Illusion and reality

Illusion is the cover of things; reality is the depth of things. The body is the illusion; the soul is the reality. The flower is the illusion; the fragrance is the reality. The fragrance is the spirit of the flower; it persists.
Hazrat Inayat Khan

Ways to Distinguish Intuition from Lower Levels of Information

This piece I got in the mail, it answers the post before it about impulses from God

Ways to Distinguish Intuition from Lower Levels of Information

"It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are." -- e. e. cummings
The more aware we become, the more intuition develops for us. The more we can access
our intuition, the faster we grow and change. The key is to understand the language of
intuition. How can you tell if the 'inner voice' is God's,other beings, other people's
projections or your own judgmental thoughts? The tips below will help you discriminate
and discern the TRUTH.Read the list over often and get a strong sense of how to discern higher guidance. Expand your inventory of how you sense the higher or lower information that comes into your physical and non-physical senses.


• LOWER LEVELS OF INFORMATION ----- HIGHER LEVELS OF INTUITION
• demand obedience or surrender ----- suggest, advise -you make your own
decisions
• conflict with one's personal ethics ----- no conflict with personal ethics
• create fear, negativity ----- create love, inspiration, empowerment
• are generalities, long winded ----- are relevant, short,intelligent, unique
• are conditional ----- are unconditional, appropriate and natural to you
• appeal to curiosity, ego ----- appeal to goodwill, beauty, unity
• from confusing, competing voices ----- from still, single knowing voice
• affirm ultimate authority for itself ----- counsel surrender to higher power
• require no personal effort ----- need personal effort
• guidance from subconscious ----- guidance from the Soul
• emotional desires, glamour ----- higher spiritual guidance
• benefit the receiver ----- benefit the good of the whole
• fixed interpretations ----- many levels of interpretation
• create dependencies ----- create interdependence
• promote separation ----- reflect oneness, wholeness, unity
• are self conscious ----- are other conscious
• affirm mediocrity ----- promote making a difference
• reflect a part of the whole ----- reflect the whole
• are emotional, mental ----- are intuitive
• focus on things ----- focus on essence and values
• result in loss of self ----- result in self discovery
• focus on desires, wants ----- focus on soul needs
• address individual ----- address community
• deal with form ----- deal with symbols, truths
• concerned with self will ----- reflect divine will
• create victims ----- require accountability
• are sporadic ----- are disciplined
• create stress ----- create peace of mind
• are personal ----- are impersonal
• are restrictive ----- are expansive
• are particular ----- are universal
• are controlling ----- are allowing
• focus on self ----- focus on others or Soul
• focus on destination ----- focus on process
• are exclusive ----- are inclusive
• are judging ----- are accepting
• are scattered ----- are focused
• are limited ----- are unlimited
• focus on material ----- focus on spiritual
• are reactive ----- are proactive
• are concrete ----- are abstract
• focus on past, future ----- focus on now
• deal with personality ----- concern Soul
• produce inertia ----- generate growth
• stuff in ----- draw out
• focus on quantity ----- focus on quality
• are selfish ----- are altruistic
• are superficial ----- are deep
• create resistance ----- create flow
• focus on lack ----- focus on abundance
• are static ----- are dynamic
• focus on me ----- focus on humanity
• create illusion ----- reveal truth
• focus on work ----- focus on service
• focus on mine ----- focus on God's
• use force ----- use power
• focus on effect ----- focus on cause
• take ----- give
• produce fear ----- experience love
• emphasize doing ----- emphasize being
"Follow your bliss and doors will open where there were no doors
before."
-- Joseph Campbell

Impulses from God

A comment from segovius
Is it not a problem that every impulse is from God?

I have many impulses that it would quite surprise me if that were the case. It's a conundrum that is not so easily solved it seems to me

.My reply is that we would have to distinguish impulses from our reactive survival self and the impulses coming from the heart.

The survival self thinks in a heauristic fashion and thinks that it is rational but it usually not the case because this thinking is pretty much reactive and takes some shortcuts .



The languange of the heart or as the sufis say Kalam Al Batin is a much more subtle thinking that fuffills a higher purpose . It takes practice to distinguish between the two and it also takes practice to actually hear the voice calling from within.

A prayer of Hazrat Inayat Khan is:

Open my heart that I may hear thy voice calling to me from within.

Unless this channel is opened we hear but our hearing is distorted hence the distortion is then manifest in our distorted wants and needs .

A Longing for the Beloved for example may manifest as a seeking for the one true love, and this may come out as changing partners ever so often because the love one has found does not fit the ideal in one's mind...and this behaviour may one day cease when one realizes the Beloved is non other than God...then one is able to love the human beloved who is less than perfect.

Helwa and Naruto

These are 2 Shirazi kittens.
I ll post a picture of them when I can
Naruto disappeared yesterday evening. He wandered out of the house and when we noticed him missing , went to look for him, not a meow did we hear.
So we spent the night in prayer, Acik, Maryam Dayat and me.
My zikr was Lailahaillah Haq..and the prayer was that Naruto be safe and be returned ...
Next morning as I was doing my ablutions I heard a meow from the bathroom window. I heard it once and did not believe my ears and then I heard it again.
I rushed out , and Abang came in at the gate and said, there is Naruto in the scrubland beside the house..and he went to get Naruto.
Naruto is not himself today , he did not want to eat, his heart was pounding ..he seemed a bit dazed...
What happened to him?
We can only guess...

Seeking God

There are three ways of seeking God in the human heart. The first way is to care for every person with whom we come in contact, in our thought, speech, and action. Human personality is very delicate. The more living the heart the more sensitive it is; that which causes sensitivity is the love element in the heart, and love is God. The person whose heart is not sensitive is without feeling; his heart is not living, but dead. In that case the divine spirit is buried in his heart.

The next way of practicing this religion is to think of the feeling of the person who is not at the moment before us. One feels for a person who is present, but one often neglects to feel for someone who is out of sight. One speaks well of someone to his face, but if one speaks well of someone when he is absent, that is greater. One sympathizes with the trouble of someone who is before one at the moment, but it is greater to sympathize with one who is far away.

The third way of realizing the Sufi principle is to realize every impulse that rises in one's heart as a direction from God. Realizing that love is a divine spark in one's heart, one blows that spark until a flame may rise to illuminate the path of one's life.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Life Purpose?

Everything starts with yourself -- with you making up your mind
 about what you're going to do with your life." -- Tony Dorsett

Prayers

Allah al Makhluk fi'l itikadat

Through your prayers,
God creates Himself through you.
hadith

Friend of God

The sign of the friend of God is that he has three qualities: a generosity like that of the ocean, a compassion like that of the sun, and a humility like that of the earth.

-Bayazid in 'Attar, "Tadhkirat"

Spiritual Progress

Written in answer to a question on a mailing list

You asked about progress spiritually. This is very difficult for me to see in you over the internet . The simple practices outlined under meditation and chakra cleansing caste the Divine light over our inner being and makes clear to us our faults. If we can see them and acknowledge their presence, then the will to change for the better will come to us.
What helps in this is self discipline , not over indulging in the various activities of sleeping, sex and food and working to keep to a minumum time wasters that distract us from doing gainful work .
If we begin to notice particular areas of weaknesses for eg we notice we are selfish or quick to anger or we notice a tendency to boast etc, then these are the areas we need to work on in ourselves.
We also need to notice our compassion towards others and our sense of beauty , are these well developed or under developed , these are indiicators of our stage in developement spiritually.

Being able to feel our energy centers and being clairvoyant or having clairuadience or even being able to see illnesses in people , understanding where these are coming from, none of these actually means we are spiritually mature or advanced. But it does mean that when we have these abilities we should work harder to discipline ourselves and our indulgences because we are more able to destroy ourselves when we lack the discipline. For example , rising Kundalini energy without an ability to channel it to be creative results in uncontrolled and uncontrollable sexual urges. What this means is that the spiritual development instead of bringing one closer to God and enlightenment can become instead a means to self destruct.This is particularly true when we feel proud of being able to feel energy and experience mystic visions when we meditate. Please note this does not mean anything in terms of our level of spiritual development. The acid test is our level of peacefullness and our degree of service to humanity and the universe.

Very few people actually have an ability to guide their own selves, more often than not we need a teacher to see where our weakenesses are and to give us practices that can help us overcome the weaknesses. Having said that, a person who is willing to examine their lives and and learn from it , then that is the best teacher there is.
I have often felt that I am at school in the school of life and that each lesson is tailor made for me to help me to progress to learn my lessons and move on.

Do not be surprised when lessons seem to get repeated or our stages seem to come a full circle and we find ourselves back where we started. It happens in circles yes, but view it instead as ascending spirals , getting wider and higher although the possibility of being static is always there, we have a choice really.

Having said all this, do not despair of your spiritual developement , knowing that there are so many things that get in the way and may hinder and hamper you because true sincerity and a true longing to understand that which is Real will get you there somehow for the most important ingredient in our journey is not our efforts but God's grace and the most important quality you need to get this is hope, expectation and prayer.

Types of belief or rather stages in believing

This is very sufi stuff , this is by Hazrat Inayat Khan My comments will be the ones in colored text

The first belief is the mass-belief. If someone says, ‘There is a God,’ then everyone repeats after him, 'Yes, there is a God.'
One might think that today, at this stage of civilization, people are too advanced to have mass-beliefs, but that would be a great mistake. People are the same today as they were a thousand years ago, perhaps worse if it comes to spiritual questions. Someone who is called 'the man of the day' in a nation, is for the time being supported by the whole nation.
Thousands and millions lift him up, hold him high. But for how long? Until some still more powerful person says, 'No, it is not so.' Then the whole country lets him down.

I find that this mass belief is reinforced by the media. When I was in the US a few years ago , my sufi friends were discussing about how sad they were that Israel was again under attack by the wicked Palestinian terrorists. I could only open my mouth wide in amazement that they thought that was how things were!!!..now that is mass belief..we believe what we see and hear but it may not be the truth.
Just before the war I was visiting Russia. In every shop one saw a picture of the Czar and Czarina, held in high esteem. It was a sacred thing for people. There was a religious ideal attached to the emperor, as he was the Head of the Church. And they used to be filled with joy when they saw the Czar and Czarina passing in the street. It was a religious upliftment for
them. But not long afterwards they themselves had processions in the streets when at each step they broke the czarist emblems. It did not take them one moment to change their belief. Why? Because it was a mass-belief.

Yep ,. it takes but a very short while to make people change their minds when it is a mass belief.

It is a very powerful belief. It changes nations. It throws them down and raises them up. It brings war. But what is it after all? A mad belief. And yet no one will admit it. If you ask an individual, he says, ‘I am not one of them.’ Yet at the same time all move together when an impulse comes for good or bad.

Scot Peck talks about this in his book The people of the Lie.Whole villages can move to kill and hate when there is a mass sense of something or the other. Everybody is swept by the energy of the emotion that engulfs everyone. Takes a lot of spiritual strength to move against this energy.

Then there is a second step towards belief and that is belief in an authority, as with people at the time of a dictatorship.They believe in a leader. They say, ‘I will not believe in the ordinary man, in my neighbor, in my colleague. I believe in that man whom I trust.’ This belief is one step higher, because it is a belief in somebody in whom one has trust. When a person says, ‘I am a Christian,’ it means a belief in Jesus Christ and his teaching. It is a belief in someone, not in an abstraction.
Yes people have to believe in something, when they do not believe in something they get sick emotionally
One might think that people do not believe in authority today, but this is not so. For instance everyone accepts a discovery made by a scientist before having made investigations about it. Investigations come afterwards. When somebody comes forward and says he has discovered something, everyone accepts it. Perhaps another scientist will produce something else
one may believe, but the one who says a thing with authority is believed by the multitude.
Oh yes yes yes! Even when the belief is not true, like believing the world is flat. Who was it who got jailed for saying the earth is round?
Then there is a third stage of belief a further stage, and this belief makes man still greater. It is the belief of reason, and it means that one does not believe in any authority, nor in what everybody else believes, but that one has reasoned it out.
That one sees reason in it. This belief is stronger still; for of the beliefs I have explained before one cannot give proof, but in this case one can stand up and say, ‘Yes, I have reasoned it out.’
This, however, also has its limitation. Since reason is the slave of the mind, reason is as changeable as the weather. Reason obeys our impressions. If we have an impulse to insult a person, or to fight with him, we can produce many reasons for it. It may be that afterwards there will be contrary reasons. But at the time, while we have this impulse, right or wrong, there is always a reason which supports it. Have the criminals put in jail committed crimes without a reason? No, they have a reason too. It does not fit in with the law perhaps, it does not satisfy society, but if we ask them, they have a reason. The reason we have today we may perhaps change next week, but nevertheless this third belief makes us stand on our own
feet, for that moment if not always. And it gives us a greater power to defend our belief
I have nothing to add to this I should think. The mind has its limitations .Muslims are taught to believe in the unseen.Iman bil ghaib, things that the mind cannot understand or reason out. A lot of the spiritual stuff falls under this category. It was a huge test of faith when the prophet told of his night journey Israq Mi'raj.Ok so I know Muslims take it for granted now like they do what is in the Quran, it is a matter of faith but supposing , just supposing you lived in the times of the Prophet Muhammad and he had just told about the night journey , how many would accept it because reason says it cannot have happened?

And then again there is a fourth belief. That belief is a belief of conviction, which stands above reason. There is a sense of conviction in man, which is not discovered for some time in life. But there comes a time when it is discovered. And that is a blessed day. Then there arises an idea, an idea which no reason can break, a feeling which is not a passing feeling but is a
conviction. However high the idea may be, one seems to be an eyewitness of that idea. One is as strong, as confident, as a person who has seen with his own eyes. One can be convinced of ideas so subtle that they cannot even be expressed in words, and one is more convinced of them than if one had seen them with one's own eyes. It is this belief which is called by the Sufis and Persian mystics Iman, which means conviction.

There is the eye of conviction that just knows...Aynul yaqin....I think this one comes only by prayers meditation and our spiritual practices or simply by God's grace.

Another view of resist not evil

Click on the title to get to the PDF book by this author.
by Florence Scovel Shinn (1871-1940)

I wrote something on this previously:

Prophet Issa Resist Not Evil




The Law of Nonresistance
"Resist not evil. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good."
Nothing on earth can resist an absolutely nonresistant person.
The Chinese say that water is the most powerful element, because it is perfectly nonresis-tant. It can wear away a rock, and sweep all before it.
Jesus Christ said: "Resist not evil," for He knew in reality, there is no evil, therefore nothing to resist. Evil has come of man's "vain imagination," or a belief in two powers, good and evil.
There is an old legend, that Adam and Eve ate of "Maya the Tree of Illusion," and saw two powers instead of one power, God.
Therefore, evil is a false law man has made for himself, through psychoma or soul sleep.
Soul sleep means, that man's soul has been hypnotized by the race belief (of sin, sickness and death, etc.) which is carnal or mortal thought, and his affairs have out-pictured his illusions.
We have read in a preceding chapter, that man's soul is his subconscious mind, and whatever he feels deeply, good or bad, is out-pictured by that faithful servant. His body and affairs show forth what he has been picturing. The sick man has pictured sickness, the poor man, poverty, the rich man, wealth.
People often say, "why does a little child attract illness, when it is too young even to know what it means?"
I answer that children are sensitive and receptive to the thoughts of others about them, and often out-picture the fears of their parents.
I heard a metaphysician once say, "If you do not run your subconscious mind yourself,
someone else will run it for you."
Mothers often, unconsciously, attract illness and disaster to their children, by continually holding them in thoughts of fear, and watching for symptoms.
For example: A friend asked a woman if her little girl had had the measles. She replied promptly, "not yet!" This implied that she was expecting the illness, and, therefore, preparing the way for what she did not want for herself and child.
However, the man who is centered and established in right thinking, the man who sends
out only goodwill to his fellow man, and who is without fear, cannot be touched or influenced by the negative thoughts of others. In fact, he could then receive only good thoughts, as he himself, sends forth only good thoughts.

JOM LEPAK

Jom Lepak is in Malay. It means Let's Hang out!

There is a popular TV figure here , Wardina and among the ladies here one is in charge of a home for troubled teenage girls..their parents give up on them.The name of the home is Raudhatus Sakinah.

My NGO started this in Shopping Malls , the place where the young people get together and just hang out. And that is what lepak means, to just hang around doing nothing.And there is another term: cyberlepak. This is for those who hang out at cybercafes or even at home and surf the net, chatting, looking at this site and that site, you know the things the young people do not all of it bad though and I've found out, the not so young do it too!

So we took the word lepak and gave it a new meaning. Let's Enhance Positive Attitudes & Knowledge.The 2 days Carnival has been held in major shopping malls throughout the country.

The aim is to provide a healthy alternative for teens.

We' re very concerned with the deterioration in morals in society . Call it old fashioned, call it what you will , but along with deteriorating morals we have also a deterioration in compassion and a sense of justice and all the positive traits a human can have.


More pics



A group of teens singing a nasyid.



This pic shows the audience which included some tourists..did they understand the language?

Drugs and HIV

Of course I have an interest in politics. But, I have too much else to deal with to talk about it here. The politics I support are politics of justice and truth , one that fights corruption and unfairness .

So you want to know what I feel about this needle distribution program to stem the tide of HIV amongst drug users. The Prime Minister says the needles distribution program will start in October unless someone comes up with another more feasable bright idea since the HIV problem is going towards serious .....

I think, what is needed is to educate IVDU s about the dangers of sharing needles and to persuade them to go for testing if they have been exposed and I aslo feel their spouses should be checked if their husbands are positive and yes , by all means give them condoms so that they don 't infect their wives.

Will distributing needles encourage more drug addicts? Not if there is, at the same time a huge education campaign and also a clean up of all their haunts as well as giving alternative solutions to the drug lifestyle for vulnerable groups.

Deal with the root cause , yes, have we found it yet?

Sharing about my dreams



I have no qualms about sharing things about my dreams and now I feel relieved that there is actually a hadith that says you can share the nice dreams you had with friends and do not tell about your bad dreams because you do not want them to happen and you want to seek protection from them happening..

I don't think my dreams are ever really bad though and even the bad ones have some redeeming features..the the one in which I dreamt I fell on a whole lot of shit and some of the shit was rising like a wave to engulf me and I roared at it and it fell back ...

Memes

Click on this link here and find out about Memes!

Level 3 of Consciousness

You are reading about something that most people don’t even know exists. If you told them, they wouldn’t just not believe you—they would have no clue what you were talking about. That’s why I wrote this little essay: so that I could show it to someone when they had no idea what I was talking about and, if they were persistent and open-minded, make some progress in their thinking. And meanwhile I could get on with my other projects.

So ok I just got to know about it....which is why I am sharing it with you

A Little bit of Rumi

My friend Nani

This is my friend Nani snorkelling.
She even took a picture of a fish while snorkelling.


So now you know sedate Muslim ladies complete with headcover go snorkelling anyway

The Traceless Warrior

This is the name of Mushtaq's blog. I like the name and I like the concept of being so skilled at averting social problems etc that you 're not even mentioned because you' done it so subtly that it is not perceived. Like Khidr!

Some of my writings

Check out some of my writings at this url http://nursyifa.info or you can click on the above link.

I 'd appreciate any comments on them. I was thinking of writing a book about healing and this indeed is what I think life is all about, healing.
I know that it is the way I choose to view life, as a healing.
Indeed the Quran says that the behavioral problems we have, insincerity, hyprocrisy etc are maridh which means disease.

Another fantastic dream

I think my dreams are a form of escape and do not really have any esoteric meaning . It expresses my desire for something and is probably not a representative of something happening in the spiritual realm . I also have been cautioned not to reveal my dreams except to my guide but I think some dreams do not mean enough to keep to myself and are too interesting not to record. If they have any significance , at least I have a record of them.

This dream I had when I went back to sleep. Off late I have been indulging in sleep! I think it is because of the severe strain I was under when my husband was very ill and I had to nurse him to the point that my whole time was taken up with being Nanny to my helpless husband. It was quite an experience and indeed I could see where my nannyship was not up to scratch.

So here is the dream. It started out with apartments. We went to one , it was kind of colorful and I found that my mum was in a unit. I had asked whose apartment it was and she said my stepfather's and he had insisted she stay there but he was away and she did not want to stay there alone. Something about a ghost I think, being in that apartment ..I notice I've been preoccupied with ghosts lately!

Anyway when going down the lift, the lift door opened to reveal a wall and I was alone in the lift for some unknown reason but when I pressed the button again the outer door opened and I was out. I kind of was a bit upset, funny the upset though, I acted upset but knew I did not feel upset.

Next scene we were visiting some land , it was kind of hilly. I think we wanted to see it for somebody who wanted to buy it. I was holding a baby. It was not my baby but we had adopted the baby and I was trying my best to be a good mum so I was holding the baby and talking to the baby, can t even remember if it was a girl or a boy,most likely a girl. Anyway , as I walked, I made leaps into the air, because walking was too tedious , and I knew I could kind of float in the air ..at least in the dream...Some members of my family were a bit upset seeing me bouncing in the air but my son said , don t worry Mum can do that quite well. As soon as we got to the top of the hill, kind of like a plateau, I could not control my movement anymore and foiund myself being raised in the air higher and higher and the baby was quite upset but I hung on tight to the baby making sure I did not drop it and found myself making a prayer, God, what are you doing , why are you taking me so high. I remember seeing some beautiful blue patterns and then it was fuzzy and the next thing I remember was that I was lying down kind of like falling asleep
( imagine sleeping in my sleep) then I woke up to find myself in a small depression in the sandy ground of some beach, it was kind of cosy really. I still had the baby with me. Before I could walk any further, just as I was getting up from the depression, two women approached me and said, "Oh there you are!We were told you would be here and we came to pick you up."
I was wondering at this point who had told them and I asked them where I was and they said I was in a beach in Penang, and that was like 200 miles from where I was previously when I started floating in the air. I was thinking of contacting my husband to tell him I was ok and at that point I woke up..feeling rather good really...