Month: March 2012

  • Looking for Inspiration

    I once walked into a yard that sold raw materials like natural stone and treated timber that I was looking at for a DIY project I had feeble intentions of building. When the owner approached me, I simply smiled and said, “I’m just looking for inspiration.” He laughed and walked away. I often set out wanting to do something, having an idea, or sometimes just a concept in my head, and then letting it dwell in the back of my mind waiting for inspiration to strike. Sometimes, it comes from nowhere, but recently, it hardly comes at all.

    I’ve enjoyed only bursts of energy and enthusiasm recently, with the days in between being real challenges. This afternoon I set back and wondered how many others become complacent about their misery by convincing themselves that if anyone else had been contending with what they have to deal with, they’d fall to pieces or kill themselves. I’m guilty of the same self-destructive smugness. I look at the problems of a teenager reeling from the betrayal of lustful love threatening never to love again, and wanting to destroy herself and everyone in the process, and I smile. That same smug smile that leads to me forgetting how relative everything is. Just because I’ve endured more in quantity doesn’t imply that the intensity of my agony was any greater than hers. 

    But I need this insensitive comparison to make myself feel better about my own self-loathing. I sway from being convinced that I deserve nothing better to knowing that I’m just too amazing to be discovered by mediocre meddlers. But that’s really what many people are. Meddlers. They meddle in various aspects of their lives, looking for inspiration, but never committing to anything because they’re waiting for someone to appreciate them first. The excess we commit in our natural disposition as social beings is in our penchant for wanting to feel loved before we love, being appreciated before we express gratitude, or receiving before we consider giving. 

    I heard someone say today that a veil exists between this world and heaven. I think that our struggles, our principled endeavours and our consistent striving towards our noble ambitions is what tears away at that veil. If you don’t believe in heaven, then consider that veil to be all that prevents you from achieving your utopian ideals, whatever they may be. My search for inspiration will never abate. But it will be more joyous if accompanied by one that cools my eyes, but warms my spirit. So I wait patiently, living with conviction, but no expectations, only hope that some day soon my garment will arrive in all her splendour to finally caress the dreams I so painstakingly nurture to keep the jaded me at bay.

  • Confused Thoughts…Strange Experiences

    A long many years ago I was approached by an old man that I didn’t know. It was after Isha salaah at a mosque that I didn’t frequent very often since it was outside of my neighbourhood. I must have been around 18 or 19 at the most at the time. Anyway, this man started chatting to me about a Shaykh at a local mosque not far from where we were, and he kept insisting that I should go there to become a mureed. I didn’t know what a mureed was, but I assumed it was a student or something. I disagreed with the concept and just nodded my head respectfully without any intention of following through.

    Many years before that, I was playing in our garden when I was still a child, and I saw a very old man with a thick white beard, very long, enter our yard. I don’t recall him talking to me, and I don’t recall anyone else being around either, but the lingering memory of that experience was a pile of white hair from his beard that was trimmed at the tap in our front garden. It just lay there almost dissolving away in the running water without anyone making a fuss of it. He disappeared. It never made sense, and still doesn’t.

    I once had a dream of strange over-sized chandeliers threatening to fall on me when I was trying to cross a road to get to my aunt’s house. I was scared. I kept dodging the path of the chandeliers that seemed to move along cables that my aunt controlled with some gadget she had in her hand. All this took place close to a farm town of which I have many fond memories from my childhood years. I don’t recall ever knowing the outcome of that dream. I was a child when I had that dream, but the imagery is still very vivid. Many years later, after I started working, I went to a local mosque close to where I worked, and saw chandeliers of almost exactly the same design suspended from a triple volume ceiling. I could never stop staring at those chandeliers whenever I visited that mosque over the years that I worked in that area. 

    Recently, I made acquaintance with some very intriguing personalities. The entire mureed issue came up again. I was exposed to some unfortunate experiences, and in seeking assistance to overcome it, I discovered that I could determine many interesting facts behind the incidents without having any real knowledge about them. A recognised and respected local Amil (one who is recognised as being gifted to be in touch with the spiritual world with which ‘normal’ people are unable to interact and who has the knowledge and ability to rid one of Jinn, Sihr, etc.) shared his insights with me about the conditions around my situation, and nothing he told me was news to me. This happened again with someone else. On both occasions, I shrugged off the suggestions that I apparently have a gift that puts me in touch with these unspoken facts, for lack of a better phrase.  

    I always went through life believing that my instinct about others was based on my acute sense of observation, which I honestly believed was a result of my introverted nature that allows me to recede into the shadows while observing the behaviours of others. I thought that this allowed me insight into the human psyche that most are too distracted to notice. I’m not so sure that this is the reason any more. 

    By the way, all my ‘instincts’ about the people around me in those trying circumstances that I experienced proved to be accurate either through the uncovering of evidence that confirmed it, or through actual admissions on the part of those that I believed were implicated in the under-handed dealings. So once again, I’m faced with the choice of choosing to be a mureed, which I am still not comfortable with, or potentially exposing myself to harm (if any of the research I’ve done is anything to go by) by not aligning with a shaykh/scholar, usually of the Sufi path. 

    I’m opposed to excessive interpretations of anything, regardless of madhab or sect or whatever. So the same prevents me from pledging allegiance to a specific shaykh in my endeavour to acquire more knowledge about this path that I’m on. But part of this aversion to excess is my inclination not to want to dismiss everything about any group just because some of their practices are questionable. This is a confusing space that I’m in, but I feel as if I’m on the brink of a spiritual journey that could greatly influence the rest of my life. This is truly a ramble, and isn’t nearly as cathartic as I hoped it would be. (I hate that word, ‘cathartic’. It sounds so superficial!).

    That there is a significant amount of mysticism entangled in Islamic knowledge is of no doubt. The advices in numerous ahadith to recite various verses or names of Allah towards healing people through unconventional means proves that there is merit in this way that I am being exposed to. The challenge is trying to determine how much of that skill is blameworthy as taught by the Jinn to man, versus how much of it can be used to benefit man. This is all very confusing. May Allah guide me in this troubled time towards the best outcome, Insha-Allah.

  • Some Muslims on Tumblr…Disappointing :'(

    I’ve found, disappointingly so, that many of my fellow Muslim bloggers have turned out to be insincere and arrogant. Especially many of those that are outwardly and in-your-face religiously pious. I genuinely try to engage with many of them in a meaningful manner so that we can really dissect some important issues and perhaps expose a different perspective on things, but instead, the moment I go against the norm and question sacredly-held scholars, I’m dismissed or just totally ignored.

    On the contrary, I’ve found that my engagements with non-Muslims are often more sincere since they would often extend themselves to really heartily debate an issue, and only after some interesting exchanges would we tend to agree to disagree, or arrive at a point of understanding. And this is on contentious issues like atheism versus theism, morality, homosexuality, premarital relationships, religion, politics and the like.

    Unfortunately we lack maturity needed to engage meaningfully amongst Muslims, because every debate is hinged around a single focal point. i.e. You’re either in agreement with my scholar, or you’re a deviant. This is disheartening, because a few months ago I made a decision to try to engage more with Muslims on Tumblr, and instead of finding solace and familiarity, I found bickering and condescension.

    Really sad state. 🙁