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

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

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!

Making a Decision

Dear Self:

Let's make the decision today. Right now, about this life... about this ever-branching life.

You know the path that has your heart on it. Shall you, or shall you not take it?

If you cannot make up the mind about the path of the heart, then pray, honor this confusion. Take a moment. Take a deep breath. Write about it. See where the writing leads your soul. Never be afraid to explore your own "Yes" and "No". This is the only choice you have.

Enjoy the process of arriving at your decision, much as you would experience the joy that the decision, once made, will bring you.

A Trillion Billion Friends

It's 4:28 AM. I am not up & writing at these desperate hours because life is fun and I want to sit in front of a screen Facebooking & blog, blog, blogging my life away.  

I sit and write because there is something intense and compelling that I have been going through for years -- something that has done much to me and yet in the end, it has simply handed me a pen and commanded, "Write!"  

It is my life. It has been happening to me. And it wants to be written. (Therefore if there is an illusion amongst any of the readers that I do this to attract any further "life (drama!)" -- especially one that is not mine -- then, pray, know that I don't. I don't want to know any more or to think anymore. My writing isn't to create turbulence or catastrophe. It is to reach stillness. It is not to gain, but to give. That is all I have: nothing!) 

And now this thought was parenthetical because it is an aside. As can be noted, the subject at hand is "Friends."  

I felt, a mere three days ago, that I have no friend. Now whenever I confess to that particular feeling, it sends many of the dear people whose lives have served me and mine theirs in friendship, in considerable shock. Why am I writing this when this is not - what - I - intended - to - write! 

I write this because writing wants to be written. It takes its own course. It is because my heart is telling a story and I am the figurative pen, the literal keyboard. I have no command over this story. 

Now, for any dear soul which is confounded -- join the come & go club. At this moment, I am no longer in the club. I am not confounded myself. 

At this moment, my friends are countless. I tell you how so. 

I was retreating to my room for the night when I noticed the pillow and the covers on my bed ready to comfort me for the night. I stopped in amazement. What a human quality that is! To hold someone together, to cover them, to give them warmth. In some way, to aid their sleep. It is a quality so human, it is divine. I wondered. 

I looked around at things in my house. The chair I sit on, the cushions I lean on, this computer that aids me so greatly in my writing and living that I would have been dead without it -- and I mean it: this machine has saved my life. It has given me a life. I looked at my bed again, the clothes that I am arranging. Earlier, when the power went out, I chose to step out in the lawn, lie down on the grass, and bathe in moonlight. Question and Answer, the two curious kittens who reside in our garden, came and hopped over me. This is what they do; I am family to them. Question, indeed, insists upon a greater companionship -- hence the name. Together, Q&A as I affectionately call them, decidedly accompany wherever I go in the house. They want to offer enacting their kitten fights and -- yes, this too! -- giving their "clean-up licks" to me. I am part of their family, the Big Sistah Cat. They are kind enough to not see me as human, but as just another cat. 

I am touched. I am touched by what the plants do too. They dance when I am with them. Now every avid gardener knows but hides the eccentric fact that plants can understand (human) sound and respond. They also have a sense of visual attention. I am aware of their presence and their language; so well, that sometimes I forget to notice. 

It took a set of inanimate things this night to suddenly break this spell of feeling physically cut off, wandering, and alone. 

I have noticed tonight after a long, long, long time how everything is connected to me. It is connected to me, it is my friend. The thought that I am the product of all my life had been swirling in my mind like dusty little windwhirls on a summer afternoon. Now, I just get it. It's not a mental twirling thought. It is a fact. 

I am embraced. I am embraced by trillion-billion of atoms, certainly even more... all of them innumerable things. Expectations manage to lock in my attention on a few set of atoms, and often those are people. More often, those are not even these atoms, but thoughts. 

Cold as it may seem to think you are embraced by atoms -- for God's warm sake!! -- this is exactly what I mean. 

Warmth and life have a way of reaching to us. Through our beds and shoes and machines. It is a marvel how life holds us together. It is a marvel how care has a way of getting through to us, being around us. I simply marvel at all these things and the comfort of friendship they provide. I also marvel at how my life is designed such that everything makes me happen, makes me live. I marvel at how it all seems to be coming in my direction, placed around me, in an attitude of service and giving. 

This is really what it is!  

I also marvel at why my attention for years had become locked in a very few things! How long has it been since I have felt that it is not only other mere mortals who bring life to me? Quite a while.  

Tonight -- by this early morning that is about to come -- I have felt again that which is the truth: I am in the comfort of a Friend. And it is not a friend who isolates me into desperation. But makes me desperate until I see the marvel.  

Why, a rather persistent friendship this is, and one that gives me more than a calculable number of friends. It gives me as many friends as there are ways of counting everything in the world -- and then it gives me everything. 

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* 

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

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.

Grace

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Acceptance is of two kinds: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be the Change. How?

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

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

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

Be. As you are.

Curious!

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

Be the change.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Winter, 2008 [free verse]

Winter, 2008


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


By Ramlas
aka The Prophecy

Doing No-thing - III

Continued from part II

The Gestalt of No-Thing

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are all inter-linked.

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

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

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

What can I say? I only write.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


~ The Prophecy

¤ 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.

~~~