The Tweeter Ego and the Nuclear Ego.... go KABOOM!

182. Body Language

The ego does not need words

To express itself;

Gesticulations, shrugs

And miniscule eye movements

Are enough to express

A compendium of emotion

That your mouth keeps secret.

So guard your limbs and eyes

As well as your lips and tongue!

…………………………….

THE TWITTER EGO. Anger, annoyance, irritation, despair and all the other off-springs of our ego, need not our mouths to express them. Sometimes it is the slightest shrug or the smallest rolling of the eyes that can speak volumes on behalf of our ego. This prose was written back in 2004, before Facebook (unless of course you were then in an Ivy League University) and Tweeter. Now with the advent of the online social networks, our rampant ego has found fresh ground to conquer and spread its dismay. We have read the most shocking rants and tirades on Twitter and Facebook already, so it is now nothing new. People are shooting out flaming Tweets and posting angry comments on Facebook walls… and for what? It serves nothing but to feed the human ego that tells us we are always right, and someone else is the wrong one.

THE NUCLEAR EGO. A couple of days back in the posting entitled God, Adab, Ego and the Nuclear Reactor of Love (Click Here), I wrote – “Don’t let our ego into the nuclear reactor of love. It can start a chain reaction that will annihilate our most cherished hopes…” I am full of this blinding-flash-of-the-obvious sort of wisdom. But recently I found an amazing video (by Japanese artist, Isao Hashimoto) which faithfully recorded via time-lapse animation ALL nuclear explosions from the first experimental atomic bomb in Los Alamos, followed by the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, right to Pakistan’s first bomb in 1998. The entry of countries into the Nuclear Club is seen in the flags depicted and each atomic flash is coloured according to the country doing the exploding. It starts slowly from the 1940s into the 1950s, but from the 1960s onwards things start to get exhilarating (in a morbid kinda way), as colourful explosions start to flash all around the globe. After a while it starts to look and sound like a deranged pinball machine. Here’s the video… Play it with the volume loud. 

May God protect all mankind from the worst excesses of the human ego- by politicians and military leaders acting under some misguided sense of patriotism and national self interests. They know not what they are doing, and what they are risking... May God guide them to the right path to abolish and destroy all nuclear and bio-chemical WMDs.

Thank you for dropping in, sunshine. Let’s have a thoughtful day.

wa min Allah at-taufiq

Hate has no place in Islam

Love will show the Way

Whirling and Loving in the Last Quarter of Time

After we perished, we returned and we whirled

We perished, did we not?

When life appeared unfair and

Sadness fell like rain from the heavens

Leaving puddles of sorrow all around us.
Friends came visiting to wish us well,
Unknowing that they were consoling
An empty shell.

We died, did we not?

When hateful thoughts and bombs left

In buses, trains, marketplaces and falling from the sky

Took away our children, our fathers and mothers,

Our life reflected in the mirrors of our beloved,

Now cracked, broken and buried

In the meadow and sand dunes of our pain,

While orphans and widows turn to us crying, "Why?"

We were lost, were we not?

No humour amused us,

No song calmed us,

No balm soothed us.

We were simply blown away, were we not?

By the rising storm from the east,

By the despairing horde from the south,

By the lords of the north and west,

Where has gone the light of the universe?

Where is the orphan from the desert?

Where is the Moon above Medina?

Where is Layla and her Majnun?

From this despair we return;
We are now whirling,
We are now loving,

Expelling the death of hope,

Turning aside the defeat of humanity,

Ending the famine of mercy,

Watering the drought of love,

We are struggling, are we not?

We are asking, ‘Forgive us’

We are pleading “Do not forsake us, o' Lord’

We are begging, 'This way that You love us,

Do not ever stop...'

How needful are we for You,

Are we not?

O' God?

Sinner. Do not worry, sunshine. If I could whirl, I would not write. If I was so busy 'being good' I would not spend so much time in the grubby confines of the sinners' almanac. Things are difficult, but perhaps things were never so easy to begin with.

Still around. It is coming to the end of 2011, and soon the Christians will celebrate Christmas, and later in 2012, it shall be the turn of the Chinese to celebrate their new year. Thank you for still being around, my friends. Thank you for sticking with it, for rising up however fate has put you down, for facing the big and small adversities of your life with patience and submission.

End of Time. People worry about the end of time, and there are pundits out there whose sole job is to chronicle the passing of Armageddon's milestones. I do not have the talent nor the sheer chutzpah for that. My job is only to write and remind myself how beautiful this world is, how it can still be preserved and how there exist still millions upon millions of people out there, whom without funfair or grand gestures continue to live their days, making beautiful changes, and sparking a beautiful light in the lives of those whom they touch.

I appreciate all that you are, and all that you are trying to be. God bless.

wa min Allah at-taufiq

Hate has no place in Islam

Love will show the Way

The One-Eyed King behind his Besieged Walls of Deceit and Conceit - Prose of Ramadhan Part 22

31. Affections of the Master II (a reappraisal)

There are those who would preach,

That choices have no role

In the Realm of Love.

But it does,

And at many times,

Your choice magnifies Love.

For have you not contemplated,

That when the Lord created us,

He too, chose.

My son Mikhail has his entire life ahead of him, while statistically I have passed more than half of mine. In the course of his life Mika shall have an ocean of choices to make. To weigh as best as he can, in the circumstances that he shall find himself in, which path to take, which door to open and which destination to choose. 

It is my earnest hope, that he shall always choose to magnify Love. To not be quelled and cowed by the illusion of our limitations. To not be bogged down by the baggage of regret and fear. To put faith in his heart and act upon his good conscience. And that perhaps, in the course of his mortal time, to unearth someone who shall always recall him to the Lord of Mercy and Compassion, as I have found in my son and his hypnotic glances.

If it is fated that I am to pass on earlier, I hope he shall remember his father's hopes. And if you bump into him on the street, or sitting next to you in the bus, tell Mika what I wished for him. So that he knows that his father is never truly gone.

When we act upon hate, envy, hubris and anger, we lose our choice to our manifested ego. It is our egos that choose, not us. It is only when we elect to do good, to be on the side of God that we retain our honoured gift from the Lord. To choose to be the gentle friend, the firm support to all humanity, as chevaliers in dowry to the court of Fatima az-Zahra the Renowned. The conspiracy theorists talk of the one-eyed king in the end of time and his vast black dominion. But in my writ, we are besieging the dark lord behind the walls of his conceit and deceit. He hasn't a snowball's chance in hell. Into the breach, my friends!

God bless you on this early hours of a Sunday morning in Ramadhan 2011.

wa min Allah at-taufiq

Let the Mounts of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse Starve. Facing the One True Conspiracy - The Human Ego

Quite a few people bump into this almanac because they googled up ‘sword ali zulfiqar’. And it is good because the Muslims (and non-Muslims, come to think about it) should always learn more about Muslim lore. There are also quite a few hits arising from search words like ‘dajjal’, ‘antichrist’, ‘Obama’ and of course, the inevitable favourite - ‘jihad’.

CONSPIRACIES. This obsession however, with the so-called conspiracies and grand designs of 'the Bad Guys' in coming to the end of time is worrying. Simply because a large chunk of what is out here in the worldwideweb is rubbish. The internet casts the illusion of knowledge. It builds a façade of information in the absence of real life experience. Like the television, and religion to a big segment of humanity, the cyberworld has become an opium of the masses. A disinformation superhighway, and the car crashes and wrecks are piling up, my friends.

THE HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE. If you want to look for anti-Christian sites, they are all here. If you want to drown in a sea of hate for the Muslims, they are here. If you desire to read about the anti-Israeli sites, you need only press a button. If you want to bask in the glory of your faith, ideology or country – it is all here, splendid in their sanctimonious and arrogant postures. Hate, fear, despair, envy and hubris – all these Horsemen of the Apocalypse, they are all here. And the tragic thing is these websites or Facebook pages all portray themselves as being the saviour. The warner. The superhero that is warning humanity of the impending doom and how the problem is never ever ‘us’ but always ‘them’ and ‘the others’. THE EGO. Things never change. From the year dot, mankind has been troubled by the most cunning and wily adversary. And no, I am not talking about Azazil the Accursed (you can call him Satan or Bezelbub or Iblis or Mephisto). My prying mind is addressing that thing which all of mankind carries in their pocket. Our ego. And I do not wish to talk to your ego. I wish to talk to you. Can you tell the difference?

192. An Egologue II
Ego! These words are not for you.
They are meant for that poor fool
You have bound and trampled
Under your cloven hooves.

THE ENEMY OF ALL. It is through the human ego that the very worst of our nature arises. Ego is the fodder that fuels the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It is from the ego that all our hate, fear, despair, envy and hubris manifests itself – in all things. Each second of the day, each moment of your life is an ego-moment, unless you are rightly guided and have the conviction of your conscience to overcome it. Even in Sufism, even in your highest aspiration to goodness and servanthood to God, whether you are a Hindu priest, a Jewish Rabbi or a Christian Pastor – your ego will seek to misguide you. For a Muslim, especially those dutiful aspirants of the Tariqah order, shelter under the protection of the Master is no guarantee of safety from the ego.

13. Beware
Even the ego
Will love the Shaykh,
But for its own
Selfish reasons.

THE CUNNING OF THE EGO. It is easy for us to grasp upon the big conspiracies to validate our smallness in the face of the vast cosmos. The bigger the Masonic conspiracy, the bigger the Illuminati plans, the bigger our egos grow to meet our so-called enemies. Such is the delicate test which this life has to offer us. Even when we think we are learning, when we are acquiring knowledge, we are in truth only feeding the human ego – whose appetite has no limits. For the Masters of the Tariqah, what is more important? Is it the so-called devious establishment of the New World Order? Or is it about how you brush your teeth or button up your shirt? You will be surprised by the answer.

THE HUMAN CONSCIENCE. The only hope that mankind has rests within them too, it is the human conscience. Just like the ego. But our ego, encouraged by the what’s-in-it-for-me generation and mass consumerism has grown to such proportions that we have become confused where we begin and our egos end. Instead of our ego being submissive to our conscience, it is our conscience that has adapted to fight a guerrilla war against our dominant ego. But thank God – the Conscience is winning. Indeed, the Conscience must win. Otherwise, the future will be black for our children and grandchildren.

157. Dear Man-Ego
You think you are on your own,
You think you will have it all your way.
But your soul, your secret name
That common man call conscience,
Is already planning his next trespass.

So do not be fooled, sunshine. Do not take part in the mass hysteria of despair, crusade and jihad which is being fanned by the extreme religious and economic zealots on one hand, and the mass media on the other hand. It is all lies. It is all a pack of lies.

Today, the Sun is still shining. And I have just sent my son to school. Shortly I will be going to work. And it is my prayer, that I will be guided in all that I do by my conscience. For this is what my Prophet Muhammad is teaching. Religion of the Conscience, of which Love is the Highest Law.
LET THEIR HORSES STARVE. I offer my hand, though it is sinful. I offer my eyes, though it has seen many bad things. I offer my heart though it is unpolished, to you. You must make a difference in this world. You are the hope on which all Creation rests. So do good in the name of Love, God, Beauty, and in the very best etiquette of Servanthood. Even if it is simply brushing your teeth or buttoning up your shirt. Your ego will hate you for being concerned and taking pleasure in such mundane things. And that is the best way to take away the fodder from the black stallions of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Let them starve, I say.

Have a conscionable day, pet.

Pax Taufiqa.

Jesus, the Mahdi, Dajjal aka AntiChrist, 4 Golden Rules of Interpretation pre Armageddon and The Camel Saloon (Whew!)

(If caption unreadable please click on picture)
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THE IMAM MAHDI (or simply the Mahdi) is a personality foretold by the Prophet to be born in the future, to revive the truest form of faith for all mankind. How the Mahdi intends to do this, I do not know. There has been quite a few claimants to be the Mahdi since Muhammad prophesied his coming. According to such Muslim lore as have come to the Sinner’s ear, together or perhaps soon after the arrival of the Mahdi, Jesus of the Immaculate Conception would descend from the heaven and they would greet each other to embark on their duties as the All-Loving God has anointed their hearts to bear.

THE DAJJAL / ANTICHRIST. Of their many tasks, (and I am sure they have a long list of Difficult Things To Do) the most publicized is their mission to battle and vanquish the Dajjal (the AntiChrist) and his armies.

THE FOUR GOLDEN RULES AT THE END OF TIMES. There are some specific details about Jesus, the Mahdi and the AntiChrist being expressed by both the wise and the ignorant – since I am neither, I shan’t say much – and I am sure you can find out for yourselves! I only beg you remember these 4 rules…

1. Things are always more complicated than it seems.

2. God always keeps the best secret for Himself until He Decides to spring the surprise on you.

3. If something smells like rat, then in all probability IT IS a rat. Even (or especially) in this anticipated Armageddon –End Times–Apocalyptic-Cosmic-Finale, things ought to be judge by the ultimate faith shared by all humanity, the religion of Love and your Conscience. Neither will betray you. So polish up your obedience to your Conscience, that you might actually listen to it when it REALLY matters.

4. Oh yes… perhaps the most important rule of it all – God loves you. And not just insignificant us, but every other man, woman and babe that dot this small chunk of space debris that we call Earth.

CAMEL SALOON AND THE SALOON OF INNER BEAUTY. Being a stranger (and sinner) in this parts, I was looking for Ms. Kitty’s establishment, but instead came across a Camel Saloon. A little bird perched on my pointy-hat turban and whispered… “Your poems are appalling. If you want to read REAL poetry, click to the Camel Saloon." As I am not the sort of sinner to ignore an imaginary bird, I have added the site to my blogroll. The worthy bartender at the Camel Saloon is Mr.Russel Streur. It is an active poetry blog site with really good poems for your consumption. Some whimsical, some serious but always heartfelt and real prose. As for me, I would call it The Saloon of Inner Beauty, simply because I believe that the word ‘camel’ comes from the Arabic word ‘jamal’ which simply means ‘beauty’ and can also mean 'the Inner Beauty of the Heart".

MY DEAR READERS, in this posting we (meaning the Mahdi, Jesus the Prince of Peace, a broken-back Camel and your humble sinner) are all congregating in the Saloon of Inner Beauty that you commonly call your heart. Is it still Happy Hour, Mr. Bartender?

Have a great Sabbath, mankind!

Pax Taufiqa.

IMPORTANT FOOTNOTE - (1) As far as I am aware, the Imam Mahdi has not authorised anyone to form his Army... so you guys (you know who you are) who are using his name for recruiting purposes for your political and often violent ends... I post to you one question - Who died and made YOU the Imam Mahdi? SO JUST DROP IT.