Fall 2006

thoughts during my first time viewing of the Passion..

What is wrong with the masses?

Why do we hate truth when we see it?
Jesus, Gandhi, Nelson, X
All imprisoned in the
depths-of-our-denial
This sadism this flagellation
Of the only reality the only
human decency for

Are we not capable of seeing
This blindness is taking over
My heart
My Lord I am afraid I
Cannot tell darkness from
light and Your Light
Is so Bright that my
Eyes are blinded in shame and
I dare not look up again

Look within.

But what will I say to you on
The day?
What was wrong with the masses?

Are we
diseased_defeated_dictated
We are
In incessant mourning

Why don’t we SEE
Why don’t we BELIEVE

Love.
Forgive ourselves and accept
the state in which
You
created us.



^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
randomness

Life is such a crazily beautifully awe-inspiringly ravishing learning experience.

I think everyone should read Pride & Prejudice to learn more about people and the dynamics of social interaction. ~.~.

never stop learning - you just cant - the moment you do, you're as good as dead ;)

peace within and with-out.

~

11/22

constructed.

Just who do you think you are?
With your pretty face
God given brains
your college degree your
Personality sufficiently constructed for the satisfaction of society

Under the cover
Strip down the acquired contrived nurtured
i-den-ti-ty that you must be
and see yourself in the mirror of everything
besides yourself.


I see



nothing.

~

11/06

I want the unattainable
I want the unfathomable
Abstract
Real
So strong that all else sense of this or that is
rendered extinguished down under

Knowing that there is a Creator
Means too much
Can you handle it?
Or do you choose to accept subtle vibrations of this
reality you have made your life.
Minimum contact with the Real
Smug smile on your face and approval from other than yourself
Reflected back on to your self identity
Gloated bloated helium

Why do I want such a radical change
What do I want .
I want you

Do you really
These tears you shed mean
nothing
These outbursts of that void that you
plant nurture and grow
Water with the whinings of your sporadic mood swings these
Seeds of your own
Your own exaltation are in
perpetual slumber and

Outside
We are all in wakeful silence.


inna haadha la howa haqq ul yaqin
fasabhi bismi rabbikal a3dheem


~`~`~`~

Ultimately, no one can help you
Along the Path
No signposts, manuscripts, books or words can
Enlighten
Light falls upon the heart of the Sincere Seeker
Who does not just beseech her Creator when
tormented, fragmented and mellow
This is a continuous call for clarity
This desire for direction

HOW often forgotten under the mist that we accept as part of our daily
Vision – ?
These episodes of bipolar spirituality need to be balanced
God where are you?
And where am I leading myself?
Are you leading me or am I deluding myself into…
Into this supposedly narrow alley this scattered forest this

Vision I have of where I ought to be
I don’t know where I am right now
I do know that I am not in a ditch.or.darkness
And only I hold my own self back from opening my
Eyes, ears, mind, my heart
Is oppressed and my mind is King


~^~^~


10/16/06
Longing

You watch yourself sleep every day
You fail to wake up
This incessant slumber
This perpetual reluctance. denial. delusion

And yet
A longing for otherworldliness?
A sincere desire to be under the Divine Light and nothing else--
For truly everything perishes save the face of your Lord
Or an escape from worldly duties?
A rejection of worldly duties
A rejection of selfhood
A rejection of God's created realm.

Sincerity, cursed sincerity.
Mocking my surface depth
Sweet, shallow depth
Mocking it oh so delicately
Were we not loyal friends at heart
But you left

I pushed you away
Unknowingly, unwantingly.
I apologize yet
You shy away from me.
Echoes of a lost friendship
But Friendship never fades...
Is my heart so rusted against your golden embrace?

Dilapidated dormant dryness.

Where is the alchemist of my heart!
The resurrector of my spiritual death!

~^~^~^~^~^~^~

Words.

When you realize your words have spoken too much
Your inner reservoir for sincerity diminishes
And your words become those same old cliches, proverbs,
emptiness.. ensues
Be stingy with your words
There will come a time when you can speak no longer
Your words will become plastic
Suffocated-fabricated

Be plentiful with silence
and a clean heart.
The depth of silence will flood the empty vessel that words have rendered you

But how can you be silent!
They push you to say too much!
Too often.
And you forget who you were becoming.

It is no longer a matter of self-righteousness
That was yesterday's song. dream. nightmare.
Today: uncertainty
Self-doubt
Anxiety about what the future beholds her
and lack of trust in He who Controls her Destiny.

~*~*~

9/06

In the name of Allah...

They say it's all about your heart
But when your heart truly accepts something
There's no way it can escape bodily expression
If the body dodges the heart,
Acceptance was fickle.
The whole is undermined so that
Mere fragments pollute the already scattered landscape.

They say it's all about your actions
But how can action be deemed as such
When the actor is unwilling and only lips agreement?
Rebellious lips only utter broken words
Half hearted promises render unreal action
Real is in the sincere
and sincerity lies in the heart.

Who hasn't raved on about the heart!
Who hasn't placed her hands on her chest and tried to understand
Herself.
How treacherous it must be
How utterly wretched
to have never had a tete-a-tete
With the only essence that keeps life beating within us
Harmony, coherence and an intertwined maze of awe
How could you have refused to touch yourself?

Spring 2006

Summer 2006 (couldn't figure out how to make a separate post for it without disrupting the entire pattern..)

“I could sit like this forever, I tell myself. There’s this uncanny enchantment taking siege of my otherwise restless frame, as I struggle to grasp words worthy of conveying the depth to which I wish I could express myself and somehow BECOME.
Hypnotic. Mesmerizing. Life has intoxicated me”

~

May 22, 2006
I refuse to set the rules
Much less live by them
Do I like this lack of commitment?
I do as I please and you
Can go your way
But I thought my words weighed more than just those
Sayings of those old folks in those big books
I thought they meant something
I thought I meant something
You want purpose and meaning
And so I talk
I talk till I only hear echoes from afar
I lost my voice somewhere
I hope you caught it for me
Resurrected a dying light
Or a dim candle even
Darkness towers in the distance
Approaching
Closer and fainter
Fainter and brighter - I am walking towards it
This purgatory of selfhood is
Worse than a life adorned with welcome materialism

~

April 5, 2006
Bismillah arRahman arRahim
There comes a point where reading the words of another and internalizing their borrowed meaning ceases to serve any substantial purpose. It starts out as a pebble, a stone, a boulder and finally, before you know it, your whole heart's gone hard and you're left lifeless. What happens is that at some point along the way, you stop making the connection between words and the meaning behind them. For every word speaks higher than itself. It conveys a twofold meaning the resonates within us and allows us to react to it by virtue of the substance of the words and the feelings that it arouses within us. Somewhere along the way though, even if certain words are cherished, others loudly lauded, their impact is almost flushed down a ruthless toilet. Why the crude terminology? Well really, when one isn't even moved by the most beautiful forms of communcation and language impregnated with symbols that ought to stir us to go out and do something or be someone, then clearly something is missing. And again, as my mom says, "you can't clap with one hand" -- its a two-way affect. Of course you can't say that "both the words and I am equally at fault". The words don't have a soul of their own until we recognize the soul behind their transient echoes and connect it with our own hidden, rusty sense of selfhood. But that must mean that somehow the sense of selfhood that was on a path of conscious development -- unhindered by the pebbles and boulders that stubbornly glared as you just as confidently strolled by -- that selfhood went off track. Unlike your past, when there wasn't even a track, there was merely cloud upon thick cloud that refused to hold you up. Since then, a track has at least been erected and maintained. Now, it is either changing directions or it has been tampered with. Or, its broken.

Mend yourself.


April 5, 2006
Every year for the past two years it seems as though I reach this routine stagnance. I just freeze, like a worn out ice cube tired of ingesting the cold air around it. Or even a flame, tired of being consumed by the endless waves of fire melting the very frame that once held each distinct flame on its own...at least in my imagination. And then I always wonder, is this self-induced, or is it above and beyond my control? And I always reply to myself: naturally, it is both. Why do I even bother succumbing to the same rather numb state of mind, rather glazed sense of self repetitively? It's like a 5 inch lazer wall has laid seige over my entire physical body and the profound awareness of life no longer penetrates through. At least not as much as it did during those good old natural highs. And again, what's difficult in characterizing this particular state of mind is that it isn't mercilessly inundated with woe upon woe and heartbreak upon calamity. I am no hamlet, no starstruck lover. I'm relatively at peace, or at least pleasantly holding on to the well earned internal peace of the past. Although, its gnawing against my very fabric when it initially whispers, whimpers and eventually starts screaming in pain, "it isn't enough! it isn't enough!" I ought to do more. I need to do more. Some revolutionary change of mind, heart, body and soul and of course it isn't happening over night. And is it even happening? Am I scared? I wonder. And what is this 'it' that I so casually refer to. This 'it' to which I give the right to define the very basis of my existence, and the fuel that will further serve to push me down this road called life. I wonder.

March 30, 2006
i find it funny how everything other than us, everyone other than us, every thought other than our own, every belief other than our own, every way of life other than our own becomes an outlet for us to somehow comfort ourselves in our own alleged superiority. our lack of understanding, our lack of knowledge, lack of emphathy, sympathy, emotion and depth is something we barely care to rectify instead.

Good old quotes

A few of my favorites...

From Kashf al Mahjub
“When Moses conversed with God, he asked, “Lord, where shall I seek You?” God answered, “Among the brokenhearted.” Moses continued, “But, Lord, no heart could be more despairing than mine.” And God replied, “Then I am where you are.”

~

Nasr, naturally ;)
"Reason, once divorced from the guiding light of the intellect, can at best confirm the existence of the noumena, of the reality of the essence of things. But reason alone cannot know the essence itself. The knowledge that is essential is one that is ultimately based on the identity of the knower and the known, on the known being consumed by the fire of knowledge itself"

"To claim to know the human psyche without the aid of the Spirit and to claim a finality for this knowledge as 'truly scientific', independent of any other form of knowledge, cannot but result in the very impasse which in fact the modern world faces today. It can only end in a truncated and incomplete, not to say outright erroneous, 'science of man', which is asked to play a role for which it has no competence. Such a science is most often more dangerous than ignorance pure and simple, for there is nothing more dangerous than simple ignorance except an ignorance which has pretensions to being knowledge and wisdom"

Khalil Gibran
'Be very careful
what you set your heart upon,
for you will surely have it.'

Outlandish:
"I'm out to fight the devil but never fought myself
Read a thousand books but never read myself
My souls starving it needs to be fed lord I need your help
Hell with the devil my biggest enemy's myself"

Charles Gai Eaton (from Islam and the Destiny of Man)
"...our natural feelings must never be taken out of their proper sphere and elevated to the rank of philosophical principles. The fact that I am sad does not mean that the world is out of kilter, the fact that I have been hurt does not mean that God is unjust, and the fact that my personal life may have been darkened by tragedy does not mean that no sun shines upon creation. It is when emotion is transposed to a different dimension that we have a 'problem of suffering' and this, precisely, is what has happened in our time"

2pac
It's time for us as a people to start makin' some changes. Let's change the way we eat, let's change the way we live and let's change the way we treat each other. You see the old way wasn't working so it's on us to do what we gotta do to survive.

Attar (from Conference of the Birds)
"And he who does not seek is like a wall, Dead, blank and bland, no living man at all; He is, God pardon me, a walking skin, A picture with no life or soul within. If you discover in your quest a jewel, Do not, like some delighted doting fool. Gloat over it - search on, you're not its slave; It is not treasures by the way you crave. To make an idol of the gems you find Is to be drunk, to cloud the searching mind-- At this first glass your soul should not submit; Seek out the wine-press of the infinite."

Imam Ghazali, my hero. despite my-issues-with-his-issues-with-women
"To prove that it is not men who make religion true,
we must prove that religion can make men true"

Ibn al-Arabi:
"Whoever binds his faith exclusively on demonstrative proofs and deductive arguments, builds a faith on which it is impossible to rely. For he is affected by the negativities of constant objections. Certainty, (al-yaqin) does not derive from the evidences of the mind but pours out from the depths of the heart"

Rumi
"Leave all worries behind and make your heart totally pure, like the face of a mirror with no image or design. Once your heart is cleansed of all images, it will contain them all.."

"look at spirit
how it fuses with earth
giving it new life
why are you so busy
with this or that or good or bad
pay attention to how things blend
why talk about all
the known and the unknown
see how the unknown merges into the known
why think seperately
of this life and the next
when one is born from the last
look at your heart and tongue
one feels but deaf and dumb
the other speaks in words and signs
look at water and fire
earth and wind
enemies and friends all at once
the wolf and the lamb
the lion and the deer
far away yet together
look at the unity of this
spring and winter
manifested in the equinox
you too must mingle my friends
since the earth and the sky
are mingled just for you and me
be like sugarcane
sweet yet silent
don't get mixed up with bitter words
my beloved grows
right out of my own heart
how much more union can there be"

Seek "Satisfaction (rida) with God and independence of mankind."
-abu hazim al-madani

Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore has some AWESOME poetry by the way... here's a little example:
this is from his poem called "The Mystery of Someone Sleeping"

.."but sleepers their faces tell no story unless
scarred
they are in a bliss they maybe don't
feel when awakre they're in
God's hands as if
cradled there
ebbing and flowing
puppeted by their sleepy breathing
and I wondered at what the
sleeping face of Cleopatra must've looked like
or sleeping Jesus
all extroverted moonlight
beauty in its essence molding
a perfect face from inside
even these faces actaully beautiful and as if
carved from within..."

Spring/Fall 2005

10/05

We all go to the grave
Of course, not by accident
And everything ends
Not because I finished it
Or because you made it so that
There came an ending to
My story
or Yours

Its all the same
Whether you like that or not
The leaves are gonna grow and regrow on
That tree the rings are gonna increase
In strength the roots will anchor
Anchor underneath the soil
Will be the death of us all.

An inevitable return
Of course life means something more
More than you dare imagine
Why does that thought cause you discomfort?

I see you looking at your watch
Time’s all the same
Everywhere and every generation.
It’s you who changes and acts and reacts

Detract.

I cry because I want to know my Creator
I cry because I wish I knew why
I wish I understood
But I’m too weak to look at

My Own Reflection

The Creator of all that is within and
Without me
What am I and how Great are You!
And you let me breathe.
Every day a chance to baptize
To baptize and become
A something who knows not herself
And sees everything but sight.

~

A glance into my old mindset. Thank GOD for epiphanies. for ups and downs. happiness and sorrow. and thank God for moving on. for being able to move on. I hope.

~

4/7/2005
A day...

"You come into this world thinking you can live, you wake up every morning and go to class. After classes are done for the day you attend your ritualistic meetings and pat yourself on the back for indulging in the workings of the world.
Meetings and such end, and you meet your friends for a casual, kickin-it-back dinner. With a materially satisfied abdomen you head off to your room or the library - depending on whichever location provides more comfort for the pursuit of academia. Distracted by the utter boredum flowing from the pages by which your eyes have been seiged, you welcome Distractions and jump up every time an even remotely familiar being floats by. The sun set a while ago and it's way past the first awakening.
You head back to your room, or if you were already there, you step outside your room and look around to see with whom you might share the Woes of the Day, the Walkings of a Moment, the Highlights of a Twenty Four Hour Heartbeat.
You're talking to them but they don't hear you. They hear you but they aren't listening. They're listening but they aren't feeling. They're feeling but they aren't understanding. They just aren't. And you aren't either. So you turn around - or at least your mind makes that 180 degree turn and steps back inside your room. A small, light, levitated step towards the confinements of infinitely vague introspection. Something you'd rather do without. At least for one day. Please spare yourself. Let yourself spare yourself -- lose yourself in the moment just this once. One moment too soon?"

^*^*^
3/10

My mortal wants, desires have resigned
to my feeble will
Satan mocks me.
And goodness suffocates my fickle virtue
Choking out the venom within
black, thick and damp.
Burning against my skin,
Down my bones.
Through my veins-
Into my heart.
Caustic heart
Succumbing my emotions to
Vileness
The essence of what once was
or of what I thought it could be
Gone
Down a narrow, infinte vacumn
A vacumn so many others have entered
Hoping we are not barred therein
Forever

But the vacumn only crystalizes icicles
Absolute Zero
Shivers of empty, numb, hellish
Feeling
Lessnes
a cadaver.
a stone.

~

4/13/05

I looked at him blankly
I looked through him softly
My eyes rolled at me
And I looked back at myself
"What's gotten into you"
Rather, what has left?
But I looked beyond him again
And beyond the finite reality
Upon which I now levitate

A weighty heart
Ought to anchor to immeasurable depths
Under oceans and earths of abuse
And misuse
Unfounded exploitation
An imperialist's dream
And yet I'm floating
In heretical levity
And the wind is blowing
Blowing away particles of sense
They too are gone now

So I look at him
Though he has been looking at me
Looking through me,
Beyond me

Yet neither of us know.

I see him floating
A mutual denunciation of gravity

~

April, 2005
Redefinition
Reconstruction
striking a hammer down the cement mold
shattering a finite certainty to pieces
wisps of dust carrying broken understandings
Disappear, leaving nothing behind
Nothing yet something
A vision, a reality
A truth to learn from
A truth that invites novel thought
Redefinition, reconstruction
This time, with wisps of used understanding
We fancy calling it wisdom
Others mock it as a mistake
But life isn't a mistake
It is a mold that has to be broken, ultimately reshaped, perhaps shattered again.
And again.
Until the day we die.

~
(less of a poem, more of a reflection)
2/17/05

Relationships come and go
People move on and connections that were
once embedded in the core of
human interaction slip away
People come and go.
Some leave an irreplacable trace of
raw beauty with the footsteps they etchned
in one's soul
Others cause one blatant harm.
In all mortal endeavors involving
interaction with other humans,
an element of risk portends its eerie glow.
Chance tempts one into novel spontaneity
Or even intricate commitment

Trust makes a mockery of us all

One can leave any relationship with the
forced reassurance of knowing oneself better
as a result of establishing that connection.
Or one can withdraw from that same relationship
knowing that one had, in essence, been in a trap.

Mortality, the feebles woes of human feeling,
the essence of creative interaction -- to what end?

In the end, all that matters is not
on the surface of man's decadence.
It is not about fables of emotional growth
at the risk of the paramount of one's existence: FAITH.

Broken

3/20/05
Broken.
The sun shouldn’t shine upon me
Warm me, nourish me
Burn the filth within
The soft breeze shouldn’t touch me
Gently, delicately
Only to adulterate its green virginity.
The sun comes and goes
Teases me behind evanescent clouds
And I shiver
Until it comes out again
This time a little warmer
The wind a little harsher
Begging her to return
Nature is down on its knees
Asking the criminal, the felon,
The rapist
To strike a bargain for innocence
The innate Goodness.
The trees are bowing, bending in despair
The wind is howling in anguish
The sun is on fire
And so is her heart.
When will she return.

A walk down memory lane...

Moments out of the past year.... (oldest entry at the bottom)

June, 2005
** One of my favorites by Ibn al-Arabi***

" On our way, I found a man living in a marsh in a place covered with rushes. I learned that he had lived there for thirty years in seclusion. I stayed with him for three days. He prayed day and night and did strange things. Every morning he went fishing and caught three fish, One he would let go, one was his meal for the whole day, and one he gave to the poor.
As I was about to leave. he asked me where I was going. I told him, "To Egypt." Tears came to his eyes. "Oh!" he said, "My beloved master, my Shaikh, is in Egypt. Please go to him and give him my respects and greetings. Ask him to advise me what to do with myself in this world."
I was amazed. That man had abandoned this world and the worldly. It seemed to me that he did not need any advice about it.
When I went to Egypt, I found this Shaikh living in a palace in complete luxury and wealth. He appeared to be nothing more than a man of the world. When I told him the request of his dervish in Tunis he said, "Go and tell him that he should take the love of this world out of his heart." This also amazed me, coming from him.
On my return to Tunis I found the secluded fisherman and told him what his master had said. He shed tears of blood. "Woe is me! For thirty years I have separated myself from the world and spent my time in worship, but my heart still belongs to the world! While my master lives within the riches of this world, he hasn't a drop of it in his heart, neither its love nor its worries. O Muhyiddun, that is the difference between him and me!"
What the Seeker Needs
Ibn al-Arabi

Beautifully demonstrates a striking human weakness. Something we love to resort to whenever we are unable to get rid of something either outside or within ourselves. We try to forbid ourselves from it, demonize it without ever truly understanding it, we try to distance ourselves from it to an unhealthy extreme. This, with the mocking result of never moving on at all. In fact, being more rooted in the same predicament than ever before. A trivial example. Let us say that I struggle with stage fright. Whenever I go on stage I end up making the same mistakes, I either speak too fast or the wrong words come out of my mouth and I aggravate an otherwise normal situation. Finally, I quit drama altogether and move on to the Sciences. I've convinced myself that there's actually something wrong with acting itself, because it always elicits such reactions from me! Surely, acting itself must be flawed. A fallacy in causation. I feel as though I have overcome my weakness, but the idea of not ever being good at drama continues to bother me. Instead of practicing and perhaps approaching drama as something other-than-an-enemy, something not to be afraid of or demonized, I approach it with this very mindset once again and sure enough, fall into the same trap. My emotions were never tamed, my mindset never sought to reconsider its outlooks. It's a viscious cycle and only I am to blame.

***

May, 2005
I am sick of superficiality, the finite - fleeting, Flood of the Ephemeral that we all seem to be drowning in. I need the natural, the truth, the beautiful Truth. I need those walks alone with the trees and the grass. Those are two things I love. The life of their greenery gives life to my vision. That fades away around mechanical interactions of any given day otherwise. Human relationships are almost sacred, they have this divine beauty that one can either choose to desecrate or consecrate. Embrace or decry. Nature is just great. The idea is to burrow through the smog of the artificial, to use that lemon juice to wipe away the rust. Beneath the rust is the natural in us all. That natural, shining beauty that is suffering, groaning under the smoke. Under that dark - charmingly dark - velvet.