Love without Rival and the Beloved without Rival - towards a life of sincere sweetness

Love Without Rival

When my Lord looks for sincerity in me,

He sends me illness and poverty,

But He finds instead my hardness…

When my Lord looks for sweetness in me,

He sends me health and wealth,

But He finds instead my forgetfulness…

Either way I am undone,

Like a knot unraveled,

Unprepared as I am

To a Love without Rival.

…………………..

An illness gripped me for a couple of days, and I could not stand it, and I found true hardness in the core of my being, asking God why should I be made to suffer in this painful humiliating way. Even as the thoughts pass through my soul unchallenged, I felt guilty, and not a little stupid.

Ah, but that is what makes a man sometimes, yes? A little guilty, a little stupid. A clown really.

Yet it doesn't bode well for me even when the Lord grants me with health and wealth, for then you may find me silly and forgetful. Either way, I cannot win. Not alone, and certainly not by my own devices.

An ancient friend confides in me that the best path is the middle way, and the union of sincerity and sweetness into sincere sweetness, as elevated into a perfect art by Muhammad Prophet of God (s.a.w.s.), most intimate of all creation with the Creator. "That is the best way for you", he says... 

For Allah(s.w.t.) is Love Without Rival, and Muhammad (s.a.w.s.) 

is the Beloved without Rival.

Have a beautiful Sunday, sunshine. For me it is beautiful already for my illness has abated under the care of my father. And with my friend's advice ringing in the bell tower of my spirit, I look forward to a new day refreshed with hope, and a love without rival.

wa min Allah at-taufiq

Hate has no place in Islam

Love will show the Way

Make Money and Be a Trustee of the Wealth of God - He wants you to be happy and make others happy

Okay already with the spiritual pose. Go earn some money.

27. Most

Never underestimate

How money can make you happy,

Nor how its loss,

Will leave you morose.

Money is not the sort of thing that is often bandied in the elevated discourse about spirituality, mysticism, Sufism, Rumi and the like. But with my own eyes, I have seen grown men quiver and burst into tears, worried about money. Money, money, money.

The sinner likes having money. I will admit here that lack of money, or even worse, no money whatsoever gets me down. The apprehension sets in, the FEAR that I would not be able to cover my debts and expenses, Mikhail's maintenance and tuition fees. But the sinner is not poor, so I can only imagine how families try to get by on less, with more children and no house to call their own. The fact that they continue to live with a smile on their faces, leaves me in absolute respect of their bright shining souls in the face of adversity. Don't they deserve help? Don't they deserve a raise, or a gift? Of course, they do!

My mother, God bless her sainted soul, was a giving and generous human being. And nothing will recall you to people more than your kindness. When my family and friends come to visit my house to see my father, they always say the same thing, "We remember your mother and what she and your father has done for us..." Although some of my friends (all in their 40s already) still confess of being a little scared of my dad. I wonder why. Hehehe.

You cannot help people if you do not have the resources. So if you are bright and smart (as I am sure you are), do not descend into ordinariness. In what we do, whether we are a policeman, a banker, a lawyer, a businessman or just a clerk, I think it is best that we do the best we can. Let's try to earn a honest living and make money. And if possible, make more money than you actually need. You will then be in a position to give and help people, and they are so many of them out there. Then surely, you will be beloved by man and God. As the Prophet once said - "The hand that gives is more blessed than the hand that receives." Not everyone will be a millionaire philanthropist, but everyone can give a little.

Spirituality has its perks but money will put food on the table. It is a means by which Love is often expressed. Don't get me wrong. Money does not necessarily bring happiness. Money can also buy you a lot of grief. But so long as you remember where that money came from (God), where you came from and will return to (God again), and share your blessings to help people in need, then surely you will find happiness as a Trustee of the Wealth of God. I think all religion teaches this.

I am both Trustee and Beneficiary of God's Love! Lalalalaalaaaa...!

Don't you agree, sunshine?

wa min Allah at-taufiq.

Subprime Bust Part 2 - INSIDE JOB the Movie

INSIDE JOB. At 5.14am earlier this morning I was still awake. And guess what, I only dozed off at about 9.30am. For this loss of sleep I must blame INSIDE JOB, a movie which according to the tagline, costs $20,000,000,000,000.00 to make. The movie was in fact a documentary, directed by Charles Ferguson, about the subprime bust in the USA which almost tipped the entire global economic structure into chaos. In my earlier posting entitled 'Michael Lewis (Wall Street Insider) Mikhail Taufiq (Venture Capitalist) and the Subprime Bust"(Click Here) , I touched a little about this scandal.

AMAZING MOVIE. If you wish to know just how close the world came to a financial tsunami of biblical scale, you MUST see this movie. The list of luminaries alone (both the villains and heroes of this Wall Street escapade) which were interviewed is a good reason enough to watch it - Willem Buiter – Chief economist for Citigroup. John Campbell – Department chair of Harvard University’s Department of Economics. Kristin Davis – Best known as the “Madam” to countless investment bankers. Martin Feldstein – The George F. Baker Professor of Economics at Harvard University and President Emeritus of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Jerome Fons –Served as Managing Director of Credit Policy at Moody’s Investor Services. Barney Frank – Democratic Representative for the state of Massachusetts. Samuel Hayes – Hayes holds the Jacob H. Schiff Chair in Investment Banking Emeritus at the Harvard Business School. Glenn Hubbard – Chief Economic Advisor during the Bush Administration and current Dean of the Columbia University Business School. Christine Lagarde – The French Minister of Finance, Economic Affairs, Industry and Employment. Jeffrey Lane – CEO of Modern Bank, and former Chairman and CEO of Bear Stearns Asset Management. Lee Hsien Loong – The current Prime Minister of Singapore. Frederic Mishkin – American economist and professor at Columbia Business School, Mishkin was a member of the Board of Governors at the Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2008. Charles Morris – Author of The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers and the Great Credit Crash. Raghuram Rajan – An economist and Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the Booth School of Business, University of Chicago. Andrew Sheng – Chief Advisor to the China Banking Regulatory Commission. George Soros - is a Hungarian-American currency speculator, stock investor, businessman, philanthropist, and political activist. Dominique Strauss-Kahn – Current Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund and former Minister for Finance, Economy and Industry, France. Paul Volcker – An American economist who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve under Presidents Carter and Reagan from 1979 – 1987. Scott Talbott – Top lobbyist for the Financial Services Roundtable. Nouriel Roubini – Professor of Economics at the Stern School of Business at New York University. (write-up extracted from the movie's PressKit)

MATT DAMON TURNS UP THE HEAT. The narrator and interviewer was none other than Mr. Bourne Ultimatum himself, Matt Damon. I wonder just how many of the super-bosses interviewed thought "Hey, I am going to be interviewed by Matt Damon. The kids are gonna love this. I bet Matt haven't a clue and will throw me easy questions to answer... this is going to be a walk in the park". Or so they thought.See bankers, regulators and acadamicians (under pay of the financial industry) squirm in the interview chair, looking like they rather be a million miles away from the interview and Matt Damon. See grown men (the villians are all men) lie to the camera and asking for a break in the interview to regain their composure. See one particular guy lose his cool and insult Matt. Hehehe.

MOVIE ACCOLADES. The movie is brilliant and already recognised so, winning the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature recently in February 2011, and before that the Writers Guild of America Award AND the Directors Guild of America Award for Best Documentary Screenplay and Best Documentary. Sunshine, if you are an American, I suggest you spend some quality time to watch the movie. It is very enlightening, to say the least. I am not saying that the sinner predicted the subprime catastrophe, but in 2004 I recorded this prose...

188. Paper Promises
Paper money make poor substitute
For gold and silver,
A mode of transaction
On human promises.
And oh, how well
We know of man
And his paper promises!

OUT! OUT! OUT! When Jesus, the Prince of Peace, kicked out the money-lenders out of the Temple, I don't think it is because he disliked how they smelled. The economy, for those in the know (and I know you are in the know, sunshine), is not only a temporal issue - it is a spiritual issue of great significance not only because you have frauds and monopolies, but how such crimes and social injustice affect a great swath of humanity if something goes wrong. And in 2008, oh boy, did it go wrong!

Have a nice day, sunshine. And if you have the vote in America, please make you vote count. As I said, if your country has a cold, it's the rest of the world that will be sneezing. Help us.

Pax Taufiqa.

Relevant Links - 'Inside Job' Official Website / 'Inside Job' Sony Pictures Website / Wikipedia on 'Inside Job'