about, in the midst of such hate and murder?

I should have called them to Love. 

And the first one to answer the call should have been I.

But I tried to be reasonable. I tried to teach, to gather, to console. I tried to 'organize'. 

Nothing worked, really. I mean some lives changed. Perhaps, most fundamentally, my own. I realized all over again that I realize nothing at all. 

But the concern for love and money and reputation held me down. 

What was to be the security in changing?

In moving away?

In living a new life... and being a light to others who'd dare do the same?

I left the path of this apparent insanity, and tried to be sane. 2009, 2010. I attempted to help the unhelpable, teach the unteachable. 

Nothing has changed. 

They still keep on murdering. They still keep on fighting. They still keep on seeking significance in the insignificant, security in the crumbling. And I am here, still here, torn between the call of my heart and a self-created call of 'duty' -- which has now turned into proper inertia and fright. 

I will try another time.
I will try love, the path of heart, and flight. 

I have nothing sensible to say, teach, share anymore. 
I have no invitations to make to sense and sensibility -- there are none. 

I read this diary, and I realize, with much amazement, that that which I consider lunatic and insane actually makes perfect sense. 
And all the sensible persons and things are now bewildered.

I was answering the wild call of the heart -- and I was right! 
There was magic to it!
There was flow to it!
There was love to it!

No PowerPoint presentations can be made on that, alas. 

No TEDTalks. 
No mashable stories. 
No Twitter lead tags.
No Facebook pages may entertain such insanity.
But I like this insanity.
I prefer this over a thousand folds of sanity!

And this is it. This is it! 
(Amen!)

--

ra

02 May 2012

03:47 pm

(Still sitting) at the writer's desk

Bold as Rumi [a poem]

BOLD AS RUMI

If I were bold enough as Rumi

I would throw this pile

-- this burden! --

of books from my head;

I would tear the gown of familiarity 

and retreat into the forest

-- the ever-perplexing, awe-stirring forest --

of my being.

But I am no Rumi.
I am grounded finer than stardust

and blown into a thousand constellations

a hundred galaxies.

I am not one thing.
I am not even nebulous.

I am a powder grounded 

too fine, too fine, 

and blown with the cosmic wind

in ten directions.

I take time to gather my being.

They say there is no time.

Have they been me?
Have they found, upon awakening, that their being

was not their being?

But rather through necessity or compulsion

she was a soul crushed and grounded as gold powder

mixed with the meat of a million 

earthly beings?

How does she gather herself

I know not. 
Rumi, at least, left me one legacy: 

he said, "Sell your cleverness, and buy bewilderment!"

I lie bewildered, though gathering.

Gathering, gathering, gathering.
A mercurial being
gathering into a mercurial ball

rolling away from the touch of lecherous beings.

I am gathering.

As boldly, clearly, ecstatically

as a quiet, lost, hidden Lover 

is capable of

gathering.

Amen.

~

January 8, 2012

12:11 am

Friends Say 'Do More'

Click for larger image.

Death

The most significant lesson of 2010 for me was death.

On the 3rd day of the year, I collapsed twice. Apparently, I was blood-less, weary, fatigued -- and had no one to talk to. That was the doctor's assessment, and it was only partially true. I had someone to talk to, but I was away from that someone in a cold, wintry town with power and heat outages. On that day, as my heart collapsed twice, I could not reach the only person who listens to me. 

In the initial hours of my collapse, I did not quite fathom what was happening. I was only very sure of one thing: I was dying. 

I had never, ever imagined death to be a feeling so friendless, so cold, so completely an annihilator of all attachment. 

I was in the town attending a wedding, and yet I had a feeling that I had parted from the world. My chest felt a certain coldness, a darkness. At night, unable to sleep for fear of falling through, I felt myself departing and returning, departing and returning. It was all in the region of the heart. My heart felt a terrible despair, a sadness, a reversal of time. Perhaps more macabre than the feeling was my utter sadness at the lack of preparation for the moment. 

When I was younger, I found life an explosion of color and energy... and yet I felt a marvelous firmness, a stillness, a base underneath it all. It was a power, a friend, a magic that I faced. Intuitively, I knew, that I would one day explode into it. I will become dust, and I will be a whole, full part of it again when I die. And only when I die. And this peculiar knowledge made me willing to die. More so, it made me embrace life with a fervor!

And yet here I was, physically obliterating, and I felt weighed down. 

You know, as I am writing these words down, the whole imagery of becoming a part of 'it' again through death has made absolute sense to me. Just now. I came from that magic, after all, that I am looking at. A woman somewhere here has carried me for 9 months until I came to be a separate body. An animal here is related to another animal that I consumed at one point, and part of it still resides as my muscle. I ate plants from this Magic. I breathed out into it (I exhaled), and it breathed into me (I inhaled). I excreted into it, too. When I die, my body is going to disintegrate into this Magic again. This Magic is where I came from. This Magic is where I am going to go into. 

Wow! 

This I only realized now. Just now, as I am sitting by a spectacularly well-lit white window, watching the dazzling, warm afternoon sun rays strike upon the luminous green flesh of the plants in my garden. It is a brilliant scene, bursting with life and color. 

I struggled a few days after my collapse with an immense feeling of darkness, of gray, of weight, of old age, of time. I felt as if I were 70 or 89, and I was about to part the world having tasted little of its fruits. I felt angered, sad, terrible. 

My goal immediately become to lighten the burden that I was carrying. I returned home as soon as I could, took medicine that worked at -- I later realized -- at a very deadly bout of flu that had attacked me in early 2004. I had managed to fight and resist it, while still managing extremely hard work. But it had managed to harm me. 

I had one of my most intimate prayers in a long time when I returned home. Standing on my prayer rug I felt, after years, that I was face to face with Allah. I spoke with Hu. I shared that I was taken by such utter sad surprise that I was not ready to die. What a shame it was! If I had any grace, I would leave even if I had a burden on my shoulder. But here I was, still left to live, feeling that my sole task now was to chuck this weight off.

It is fantastic that I have still put on more weight since that close brush with death. I went on to do more, and yet my pledge was that I would do less. In other words, it took me a while yet longer to slow down, to slow down, to sow down my rapid progress on the wrong path. 

I finally started turning around on 01 October 2010. That is when I started a Sabbatical. What is this Sabbatical about? Heck, I don't know and I don't want to know until what I am to know becomes apparent. What it is certainly about is me sitting with myself, listening to myself. I feel relieved now. 

What do I want at the end of this Sabbatical? I want to be the person who is willing to die immediately the moment death comes. This is the only state in which you will ever taste your life fully. This is only state in which you know what it means to be alive. 

Amen.

~

Accept Me As I Am [a prayer for the profane]

Accept me as I am.

A liar, a fool, a pretender.

A profane obnoxiousness full of venom

and lies.

A soul refracted into many --

all reflections mere imposters --

pining for one.

Accept this.

See me

who I am.

See me.

See the filth, the lie, the shining heart

that yearns and yearns and yearns

even in its maddening forgetfulness.

This mad woman

with a tattered robe

and a mouth full of lies --

lies and venom.

Lies and venom.

Accept me as I am.

For I am a serpent,

I am a lie,

I am a masterful delusion

that children can see through for a laugh.

A cauldron bubbling, toads croaking in the silence

while some angels double over in laughter at the drama that this is.

Yes, it's a drama.

It's an expulsion.

It's a spitting of words jumbled, uncouth, unrelated that do not belong to my mouth.

I have drank venom

and I spit it,

I spit it,

I spit it.

Such a cad of a woman.

I am in tatters

but proud.

I am mad

but vain.

I have no reason,

no notion,

no not even bewilderment.

Just a load of hateful lies to spit out. Out and out.

I spit.

I spit out that I am other than who I am.

I am me.

I spit out that I must not will to live.

I live.

I spit out that another but You is the master of my faith.

I say, "No!"

I say no, no, no, no!

None of you fake imposters,

you oblivious beings

who do not find meaning within your wondrous existence, you!

You!

You whose eyes are glued inwards,

looking into the back of their abysmal skulls,

watching your endless plays of misery or trivial happiness

are my masters.

You are liars.

You are liars.

You do not even know your fate.

You do not know what raced you to conception,

and what is guiding you swiftly towards your death

you self-serving dolls!

You are not my masters.

Alas! Alas! Master! They have held my soul by the throat.

They have held my soul by the throat and poured in me their vials of lies

suggesting that You are forgetful, that You do not love,

that we are not together, You & I,

living and breathing one another in one breath of

Al-

Lah.

Al-

Lah!

Breathe me.

Breathe me my Master.

I have become profane.

And You are Sacred.

I am a lie.

And You are the Truth.

I am a delusion, a whiff of dust.

And I take three spaces when I have but one for me.

Therefore You Are! You Are! You Are!

You Are.

Lead me.

~

.ramla

12:48 am

Sitting in the lawn

legs folded

on the grass

under the moonlight, and the warming rays of a street-lamp

Karachi, Pakistan