About garbage and waste products

I have not blogged in a long time . Not since kind of switched off certain parts of me in response to some really trying times as far as emotions are concerned.

Perhaps it is menopause kicking in or perhaps it is the drastic changes in the day to day activities that has caused this partial shut down.

Anyway, this is an attempt to restart my blogging engine.

Lately I have been chided by a number of people for saying or doing things which were less than ladylike or perhaps less than Muslim.

1. I posted a picture on my facebook that had a cute little pig on it..And I was told this is Ramadhan and pigs are ... Oh dear...I did not eat the pig , did not touch the pig and it is one of God's creatures . But I was wrong, because I hurt the sentiments of fellow Muslims. The picture was from a Facebook game, Farmville .

2. I said some politician was a pain in the ........ ! And so this very Islamic man says , Astaghfirlah this is Ramadhan ! Oh sorry ! It came out without warning maybe because my ......... was hurting!

There you go! So now I have created a bad impression of myself as a pig loving swearing unladylike and unislamic woman.

There goes my reputation, firmly and surely down the drain .
Do I really need to be acknowledged in any way?
Probably yes and my reputation is somewhat important but there you go! No way to retrieve it now . I am forever in some people's bad books. Tut tut tut!

Okay I have stopped my ranting !

Here are some Ramadhan reflections from some phrases in the Quran by this unladylike irreverent so called Muslim. I am grateful that in God's perspective , all I have to do is hang my head low and return ..Astaghfirlah hal Azhim Allathi lailahaillah huwal hayyul khayyum wa atubu ilaih.

Allah watches attentively over you

Su's comment Yes Allah watches over us and let us get into accidents and get hurt , even die. Sometimes things happen because it is what is best for us. Sometimes things happen because we thought we were not being watched and we forgot Allah is in charge and remains in charge even when he gave free will .One question that I ask myself in each situation is: What do I need to see in this ? How do I need to change? What needs to be realised and overcome? Not poor me...why did this have to happen? No way, Allah loves me and you and everyone and when we understand this love we get showered with it and will feel supported all the time.

And remember your Rabb when you forget

Su's comment It is when we say Taubah ! God loves us when we sin and then we return because the repentence draws us even closer..like a recalcitrant child who finally yields and climbs onto his parent lap and feels the comfort and love of being enfolded in the parent's arms.

regards

Suriya

My facebook name Suriya Osman

Preventing Entropy of Mind and Heart

Kenyir lake

This is nothing to do with Kenyir but is a cultural show in Bukit Tinggi ( Sumatra).I was there two weeks ago

This is me in front of the cabin in Kenyir Resort about a couple of months ago. Observe the mp4 hanging around my neck. This was an entropy preventing trip of seeking beauty in nature and reflecting on my spiritual teachers words ( the mp4)

This is the cabin from outside

What has triggered this topic is a combination of human actions and reactions and my current project: A book on EQ.

This book has been good for me in more ways than one.

• It has induced me into becoming aware of my emotions and how I interact with people
• It has made me even more convinced to always try new things
• It has made me more persistent in my efforts to balance my emotions , experience peace and joy in the depth of my being
• Last but not least, remove from the environment the polluting effects of my own toxic emotions by not feeling them .

What has all this got to do with entropy?

On a discussion recently on the sufi studies list , while discussing about human behaviour Mushtaq mentioned the word entropy in the way things happen . Even when things start out as lofty ideals and best intentions , it kind of deteriorates over the years and naturally depraved human beings give in to their egos and lusts and desires.

This is getting complicated so I will just stop here with a few observations and suggestions

When was the last time you REACTED rather than RESPONDED?
What I mean by this is you jumped to conclusions, made judgment on a person who is communicating with you and became absolutely angry and out of control and then started to exchange insults?

If you tell me you did that in the past one week then my next question is ...

What have you been doing recently to stop brain and heart rot? I am not talking about some rare disease caused by germs or viruses but the all too human tendency not to do things that develop the brain and the heart.

What are these activities you want to know?

Here are some suggestions

• Pray with full focus and and concentration
• Contemplate on beauty - nature , poems , music etc..( What is that? These things don't move you ...aiyooo.....come see me to unsupress , I will give you a homeopathic remedy )
  
• Learn a new skill
• Read a book that is not essentially junky
  
• Memorise a verse or saying or ayat that is soul food
• Do something you have not done before
• Reflect on your deeds without being defensive
• Stop finding excuses for your shitty behavior
  
• Hug a kitten or a tree if you do not have a kitten
• play with young children ( tolerating them while feeling rotten does not count)
  
• Did something positive for someone out of the sheer goodness of your heart ( force yourself to do this if you cannot find the goodness -hopefully it will have to surface -unless the rot is total! )
  

How will you know you have stopped the brain and heart rot ?
When you cannot remember when the last time you yelled in anger because of your intolerance and judgmental attitude and your heart does not easily contract in anger and tension and your mind is not constantly thinking of ways to entertain your jaded senses.

Laboring to be fit

Ramadhan is special and for me this is the detox , cleansing and recuperate and regenerate month physically mentally emotionally spiritually.

Detox diet, toning exercise, contemplations, extra solat ....

Yes it is not easy , not easy at all but this post is a proof that it can bear fruit !

Detox diet from Maryam's Light of Healing Center while observing Ramadhan fast:
First week: No red meat ,no caffeine , minimal salt , loads of vegetables , no wheat , no sugar , minimal fat , loads of fresh fruit and uncooked vegetables ...
Believe it or not I almost manage to eat this without batting an eyelid over what the others were eating , fried food , tempting sweets , santan based food , coffee..oooh the smell of it .

First day : headache , sluggish , sleepy , inertia but a sweet temperament which I always get when I fast ..well not so sweet..I yelled when my staff told me they did not plan a break and I was to work non stop till 5 pm!

Now going onto 5th day , alert, body feels light , mind is clear and still holding on to this bland diet with a surprisingly good appetitte...there is no hunger involved at all !!

Exercise :
Boy it is tough , especially because these exercises are for core muscle strengthening , and indeed I need that . What with menopause beckoning me , and extra kilos of blubber ! I have been exercising regularly for more than two months now and the results are showing . I can bend my knees and keep in the bent position for some time without feeling any pain which I used to. My ankles are also stronger and I hardly get the stiffness I used to get .I can also walk for longer hours without feeling tired as proven when I did my walkabout in Perth !

Contemplations :

Yes these are my special meditations for this Ramadhan , phrases from the Quran towards selfrealization ...Among my favourites

Fa ayna ma tuwallu fa tamma wajhullah 2:115

Where so ever you turn there is the Divine face

I am slowly building up my extra solats , no shock treatment for me , I let my body find its own pace and build up as I strengthen physically.

Yesterday evening Maryam decided to get my stats , well is that not a bit late considering I was already on the detox. But , about three weeks ago I weighed ........ and now the scales show that I am 4.2 kgs lighter ...wow , what do you know ? Nah , I still do not have an hourglass figure and still look grandmotherly , what do you expect, the hormones ( more like lack of it ) are reshaping my body to menopausal figure ...

Looking good and awakening passion

I have dropped one dress size and probably can drop a few more when I am done.


What has made it easier to shed my excess bagage was my daughter's detox meals she prepared for me and several of her clients for the fasting month. It is not easy to take because this first week it is a very low salt diet but she promises me it will get easier . I am however beginning to get used to it and there is an added bonus of tastebuds becoming more sensitive to the subtle flavours which the salt used to mask. There is an analogy here about the food. I think focusing on eating masked something that genuinely wanted to find expression within me , and removing food as a focus unmasked it. Now , removing salt is unmasking something that was always there in the food but could not be appreciated by me because of the salt. I wonder how much in our lives we have masked with something and therefore fail to benefit from the blessing that we could not recognise?

I had succeeded in getting myself to a size ten two years after my last child was born , then, after getting quite ill with endometrioisis , going on hormones , I regained the weight I had lost and more! From time to time I would get upset over it and then lose a few kilograms only to get it back whenever I had a training to do or to attend . We Malaysians eat so many times when we attend meetings at hotels. Once I had invited a lecturer from the UK to give our three day International workshop and she commented , you people eat as many times as I would take a walk! I had to accompany her for a walk down the dusty, smokey roads of old KL simply because she did not like being cooped up in the hotel even though I had protestd that her notion of getting some air was misguided in view of the pollution!

I have another reason for self sabotage, ie for not getting myself into normal weight , being content with a BMI just oustide of the normal range . When I succeeded in reducing my weight to normal, I found my physical energy increased. I had more strength, I could walk more, I could run up the stairs and shop without getting aching feet. And then , I also found my emotions began to create havoc. I was not the staid , serious , no nonsense , sensible person that I thought I was. Steadily plodding along doing what needed to be done out of duty and all. With the energy increase, I began to feel a need for action. I used up some of that energy doing aerobic workouts but this did not seem enough and I did not know what to do with emotions running high and causing me to laugh one minute and feel a depth of sadness the next. I think this is what finally developed into my endometriosis and the severe pain that came with every menses. I had to take hormones which brought my weight up again. I later stopped taking hormones , put myself to work studying endometriosis until I came up with a method to treat the disease using homeopathic remedies . The thesis I wrote can be found here.

As I mentioned earlier , I am quite a survivor . No matter how badly broken I am inside of me, I plod on , I try to find answers, I do not give up on myself , on God and on humanity, even though outwardly you would find me distant or flat or indifferent.Through it all I kept doing things to improve myself , read, take courses, attend workshops , bring up my children while all the time having so much pain within me in my physical and emotional bodies.

My breakthrough came when I decided I had enough and wanted to heal. I went to the US, after my husband gave a grudging permission, I studied sufism and spiritual healing, came back to practice what I learned and slowly began to heal from very old wounds buried deep in my soul.

After this , almost every year I travelled abroad to continue my spritual journeys, meet my teachers , meet others on the Path and every time I came back I found some area within my being had changed, I had learned something new , I had internalised some new realisations.

And it is only in the past month that I had found the strength to give up eating to fill a void within me . Perhaps it is not so much a void as a part of me that lay dormant for as long as I filled my belly with food. That part of me is my passion. I know it for what it is now , and perhaps as I am much older now and hopefully much wiser, I will find a way to harness this passion to serve me and to serve my fellow humans better.

With this passion comes a deep longing for a meaningful communication with people I find worthwhile . What is it that prevents this closeness ? Can people not have a meaningful platonic relationship without any need or want for a physical closeness? Perhaps blogging is one way for me to have this depth of communication , as I lay bare my soul for those who care to read. Sometimes after I write something and post it to my blog, I find my heart filled with a sweet joy , and I think to myself, someone somewhere is reading what I wrote and resonating with it and is sending me loving thoughts and I say a prayer of gratitude to my Lord for sending me the sweet love in my heart.

Daily review questions

From Higher Awareness

I am tagging Hana, Aimi, Maryam , Hilmi , Aiman , Dr J to also answer these questions. Pick a day that is meaningful :-)!

Also Kevin , Pycno, Dr Roza, Kenakalayan if they happen to drop by!

1. What was your peak experience or accomplishment in the past day?
Did my relax class and used the realizations I had about letting go of grudges, an attitude of gratitude and also introduced a zikr practice that gave me a high ....
Your main challenge?
My main challenge was balancing and neutralizing bad energy that came from a reaction I had from someone whom I felt was degrading my position by the request she made.
2. What emotional reactions, stresses or tensions were triggered in the last 24 hours?
As above, I felt insulted and had to look within myself to see what was causing it. Looks like I have to take myself down a peg or two!.
3. What decisions need to be made?
Date changes if needed of training events.Which account to use to pay for further renovation works on LOHTTC.
What problems need to be solved?
How to manage my patients wholisitically with my busy practice. Need to train Maryam and Hilmi to do energy work and persuade them to learn homeopathy.
How to put up the swimsuit ads on the Wanita JIM online shop..DONE!!
4. What early warning signals are calling for your attention?
Body stiff and aching, cough still on although reducing..Need to look into my health issues and DETOX ..when will I do it...???
5. What did you learn about yourself in the past 24 hours?
I am getting more selfaware , can see some thinking and feeling modes but am not so hard on myself and can forgive myself , this I learn from looking at my reactions to my thoughts /emotions.
6. What new ideas, insights or urges came up?
The CD I ordered on Pir Zia's lectures came in the mail but it made me listen to another CD I had for some time, and what treasures I found there..oh why did I not find the time to listen before:
I learnt a very good zikr about expanding our limitations which is essential for survival for in order to survive one must expand.
Ya Shafiq, Ya Rafiq, Najjini min kullu Diiq ( save me from all limitations)
7. What strong desires did you notice?
It is a ridiculous desire ..I had a strong desire to be seen as a Being of Light...
8. How did you experience any reflection, stillness, relaxation or fun?
By being present to my emotions and my awareness, by savouring my joyful state centered in my heart, by responding with love to loving family members
9. What can you do to improve your health, energy and memory?
Take my supplements , begin my exercise program , stop taking empty calorie foods...erk!
10. Who, including yourself, needs your acceptance or forgiveness?
The lady I was saying about, maybe my children.. I need to forgive myself as well.
11. What goals or next step are unclear or need more effort?
My zikr and meditations need more effort
12. What is your ‘critical inch’ (thanks to Richard Carlson) – your most important immediate next step?
Make sure I listen to the tapes and read the energy psychology interactive CD and do the lessons to become better at my spiritual self healing and other people healing!

About grudges

About grudges


I share something I went through recently. Somebody who started to say things behind my back and do a number of things that upset me about 10 years ago ..he was still around in town but we never met..recently died quite suddenly . My first reaction was " that is good!"

A few days ago a read about how Ibn Arabi did a zikr 75,000 times to ask forgiveness for a man who had just died. The man's bad deed was cursing Ibn Arabi 10 times per day ..I don t know for what duration of time...

When I read that, I realised I also had to ask forgiveness for this person whom I feel wronged me...perhaps he felt I wronged him, who knows...but it made me feel so much better as if a load is off my back.

I am not saying we should condone any negativity or abuse directed towards us. Indeed it needs assertiveness to ask people to stop it and to take action to prevent people from doing harm and assertiveness is necessary .

It is when we have made the right actions and we now find we have to deal with the emotion causing a pain in our somatic body.

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

From Pir Vilayat Khan

Now comes the crucial test: Remember Pir o Murshid said: There must be no grudge against anybody, and no complaining of anyone having done him harm, for all these things which belong to this world, if man took them along, would become a burden on the spiritual path. The journey is difficult enough, and it becomes more difficult if there is a burden to be carried. If a person is lifting a burden of displeasure, dissatisfaction, discomfort, it is difficult to bear it on that path. It is a path to freedom, and to start on this path to freedom man must free himself

When I advocate forgiveness, I sometimes have the response: "Pir, I already feel so bad because of what that person did to me and now I feel worse because I feel criticized for not being able to forgive!" I know it is difficult, but if one wishes for illumination very strongly, then one needs to meet what it takes. Pir o Murshid gives
the clue: It is the need for freedom to progress on the path that will help one overcome resentment because one's grudge weighs upon one holding one back; one's will cannot do this.

If the transit from the past into the future is not triggered off by one's incentive in singling out a resolve or resolutions, one will slip back by dint of the law of entropy. Life is a battle against deterioration, neglect, letting go, defilement, decadence, decay, slovenliness, You will find that if you do not yourself take the initiative to bring about a change, either entropy, psychological sclerosis, will set in or a crisis will start brewing and force you to take a decision.

The cosmos has a perfunctory way of righting itself, often awkwardly, inadequately, incongruously, unfairly, that baffles our need to make sense of life, and shatters our concepts of a wise, merciful and just God. The storm let loose clears the present from the past with a thrash, ruthlessly, savagely, indiscriminately, often victimizing
innocent martyrs while sweeping tyrants into power. It is the same primitive force of nature bursting forth in galactic explosions, in the territorial combats of animals ensuring order by the pandemonium of war, or the racial vendettas still raging in our supposedly civilized world, and at the personal scale personal resentment. The
evolutionary thrust takes time to refine, and transmute this savage force into unconditional love. You find it amongst the few - the saints. This is spirituality.

When the cosmos shrieks in flashes of light and sound, lightning and thunder, it tells us of its wounds, for example, in the cries of agony of victims of torture in concentration camps, in the the agony of the whole cosmos the ordeal of the disaster wreaked by the abuse of the Universe's (God's) gift of free-will to those fractions of the cosmos which now become auto-destructive, threatening to not only disrupt
others but destroy the very totality which endowed it with free will.

Fortunately alternatively you have another option: validation of the gift of life, zest, verve. You may pick up on the screen of your mind a mountain scene at dawn, the sky radiant with many-splendor ed colored clouds while His Majesty, the Sun takes his place in this array of glory. Or you may pick up the atmosphere of sacredness of a religious celebration. Or, moving back into the 1st century you could still recall the ovations of the masses greeting Christ as he traveled on a donkey from the Mount of Olives to Gethsemene.

The psychological energy generated by pain and suffering wreaked upon the psyche by abuse, injustice, failure and for whatever reason, being frustrated if it finds no outlet in revenge, vendettas, will simmer furiously in resentment. But by calling forth the transpersonal dimensions of one's being, one transmutes personal rage in cosmic outrage, one awakens latent qualities lying in wait in the seed bed of one's psyche which will trigger off creative thoughts fashioned into creative forms having a healing and enlightening effect upon the social environment.

Some mountains are scars incurred by our Planet by explosions spewing asteroids across space that bombarded us aeons ago. Here is one more illustration of the way that violent turbulence can trigger off beauty and majesty. Likewise with our psychological tribulations: the breakdown may aver itself to be a breakthrough. Pir o Murshid says: a defeat can aver itself to be a victory.

Making a difference

Making a difference

"The spiritual life is a call to action. But it is a call to ... action without any selfish attachment to the results."

-- Eknath Easwaran

Many of us feel deeply that we want to make a difference -- we want our lives to mean something in the bigger scheme of life. While this is a noble motive, we might want to explore what lies at its root.

Does the drive to make a difference arise from ego’s need to feel worthy? If my ego is not convinced that I matter, I may want visible proof that I do by making some kind of impact on life.

Soul doesn’t need proof that it’s worthy. Soul thrives in being awake and connected. Perhaps if we let go of the pressure we feel from our ego’s need to be recognized, we will be more open and able to simply live soulfully. And by doing that, we WILL make a difference!

"A person’s worth is contingent upon who he is, not upon what he does, or how much he has. The worth of a person, or a thing, or an idea, is in being, not in doing, not in having."

-- Alice Mary Hilton

How can we make a difference in this world that we live in? Is it by changing it ?

No ...it is by changing ourselves....

Only then will we make a difference in the world

Change from blame to responsiblity
From hate to love
From invalidation to respect
From being ungrateful to being grateful
From looking at the weaknesses to focusing on strengths

post script:

I had a number of feedbacks on this posting. One of which was a spousal abuse victim. It was only when she stopped blaming that she was able to move on in her life and she felt as if a huge burden had been lifted from her. It is when you stop blaming that you stop being a victim and are empowered. Only empowered people can make a difference.