Shaykh's Blog

on listening

2008-04-25T04:04:00.000-07:00

It seems that the hardest thing to find is someone who will listen to you without judging you in the process.
Active listening in this sense means to be able to hear with your heart and try and understand what that person is going through without adding your reactions. The difficulty is in observing what your inner knowledge as well as outer experience can guide you with.
Tricky to walk that line, and put aside your own crap so you can be present for the other person.
Being present and not lost in your own past and future helps.
Also, we need to be there for each other, and to stay out of the way when someone needs us.

Now and Love

2008-02-02T14:50:00.000-08:00

You know when you have a spiritual disease when you think you know what is right and wrong. Only God knows what is true and false. We do our best to follow the Prophet’s (pbuh) example. But there is no ultimate good and bad when it comes to human endeavors, because there are too many nafs and cross-purposes at play.
When you seek to defend your thoughts and actions using only books, you are accessing only a portion of what God has given you as guidance. The missing part is the Love factor.
Love is what brings you into the present moment, takes you outside and beyond your self, and gives you access to your spiritual heart, as well as direct knowledge that no book or quotation can come close to, except as a guidance and framework.
Why? Because this moment is unique. That means to be with God here and now you must make the ultimate sacrifice that only Love teaches: to trust Allah. This is called fearlessness. That is the goal of Religion: to bring you to the true knowledge which cannot fit into a book except the one that is being written at this moment.
The Koran, Torah and Gospels are incomplete. They are part of a circuit that you must fulfill through your words and action. What you say and do send ripples out that has consequences far beyond your comprehension.
It can be summed up in the constant interplay of wisdom and compassion; knowledge and love; or gnosis and Haqq al yaqin.

On Being An Artist

2007-10-23T18:05:00.000-07:00

In the story of King Kong a massive door separates the islanders from Kong. Kong lives in a world of natural forces and represents the primitive powers within.

Imagine that universe is your unconscious.

In this world of inchoate and symbolic energies, there are no words, there are no names, only unimaginably powerful primal energies. They are subtle and deadly. Any of these energies may strike suddenly or attack slowly and persistently.

A true artist is the explorer and sometimes hunter of these creatures and worlds of the unconscious. It is more than frightening, because it is The Unknown. And because it is unknown, it is the most terrifying of all universes and worlds: the self and beyond.

No one who enters this world returns the same. Some do not return at all. It takes an unusual courage and distinctive stamina to travel into the unknown and return with an artifact to share. To hunt in the unconscious and bring something back alive requires a strong heart; a flexible and quick mind; and a score of lateral intelligences specifically able to deal efficiently and effectively with scary shit.

And when one returns from such an adventure, the contemporary world of conformity and social mores seems, in comparison: bland, gray, boring, silly, supercilious, false and arrogant. When one has fought ogres, barely escaped the whirlpool of despair, seen the Light-web of Unity and drunk the sweet water from the Fountain of Life, the world of so-called “normalcy” seems more than strange- it feels absurdly shallow.

Thus when you meet a true artist, their way of speaking or thinking seems odd and out of place. Perhaps their thought process is incomprehensible or jumps in non sequiturs. This is because that is the breed of person that is needed and survives in the arcane jungle of the unconscious. One does not return from the unknown if one cannot adapt.

The great door that separates the islanders from the primal world is the gateway between the conscious and unconscious. Without that door the unconscious would spill into the conscious world and we would have to come to grips with giant apes climbing skyscrapers, which is unpleasant.

The artist is the interpreter and presenter of what has been discovered in the world beyond the conscious. The artist does their best to present this discovery as clearly with craft and clarity for you. The artist makes it as safe as possible for you to see beyond the artifact back to its origin, which, you soon discover, is within your own self.

The true artist cannot be placed within psychological profiles, unless the test maker actually travels to the frightening universe of the unconscious and returns to talk about it. A psychologist will then know it is not quantifiable.

The world and population of the unconscious does not support statistics. The artist lives and survives outside of the quantifiable because that is the only way to endure in The Unknown.

Love

2007-06-09T19:37:00.001-07:00

For there to be love in your life, you have to make room for it. And that means allowing yourself to become vulnerable. There is no joy without allowing for the possibility of it. Wherever you put your focus or your energy or your thoughts, that is what you will see. It will also be what you will become.

Defending

2007-06-09T19:35:00.000-07:00

Where you defend and what you defend is usually where you are the weakest.

culture

2007-04-17T04:34:00.000-07:00

Just as DNA is the coding of life, so culture is the encoding of a society: where it has been, where it might go, and where it is right now.
When you remove, delete, or ignore the components of a culture – the visual, performing and literary arts, you take away the unifying heart of that society. Without its heart and memory, that society will quickly devolve to the lowest common denominator, making education subservient to the state or worse.

Nafs Management

2007-04-16T14:59:00.000-07:00

We are professional get-in-the-wayers, We know very well how to block Allah's blessings so we can think "I am an individual and I can do it myself." Well, there are some things you do need to do that, but it's like the actor forgetting that she is wearing a mask, and can't remember to take it off.

Being Present

2007-04-08T17:10:00.000-07:00

There is nothing like one's impending death to focus one's mind. Pick a day when you have some open time, and imagine that these are your last hours on earth. Each breath you take is your last one. Each tree, bush, person, rock is the last you will ever see. Each person you look at is the last time you will ever have the opportunity to say hello or goodby.
This is IT. There is no more after this moment. Your purpose here has been fulfilled and you are being recalled back to where you came from. You have no more time. Time is done. When you go to sleep there will be no more waking up. This is a terminal situation, and you will not survive.
Enjoy this moment, because there will be no other like it.

Forgiveness

2007-03-11T21:47:00.001-07:00

Forgiveness is the water that washes away regrets.

Capacity

2007-03-10T14:09:00.000-08:00

The more you remove yourself and get out of the way, the more you can actually carry.

getting the heart free

2007-03-06T14:09:00.000-08:00

With mind under control, your heart can be free.

By taking charge of your brain, and using it as a tool rather than a master, you are then able to be in continuous touch with your heart - able to listen and speak and see with it. The brain (nafs) always wants control. You have to make the effort to take over the use of the brain for the sake of your heart.

Relationships

2007-02-27T20:20:00.000-08:00

Thinking about the different kinds of relationships, and trying to distill them to their essences. Here's what i have so far...

Parent Parent
Child Child
Adult Adult
Teacher Teacher
Student Student

Consumer Professional
Professional Consumer

Performer Audient (One member of audience - the receiver)
Audient Performer

Now draw lines to connect between these roles. For example, a Child can relate to a Teacher, or a Teacher to a Parent, a Teacher to a Teacher, or Performer to an Audient. The question arises: What relationship are you having now with whoever you are talking to? Sometimes relationships get fuzzy, and one is not clear. I am proposing the idea of clarity. What do you think?

Identity

2007-02-27T01:08:00.000-08:00

How you see yourself defines how you deal with the world and life. Your image can be your god, or you can decide to smash the idol and see what happens.

There is the inner image and the outer image. To be a whole person these 2 must flow, need to be congruent to be integrated.