Rambling on Issues that are current in my life.

Woke up this morning , 4;30 am., with a whole lot of negative vibes floating in my mind about life and my status in it thus far. Yes, no matter deeply you think you have understood yourself, the workings of your mind, the psycho emotional ups and downs of your consciousness. you have yet to touch the truth to your being who you are. Time and again I find myself slipping back into depression, dejection and the whole works, like a man sinking into a bog and clutching for dear life to stay at least physically if not mentally and spiritually. In my younger days this would be the moments when I would succumb to getting high, or drunk or contemplate ending this  life of mine and I did tried to, at least twice. This is what depression is all about and it is a very heavy condition one that many has lost the battle and gave in to one form of destructive trait or another. This is more prone to those who make it their venture to  dive into the meaning of life on a deeper level.

I have not been making my blog entries as I used to not because I have run out of thoughts and ideas but simply because i have become become saturated by  all that is happening in and around me. I feel like stepping out of this time and space and engage myself into the unknown   where I can be free from all these bogus experiences that i am being exposed to, experiences that are repetition of the past over and over only on a more intense and deeper level. Perhaps it is part and parcel of getting old and I have less resistance to being invaded by negative thoughts and feelings about the daily and mundane course of life. Perhaps I am expecting miracles where miracles are a rare commodity even for the enlightened; what is bugging me? I have a roof on top of my head and a beautiful daughter and son to content with and I have a beautiful cat for a friend to care for. I eat well and and thus far for the past eight months have almost completed 20 paintings ready for a solo exhibition, what is bugging me? Perhaps I am hoping for too much, hoping for what to happen, hoping for enlightenment?; that is a joke. How can one whose life is like a yo yo become enlightened and what is this state of enlightenment anyway?

I have been trying to achieve the state of enlightenment as that which was attained by the historical Buddha for most of my adult life only to realize that I was born enlightened and most of my childhood life was spent in an enlightened state but it got eroded as i grew in age;now I am suicidal. If I could end my life without becoming a sinner or disrupting, the lives of those closest to me, I would. One of my Zen teachers used to ask," Is this all there is? Is this the peak of the mystique mountain?" Well, what do I expect? Before enlightenment, I used to cut wood and fetch water, after enlightenment I am still doing the same as a Zen saying goes. What I truly need is a good cup of Nescafe black with sugar right about now. 

The call for the morning prayer has just ended and I am brought to mind of my religious commitment as a Muslim something that i have been at odds with for most of my life, to pray five times a day. This is one of my guilt trips that I have grappled with as i find it hard to pray like other good Muslims and as such I am not fit to consider myself as one as it is one of the five pillars of Islam. It is not that i do not believe in God, I do as a Muslim I believe in the One true Divine Being, a Being that I worship with every breath and have absolute faith in. However I have a problem when it comes to performing the Solats which I  tried in the past but find that it does not work for me, perhaps I did not try hard enough. I have always considered myself a of a spiritual being than a religious one simply beause I find religions to be a source of  humanity's major problem rather than a comfort. It is said that religions has caused more death and destruction than any other factors in human history and I believe so. Often enough I encounter devout Muslims who are haughty and arrogant assuming themselves to be above everyone else, frowning upon those they consider non-believers: i find no comfort in praying in the mosque from this negative experiences. I worship my Lord and you may call by what name you like, in my own way and the very fact that i have to deal with the issue of faith and worship makes me a constant believer as it keeps my Lord in mind every so often when the question of faith and practices arises and it does more often than not for me; I know i come from my Lord and will return to Him sooner or later and that I will have much to answer for.