Reflection: Exercise Choice, Not Convenience

Perhaps I am not doing the right thing? 
 
One cannot be those who one does not want to be. One creates the world of their preference by living out one's own principles.
 
Be cautious, Prophecy. One is only robbed, if ever, of their essence. Rather, the chance to manifest their essence. 
 
Trust that this is within your reach. Be human. Exercise that choice. The more you exercise your humanity, the more, you shall, inhumanity around you dissolve. It works that way - and only that way.

The Circle of Joy! The Joy of Circling!

So today I did something that began restoring that warm feeling around my heart that I associate with love, and connectivity. You see, I had been asking myself a question for the past few days: Why am I not feeling the warm feeling that is associated with Love? And that which I have increasingly become more used to?

Prayers were not helping. I uttered the name of God "Wudood," but I did not feel like cheat-coding my own development. I couldn't initiate writing to my mentor without feeling that I already had an answer and therefore should not bother them. I did not want to discuss this with friends because often asking for advice invokes a pity I find incapacitating and annoying.

No. I had to find my own answer because I knew I had it.

Today, I intuitvely did a rather routine chore that suddenly starting warming up my heart....


It seems that I have learned much at a great speed in the last two years in particular, when I started making resolutions based on the lessons I was learning.

So if I learned that safer neighborhoods are an outcome of neighbors who watch out for each other, and smile at each other - then I resolved to connect with my neighbors and smile at regular vendors and maids and the children who walk down the street.

I made several resolutions. But there is one that I had a great deal of difficulty with: letting go of things. A great deal of this problem is very cultural. I feel in my heart I want to give to people, and give them things that I think are beautiful and valuable, and of use to them. Yet it seems that the society applies a great deal of economics to the issue. When I was a young child, it bothered me, but I didn't have to deal with the problem of giving or taking things - it was adult business, and I was often truly blessed that my elders made my birthdays and other events of celebration such as Eid truly memorable by sharing. We had a good life.

Yet this thing about accumulation, which grew more significantly in our culture as I grew up, bothered me. When I was teenager, I hadn't quite worked out the feng shui of stuff, and the equation of accumulation with stagnation, but I could tell that things took a lot of time. Indeed, I had a tough time because I was a girl, and I despised housework because I thought people make it the purpose of their lives and ignore what is. It still puzzles family and relatives that while I show skill in housework, I never like to talk about it. I thought it wasted too much time, how people went on and on and on going over the same stuff again and again without any sense of joy! It annoys me to hear people complain about their kitchens, their children, their studies, their school! But of course these things hurt if one makes an existential quest out of them!

I believe life has a larger purpose, and it's up to us. It's certainly not getting busy, even though hard work and dedication and loving the work are forms of worship! Now this was all too paradoxical for some.

While I understood the futulity of staying constantly busy, I never quite mastered the management of stuff. It is a matter of generosity, and it also takes a bit of a technical skill. I believe people can learn techniques simply through intuition - after all there has to be a first human who initiated any technique from boating to archery to lighting up fire. Intuition taught them what to do in the moment.

Yet in Pakistan, we live under a heavy wet blanket of a very oddly mixed-up culture, and it veils our eyes from seeing what intuition tells us. Our grandparents understood giving. But there seem to be a few generations starting with them, and continuing till now, that make accumulation a point of their being. It's gathering, gathering, using, storing, preserving - and constantly doing work to sustain that activity. This is madness! And it's phenomenal how this mindset has taken over the culture - it seeps down to advertising on TV and conversations amongst people. People are living for things. It's no longer things for people. What an odd life!


So, Allah says that true believers are people who give of what they love more. I love my books. I love Harry Potter, Eckhart's works, Coelho's stories. And it's also my books and some really old stuff that slows my life. I know it.

Two years ago someone gave me a book called Me to We. I loved it. It's about sharing, generosity, acts of kindness. It affirmed my beliefs. it made me cry. It whipped up my desire to give more! Oddly, I give more of my self than my things - while it's the former that's harder. Which is all the more why the latter seems to stop my spirit. Wow, this is an epiphany!

So. Today, I thought, why on earth did I not follow my instinct the moment I had finished with the Harry Potter series? The mania was still hot, and I wanted to ship the books to my little cousins. I just didn't! So here was this general resolution of "Clearing Stuff Out" and then the specific resolution regarding Harry Potter theat stayed unfulfilled.

They say that "In heaven are those who fulfill their promises." I think I am beginning to understand this at a deeper level now. Personally I am not a promise-breaker or a liar so I thankfully don't know much about hell. Yet everyone has flaws and mine was constricting the flow of my own joy - for fear of having to report on what I gave. Our lives are too controlled by our society and elders! Years of mal-practice later I have just reached the same old conclusion: "It doesn't matter what people think; defy them with righteousness. Or in the end, you will reach the same conclusion that you were right when you were right!"

As I went through my bookshelf pulling parts of the Harry Potter series out to mail to my cousins, suddenly there it was! A warm glowing feeling around my heart. A feverish blanket. A sense of connection, and of safety. I started thinking of making a game for my cousins: asking them to pick out lessons of life from Harry Potter and share amongst each other and wiht me. As I went through other books, I realized which family member or friend could use what. What a feeling of joy! Life is energy that travels amongst humans. It grows as each human adds to it. The source of it all is our hearts, and to plug that source is to bottle up joy.

Sharing, indeed, not just brings us joy. It grows us by growing others around us.

Amen to sharing! Amen to joy!

Listener

027.062
YUSUFALI: Or, Who listens to the (soul) distressed when it calls on Him, and Who relieves its suffering, and makes you (mankind) inheritors of the earth? (Can there be another) god besides Allah? Little it is that ye heed!

Iztiraab

By God, I cannot contain this feeling any longer. In Urdu, it is called "iztiraab." In English, it is "restlessness, yearning, anticipation." It is that state in which they say prayers are best heard. It is then that looking up to the sky when the answer to one's prayer is awaited.

But I reckon this last metaphor is a bit outdated. They say spirituality is evolving. There is no sky to look up to. There is now one's own self to turn to to get our prayers answered. I read this line from Urdu poetry that drives me to ecstasy each time I repeat it:

"Sawaal ban to sahee, mein teray jawaab mein hoon!"

Roughly, in English, this translates to, with a tone of gentle chiding or sweet exasperation: "Well, go on, become a question! I am awaiting to be the answer!"

---
Oh dear God!
I start writing out these blogs of mine when I am in an intense state of iztiraab (or ecstasy). When it is iztiraab, I decide each time I will put my heart out here. I will tell the world that I am human to the hair & bone, I get tired of what I consider sharing and giving, I need my sleep and rest and a gentle dose of love and understanding each day. I get tired of feeling alone and struggling. I get overwhelmed by my world, and I am tempted to run away from responsibility. But the people! The state of the people and their affairs! How can I run when I most want to?

I write in a state of anguish. But it doesn't quite remain so.

I heard Shaykh Hamza Yusuf on YouTube the other night. He said, "Pray in the state of Iztiraa___!" (OK I indeed even fact-check my personal blogs, especially when it's quoting other people, and it turned out he said Iztiraar. Now that's different; it's subtler and less edgy than iatiraaB. And now I wonder if it is iztiraab I feel, or iztiraar. God knows I am full enough to be feeling some of each, and then some!)

Bless fact-checking and scholarship! It indeed took my mind off whatever its state is!
---

And so it is iztiraar - "agitation, constraint, helplessness" - in which prayers are best made and heard. The Lord is the Lord of all creation, and Master of all states of the heart, and I am certain iztiraab qualifies just as well.
---

I prayed in my iztiraab and iztiraar - admittedly I am doing quite the contrary of good sense and despairing more than hoping. Silly woman, me. There are nights like these when I feel utterly alone. I wonder if my heart will be understood? I tire of myself, honestly, when I take the weight of the world upon my shoulders. But seeing people's tribulations and their misunderstanding, I feel no other choice but to stay around...

I think I have to translate this "staying around." It is obvious by our design that each human is a complete entity unto themselves. While I can tire teaching or educating others, I cannot for a moment assume the responsibility of even one other life. No. It's not possible, and it's not human domain. Our domain is to do our job - which can benefit billions of souls. Just as the Sun does a single star's job, but reaches out to trillions of souls - human and others.

---
So my personal, microscopic history moves with the history of the world, of the Universe, and sometimes I feel that as a burden. Tonight is one such moment. I am tired to the bone. I wonder when will people wake up? I also wish for love and compassion in my own life. I honor myself because I do not partake in the ethic of selfishness, and I am done with feeling guilty out of obligation to people with a sense of entitlement. All things kept equal, these people are in genuine need of their own consciousness, and may Allah grant them such.

I must resign from my management of world's affairs, and just be me. God, I believe, will take care of these people. Benevolence is the fundamental attribute of God. My work is ony my own search of excellence - of what is known as piety or taqwa. No more. It is beig clear on this point that will allow me to be of true service to God in whatever way God wishes.


May my iztiraar and iztiraab and may my peace and my sleep or the lack of it, may my consciousness and unconsciousness and clarity and vagueness - each living moment and state - takes me closer to Allah. May I see the Face of God, Who is at once the Most Manifest and the Most Hidden. May That Be First, may That Be Last.

Amen!

Into the Unknown!

Yesterday, for the nth time, I realized my work with my family is finished. I must leave. Th reason might be ridiculous and inexplicable to some: I'm leaving home because I support Obama.

I am not walking away because of my microscopic story. I'm walking away because of what's happening to the world.

To me, it is clear that in the face of the glocal catastrophes, people are responding in two clearly different ways:

1. They get it
2. They don't get it

It is this second type of people which one wishes had seen the reality of affairs during the cruel October of 2008. 

But, as someone said, "Never underestimate the power of self-deception."

My problem right now is that this second type have not only been clinging to their old world of permanence & dominance, but that they will betray any effort of the former type very pro-actively.

And that, to me, is disagreeable.

I believe all humans are One. But two minds are not one. It's almost ironic to see the second type as a class of humans, so I'd say the solace is that the humans of that mindset can transcend it. The second type is a mental construct, but one that's gripping a great part of humanity. 

I believe it's their choice, and that no one can be 'helped' any longer.

To me, the universal support for Obama is for the simple fact that he "gets it." And so anyon else who gets it too supports him over his opposition. This is not the age of hero worship. But it's still a time where a man who speaks of "ushering in an era of responsibility" can be a guide to those still grappling with the concept or joining to co-create a new reality.

I want to co-create that reality, and it seems that right now, that requires me to rise above personal & familial relations for as long as I am being limited by those who don't get it.

I have left home in my mind, I have left home in my heart, and now, finally, I shall leave home with all that I am: Mind, Body, Soul, Spirit.

Into the Unknown!