Title: The Final Breath That Never Came - posted 4/4/2021
Search for words all I can, but never quite find the right ones to express how I feel. Sometimes I'm sure, sometimes I'm merely drifting. Then, I feel the breath of my Lord touching my heart—giving me the will to stay alive, even after what the doctor called a "mild stroke," or more precisely, a hypertension attack.
I almost passed out completely. I didn’t want to go into the how and where of it all, but I truly thought I was dying—watching my last breath drift away from my body. I prayed to my Lord for forgiveness and surrendered myself.
Then my daughter called on the phone, and just like that, I was yanked back to the reality of this physical form, mind and body reactivated. I had to get up and drive home. And I made it, Alhamdulillah, without much difficulty. No one knew what had just happened to me.
Sometimes, I feel like Mr. Sanford from Sanford and Son, that old black and white TV series from the U.S. Fred Sanford would clutch his chest, stagger a little, and reach toward the sky crying out to his late wife, “I’m coming, Elizabeth! This is the big one!” But it never was. He survived every episode—and somehow built a junkyard empire in the process.
For me, surrendering to the inevitable has become the final act of worship. To surrender to the Will of the Lord—to His Infinite Mercy and Compassion—makes it easier to face that final Big One. Step by step, breath by breath, I merge into the unknown. But the final breath never came, not yet. Insha'Allah.
Am I pure enough to return to my Maker? Not yet. I feel like I exist in limbo, between this and that shore. Drifting into a senseless purgatory, perhaps waiting for another round of birth and death. But even that, I suspect, is illusion. The mind’s perception. A deluded ego still trying to make sense of the infinite.
What happens after death? Heaven? Hell? Judgment? Even the most pious sometimes ask this. Ego doesn’t let us surrender easily. To merge into the ocean of consciousness, like a river flowing into the sea, feels like a suicide of the ego. To return to the formless, the dreamless—unconsciousness—it’s too deep for the average mind to fathom. Non-duality, unity, dissolution… these are not simple ideas.
Lately, it's been getting harder and harder to keep up these blog postings I’ve been doing for over a decade now. Maybe the closing chapter is at hand. Maybe what I try to share now feels unimportant—just more stories, mini-series, episodes of a lifetime.
This all began in 2005. My good friend Fadzly Mubin in Kuala Terengganu helped set up my blog. It started as a space to write down my thoughts, to develop my writing, to keep my sanity. Just writing the way I speak. Nothing fancy. And now, I’m writing about heaven and hell… and chilli sauce and soy sauce that binds it all! Sometimes I feel like a schizo trying to stay on track. Like walking a tightrope with two buckets of crap hanging off your shoulders—one wrong step and the whole mess flies.
There’s not much left to say that I haven’t already said. Try reading between the lines of my blog—see what I didn’t write. I fear repeating myself, or worse, regressing. Yet writing has been my soul therapy. A way to purify the heart. A form of surrender.
To express that which cannot be expressed. To speak of the Divine, the Timeless, the Formless. To share thoughts that might just fall upon the eyes of a stranger and change their life. Maybe a single gem lies buried in a heap of dung. Maybe a reader will find it.
This journey—my journey—was always meant to be shared. Perhaps it will be picked up one day for a NETFLIX mini-series: The Life and Times of the Cheeseburger Buddha.
#SurrenderToTheDivine #BrushWithDeath #CheeseburgerBuddhaChronicles #SpiritualConfessions #FinalBreathReflections #SoulSearching #HumorInMortality #LegacyInWords #NonDualityMusings #HeartOfASeeker #BloggingToHeal #FredSanfordMoments
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