Envy, History and the New You

Envy and the 'New You'

Don't ask for a 'new you',

Ask God to help you reveal

Yourself as you truly are,

As God meant you to be,

Each morning, each day and night

This words come again and again to me, 

Harassed as I am in my despondency and envy.

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Envy. I don't talk much about it, much less write it. I guess you can call it a sister or brother to pride / the ego. It is certainly a close relation, because just like our ego, it comes from an overwhelming sense of entitlement. Envy is the poison in the well, the hemlock in Socrates's cup, the overcast cloud that ever threatens your daily happiness.

Envy makes prayers dull and dry, and knowledge a burden. It has the ability to change your best of intentions into a warped hateful thing. What can I do??

History and His Mercy

Grab your envy,

Hold it tightly to yourself,

Then... in the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful

Leap off the cliff of your hurt pride

Into God's Mercy Ocean.

And surrender to history.

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There is some solace, some balm for this poison. And I think you may find it reading and contemplating the history of the Prophet (s.a.w.s.) and his Companions and Saints. For in their history, we can reflect upon our own still-to-be-finished story and why that as long as we still have breath, we have opportunity. Well, it works for me... So I am going to read a good book today. 

wa min Allah at-taufiq

Hate and Envy has no place in Islam

Love will show the Way

The Lake of Despair - Come on... let's get out of here...

The Lake of Despair

There is a lake in the valley of your consciousness,

A black abyss of the blackest water rising from

Some dark lightless layer of water table many fathoms

Deep beneath the surface of the valley.

On some days, and perhaps many times in a day

Your spirit finds itself drawn there,

Denizens of the valley has a name for it,

Calling it the Lake of Despair,

And they often call on you,

"Do not go there! Do not drink there!

Do not swim there!"

But you do.

The depth of the water is unknown,

Being as deep as the deepest abyss of human hate,

The water is as black as the blackest ink of human pride,

The bitter taste of the water is as bitter

As the most bitter grape of the human ego,

And the lake itself is so wide that if you stand on one shore,

You shan't be able to see the shore on the other side,

For it is as wide as the widest state of human envy.

No one should come here...

But I find myself here,

And here was where I found you too...

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We get angry. We get mad. We get upset. All sorts of things (and people) can rub us the wrong way and frankly spoil our day. It can be a co-worker, a neighbour, brother, sister, our spouse and (may God forgive us) our own fathers and mothers.

Sorrow and anger is not the same thing, but it originates from the very same dark place in our consciousness (and subconsciousness), and both inevitably throws us into despair, the Lake of Despair, as where we found each other.

Come on, sunshine. You don't belong here. We don't belong here. Let's go back and shut our inner ears to the poisonous whispers of our ego, which wants to win all the time. This will lead us to anger, sorrow, disappointments and ultimately despair. Come on... let's get out of here. God and the Prophet(pbuh) is waiting. And Victory is Forever in the Divine Presence.

...sometimes, when I find beautiful spots here on earth, I wonder to myself...
Just how mind-blowingly amazing would the Divine Presence be? If it was not for God and the Prophet,
I cannot imagine anything or anyone else trouncing the beauty and mercy that God Himself
has already sprinkled here and there on this planet Earth. It is as if He is saying -
" If you think this is wonderful...Wait till you get here with Me and My beloved..."

wa min Allah at-taufiq

Hate has no place in Islam

Love will show the Way

God, Adab, Ego and the Nuclear Reactor of Love

9. Envy II

There are no doors for kings and knaves to reach Me,

All shall come to Me as servants, beggars and slaves,

But yea, How loved is the beggar,

When the Lover is Me!

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Lovers are fond of making the sweetest promises, and promising the most impossible of things to their beloved. And I don’t blame them. For if they are motivated by true love, everything suddenly appears possible, and nothing is impossible. They have inadvertently tapped into the Vein of Love that courses through every man, woman and child on this planet. It is a powerful stuff, this love. God made us all this way. Thank You, God.

But love, like all forms of energy, must be cultivated and nurtured. Love is not without its pre-conditions and post-conditions. Who was it that once said that there is a thin line drawn between love and hate? He (or she) is not far from the truth because Love is like a nuclear reactor. If planned and carefully prepared, love can energise entire nations. But if it is treated disrespectfully and callously, it can destroy whole cities. And this happens when the human ego seeps into love, tainting its sweet, generous and selfless nature – love is overthrown and something mimicking love is in place – the ego-driven need for validation, praise and security. This thing fools the smartest of doctors and the most beautiful of beauty queens… It has uprooted the reasoning of Kings and the modesty of Queens. It is a bad thing.

How Shaykh Raja Ashman adored his Maulana!
But that seemed to augment and not lessen his
ability to love everyone else, leaving each
person who crossed his path feeling 
special and hopeful. al fatihah.

That is where God comes in. In particular, our servanthood and adab (courtly courtesies and manners) towards God. Because from this very basic divine formula of love for the One God, flows all our love for other human beings and other creatures, and all sentient and non-sentient matters in this Universe. A selfish insular love for another person, be it a woman or man, is no love at all. Because everything is weighed and measured in totality, and that includes our friends, family, neighbours, workmates and acquaintances. To ignore or exclude anyone else but your boyfriend / girlfriend or husband / wife is a strange and lonely facsimile of love.

Of course there is a certain balance that you must seek to attain. After all, you have specific obligations and rights over your spouse that you do not have over anyone else (the unfortunate breach of this basic rule has led to many a broken marriage). And you owe a greater duty to your parents than to your friends. And this is the tricky bit, to find the perfect balance and equilibrium. I do not think it is easy, and I always hope to be rightly guided.

Hehehe. The fact is that we often are rightly guided. But our egos are also good at persuading us that it is in our best interest to follow its advice and take the opposite path. And there lies the road to trouble. So conclusion for today… Don’t let our ego into the nuclear reactor of love. It can start a chain reaction that will annihilate our most cherished hopes…

But don't worry (too much) about my nuclear euphemism, sunshine. After all, God is on the side of lovers and the broken-hearted. I bid you a lovely, lovely Sunday.

wa min Allah at-taufiq

Hate has no place in Islam

Love will show the Way

The Path is Unending, but this is a Good Month to Walk! - Prose of Ramadhan Part 31

I Won't Pause to Say Goodbye! (Ramadhan Verses #17)
O’ fear, you have long haunted me,
O’ failure, you have long dogged my steps,
O’ hate, you have long coloured by view,
O’ misery, you follow upon your brethren’s way
And often darken my day.

O’ envy, you tried to make me
An enemy of my brother,
O’ lust, you tried to make me
An exploiter of my sister,
O’ ego, you befriended all these bad things
And tried to convince me that
They are all my good friends.

O’ hubris, you have abused
My spiritual inheritance for
Your own corrupt ends!

Well, today I am going.
And I shan’t pause to say goodbye.
My Lord misses me and wants me home,
And there I shall be an apple
In my Beloved’s eye.

Two Sundays ago, on the eve of Ramadhan, this prose was kindly posted up at the Camel Saloon by its worthy barkeep, Russell. Whether it is Ramadhan or any other month, each moment in our life is a migration from bad to good, and good to better, and better to even better. It is especially so I guess for those who fast and keep to their good manners in this particularly holy month. 

The highest (and most difficult) fast is the fasting to refrain from acting upon our bad traits, most often motivated by our despicable ego. Physical fasting helps because it weakens our ego, enabling our better selves to come to the fore front. It is not the final act, nor is it a final step in the path towards servanthood. But it is an important step. So my clown is making her way out of one door, only to be confronted with the negative emotions and purposes at another level. So long as she is alive, her foes shall continue to bark and bite at her heels. But by God, in this perfectly beautiful Ramadhan, she will know with certainty that God and the Prophet is on her side, with the host of prophets, saints and angels rooting for her to succeed and overcome her lower instincts - a step closer to truly becoming an apple in the eye of the Beloved. I just thought that you should be aware of this too. That is why I wrote this posting.

So cheer up, sunshine, and never despair.

wa min Allah at-taufiq.

GOD'S GLUE FACTORY - Prose of Ramadhan Part 8

A couple of days earlier, I recorded a prose entitled ‘I won’t stay to say goodbye’ which was kindly hosted by the faithful barkeep of the Camel Saloon, Mr. Streur. Click Here to read the entire poem, but this is how it begins –

O’ fear, you have long haunted me,
O’ failure, you have long dogged my steps,
O’ hate, you have long coloured my view,
O’ misery, you follow upon your brethren’s way
And often darken my day…

ONE STEP. Fasting in Ramadhan is not just about restraining from eating and drinking from sunrise to sunset. At the centre of its purpose, it is also to restrain ourselves from acting upon the darker inclinations which often form part of the human psyche. Of course, better still to totally rid ourselves of this mortal encumbrances, but if you are not able to (and I find it tough), then at least, to will ourselves against acting upon such negative impulses is already a good change. One step at a time.

GOD'S GLUE FACTORY. As a certified sinner, I often fail. What else can I do but pick the pieces of my hopes and try to glue them back together again. Happily, I have a key to God’s Glue Factory, and He lets me have as much glue as I need to piece back together my broken promises and dreams. He is All-Wonderful that way.

Good night, my friends. Tomorrow beckons, and I hope to receive it with a smile on my face. Sweet dreams.

Pax Taufiqa.

Money, Good Friends, Closet Sufis and the Angelic Audience

Look at him! His impudence is really too much. Writing as if he can see us!

260. Selling my words

For two days already,

I have been selling my words,

For glasses of tea and packets of cigarettes.

I feel a little guilty,

But not enough

To feel shame.

What a brigand and a bum am I!

And how glad am I to be one!

For what we steal and speak of

Cause Angels themselves to pause and sit in!

Now if only I can find a way to charge

These Angelic audiences…

A FRIEND IN NEED. ME. I was a little broke for a couple of days. But I still like having my chai at the neighbourhood Indian Muslim restaurant. So being the pragmatic and unprincipled rogue that I am, I simply went through my little black book and called up old friends that I have not seen in a while. Often they would not only pay for my cups of tea, they would also cover my meal, and sometimes even my fags (cigarettes). I am incorrigible, I know.

THE CRAZY ONES. My favourite collection of friends are the crazy ones. Well, not actually insane, but the sort that I could be truly honest with, especially in the topic of religion, spirituality, love, God, Prophets and saints. They tend to be humble, but most of all never boring and always funny, often making themselves the brunt of their own jokes. Some people call them Sufis. They deny it of course, but I can see through their pretensions of not being Sufis. They are rarely judgmental. Sometimes I can have a huge chip on my shoulder, a fuming volcano of dissatisfaction about something or someone. I would talk to them and with empathy, they would pop my balloon of anger / envy / jealousy. These are the sort of friends that EVERYONE should have. They won't allow you to wallow in your pit of negativity. And they certainly are not those who would make things worse by goading your ego. With a smile and a gentle hand on  your shoulder they would make you see that the world is in truth beautiful, all things are happening as they are fated to, and God is always smiling upon us. With my hand on my heart, I wish upon you such good friends. Amen.

THEM ANGELS. I have no doubt that the Angels are listening in. But sadly I am unable to cadge anything from them. After all, they don't drink, eat or sleep. And I don't think they smoke. There is absolutely no point to ask them for anything. But maybe they can put in a good word for me with  THE FRIEND OF FRIENDS... aka God.

Have a friendful day, sunshine! 

Pax Taufiqa.

The Lord of Discord and the Meaning of War - Sinners' Dictionary

14. Lord of Discord
We resist the lord of discord,
Who rules over those
Who let their anger hold sway.

In their mad utterance,
He shapes their clay.
And in their violence
Is his to play.

To no fleeting shadow,
Will we bow,

To no whispers spun in the dark,
Do we bend.

For we serve the Lord of Accord,
And under His flag
We fear no discord.

I woke up this morning early, before the first ray of the sun spreads its glorious light upon this earth. And I expected something in the breeze to tell me a story. Something to say for this overcast Sunday. But nothing came to me. No verse, no prose no story. So I returned to my old poetry collection and found this old prose written perhaps two years ago.

The Lord of Discord has no name, unless it is our name. He has no form unless it is our form. He can do nothing to this world, and even the smallest ant is safe from him. Alas, through history we become his abject slave... setting swords, arrows and bullets upon our brothers and sisters. And all over words. Because in the Sinners' Dictionary war is defined thus...

War is...
A Series of Battles
Over the Meaning
Of Words.

When we stop talking and perhaps more importantly, when we stop listening, we become a ghost of our true selves. Another pawn in the momentum of a false history. Because the truth is, Love has always been king. From the looking glass of Glorious Love, there was never a Crusade, the Cold War never happened, and this thing which the media and leaders like to refer to as the jihad, the great clash between civilisations and faiths is a great big lie. Civilisations and Faiths must essentially be the same one thing - if we obey the Lord of Accord, whose counsel to be patient and understanding rises again and again in our Conscience...

The world has two histories you can choose from to inspire your life. The history of hate and the history of love. The power, and the responsibility to choose wisely is yours.

We must listen, sunshine. So we can be the true repository of Truth and Love in a world blinded by the illusory power of hate. Hate, like evil - exists in the absence of Love. And I know you are not like that at all...

Hehehe. Well it appears the breeze has spoken. The Sun is shining now and the wind has blown the overcast clouds away... I have my story.

I love you, sunshine. Have a perfect Sunday contemplating this joyous world...

Pax Taufiqa.

Love of Love vs The Love of Hate

You will always be The Other

Life is about offering your hand to another,

Life is about sharing your food with another,

Life is about sharing your bed with another,

Life is about sharing the burden of one another,

Life is about keeping promises to one another,

Life is about sacrificing your life for the life of another,

Life is about looking out after one another,

So life isn't about you at all, it is all about the other...

But to someone else who loves you,

You will always be The Other...

I am quite in love with love, as in the idea of love. After all, in the great Cosmic Plan of the Almighty Creator, He need not have created love. But He did, and it is a Sublime Gift to humanity, that we may unite through Love. But there are also those who are united by Hate - who find assurance in the company of others who share the same jealousies, inferiority, despair, sorrow, arrogance, hubris and hate that have pickled their perception of other people. To them, 'the others' are not to be loved... 'the others' are to be feared and despised.

Often these groups fool themselves into thinking that it is love that binds them together. They are often a closed group with closed minds and hearts, and such people are well dispersed in all sort of human associations - be it a political, racial, religious, national, economic or social sub-group. Be cautious of them, sunshine, whether they are in a Christian society, a Jewish sect, a Muslim madrasah, a street gang, a political party, an atheist's club or even a Neighbourhood Watch. They will say to you that they are offering love, but it is in truth the Love of Hate, a poisonous and bent facsimile of real love.

Have a friendful and loveful Wednesday, pet.

Pax Taufiqa.

At the Conference of the Earnest I Found the Religion of Hubris

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CONFERENCE OF THE EARNEST. I spied upon a congregation of earnest people. Some of them looked slick and oily, others bright and sparkly like models in a skin whitening advertisement. Some were bearded and wore turbans, others wore the Jewish skullcap. Some looked like Christian bishops, and amongst the crowd I saw Mullahs with AK-47 strapped on their backs. There were also mystics, political lobbyists and cult leaders. They were all holding onto their respective holy books for dear life. A lot of them were shouting, and in the back, I could see a crowd of young ones, clamouring “Jihad! Crusade! Jihad! Crusade! The Dajjal! Red Heifer! Democracy! Capitalism! Jerusalem! Unity! Purity! Lies! Death! Eternal Life! Gog and Magog!” In a corner all to their own were priests of ideologies and dogmas in fevered debates - the Darwinists, Capitalists, Communists, Socialists, and all the other ‘-ists’ that your mind can google.

.

NEMESIS OF MANKIND. On the pulpit was a man with white hair and he was raising the crowd’s spirit commanding, “We must fight for our religion! We must die for God! For Freedom! For Equal Rights! We must defend ……… (Well, just fill the blank space with whatever religion / ideology you want – it doesn’t matter really). Scurrying between the heaving mass of capitalist crusaders, armed bigots, and fuzzy muhajideens were a couple of nemesis of mankind – I recognize them, they were Uncertainty, Envy and Anger, unmasked and looking like pubescent trolls. They looked happy.

I CATCH ENVY. Behind the curtains I ducked, waiting for my chance. Then one of the little troll ran pass by and I managed to catch it by its collar. It was Envy. It looked hideous. It had hair but the colour is never the same, it had a face, but it changed every second, its shape shifting according to men’s insatiable and ever-changing desire and greed.

THE REAL RELIGION. I asked it, “What is this place?! Who are all these people? Envy smirked and said, “Look around, Taufiq. They are people who are adepts in the forms of their religion or beliefs – See, that is a big time Rabbi, and there you see an Evangelical TV star, and look, hey, that’s a world famous Jihadi! And I think we even have a Monetarist here somewhere…”

This evil imp wasn’t answering my question right. “Yes, yes, but what are they all doing here?”

Envy hissed, barring sharp carnivorous fangs, “They worship in their religion here.”

“What religion? All religions and ideologies are represented here!”, I argued.

“Bah! That is only the religion of their outer form, pet. The creed that they are truly following is the Religion of Hubris.”

Then smiling, Envy asked me, “Are you an intruder here, Taufiq, or are you here by SPECIAL invitation?”

Ouch. I immediately dropped Envy and ran for dear life.

.......................

How many times have we become the unwitting acolytes in the Religion of Hubris? May we all be guided by our conscience and our heart, elevated and unsullied by hubris. It is not an easy task, but in you I hope to find my guide and support - My brothers and sisters in the Religion of the Conscience, the Religion of Love. The most delicate and beautiful manifestation of our respective faiths, whatever it may be.

Have a good hubris-free day, Sunshine!

Pax Taufiqa.

The Defilers of Maqams

1. If The Kaaba …

If the Kaaba is a diamond,
The defilers of maqams are conspiring to pry off the gemstones
That dot her ornate setting,

If the Kaaba is life,
The defilers of maqams are conspiring to choke her breath,

If the Kaaba is the sun,
The defilers of maqams are conspiring to eclipse her moons,

If the Kaaba is justice,
The defilers of maqams are conspiring to conceal her mercy,

If the Kaaba is the universe,
The defilers of maqams are conspiring to rewrite her history,

If the Kaaba is a writer,
The defilers of maqams are conspiring to be her censors,

If the Kaaba is Rapunzel,
The defilers of maqams are conspiring to cut off her golden tresses.

That is want they want.

But who can they harm but themselves?
And what can they defile but their own name?

(No.1, from 'The Nineteen Verses'. 'maqam' in this context means the grave and tombs of the Companions of the Prophet and the Saints that dot the earth like bright pearls of divine grace)

I am not diverting from love and the theme of love. This is what we call tough love. It is still love, but this embodiment of love has sharp cutting edges. It is the opposite of hate and is gamely waiting to give the defilers of maqams its gentle loving attention.

44. Beggars & Kings

Why do you always complain
That others are made kings
But you a beggar
While others are made rich
But you only poorer?

Has Allah not given unto you
A Master of exalted stature
Muhammad, Father of Souls
Allah’s most Favored Treasure?
A truth irresistible
A mercy undeniable!

But all you do is complain
A picture of abject misery
Crying, Woe is me! Woe is me!

O’ miserable ingrate!
You have eyes but you do not see
You have ears but you do not hear
You have heart but all you do is envy.