How to Un-Educate My Mind - Part 1
The Most Challenging Education is to Uneducate Yourself.
I’ve come to realize that I’m living the life of a schizoid—there seem to be two distinct sides to who I am, how I think, and how I act. It’s as if I’m governed by two minds. One thinks and dreams in English, the other in Malay. My Western nature seeks fulfillment in the physical and material realm, while my Muslim self reins me in, grounding me in the Din of Islam and the teachings of the Awakened One. It is this Eastern self that has held me back from falling into the abyss, giving me faith in something far greater than what this world can offer.
My Western self has kept me alive, active, inquisitive, and creatively expressive. But I also let my ego run wild—especially during my 21 years in the United States. The West gave me the freedom to choose who to be, while the East gifted me with ancestral wisdom—wisdom inherited from my father, my mother, and those before them. Their faith has sustained generations. I stand today as a living legacy of their devotion.
I know now that I am neither my body nor my mind. These are but tools—vessels for expression, vehicles for manifestation. I take care of them as best I can. I’ve pushed my body to its limits in every career I’ve taken on. I’ve also refined it to perform delicate tasks like painting, printmaking, playing the guitar and the flute. I may not be masterful, but I’ve always given it my best when I set my heart to it.
But the West in me has also brought out my animal nature—my shadow self, obedient to ego, often without conscious awareness until I’ve tripped over a wire or stepped on a mine. Only then do I pause and ask myself how and why. Every move I make, every thought I entertain, is divided by the dichotomy between East and West. This isn’t a metaphor—I live this division. Every mental formation, every decision, must pass through this filter: do I act from my Western persona, or do I respond from my Eastern soul?
Ironically, after nearly 30 years of thinking and living with a Western mindset, it was in the West that I rediscovered faith. In fact, when I arrived in the U.S. in 1973 or ''74—at 25 years old, married, with a four-month-old son—I had unconsciously rejected religion altogether. We landed at Austin Straubel Airport, "The Gateway to Lambeau," in the dead of a Wisconsin winter. It was a soul-jolting shift for someone raised in Georgetown, Penang, where the days are warm and the nights cool, untouched by snow. I was immediately thrust into a new paradigm, trying to figure out what was halal and what was not.
How I coped is written elsewhere—just type “Green Bay” into the blog search bar. My stories overlap and repeat, but with each retelling, I add new details, trying to make sense of where, when, and why certain things unfolded.
Ultimately, I’ve come to accept that everything I’ve written, painted, or sketched may be of little consequence in the end, at least to me. What I have gained through this ongoing self-discovery project is the ability to distinguish who I am from who I think I am. I now understand how my mind operates, and I’ve learned that nothing in this world is truly real. Nothing lasts. Nothing is eternal—except this awareness that bears witness to all of life, navigating thick and thin with the least resistance. Effortlessly.
My journals spell out the arc of my life, from birth to now. They lay bare my strengths and weaknesses. And yet, even with all this self-inquiry, I know I’ve only scratched the surface. Some karmic roots remain deeply buried, and perhaps it’s better they stay that way. Picking at old wounds never heals them—it only risks further infection. Sometimes, the best thing to do is leave the scab alone, let it dry and heal on its own.
When my wife, son, and I were driven from the airport to our new home in Duck Creek, off Shawano Avenue in Brown County, I felt something within me shift. I felt my Malay identity slip away. I felt like a soul in transition—neither here nor there. I was scared. And so began my life as an American. My survival instinct kicked in, and I burned the bridges behind me.
It kept me alive.
And this blog—this living journal, this documentation of my journey—has been ongoing ever since. I’ll keep writing until Google disappears or I die. I’ve never earned a dime from it. I owe no one, except my son, whose computer I’m using.
Whether I’m looking back at myself through a Western or Eastern lens doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is that I now understand how my mind works. That understanding helps me stay humble, keeps me from being overly judgmental when I tell my stories. Still, I wonder—now that I’m enjoying it so much—how do I stop? This is an addiction. Like it or not. Waking up at 3 a.m. to write about yourself, for no one in particular but yourself, and calling it a labor of love and healing… it is what it is. Maybe it helps keep the soul from being completely swallowed by the illusion we call life.
So…
How do I un-educate myself?
#UneducatingTheMind #SpiritualJourney #EastMeetsWest #BlogOfBecoming #MalayInAmerica #SelfDiscovery #InnerDialogue #WisdomFromTheUniverse
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