My other blog

I just updated by other blog with an entry about jumping to conclusions. It is in Bahasa Melayu. I am trying to write in English here and in BM on the other blog .

JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS

Somatic Healing and Energy Psychology

I attended a 2 day workshop at the Nanyang Siang Pao Multipurpose Hall on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. I went with my son Ahmad Hilmi. He is learning so much so quickly , his path to healing himself is transforming him into a healer!
Learnt some great stuff that complemented my knowledge and practice of energy healing and discovered some interesting facts about Nanyang Siang Pao Press

About Nanyang Siang Pao: A Chinese Newspaper daily that has a philanthropic Foundation called Nanyang Press Foundation. It was the Foundation which organised the two day workshop apropriately titled The Body as an Ultimate Healer.They help single again women , youth , disaster victims and work with NGOS in areas needing social welfare help. It is the only newspaper in Malaysia that has such a foundation.

The workshop was conducted by Dr Maggie Phillips , a licensed psychologist practising in Oakland California.
She has a whole string of qualifications , has writen books and clinical papers and most of all , she is a great healer.

I met some wonderful people including a Salma, Chinese Muslim counselling student studying at MU and a very caring insurance agent named May , both of whom I had the honor of doing practises with.

The only negative I have to say on the workshop is that there was too little time and too many people at the workshop , almost 200 . I would have liked a much smaller workshop but it was more than ok for the small token sum paid, RM80 .
I ended up paying more than RM100 to order her book and perhaps would be poorer by RM 1000 if I enrolled for her online course .

It is just so comforting to have my work affirmed by her. I had known of the tremendous benefit of Somatic Healing and Energy Psychology via my Energy Healing work and also my Emotional Freedom Technique but to have her demonstrate almost exactly what I did in my practice and to have her demonstrate the beneficial effects of EFT simply made it whole for me . She has words to explain in terms people could easily relate to stuff I knew only in terms of spirituality. It gives me a language to communicate what I do to people not exposed to the subtel energies. I know she is a medical intuitive and was extremely sensitive to people's energies even though she did not say so . The way she knew what the client was feeling showed this. I was called to be a client one time and experienced this first hand!. It is difficult to find people who understood the work I do here in Melaka and even in Malaysia and I am glad someone is going around spreading this knowledge ! I feel less lonely now!

Which Sci Fi Character do I match?

Got this from Mushtaq's blog....

Galadriel


Possessing a rare combination of wisdom and humility, while serenely dominating your environment you selflessly use your powers to care for others.

Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.

Galadriel is a character in the Middle-Earth universe. You can read more about her at the Galadriel Worshippers Army.

Viral Outbreak!

I found myself ill on Friday! It started with a runny nose, next day my tonsils felt slightly painful and by Sunday my body was aching. On Monday , I was having a fever, I may have had it earlier but it was only on Monday morning that I recorded my temperature at 37.8C, On Tuesday I was better from the fever but started having terrible cramps in my stomach which was pretty distended. I could not eat for the whole day , could only manage water and some fruits and cendol!
The cramps were so bad I was absolutely miserable. The next day , I still had cramps but it was less. Then I found the perfect homeopathic remedy for it, actually I had found it a day earlier only I gave it to my grand daughter and my son in law and it worked fine for them ...by this tim 3 more members of my family were affected.My daughter, granddaughter and son in law. I also started seeing more and more cases of the same fever, runny nose cramps vomiting and diarrhea.

After a dose of the remedy Cina 30c , I passed flatus ( oh the blessing of being able to pass flatus) and from then on I began to feel better and better....except that now I have this slight cough....

So , this is just to inform you , there is a kind of virus around that gives you the whole deal.
I suspect it is an adenovirus rather than a rotavirus or a Norwalk virus because it seems to be spread by airborne rather than water borne. Why I say this is because of the rapid manner of its spread as well as the components of runny nose , tonsillar affection and sore throat.

Anyway , now my maid, my hubby and my son are affected....
It seems like there is no escape!!

Good thing I have the remedies....
So what is my advise if you get the viral infection?
I think the most troublesome and potentially serious part is the vomiting and the diarrhea.This is potentially dangerous for old people and infants.
The vomiting is self limiting which means it stops itself in about one day and the diarrhea and stomach cramps also go away pretty fast but you have to avoid irritating food and also irritating medications such is NSAID s like Ibuprofen ,Aspirin , Diclofenac etc. Take rehydrating salts, fluids and non sour fruits and juices as well as rice porridge and boiled barley. For the cramps you can take buscopan if you like. If you have a homeopathic pharmacy nearby you may try Cina30 c. It may not be the remedy you need though ..best to consult a homeopath.

My own worst enemy

I have been attending a train the trainers session , six days of last week. And , I found out I am my own worst enemy.
I am a natural at facilitating , I do a good job especially when I am well prepared.
Unfortunately , when my facilitating is under scrutiny and I am being examined, I kind of get so worked up , and so fearful of the fellow trainers who are very likely to give me a hard time that I become fierce.
So I realise , if only I focus and center myself in my heart space , am sincere and gentle as I know I am capable of , I won t become fierce...
Lesson learnt ..how long will I remember and not do it to myself again?????

Between Love and Fear

In response to some questions

I think we have on this list tried to define what it means to love God.

As for fear of Shirk as you defined it here:

>>>the Unforgivable Sin of Shirk, or associating partners with Allah (S.W.T.). I assume that associating partners with Allah includes loving them with the same intensity that one should love Allah.<<
And you ask the question:

>>>Where does Love end and Worship begin, and vice versa? And since Allah is the only One worthy of our worship, how do we protect ourselves from "worshipping" something or someone else, thus commiting Shirk, while all along we are assuming that we are merely "loving" or "admiring"?????...snip...Hence my fear that "Hell's gates might open up and suck me in" in relation to "loving" my new car.<<<
There is a lot of fear being expressed so it comes to : Wanting to do what is right by 'God's definition of right ' to avoid Hell.

There is nothing wrong with this: Avoiding hell is instinctive if we equate hell with eternal damnation and destruction misery and pain everlasting.

Going back to your questions , let us try to define some words mentioned;

Worship:On a literal level and in a simplistic way it means the formal acts of worship such as formal praying , bowing to statues ,ceremonies to show allegience and obedience to the object of worship. On a deeper level it means to obey and to love the object of worship to be loyal to. So here we can see love as part of the worship .

Shirk: To take other objects/people other than the REAL to worship which means to pray to , to show allegience to , to love and to obey.

In a simplistic way we point our finger at polytheists those who have many Gods, such as what we understand about Hindu and Greek beliefs . But if we knew it in a deeper way , the ones who really understood knew that these many Gods were attributes of God just as in the 99 names and the qualities of God that we learn in Islam

We learn from our holy books that there are those who take their lusts as their gods and money as their god , sacrifice their convictions for the sake of material gain or the love of a woman .So these are the finer points of shirk that we could become aware of.

How then does one avoid shirk especially the finer points of it, like when we deeply love something so much so it takes us away from our focus of worshipping God, or takes over from our worshipping God?

We hear in Hadith that a sahabah gave away his garden because he enjoyed it too much and was afraid it would distract him from God. I somehow doubt I would give away a beautiful garden because for me , it would make me closer to God for the beauty would be a manifestation of God but that does not mean the sahabah was wrong because he did what was right for him at the stage that he was in.

Many of us were brought up on big helpings of fear and guilt over doing what is 'right' and avoiding what is 'wrong'.Perhaps it was needed to keep us from spoiling the focus of our spiritual journey with the false gods of hedonism and sexual promiscuity and the simple game rules helped us to have some order in our lives so that we had the space to reflect and grow .When the fear and guilt become barriers and obstacles to our spiritual growth is when we have to take a stock of where our convictions and beliefs are taking us , or not taking us .

Can we believe instead in a kind and merciful God who will come running to us when we take our faltering baby steps towards Hu. Who will open to us the secrets of Love and Truth when we stand before Hu with longing and hope and trembling in fear of not getting close to Hu?

What are game rules?

About game rule:

Many people are simply scripted into doing what is right and by what is right is meant what is right in the society we are in . Which is why 'what is right ' according to society is never good enough for those whose conscience are awakened enough to be aware that society is not always in alignment with the ultimate TRUTH which is another way of understanding God.

More on God

God is Beauty in its utmost beauty, Justice in its utmost and Truth because there is no truth except the truth God created.
So those who love truth , beauty and justice are lovers of God as well. They manifest their love by loving God in God's manifestations.

How to love God

These thoughts came up out of discussions on the sufi studies list


Steven Covey said love is a doing word. What he meant is that love finds expression in deeds. So your remaining attentive of the moment is a manifestation of your love of God since it is what scriptures and those enlightened beings tell us is what is required of us.

For me, it makes no sense to say you love God and then go against God's wishes, of course then you want to know, What are God's wishes for me?

Depending on what one's convictions are, religious duties would be part of doing God's wish. but having said that, there are very many levels of doing God's wish and on the lowest level I think people approach God as someone in authority to pander up to in order to get what they want.
This always conjures up the memory of my doing my hajj way back in '86. I had so much difficulty doing tawaf and saiei because of some self centered groups who literally elbowed everybody left and right , shoved and pushed so they could please God...

Now I am going on to why people perform religious duties: Presumably it is out of love for God but we find out that love can be pandering up to authority , or fear of authority , like when you are aftaid God would throw you into hellfire or make you fall and break your head and this fear keeps you doing what you think is God's will.


We move up another level and that is when you are blessed with the sensations of an awakened heart. At this level , you kind of have something of a link with God, just like when you are in love with someone and are sensitive to the nuances of their approval and disapproval and at this point you just don t want to do anything that makes the beloved distance themselves from you , and in this case you can feel it in your self when God communicates from within you.

At this level you keep trying and trying to understand the communication and keep trying to do what is oomunicated to you and more and more you do things out of an inner Yaqin rather than " I think this should be it" But it is at this point too that ego gets in
the way and some people start to think they are holy ..... or something like that....

Redha

Question: What is redha? I looked up "redha" but all I got were references to some soccer player....what does it mean?

My answer
Redha is probably a popular name so you get a soccer player named Redha.
You know when things happen to you and you react to it by resisting and not allowing and denial? That is the opposite of redha. Redha is letting it be, not resisting , simply accepting,
My healing teachers teach a method of being present to our selves, ie the sensations that is going on in our bodies. It is amazing what you will find, looking inwards you will see all the rigid structures that have developed out of non allowance , all the tightness and tension. Then you just watch and observe and let it be, and the rigidiy and pain seems to become worse for a while and as you keep watching it disappears and is replaced by a senses of expansion and joy.What caused the non allowance may still be there but the reaction to it is gone, that is redha.

Important errors in communication

This is from Mushtaq ..I have made the second error of not verifying the truth of the information because of my overconfidence in my sources so you can take it with a pinch of salt if you like:

Ibn Khaldun, the father of information theory had this to say about communicating information.

There are very important things to keep in mind when saying that a bit of information being related is "true" or "false"

All information, by its very nature, is liable to error.

• The first of these errors is partisanship towards a creed or opinion.
• The second error is over ‘confidence in one's sources.
• The third error is the failure to understand what is intended by to originator of the information.
• The fourth error is a mistaken presupposition about the truth.
• The fifth error is the inability to place information in its real context.
• The sixth error is the common desire to gain favor of those of high ranks, by distorting information so as to please them.
• The seventh, and the most important error, is the ignorance of the laws governing the transformations of human society.

Its is 2007

I am sure many people have written on the New Year , what with New Year resolutions and the happenings in the world and in the country.
It seems that the last days of the solar year has not failed to produce its own shocks and for us here in Melaka it was the big floods where places that had never been underwater went underwater , along with chairs and books and clothes and tv sets etc and etc.
My family has been lucky. I think I will now put a notice on my house that says, "Flood Free Zone".
I actually saw this notice in front of a new housing area along jalan Bertam Ulu. It was on high ground and the whole of Melaka would have to be flooded before this area got flooded and the whole of Bertam Ulum would have to get flooded before my house got flooded since the house is on high ground. It has its downers for example , when I get down off the bus from KL, I have to huff and puff up the slope and , when it rains the safety switch triggers off if there is lightning but it has its upside and one of which is no floods.

Today morning , I went to the new Giant's opening day . They had sent a flyer to the house and I thought why not , since it is not too far and, we needed a lot of groceries , now that my maid is onj a holiday in Padang, Sumatra , I have no one to go to the wet marked. Here is a piece of advise from me: Never go to a hypermarket on opening day! There we were it was hardly 10 am in the morning, Giant Hypermarket opens at 8 am , and there were actually volunteers from RELA directing traffic from about a kilometer away from Giant. There were cars parked along the roadside and I was thinking don t tell me they do not have a parking lot ! They have one except it was full! We managed to park in the outside parking lot by waiting for a car to leave.

It was another hassle to get into the building because there were so many people it was like some kind of celebration and I was wondering where all these people came from ! No doubt it was a public holiday and a long weekend and the school holidays were about to end but I felt it could not explain how all these people all converged to this new hypermarked when they were doing their shoping elsewhere just the day before ! So now I was witnessing the power of Branding and the power of advertising. They had posters all over town , on the traffic light poles , on buses as well as sending the mail drops house to house. I was afraid I would not find the place but no fear., the posters all had arrows showing us exactly which roads to take !

Even though there was so many people , to my utter surprise there was still a lot of things on the shelves and we managed to get the fish the groceries the vegetables as well as some stuff that simply called out to me, Dr J and Aimi! Those little slippers for Nayya are a must and oh that wee swimming pool , she needs it...and I must get those paving stones for the garden ...
Paying for the stuff was quite another hassled but I guess Giant is one experienced Hypermarket since they had extra paying counters and staff and we managed to finish our shopping in a couple of hours which is just about the same time as when we went to Tesco about 2 kilometers away from the new Giant !

Aimi said, Ma, this hypermart is Home Grown , born in Malaysia ,we should shop here instead of at Tesco. I replied there are pros and there are cons. Did you notice how Tesco takes care of customers ? They have consideration for the handicapped and they have baby careers on their trolleys as well as special parking for families with babies .Giant on the otherhand have had some problems in the past with selling goods that are not up to safety standards. This is part of the evolution of companies, somehow in order to become caring and ethical , you have to pass through the stages of growing . It is a lot like how people grow, when we are struggling to make a living that takes up all of our time, when we stop struggling , we start to see there are things we can do better and then as we evolve we become more and more concerned about the greater good for self for family and for humanity, it is growing up. So perhaps we will help Giant in its growth by playing our role as members of the public and demand that it sets higher standards of ethics and show more caring for its customers and people!

That picture of Aimi and Dr J was at the kopitiam at the Batu Berendam Giant complex.

And if you want to read the rest of my article on communication via the net , go to my other blog

HERE

The topic is Gagal Memahami dan Menyampaikan

You just have to marvel at the faith!