The month of Ramadan began yesterday and I managed to get through it barely loosing my tops with my kids. How small irritations can become major explosions when your bewlly is growling and your head is in a migraine mode. I even made it to the mosque at night for the Taraweh prayers, a special prayers performed during the month of Ramadan. Being the laid back ladaisical kind of Muslim not worth the beard growing on my face, I must admit that performing the prayers in the mosque has had its calming effects on my mind. I had made my silent vows towards fulfilling my fasting throughout this month to the best of my ability and I had asked my Creator to assist me in this performance as i am even at my age today still as flacky and fickle when it come making commitments as i had ever been especially when it comes to religious ones. If all goes as promised and Allah keeps His promises, I am bound for the deep end as i am sure that by all counts i have one hell of a long list to catch up to in repaying my debts and promisses, in recocilliating and forgiving and in cleaning up my garbage filled mind. My closet is filled with skeletons and my soul is haunted by past mistakes and reckless living and my heart is a roost for ancient and twisted karmas born through greed, hate and dellusions.
But if promises are keptand Allah keeps His promisses, this month of Ramadan is yet another chance for one like yours truly who had" squandered all his resistance for a pocket full of marbles, such are promisses," to do a little more of his souls searching and heart cleansing practice. The fasting month has always been a great spiritual struggle for me not because i cannot stand hunger and pain but because of my faith towards my Maker. During these days when i am fasting, if i fast, my mind is being put to the toughest challenge of the finer acts of resistance of desires especially sexual desires. Food is not hard to resist but the mental forms of fornication can be a torture and if one is like me where the mind is constantly incriminating against itself at every distraction. The senses are heightened when you are fasting and the need to maintian a sense of detachment from all forms of sexual becomes a monumental effort without giving in and thus forfeiting one's fast for the day.
Why do I torture myself such? This is what i have asked myelf time and again whenever I am confronted with religous issues versee fulfilling my desires which comes as naturally as my lack of understanding and faith does. Waht do I hope to gain if all is being predestined for me or what or who am I trying to prove in undertaking any form of self discipline or mind purification practices? I look around me and all I see is the same old tricks played in different forms and manifestations and all in the effort to promote the AlMighty 'self'. Wear the beard and dorn the skull cap and you are a Haj and people look to you with respect and garner for your oppinions. Pray five tiems a day and you become aloof from the rest of humanity because you are closer to God and you are given the answers or worse yet you have become the chosen ones! Visit the Holy Land three times in your lifetime because you can afford it and the hell with your brothers and sisters whose children are on the verge of becoming thieves. And I want to become one of you??
As long as I have been going to the Mosque for the Friday prayers I had never felt the holyness or he wholesome feeling of being in the presecence of the Maker and at times far from it i had often left the house of my Lord more dismayed if not downright pissed. Why?? I had seen and witnessed more friendly and heartwarming looks in the market places and on the streets than I had ever in the prayer house of God, more than not I would gat a disdain stare like 'what the fauck are you doing here.? If you ask me why I am ambivalent about my religious commitment as a Muslim all I can say is that i am not a religious being no, I am a Spiritual Being. I seek to align my spirit with that of my creator and eventually merge into His Being. This muc i had come to understand and that is , I am not an atheist, I am a believer if not a True Believer. If there is anything i fear about life and death is the fact that i nver tried to understand my belief in that which is my Creator. I am afraid that my life had been a total waste at the end of my days and where i head on from then on would be nothing more than repurcussions of my lack of understanding of this phenomenon I call life and living, death and dying.
When the call to prayer was louded over the speakers from four or five different voices of the Bilals from in and around the area, I was twisitng like a demon burning from self torment. my mind struggles with all kinds of reasoning on why I cannot pray why these prayers are not for me and inadvertantly for my children as well. This has been going on for as long as I had lived and within the hearing distance of the mosques. I look at my neighbors' children as they are all dressed up with their white trubans and goaties well trimmed their white Pakistani Kurta and clean sarongs getting ready to leave in answer to the call. I reflected upon myself and my children and I had no answers but just a feeling of emptiness, guilt ridden sense of emptiness. QWhy?? As I look at these individuals at their performances i also realized that these are the hypocrates whose personality I care not for in their daily lives. I have come to know them and through my observations of their ways I cannot say that they have my utmost respect for their display of piety. But who am I to judge? my trip in this life is strictly self discovery, on knowing or coming to know who I am and not compare or critisize others for who or what they are.
This fasting month is for me yet another milestone of my getting to know my LOrd and how i fare through this whole month of Ramadan is yet to be seen and as always i will wrtie it all down for my better understanding of the whys and why nots. Allah, I 'oft forgiving and Most Merciful' and in this i had always held to be the ultimate Truth. If i fail in all else towards becoming a True Beleiver in this I rest my mind my heart and my soul, that He forgives even the worse of the worse if and when He decides it so. In the meantime my journey in life will go on untill the end of days for me.
But if promises are keptand Allah keeps His promisses, this month of Ramadan is yet another chance for one like yours truly who had" squandered all his resistance for a pocket full of marbles, such are promisses," to do a little more of his souls searching and heart cleansing practice. The fasting month has always been a great spiritual struggle for me not because i cannot stand hunger and pain but because of my faith towards my Maker. During these days when i am fasting, if i fast, my mind is being put to the toughest challenge of the finer acts of resistance of desires especially sexual desires. Food is not hard to resist but the mental forms of fornication can be a torture and if one is like me where the mind is constantly incriminating against itself at every distraction. The senses are heightened when you are fasting and the need to maintian a sense of detachment from all forms of sexual becomes a monumental effort without giving in and thus forfeiting one's fast for the day.
Why do I torture myself such? This is what i have asked myelf time and again whenever I am confronted with religous issues versee fulfilling my desires which comes as naturally as my lack of understanding and faith does. Waht do I hope to gain if all is being predestined for me or what or who am I trying to prove in undertaking any form of self discipline or mind purification practices? I look around me and all I see is the same old tricks played in different forms and manifestations and all in the effort to promote the AlMighty 'self'. Wear the beard and dorn the skull cap and you are a Haj and people look to you with respect and garner for your oppinions. Pray five tiems a day and you become aloof from the rest of humanity because you are closer to God and you are given the answers or worse yet you have become the chosen ones! Visit the Holy Land three times in your lifetime because you can afford it and the hell with your brothers and sisters whose children are on the verge of becoming thieves. And I want to become one of you??
As long as I have been going to the Mosque for the Friday prayers I had never felt the holyness or he wholesome feeling of being in the presecence of the Maker and at times far from it i had often left the house of my Lord more dismayed if not downright pissed. Why?? I had seen and witnessed more friendly and heartwarming looks in the market places and on the streets than I had ever in the prayer house of God, more than not I would gat a disdain stare like 'what the fauck are you doing here.? If you ask me why I am ambivalent about my religious commitment as a Muslim all I can say is that i am not a religious being no, I am a Spiritual Being. I seek to align my spirit with that of my creator and eventually merge into His Being. This muc i had come to understand and that is , I am not an atheist, I am a believer if not a True Believer. If there is anything i fear about life and death is the fact that i nver tried to understand my belief in that which is my Creator. I am afraid that my life had been a total waste at the end of my days and where i head on from then on would be nothing more than repurcussions of my lack of understanding of this phenomenon I call life and living, death and dying.
When the call to prayer was louded over the speakers from four or five different voices of the Bilals from in and around the area, I was twisitng like a demon burning from self torment. my mind struggles with all kinds of reasoning on why I cannot pray why these prayers are not for me and inadvertantly for my children as well. This has been going on for as long as I had lived and within the hearing distance of the mosques. I look at my neighbors' children as they are all dressed up with their white trubans and goaties well trimmed their white Pakistani Kurta and clean sarongs getting ready to leave in answer to the call. I reflected upon myself and my children and I had no answers but just a feeling of emptiness, guilt ridden sense of emptiness. QWhy?? As I look at these individuals at their performances i also realized that these are the hypocrates whose personality I care not for in their daily lives. I have come to know them and through my observations of their ways I cannot say that they have my utmost respect for their display of piety. But who am I to judge? my trip in this life is strictly self discovery, on knowing or coming to know who I am and not compare or critisize others for who or what they are.
This fasting month is for me yet another milestone of my getting to know my LOrd and how i fare through this whole month of Ramadan is yet to be seen and as always i will wrtie it all down for my better understanding of the whys and why nots. Allah, I 'oft forgiving and Most Merciful' and in this i had always held to be the ultimate Truth. If i fail in all else towards becoming a True Beleiver in this I rest my mind my heart and my soul, that He forgives even the worse of the worse if and when He decides it so. In the meantime my journey in life will go on untill the end of days for me.
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