From the arms of Azazil

Alif Laam Meem,

I cannot assemble my grief properly, and so it has not become a coherent person, and thus I cannot address it. I want to love it, speak to it, grieve with it.

But I do not have a person to grieve for or about or with. I have a multi-million fractured pieces.

But for Your sake—for Your sake and for Your Love's, and Your Name's and Your Honor's—I will again let my tears flow, and then I will wipe my eyes.

You have always loved, upheld me, loved me, curtained me, fed me, clothed me, sheltered me, sustained me. I am in terrible need of doing something for You; to lend my existence credibility.

I wonder if there is something terribly wrong with this: if I have chosen the station of being Your helper, rather than Your beloved guest, and as if my chosen station is a terribly lower thing. I cannot say for now, for to speak beyond my current comprehension is a terribly wasteful thing.

I cannot love me and I cannot help me.

I have never heard of another person who has suffered such terrible devastation and compression and destruction and humiliation such as I. How and why does it happen? The reasons are complex and beyond me.

But I have seen You devastate me, and I have experienced a glimpse of Your Awful Triumph, Your capacity to destruct and devastate, Your ability to utterly swipe me, and yet somehow uphold me.

And I know and believe that You can stitch. That You can render anew the fabric of space and time—if only for this sinner, this forgetfulness-full beast, this bestial me. That You are rendering me anew even as we speak.

I will leave this discourse here. I love You, and You love me; and I have hurt You, and You have pained me. We abandoned I abandoned You each other completely brute awful terribly love is love is lovely, I cannot speak out the matrix of ourmyapart searing and tearing beating terribly and goes it there to... something like it like it or not to comprehensive truly out now complete fractured mirror utterly fabulous and comprehensively comprehensible being  do you understand this?

These are my murdered fractures alive still somewhere comprehensively beating alive in the heart and they are speaking! And they are speaking! 

They are speaking. Darling. They are.

Rescue me from this despair, from this falling, from these arms of Azazil, as only You can. Dear Lord, I have no capacity. If it were possible for me, I would like to leave this existence, this fishbowl-entrapment of the soul and senses, and have come to Your Presence such that You'd have slapped me. And then loved me. Taken me within the folds of Your curtains, and, in a flash, disappeared.

But this is not how the Lord acts—this is the doing of an angel. Allah does not flee.

You know I'm foolish. I know You're Kind. And the bones that I have broken in my skull and spine, and the chest that I have here seared with pain and grief, and this old age that has suddenly descended upon my head, and this twisting of the spine and eyes, and this corruption—this acidification—of memory... this is nothing but a speck for You to repair, reprieve, heal. Yes, I do not deserve it, but whenever did I?

I only believed that I was someone especially in love with You, and thus I felt dearly loved and held by and cared for by You. I believed You were Precious to me, a God Who needed my help and company, and thus I tried to make myself worthy of giving You that company, that servitude, that representation-on-Earth that I could through my being. I tried to be Your friend, Your obedient listener, Your companion in a manner that even transcends my own comprehension.

I reckon I wanted to let You be, through me.

Is this blasphemy?

I am deconstructed beyond imagination at this point. 

Let me return to this. Aameen.

Or let us proceed. As You wish.

Aameen.

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

All The World, And I [a poem]

All The World, And I

As if of all the world, and yet of none of it. 

As if of the wind, the earth, the silent flowing water that runs beneath.

As if of fire that burns, and fire that kindles life. All if of all force on Earth.

As if of East, of West, of both polarities. 

As if of here, of there, of in-between, 

As if of in & out, off on.

As if in left, in right, in true & false, 

As if in up & down, yes no. 

I've found myself everywhere.

As if as far the glance stretches

and as far the ears can hear

As if wherever my sound echoes

As if in all far and all near --

I had found myself everywhere. 

I was all the world, 

and yet

none was I.

Until the instance

when my gaze met the world

and I saw I was that, 

----

.ra

the poem had arrived as I watched pigeons congregated on trees outside Jinnah's mausoleum in Karachi

december 21, 2009

(poem was left unfinished. perhaps I perceived nothing beyond that point that day. certainly, what I began to perceive was inexplicable back then. -- September 9, 2010)

Chocolate For My Soul

When I was a child, I was very still and quiet. But every now and then, I let out my disagreements with the world in One Giant Scream. 

I would go to the center of the house, which was an open space, and just SCREAM! AAAAAAAAA! 

My uncles were weary of this ritual. My youngest & dearest uncle once made a pact to buy me chocolate every Tuesday if I please did not yell. 

That was my first Faustian bargain. I sold my soul for chocolate. 

~ra

Managing Attention: Tip #2

"Your opinion of me is none of my business."

—Just another wise saying

Great Person?

I was reflecting the other day that there is really no such thing as a great person. Whoever each person becomes was their within their potential anyhow. That was their mandate, their chance, their place in the scheme of things.

It is no greatness to be who you are -- it is exactness and circumspection. Therefore a person who is truly noble is not one that is rising above or expanding beyond their natural space (and different people have different natural spaces), but the one who restrains themselves exactly to their natural space. This makes them 'disappear' in a sense for they are part of the same fabric that everyone else and everything else is a part of, too. Thus by way of being part of the same, we become invisible to each other. Visibility, then, is akin to the visibility of a wart on a flawless skin -- it garners immediate attention. But it is truly great?

This brings me to the case where we seek greatness by way of extending beyond ourselves. First, we must note, that a thing or a person may be stretched beyond themselves temporarily, as some kind of structural adjustment. This is not desirable and it points to something that is not working somewhere, yet it happens. It is not, sometimes, a deliberate decision. The kind of extension-to-greatness that is to be warned of is.... seeking significance. Being 'great' by being more than oneself, handling more than one can honestly deliver, consuming others' space to be, to work, to exist.

This is, oddly, considered noble. There is nothing noble about it. It may be something that arises out of a deliberate need to be a giant, or out of an inability to make decisions and keep life in perspective, or sheer ignorance of one's scope and limitations. In any case, this is tiresome. It also costs one's relationships, drains one's world, and, even, cost the planet in tangible terms. For instance, such a person would be traveling all over the town doing 3 jobs, one of which they can give up if they so choose.

It is said in Islam, which is the way I subscribe to, that true greatness only belongs to Allah: Allah being All-That-Is. Allah is not just greater or the greatest. Allah is Great.

What does this mean? It means that there is a gestalt of being. That the whole is larger than the sum of its parts, that it has an energy of its own that cannot be accounted for by the sum of parts. It is that which is great, truly more, truly creative, truly the Source. It is the creator of potential.

A human being -- or any other kind of being -- is not. It is only itself: good, bad, ugly, or beautiful -- anything, but not great.

~ra

Managing Attention: #1

I'm not interested in that which doesn't work for me. 

—ra

Life vs. My Smarter Ideas

Woke up this morning and had an instant, clear realization: clever, smart ideas can become the inverse of Life.

'What do you mean!?', you ask. 

Very well. Life comes to one, in-flowing, every moment. Our choices are at our end: how seamlessly and fluently can we accept what comes our way and act appropriately upon it? The more fluidly we do it, the more we walk far and deep into this vastness called LIFE. 

Ever played a video game? This is exactly what I am talking about. It throws a reward at you, and you accept it. It throws a challenge at you, and you accept that, too. The only difference is that the appropriate thing to do (enjoy/ fight) is different in each case. But you don't resist the very act that something has come your way. Neither do you develop a smarter idea on the lines of, "OK, I got to eat a banana. How about I got an apple instead? What else can I find? Oh, not this banana, ya know!" (I am visualizing, of course, a childish video game in which you're a  monkey or some such furry thing. Indeed, a real-life monkey would not go on if it decided to have better ideas about food.)

Sometimes I am with the flow. In such moment, inspiration flashes within me, and I follow it without regards for ensuring perpetuity or security. 

This morning, I realized, heck! Sometimes I tend to get back to resistance. To better ideas. To try and be smarter. I stall projects with this attitude. I take longer to do a simple thing. And I give not days but years of my life away. 

Hmmm! 

What else could I do? I raised my hands in prayer and wished: May I surrender! May I go with the flow! Amen! Amen!

Amen. 

Life

Excerpt from a note to a friend

Since last night, I have started experiencing the presence of a new feeling in my heart: a love for life. 

The strong dis-interest -- the nihilism -- that I had develop seems to be dissolving. 

I want to do things for myself, with myself. I want to play. 

.ra

Company

Early this morning, I had a strange wish: I wish to be amongst humans who have evolved. For I am tired of cloaking who I can be, and I wish to see who I am. 

And this miracle of being who you are can only occur in like company. 

Keep Walking

It doesn't matter if no one believes in you, or all do. 

It does not even matter if, somehow, you do not believe in yourself. 

You must keep walking. 

Remember: anyone can walk with belief. The real test of keeping on walking is when you have lost belief. When you have lost a sense of direction, a purpose, and even a sense of being. 

For eons, this is how those who were 'lost' in the desert (literally, 'desert-ed') found their way back & out: they kept walking. It doesn't matter if you have no direction, no compass, and nothing to go on. It doesn't matter. What you are is larger and beyond belief and directions. What you are is life itself. 

Remember: it's all about the walk. The circumstances of the walk, favorable or unfavorable, are mere illusions that fold the core within them. They are here to attract and repel those who are taken by illusions. 

Discard the illusions of favor or the lack of it.

Just keep walking. 

Wise Self-Advice

My darling:

No one can make you do something as long as you have the courage to refuse. Put all concerns aside. Put popularity and endearment aside. Consider only the truth of your heart. 

Follow it without regret. 

Love,

.r

esreveR

Where, then where, is my miracle?

.of dreamed have I something is ,see I Everything 

.before known I've ,told ever am I that Everything 

.reverse in life my living am I that feeling distinct the have I Sometimes

~ra

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.

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 ~