"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!

Rising Slowly [a poem]

THIS SIGH!

There is a sigh
Trapped
In the depth
Of my heart.
Like a bubble
Of fish breath
Under weighted tons
Of sea.

All I ask now
Of my Self
And my patience
Is to witness in silence
The slow upward rise
Of this bubble, this sigh.
This sigh,
This bubble sigh!

_Prophecy
March 02, 2009
1550 hr

The Healing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Wave's Return

My life
was nothing
but the temporal rising
of a wave
within the Ocean;
raising its head
to the surface
for an instance,
and collapsing again
into the origin
of its insignificant being.

Oh how long
has stretched
this moment
of this wave
shattering into the Ocean!

_RA.
aka The Prophecy

Let God Be

I want to remind you of a truth that you knew:

That to ask oneself, "What if?" is not only futile, it's destructive. There is no "What if?" There is nothing that you could do better, worse, more, less, happier, sadder that what you did! All Existence exists as is! At once! Anyone who looked at a satellite map of the world should be able to envision this. It's not an airy spiritualism. It's the truth as it is!

Everything exists at once! You are in Eternity! You are connected to it! You are within it!

Now, please know, should you insist upon knowing: NO YOU COULD NOT HAVE DONE ANYTHING DIFFERENT IN THE PAST! What kind of a futile imagining it is? How could you be anyone other than who you were? Whether you make your decisions blindly, lovingly, foolishly, gallantly, happily, absentmindedly, under influence or threat - the thing is that you made them in a position where you were who you were at that time.

You live with yourself. That is the key for you to understand. You live with yourself. There is no heaven or hell out there, it is in your heart. What does that mean? Consider this statement not as though you're still thinking of a place, and now that is a little microscopic Disneyland in your heart. The truth is that it's not a Disneyland at all! It is your heart!

A heart at peace is Heaven, a heart at constant disagreement is Hell.

But I must tell you the larger Truth: which is that whoever concerned themselves with Heaven or Hell will always find themselves in these places. The master of their Self does not even bother. Do you understand?

Here is the key to the Truth: DO NOTHING. Which means, do not go on creating new circumstances. When circumstances arise of Divine Will, respond with a graceful Human Will.

Can I tell you an even larger Truth? Forget about what I just told you! Remember Me! Remember who you are!

Resist nothing, and you will see what is to be seen. Wish for nothing, and the Divine Wish, of which your soul is aware, will fulfill. Let God be.

Presence

:-)

My darling! You have all the hints of approval from Being. There is no need to work out how things work. Rather, to stay with the process.

Ponder not the infinity of choices. Worry not about others and others. Stay in the moment and choose.

Trust yourself. That is the key. Trust yourself. You live with your Self, not with the Other. Understand this. You are exactly where you need to be. Let go of where you are not, and you will arrive in a state of arrival.

I trust you to be present.

*Smile*

Here There & - a poem

HERE THERE &

Here There &

You felt
and I felt
Eternity
in one instance.

Then step,
I step
You step.
I walk
you stop.
You run
I stand.

Here there &.

I sensed
and you sensed
Presence
in Eternity.

Then avert,
You avert,
I avert.
You revert,
I assert.
I explain
you demand.

Here there &.

This step, that step,
Right step, wrong step,
on-path, off-path,
full where, half there,
half here. Not aware.
When time will
still stand?

Here there &.

If could I
could you be
at one time
at place one ...
just meet!

It would be a moment – a full, present moment – in which we will see
all Eternity, together. Nothing will be out of place. Neither will be
looking away; searching, searching endlessly and never finding what is
right in front of us. Our hearts will be with us, not breaking into
bits & pieces over the fractured continuum of Time! All things will
flow, effortlessly. Here. Only Here.

--

A poem by
_RA
aka The Prophecy
July 31, 2008

The Girl Who Was The Mother of The Woman

This is a part of a story titled "The Dream, the Angels, the Rain". It's somewhat fussy and academic in style. But then, Prophecy, the writer was not even 15 years of age. The writer, you may guess, was I. Correction. The writer Am I.

QUOTE

"There is something I can't help thinking about the rain: 'I love it!' I praise God in the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins:

'Glory be to God for dappled things-...
He fathers forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him.'

But as e.e. cummings put:

'how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any - lifted from the no
of all nothing - human merely being doubt
unimaginable You.'

My heart is dancing a ballet[...]. I do not comprehend why rain is a symbol of [sadness] and grief to people. May be because weathers are inside human beings themselves.

I've become a part of the scene and I do not feel like going away. I wish the clock to stop and the rain to continue; I wish everything to be the same until hell freezes over. But impossible as it is, the only thing I can do is to make every moment count. I know that it is actually my existence in and the complete enjoyment of the eternal NOW which is the principal reason of my sheer joy. There are moments when you are free from every thought of the past and the future and you dwell fully and consciously in the present. As the quotation goes, "Full consciousness brings joy."

To feel the innate joy which is the open secret of the creations of Mother Nature, we have to keep our senses fully aware of what is happening NOW, and not THEN. It makes you feel as though you are in a spell which has no Dimension, no Time, no Space. As e. e. cummings would say:

(now the ears of my ears are awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Thus the joy of nature comes to you and reminds you that are part of Nature."

______

UNQUOTE

I found this story in my old papers yesterday. I remembered that it was once written, but I didn't know that it spoke so well of the power of NOW - which happens to be the subject I am so earnestly studying today as though I never heard of it. Why fool myself into acting that I don't know? That I truly don't know.... but I still lie. Sigh!

Do you now realize, Prophecy, why the Sufi Master was displeased at my feigned naivete?

One must accept the gifts one has, Prophecy. Or it will come back. My gift, Prophecy, has come back. I do not know where I shall go from here - but ever since this little discovery, I know that I have to let flow a river the source of which has always been within me.... never dried, always in the NOW, waiting it's time to gush forth.




--
I end here. And I begin.