two wings to fly

If you want to become whole, let yourself be partial;
if you want to become straight, let yourself be crooked;
if you want to become full, let yourself be empty;
if you want to be reborn, let yourself die.

If you want to be given everything,
give everything up.

-- Tao Te Ching, The Book of the Way


This reminds me of:

God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites
so that you will have two wings to fly, not one.

-- Rumi


And apparently, these too:

And of everything we have created pairs; that you may receive instruction.

-- Al-Quran 51:49

Exalted is He who created everything in pairs -- from what the earth grows and from themselves and from that which they do not know.

-- Al-Quran 36:36

Your dreams need a practical plan,

S.

Happy Ramadhan!

Ohmy, it's halfway through the fasting month,

and it's rushing by like a blur as always.

I really have been finding it increasingly hard to find appropriate pockets of time to blog;

or my blogging moments don't happen felicitously such that I am able to pen down thoughts more promptly. Life is hard but good; I have been feeling grateful and good -- battling inner and outer demons (haha, perhaps not so literally) with more and more grace and confidence. One of the things I am most grateful for? The ability to perceive the big picture. Alhamdulillah! So that even impossibly difficult things, insya Allah, reveal their gems to me.

I have learnt very, very valuable lessons that I secretly think a lot of people will hardly ever get to learn. I feel like I have been put through the wringer, and have surfaced with pearls that I jealously clam, because they're precious, and who else will understand how I've received them? I caress them secretly, deep in my pockets where no one knows, giving me a sense of joy, comfort, and a hope for further treasures. It is a strange feeling to be truly and deeply happier than people think you are. Perhaps this is the sweetness that was spoken of; that makes the tangible outside world blur into the background, and all that's left for you is this sweetness, and the sweetness of waiting for more.

insya Allah. Trust in God over everything else and....

ganbatte, S!

this is very cool interesting stuff --

also, I love how my wide reading habits allow me to match content

that overlaps over authors, genres, and fields;

it leads to gasps of recognition and more adept resonance with truths.

(insya Allah!)

I've only learnt to truly feel my feelings and immerse myself in them fairly recently; 

it is truly a skill to allow oneself to feel, and then subsequently to act accordingly.

What we often do instead is rationalise, deny, and suppress,

to fit into the surroundings or expectations we think we should conform to.

It's okay to feel angry,

but not okay to retaliate out of anger.

When it comes to anger, I am often reminded of a story (this is totally a rephrase from my memory, therefore a gist, and not a hadith word-for-word recall FYI!): Sayidina Ali r.a. was about to behead someone on the battlefield who had spat at him out of rudeness -- then Sayidina Ali r.a. paused, and changed his mind. This of course bewildered the man in question, who asked, "Why do you not kill me?" And Sayidina Ali r.a. replied, "If I had killed you, I would have done it for me instead of God."

Right action is choice! Not suppression per se. And the thing about anger is that of course it is a cover for hurt (as the girl in this video rightly mentioned). So feel the anger, feel the hurt, the grief; sit with it and feel it. (Bawl your eyes out if you have to, like I did.) Then decide your course of action. I think it is very, very real and true, that when your hurt is not acknowledged, it comes out, in Brene Brown's words, as shit (pardon my language) that you work out on other people. It is very, very difficult to take the higher road; hurt is valid. Humans feel pain; we are only human. But it is incredibly important that pain is processed and acknowledged -- otherwise it transmutes into something else, guys. In the extreme, something possibly dangerous like psychopathic mass murderers and terrorist acts (sorry for being dramatic hehe, but this is not untrue).

I've been learning that the ability to process pain and emotions as a whole, is so important and incredibly underestimated as a skill. Emotional intelligence is as essential in life, if not more so, than general intelligence. (In fact, it might be a fallacy to think that intelligence can be broken down this way. I feel like actually the most intelligent people in the world, are also the most emotionally sensitive and adept.)

God, allow me to grow and overcome these spiritual struggles.

Give me the strength to believe in the rainbow after the storm.

An aside:

I'm realising that the moment I feel like

yes, I think I've got a grip!

God sends along the next test.

Haha.

Ya Allah, be kind to me.

I have too much to learn.

serupa tapi tak sama

Mikrokosmos is probably my favourite track on the latest BTS album, Persona --
(an aside: read BBC's article on how BTS delves into Jungian psychology!)

and yessss, I knew somebody would make an FMV with Kimi no Na Wa; 

it's just so lovely! and this fits so well.

You got me

When I see you, I dream

I got you

In those nights that seemed pitch black

The lights we saw in each other

We're saying the same thing

The stars that shine more brightly

in the darkest night

The deeper the night is,

the brighter the star lights shine

💜

It feels like I haven't blogged for so very long,

that in some way, I feel like I've forgotten how to.

I feel different,

which has wrought many different things in real life, maybe -- (subtly?)

hopefully mostly for good?

I've been writing less though! I do think this is also a roll-on effect;

that's a little disheartening, I do want to get back to writing.

I feel lost without words.

Am I me if I can't articulate myself.

I probably sound insanely incoherent to every reader at the moment;

it's just that recently, I've been experiencing life differently and not in words... 

(do I make sense...?)

or not in the self-narrative format we live out most of our lives,

and it's hard to convey this in words.

For the first time (in my life? in a long time?), I've discovered / experienced

how truth and beauty surpass the boundaries of language. 

My love for language falls second place right now.

There is so much more to life, to this world, 

to every moment,

than the logical and conscious patterns of our mind.

La vie en rose

April is a wonderful month.


This song floated to me today.
It’s lovely, and feels timely.
I’ll be in Paris later this week.

💗

do you hear me; i love you

Like having feelings, making mistakes is an essential part of being human. Both are non-negotiable conditions of humanity. Please know that there's not a human being on earth who hasn't had many, many feelings and made many, many mistakes. If you meet people who say otherwise, don't listen to them; they're full of nonsense (to put it kindly).

...

My solemn promise to you is that if you do this work of building yourself up, brick by brick, skill by skill, step by step, you'll reap the tremendous rewards. As you build up the pyramid of self-love, you'll be climbing it too, until you reach the top and find that you have a level of kindness and calmness within yourself and for yourself that you never knew existed. And when you turn your powerful compassion upon yourself, you'll be living with a new You. A You that's lovable, fallible, imperfect, with strengths and weaknesses, wins and losses, sensitivity and resilience. A full and connected You.

~ Running on Empty, Jonice Webb

What a generally terrible weekend.


Had to deal with horrible situations personally, and then also this New Zealand massacre thing (and now I hear, another shooting in Amsterdam) -- I'm so tired from feeling stressed out and sad. And crying all the time. I feel like I've cried more in the past year than all my adult years before.

And then earlier tonight, my SLP class shared that one of our senior SLTs had her husband in the shooting massacre, but thankfully he appears to be recovering. #icannot It's jarring to think this scary event is no more than one degree of separation; it makes it that much more real and devastating. And my family is going on a trip to Paris soon-ish -- and I'm quite scared at some level, although insya Allah, all will be well. Everywhere in the western world sounds terrifying to me at the moment. But I do want to visit M and her family! They are such wonderful people and this divide that shouldn't be -- who is creating this divide! I have so many non-Muslim friends; so many. Scattered the world over. They are beloved to me. My closest friend E is a non-Muslim, and I would have you know she stood guard over me while I prayed in the freezing cold at a park in Japan. She knows that I need to pray five times, and sometimes reminds me about it; orders my halal food for me even before I need to ask. Many of my friends are like this. Why must there be this apparent stupid separation as though there aren't more things that are common than different between us?

Essentially why can't humans just be more accepting of difference;
it is my personal pet peeve to hear anybody mock anyone as weird
with no apparent rhyme or reason other than that the person is different from you.
So what! So what if someone is different from you!
Are you in high school and that young and stupid?

And why should high schoolers be excused to begin with -- ugh, all my memories of stupid clique-ish behaviours, and ostracizing individuals for whatever reason when we were teenagers. So stupid, and truly are the roots of horrible dehumanizing behaviour. If you're a bully in a small situation then you can be a bully further on. Anytime you leave somebody out of the group feeling smug about your being part of the in-group, it contributes to a culture of discrimination. You insecure, emotionally-weak, stupid bully! Stop trying to make yourself feel good at the expense of others' well-being!

Ugh, I have so much anger with the world.
Why are humans like this.
Is it because the ones who know enough are not doing enough?
I feel if there's anything, there's that.

There can't be true good without evil?

---

🙏

Let me post some happy things instead.

Earlier in the week, I actually came across this anime series from 2007 --

Lovely Complex.

It was amazingly hilarious and beautiful at the same time;

I loved it so much. And it had Tegomass's Kiss Kaerimichi no Love Song,

which made me all nostalgic, of course!

and I am proud to say I remembered the lyrics soon enough, hehe.

It's about a short boy and a tall girl struggling with their feelings for each other;

it's beyond adorable, and entirely relatable. I laughed so hard and cried equally hard.

I am going to be a bit crazy and post a crazy number of clips now --

spoilers ahead!

we need more happy stories in the world!

💜

Was cleaning up my hard drive and found my collection of notes
from The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller.

Children who are intelligent, alert, attentive, sensitive, and completely attuned to the mother's well-being are entirely at her disposal. Transparent, clear, and reliable, they are easy to manipulate as long as their true self (their emotional world) remains in the cellar of the glass house in which they have to live -- sometimes until puberty or until they come to therapy, and very often until they have become parents themselves.


I keep telling my friends, sometimes offending them I'm sure, that parents should stop attempting to fix their children and fix themselves. I grow increasingly certain of this. Happy parents make happy children. Stressed out, anxious parents create distraught children. The most powerful teacher is the role model. So, you can say one million things to your children -- but if you don't embody it, forget it. Your children will learn to be whatever you are.

And these incredibly intelligent and sensitive children? The perfect children you have that you show off to everybody, on whom all your hope resides? It breaks my heart. They are truly the easiest canvases on which to project your inadequacies as an adult. They will be whatever the parent unconsciously wishes them to be; they are so smart they become what you need! And if they don't ever meet an adult who truly pays attention to them, they grow up also never paying attention to themselves, and feel disconnected from their real selves.

You know how they say the best thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother? True, I think, because if you have an insecure and emotionally-distraught woman, she will project all her needs and lack onto her poor children, and the smartest ones will carry the heaviest burden. Unless you have a strong woman who stands up for herself and for her children. I'm thinking of Trevor Noah's mother who he depicted in his autobiography Born A Crime; that lady was jaw-dropping, haha. She made Trevor and her jump out of a moving vehicle to save themselves, all that told in hilariously comedic prose. She also left her useless second husband when it came down to it. Women who continuously allow themselves to suffer in silence do a disservice to their children. You think your children can't tell how miserable you are? It comes from you in waves. And it creates all sorts of complexes in their young minds.

It's hard to be a parent, I get it. (Or maybe I don't since I'm not one, but I can appreciate it at least.) But I'm just saying, human beings should work on being good human beings.
Work on yourselves.
Then maybe... you'll be a better spouse, a better friend, a better parent.

... a mother can react empathically only to the extent that she has become free of her own childhood;

when she denies the vicissitudes of her early life, she wears invisible chains.

  

When you change the way you look at things,
the things you look at change.
~ Max Planck, Quantum Physicist


So, I stole this quote from a TED Talk about a fairly spiritual topic;
note how this speaker, consciously or not, labeled famous Mr Planck
as a scientist, trying to highlight the fact that hey guys, even super-rational,
brilliant, smart people say such seemingly mystical, fluffy, and self-improvement-type lines!

Duh, believing in divine things seems super-rational to me.

More things, as above, to bolster me for this week, and future weeks:

This, this, this.

thank you.

Although some days can get difficult,

I feel over time, (over the years of fighting and contemplation),

 it's been getting easier. To be me.

I am me, I am happy to be me, I'm grateful to be me,

Thank You God for allowing me.

Now let me love You,

in the way You have made me.

I don't want to be anybody else.

shall end with a cute one!

yes, don't listen to "society".

(I do believe this is key to raising yourself to a higher standard.)

hehehe,

yes shutup shutup shutuppppp hahaha.

I love how heart is so blissfully happy here.

Just use your head, follow your heart,

and live life with gratitude and trust in God.

Here's to a better week this week;
to fighting inner battles successfully,
and facing external difficulties with grace,
insya Allah.


Blessed be he who has found his solitude,
not the solitude pictured in painting and poverty,
but his own, unique, predestined solitude.
Blessed be he who knows how to suffer!
Blessed be he who bears the magic stone in his heart.
To him comes destiny,
from him comes authentic action.
~ Herman Hesse


Wisdom = valuing the things you have while you have them

beauty is truth, truth beauty

I can't recall now what brought these words to memory quite suddenly,
but the words just came to my mind, and I looked up the poem again.
It reminds me of what I'm reading now about the beauty of everyday things,
and the profundity hidden in beauty that needs to be contemplated.

The first time I was introduced to this I was probably 13,
in one of the few literature classes that actually stayed with me.
(We had such crap literature teachers in RG;
the few successful lessons, this one with a Mrs. U,
stayed in memory like gems.)

Ode on a Grecian Urn
by John Keats

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,

       Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

       A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape

       Of deities or mortals, or of both,

               In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

       What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

               What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

       Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,

       Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

       Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

               Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;

       She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

               For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

         Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unwearied,

         For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

         For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,

                For ever panting, and for ever young;

All breathing human passion far above,

         That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,

                A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

         To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

         And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

What little town by river or sea shore,

         Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

                Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

And, little town, thy streets for evermore

         Will silent be; and not a soul to tell

                Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

         Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

With forest branches and the trodden weed;

         Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

         When old age shall this generation waste,

                Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,

         "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

I may have said this before, and not so recently,
but it's so hard to express all the complexity that roils inside,
that sometimes, only art such as this comes close.



Striving to this, to beauty, to goodness, to equanimity,
to all the high virtues, is so bloody hard --
there are days I almost feel like tantrum-ing.
I can't be magnanimous every day.
Sometimes, what people say and how they think,
still cut. And it's exhausting having to rub against this
as a way of life, every single, bloody, day.
Implicit beliefs, perceptions, and thoughts, that you don't want
to subscribe to but are constantly bombarded with anyway.
God, so tiring. Sometimes, one's resources are depleted.

I was thinking last night,
when I find that precious thing...
or when I get married, whenever that may be,
I'd want it to be as small and as quiet as I can get away with.
People ruin beautiful things.

---

not unrelated so I wanted to put this here;

hehe.

God, give us patience.

God, give us friends.

take a sad song and make it better

I was helping out at E's Aphasia Chit Chat Cafe this weekend

(which, by the way, is such an awesome thing and I've been dreaming

of running a child language version of this; it's basically a simulated cafe,

facilitated by volunteer therapists, so persons with aphasia can practise

their communication by way of chill conversations around a table, and when

ordering their food). One of the entertainment segments had music therapists

playing live music on request whilst they move from table to table.

At my table, we had a gentleman, Mr G, request Hey Jude, after we managed to help him write it out on paper (he struggled to get it out intelligibly in speech!). So the whole table belted out this classic Beatles song (which I hadn't taken the time, ever, in the past to truly appreciate) -- it was so cute! Even the ones who could barely get single words out were attempting to sing along. Music is such a wonderful thing when put to great use. It really lifts the spirit and connects people together -- which is why music therapy exists, I suppose. So anyway, I was totally enjoying the song too and sharing my phone with an adorable Mr W who was enthusiastically croaking along (hehe), when I noticed that Mr G was dabbing his eyes with tissue half way through the song. I stopped short and realised he was tearing up!

Oh gosh. I had to blink back tears myself, seeing him! Do not cry, S.

Suddenly, this Beatles song took on a whole new significance to me.

How difficult it is to live with this difficult thing!

How many dreams have been broken, 

how many loves possibly lost,

and how the heart aches.

But then to be able to enjoy a beloved song again --

how beautiful. 

I've been thinking that, rather than utterly sad things being the cause of tears:

it's when you've been given a breath of hope beyond your expectations,

when something overwhelms you in such a positive way,

this could happen I didn't think it would! --

that then causes the tears to come.

Hey Jude, 

Don't make it bad...

Take a sad song,

and make it better...

Remember to let her into your heart

Then you can start to make it better...

Nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah Hey Jude
(this is totally everyone's favourite part hehe!)

Feel seriously exhausted;
but happily so --

this week I was on at least 80% productivity,
and I made it concertedly so.

(I have to clarify that productivity doesn't mean
work productivity per se. Just productivity in the sense of
filling my life to the hour with consistently worthy and meaningful moments.)

It's hard to be coherent about this right this moment
owing to my serious wooziness/sleepiness;
but basically, I've been trying to add structure
and master myself and push myself;
my gosh I am exhausted but happily so.
And extra happily so because even when I fail on certain things,
I've been consciously kind to myself,
and it feels good, and I actually feel I could do better the next day,
and keep improving.

It feels comforting (even exhilarating) to know that the hard-won
self-love I'd achieved for myself last year is still here, hopefully to stay forever.
I'm therapizing myself, re-parenting myself, and I feel like lots of growth is possible,
Alhamdulillah.


The things people say in their ignorance still make me angry,
but I flick it away easier. It doesn't reach my core.
I am less bothered, and I can focus on doing what needs to be done.


If you don't live up to your potential,
you leave a hole in the fabric of being.
~ Jordan Peterson


I've sort of always known this deep down; maybe we all do.
Even when I was much younger, I knew that part of my listlessness
and occasional pits of depression growing up, was my knowledge that
I was not as good as I could possibly be.
(Even down to silly things like: I could have scored that test,
but I just didn't.) yes, life/things were hard,
and confusing, and just sometimes very very difficult,
but instead of fighting it head on -- I just... I don't know, checked out.
Begrudgingly played the game at times,
but overall got angrier and more upset! because the game was... unfair.
And seemingly evil. And rewarded all the wrong people.
And really really difficult?
And what does it all mean anyway!

But I think I get it so much more now.
It's not about winning (and really, what we think winning is might not be the real win).
It's about just fighting hard. Fighting really really hard.
That's why in Islam we call it jihad, right: struggle.
And the best way to struggle is to struggle voluntarily and with awareness.


These things aren't new, are they.
Sometimes you think you know things,
...but you don't, not really.
I keep being reminded these days by that Rumi quote:

You will learn by reading,
But you will understand with love.


(Wow, I haven't done this kind of ramble in a long time.
Goodnight! 💜 )

il-pal, il-sam, sam-pal, Ddaeng!

this line is really playing like a broken record in my head, haha.

be forewarned, this is a random (happy) post / fangirling outtake.

an RM-appreciation video needed to be made.

thank you.

It took me quite some time, and I always say I love all of BTS, and cannot decide on a favourite -- but slowly and surely, RM solidified at first place for me. This boy is amazing; and it may be my ultra-bias, but I will say that the reason BTS soars far above the rest of kpop is because of this boy right here, who set the tone for the entire group. You find persons like this maybe at a spiritual retreat, at a tertiary institution debate competition, or ensconced in some corner of a university faculty. You just don't see a personality like this in a singing-rapping-dancing boyband. Suddenly, a singing-rapping-dancing boyband you want to dismiss as fluff and pure entertainment delivers deep, meaningful, and philosophical messages. Suddenly, they seem to have some bigger, deeper drive and purpose, trickling down from their dear leader here.

I love the bit when Jimin starts laughing at RM, "Ahhhhh he's getting philosophical!" I also love a segment I had seen where they asked a (younger) RM to open his backpack for some tv interview, and he was carrying two books (my kind of person -- I always have multiple reads in my bag) and a toy to assemble and letters from fans! adorable. I'm starting to realise how much of this young man's philosophical meanderings and readings and reflections go into the output that we hear from BTS, especially now that I know the producers put barely any filter on him; they believe he has something to share with the world. Ah, it's amazing when you see substance packaged beautifully. i.e. Art, I suppose.

RM is my clear bias, but in BTS, all fans know that bias-wreckers are inevitable i.e. you say you have a favourite, but then you see another member, and you doubt your bias! hahahaha. Jin commonly makes me feel fuzzy and happy inside, and hello, Jin will always be extra-special to me, because he wrote and sang the amazing song, Epiphany.

I realise I have F now to share random fanstuff with, and the other day, I sent this to her.

hehe.

he's an example of how you can be proud of who you are,

without being arrogant.

"I'm worldwide handsome." 

He doesn't pretend he doesn't know it, haha.

But at the same time, he's weird and goofy, (which I adore)

and super-friendly and approachable, with everyone.

Like I know he's friends with Ji Seok Jin from Running Man,

who's probably older than his dad, and Seok Jin often calls him up

(once on Running Man too) and he'll just be chatting like they're old buddies.

to wrap up the BTS fangirling:

hahaha

---

completely unrelated,

but I got this pair of Melissa's recently,

and love love them!

At some level, I'm kind of afraid of how much I'm spending as I grow older -- when you have money, sometimes you forget that your bank is not bottomless, haha. Growing up, I've never been one to observe fashion or brands or trends. And I don't think I do that now either. But what I realise I'm growing into, perhaps, is an appreciation for beauty in tangible things. I feel (and I hope) that this comes hand-in-hand with my whole thing with KonMari / appreciation for objects / responsibility and ownership of your possessions, that I've been learning endlessly about. When you love the good pair of shoes you bought, say, you take care of them, and they last, and you wear them longer, and you don't buy crap shoes. And you don't clutter your space with unloved things.

It's my goal to fill my space and my life with beloved and beautiful things (and people).

my favourite definition of intuition yet

While everyone, of course, sees, there are many ways of seeing, so that what is seen is not always the same. What is the proper way of seeing? In brief, it is to see things as they are. However, very few people possess this purity of sight. That is, such people are not seeing things as they are, but are influenced by preconceptions. 'Knowing' has been added to the process of 'seeing'.

We see something as good because it is famous; we are influenced by reputation; we are swayed by ideological concerns; or we see based on our limited experience. We can't see things as they are. To see things in all their purity is generally referred to as intuition. Intuition means that things are seen directly, without intermediaries between the seeing and the seen; things are comprehended immediately and directly. Yet something as simple as this is not easy to do. We mostly see the world through tinted glasses, through biased eyes, or we measure things by some conceptual yardstick. All we have to do is look and see, but our thinking stands in the way. We can't see things directly; we can't see things as they are. Because of our sunglasses, the colour of things changes. Something stands between our eyes and things. This is not intuition. Intuition means to see immediately, directly. Something we saw yesterday can no longer be seen directly; it has already become a secondhand experience. Intuition means to see now, straight and true; nothing more or less. Since this means seeing things right in front of you without intermediaries, it could be called 'just seeing'. This is the commonsensical role of intuition. In Zen terms it might be expressed by the saying, 'One receives with an empty hand.'

~ The Beauty of Everyday Things by Soetsu Yanagi

Gold help me see things as they are.
Help me have the courage to see things as they are.
Help me act on things as they are.

eating problems for breakfast

If you fail to confront, you will lose.
If you confront poorly, you will also lose.
So, you must confront, but confront well.

That means that the truth-telling side of your character
must be integrated with the loving and caring side of your character.
When you show up to deal with a problem,
you must bring both of them together.
Confront the problem, but in a way that
preserves the relationship and the person.

...

"I try to go hard on the issue and soft on the person."
That means that both his truth-telling
and his care for the connection came together at once.
Here you can see the importance of integration,
as this one concept brings together three of our character components at once:
connection, orientation toward truth, and embracing and resolving negatives.
That is why integrity is always about integration as much as it is about honesty.
Honesty without love is not integrity.

But this requires a character that has neutralized the truth.
If he or she is still running around with a lot of anger inside
that has never been integrated and metabolized,
then confrontation is going to be toxic, "beating people up."
Love and healing must first have taken place inside people's souls,
or they might be in danger of treating others not in the way
they themselves want to be treated, but in the way
that they have been treated. They repeat the abuse
that they have been subject to in their own experience.

~ Integrity: The Courage To Meet The Demands Of Reality, by. Dr Henry Cloud

The world of utility and the world of beauty 
are not separate realms.
Who is to say that
spirit and matter are not one?

...

If it is our ideal to live in a world surrounded by beautiful things,
in a virtual Kingdom of Beauty,
then we must raise the ordinary things of our daily lives
to a higher level.

...

Beauty is no longer viewed as an indispensable part of our daily lives.
Confining beauty to visual appreciation
and excluding the beauty of practical objects
has proven to be a grave error on the part of modern man.

...

It is truly amazing that such beauty should permeate these humble objects -- objects which devote their existence to service, which sacrifice their lives to the needs of the daily round, which work in the harsh real world without complaint, which carry out their duties with a sense of wholesome satisfaction, and which aim to bring a little happiness into every life. Moreover, the heavens have ordained that these objects should attain an even greater beauty as they become worn by the handling of human hands. The religious life is also built on sacrifice and service to others. This selfless, devout service to God and one's fellow beings has its equivalent in the service of miscellaneous objects to their users.

~ The Beauty of Everyday Things, by Soetsu Yanagi

I shall strive to beauty every day.
God Is Beautiful,
and loves the beautiful.

I wish I didn’t have to fall into these pits of sadness,
and get trapped by certain ways of thinking —
But Alhamdulillah when I finally step out.


“When we look at the outside world,
we are looking at only a small part that interests us.
The world we see is not the entire universe
but a limited one that the mind cares about.
However, to our minds, that small world is the entire universe.
Our reality is not the infinitely stretching cosmos
but the small part we choose to focus on.
Reality exists because our minds exists.
Without the mind,
there would be no universe.”
— “The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down”, by Haemin Sunim

here is non hoome, here nis but wildernesse

(from Balade de bon Conseyl)


some days, I feel like I can't dredge up the fight needed;
and I recall my younger days of wishing I could sink to the bottom of the ocean,
close out all the noise and oppressiveness...
and just escape. God, I feel so tired.

You know, you look around at human beings
running and running and running
after things;

and then I sit with my 5-year-old client and
I zone out and stare at him as he fiddles with the Lego pieces
-- and he just is.
Just is.
Why can't we be just is, please.
He looks up and shows me he's got it right,
and on to the next piece now.

It's quiet, and thoughtful, and peaceful, and good.

BTS in SG!

I thought I could let this concert pass by 

without much comment here,

but I was wrong.

I saw BTS live,

and I get it even more now

why people love them so.

💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

Tonight was unbelievable ~

Truth Untold 

-- we all sang together, it was lovely and amazing.

When the rappers came on to do Tear, 

the whole crowd devolved into INSANE.

I have no words. 

Seriously, the energy!!! 

And hello, look at the awesome colours -- 

the screen became black and white for the rappers. 

And all the ARMY were lighted green.

GORGEOUS

I believe this was when V said I purple you

and all our lights became purple!!!!!!!

💜😭😍

What an experience! BTS is awesome but so are the ARMY fans, and it's true I think how the dynamic feeds into each side like an endless cycle. The way we all sing along, almost word for word, in Korean, mind you -- was astounding. The atmosphere was off-the-charts-insane. BTS has speeches and greetings, saying how surprised they are by our welcome, how much energy they get just being there with everyone, how much they missed Singapore, how they want to come again to see us -- and everyone is just screaming their heads off in happiness. I also have to add how much I love their efforts in speaking English to us, clearly rehearsed, but amazingly touching nonetheless. And of course, the visual aesthetics never let us down, even at such a huge concert venue -- the lights! and colours! playing off the music! the CLOTHES. At one point, both F and I looked at each other, and gushed about the boys' gorgeous jackets. Seriously, I want them jackets, they were beautiful.

At first, I thought I wouldn't let loose so much; I didn't expect myself to go completely fangirl-nuts. But then, the excitement just kept building up as the concert progressed; when they started doing the old songs (OMGGGGG) like I Need You, and Run, and Fun Boys, and Baepsae (OMGGGGGGG), I started to lose my cool. Then Truth Untold came on, and I utterly lost it. The lady next to me (who had her little kid with earmuffs on next to her) also went a bit nuts. The whole bench was vibrating with excitement. Right after the vocalists' showcase, the rappers came on with Tear (which I have to add is possibly my favourite rap piece by BTS ever), and ohmygodddddddddddd. I have no coherent words. It was SO COOL and everyone was shouting the chorus together and alternately screaming from all the awesome. I really wondered if they heard us all the way across the Kallang River.

They got goofier towards the end of the concert, and gave unscripted speeches in both English and Korean (translated, of course) -- and I love how natural and real they appeared. Jin was so goofy and funny and omg kental, it was so cute. He spoke his entire bit in English, and ended with okay, thank you, finish -- which sent everyone more or less into hysterics and squeals. They seemed really sincere, and tried to come close to everyone, and waved at everybody; at one point, Jimin came as close to our side as he possibly could (he was still tiny) and whilst F next to me was screaming Park Jimin! intermittently like she did throughout the whole concert, we waved our arms insanely in the air, and he waved back at the whole crowd -- I like to think our crazy hand waving made him wave back, hahahaha.

A taste of our singing along:

I was so happy we got to sing along together to Epiphany (my song of 2018).

Oh, BTS.

I didn't want the night to end.

I recently purchased an audiobook version of Checkmate (Dorothy Dunnett, Lymond Chronicles).
(How many versions of this series will I eventually possess, haha?)


Listened to this bit just this morning,
and can I say how much I love these lines?
Some of the best lines I've ever read:

...the moment of creation that occurs
when the warp is interlocked with the weft.
When the singer is matched with the sounding-board;
the dream with the poet.
When the sun and the fountain first meet one another.



So, so, so beautiful.
I would wait my whole life to witness such a thing.

:O

I'm gonna go make me more gamma waves!

In a separate thing I read, some other scientists did a study on the effect of gamma waves on mice and found that their brains built up less plaque (which apparently co-related to dieases like Alzheimer's...?). So if you put two and two together: praying or meditating leads to heightened gamma waves which lead to potentially brain longevity and health! 

In the Islamic culture, we always do say that someone who reads a lot of Quran or memorizes the Quran does not get dementia. There seems to be truth in that! In fact, I've been thinking how amazing/ridiculous it is: Islam stipulates Muslims pray with khusyu' i.e. practice mindfulness in prayer 5 times a day every day of our lives -- and here we are learning scientifically about mindfulness like it's a miraculous thing we should all suddenly take up. 

helllloooooo Muslims please pray it is good not just for your soul but your health. 

It's probably good in ways we will never know or understand.

God always knows.

it's 2019!

let's start the year with wise words

from this awesome lady:

 

 

Been thinking about how much of a sap I am, in the sense that I cry so easily, it's almost like a leaky tap. You could just nudge me (metaphorically) and you'd have trouble screwing shut the waterworks. This was so unbearably apparent especially when I had my brief spiritual retreat in December, and I would cry over seemingly the littlest, most mundane things. We would speak and share things in a fellowship meeting and anybody's tears almost guarantees my tears; and when I speak I devolve into a complete mess. You'd think it's an ability of sorts to feel what someone else feels, and cry easily (I could probably act very well if I put my mind to it). But the way I am, I am more often horrified and embarrassed. People would cry over their problems and I'd end up crying more crazily than them and it gets embarrassing??? Hahaha. And people would sometimes wonder if I had a similar problem or something. Sometimes yes, I suppose, but mostly... no?

When one of my colleagues broke up years ago and she was hiding, weeping, in her clinic room, I went to talk to her and started crying myself, and had to apologise for it -- because why am I crying??? HAHA. It's ridiculous. I appreciate that I empathise well, but sometimes, other people's feelings overwhelm me and my own feelings overwhelm me and why am I processing this for everybody, it's exhausting. Goodness, creating boundaries is hard. I go to extremes: either your feelings flood me entirely or I shut you down, you're out of my space. I cannot deal! I'm trying to build my essential self and develop that wisdom that is able to step back from my live wire, but my God, this is a lifelong struggle, I feel.

May this year be fruitful, beautiful, and full of happy surprises.
God, I need them, thank You.


---

Integrity, the kind that meets the demands of reality, is character that can handle another person's not being all someone needs that person to be. By moving as a positive force that is "for" the other person's getting better, as opposed to moving against him or disengaging because he isn't, the person leverages him to a higher level. As a result, these people do not get dragged down by other people's failures, but are a force of redemption in any situation, bringing it to a higher level. That translates into a relationship being healed in one's personal life, or a company getting turned around in one's business life. Either way, his or her character has been a force "for" the good of the other, even when no one made her do it. And that is why when you look at the long-term wake of this kind of person, you find long-term, successful relationships and work scenarios. When troublesome realities come along, his or her character was able to meet those demands and be a redemptive force.

-- Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality, by Dr Henry Cloud

This reminds me of what was mentioned in Arabic class last Sunday, when Mudaris talked about the difference between the soleh (the good) person, and the muslih (the good one who influences others to goodness). And isn't the best at this the Prophet s.a.w., whose very being influenced all sorts of goodness? ❤



Ganbatte, S!

what the soul chooses to love

Whatever the soul chooses to love, it will resemble;
therefore, what we choose to love is important.
Love is the force behind every level of existence.
There is some good in every attraction,
but there is a process of refining attraction,
of choosing what to love,
so that we are energized by a wider, purer love.

...

If the suffering and drama of this world were not real,
unconditional Love would have no place.
The imperfection of the world is what gives birth
to the reality of Love -- an unconditional Love
that loves even this imperfection.
Love is a quality of the unconditioned and infinite
that penetrates the imperfect and conditioned world,
bringing with it a taste of beauty and mercy.
If Love were reserved only for the lovable
it would not be cosmic. The mystery and mercy of Love is
that we are its recipients despite our faults and weaknesses.
Knowing this allows us to love even our enemies
and to love more of this imperfect world.

~ Living Presence: The Sufi Path to Mindfulness and the Essential Self, Kabir Helminski

ghina an-nafs

After the horror of the past year++,
and finally feeling like I crossed a huge internal hurdle,
(circa July 2018 -- a moment now carved in my memory)
I did tell myself that I wanted to have a reflective end-year post this year
like the ones I used to have before.

The end of last year felt like a nightmare.
And the end of this year,
Alhamdulillah!
A spring is growing in my heart again,
and I've found my footing, insya Allah. (:



At the start of the year, I blogged briefly about a dream I had where I'd discovered I had eyes behind my normal eyes, and how I was so freaked out in my dream, I shut them again and hid them away, and pretended they weren't there. In retrospect, it was a prophecy of sorts, perhaps.

I think I've received new eyes this year, a terrifying new thing,
but Subhanallah, I am so deeply grateful now.
(A million purple hearts won't suffice. 💜 )
I literally corrected my eyes and now am utterly
spectacles-free and contact-lens-free.
At the same time, I feel like I'm understanding and seeing things
so much more differently now, and hope to sustain it well into my future,
so that I may hold myself in stead,
at all times as much as possible.
And be the best person that I can be.


a list for 2018 (excuse the lack of coherence):

* a sudden (and very recent) epiphany on that famous hadith about richness being not that of material things but richness of the soul, after reading a book about Sufi mindfulness and building an essential Self. The concept of always returning to your essential Self being the richness of your soul -- ghina an-nafs (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I realise taking the arabic words literally led me to this mind-blowing conclusion.)

*MINDFULNESS -- perhaps theme of the year, after LOVING YOURSELF. And um, isn't mindfulness basically the concept of taqwa in Islam, wow. Mindfulness is basically key to a lot of successes because of the self-awareness and strength of will it cultivates.

*Loving yourself being the start of the integration of the self, insya Allah. Jin's song, Epiphany, wins my Song of the Year.

*WORK must be within and without. I must attend not just to the internal landscape of my mind, but also my body, and my space/environment. I am developing my S function, yay! hopefully slowly but surely.

*Work albeit minute steps to improving health and fitness. Although I occasionally still fail like tonight when I should already be sleeping, ahhhhhh.

*Developing a schedule (conscientiousness being a way to balance the chaos of creativity, especially as harped on by Jordan Peterson) -- slowly but I hope to grow and be consistent

*Jordan Peterson! who makes so apparent real religious truths by his uncompromising manner with logic and rationality, conscious or not on his part. Jordan Peterson's clean up your room! and KonMari corroborates. Jordan Peterson's treat yourself as if you are valuable and BTS's Loving Yourself corroborates. Jordan Peterson's contentions about male-female issues -- I don't know if he realises that the rules and norms he talks about are already stipulated in Islam :P

*JAPAN -- I thought I couldn't love you any more, but I do. And now I have a beautiful spot (i.e. Kamikochi) in the world I have locked away in memory as a promise to return again.

*BTS being increasingly awesome every year. At this point, they're at least Beatles-level. People are just not acknowledging it very well yet. *shhhh I will see them next year, yayyyyy*

*Expanding book clubs!! yayyy Alhamdulillah. And loving the fact that my personal book club is going on to serious classics, and how we're more ready now for such big, heavy works as part of a natural progression.


Thank You.

Humility, gratitude, and love are key, S.

may 2019 bring even more beautiful rain
to water the spring in my heart.

what we can know depends on our state of consciousness

What does it mean to care for your soul? Care of the soul is the constant practice of bringing loving attention to the problems, conflicts,  and longings of our lives. Emotional suffering is something to be attended to, not split off from. We can learn to read our life as a story, rather than as a clinical case. Moreover, if the story we have been telling ourselves is a melodrama or tragedy, we need to rewrite the story. Every human life, when seen from the perspective of the unrelenting Divine Mercy, is the story of grace unfolding. Love is revealing itself in the precise details of each human life, if only we do not impose the script of self-pity, bitterness, and fearfulness. The soul is where the divine attributes of God may be awakened from their latent state to be integrated into our character. These qualities are the soul's natural inheritance from the Divine. It is through communion with the Divine that the soul takes on the spiritual attributes of kindness, generosity, courage, forgiveness, patience, and freedom.

What are the signs that someone has begun to acquire a soul? More constancy in presence, more intentionality, and more remembrance in outer life.  The spiritual teacher is very familiar with the ploys of the ego self, how it interferes with people's spiritual intentions, distracts them, subverts them. That's why, especially in the beginning, it is so important to be intentional in relation to one's spiritual commitments. Without giving priority to such commitments there is little chance of transforming the false self and developing soul.

Eventually, as the soul develops it will show this constancy even in our dreams - that is, even to the depths of our subconscious mind.

The soul is a knowing substance that knows the Reality beyond time and space. To acquire this kind of knowing is to become illuminated, to be connected to a greater intelligence that will guide every step of your life. Instead of living in fear and uncertainty, you will more and more be able to trust the unfolding of Life.

...

Beyond the facts of sensory existence, or concurrent with this existence, is the dimension of qualities that are perceived by even subtler faculties than our senses. If we read great poetry with only our sensory mind and intellect, we may know the literal, concrete meanings of the words - we may know whether or not it makes sense on a concrete or intellectual level - but we will not necessarily know the meaning, feel the nuances, or catch the emotional taste of it. We may in one moment be reading poetry as mere words, but with a change of consciousness, with the heart open and engaged, the same lines might inexplicably bring tears to our eyes. What is it that controls this flow of tears? Why does this experience arise from our depths? What we experience is dependent on our state of consciousness.

~ Living Presence: The Sufi Path to Mindfulness and the Essential Self, by Kabir Helminski

the hidden Sea

The final type of conversation, akin to listening, is a form of mutual exploration. It requires true reciprocity on the part of those listening and speaking. It allows all participants to express and organize their thoughts. A conversation of mutual exploration has a topic, generally complex, of genuine interest to the participants. Everyone participating is trying to solve a problem, instead of insisting on the a priori validity of their own positions. All are acting on the premise that they have something to learn. This kind of conversation constitutes active philosophy, the highest form of thought, and the best preparation for proper living.

...

It's as if you are listening to yourself during such a conversation, just as you are listening to the other person. You are describing how you are responding to the new information imparted by the speaker. You are reporting what that information has done to you - what new things it made appear within you, how it has changed your presuppositions, how it has made you think of new questions. You tell the speaker these things, directly. Then they have the same effect on him. In this manner, you both move towards somewhere newer and broader and better. You both change, as you let your old presuppositions die - as you shed your skins and emerge renewed.

A conversation such as this one where it is the desire for the truth itself - on the part of both participants - that is truly listening and speaking. That's why it's engaging, vital, interesting and meaningful. That sense of meaning is a signal from the deep ancient parts of your Being. You're where you should be, with one foot in order, and the other tentatively extended into chaos and the unknown. You're immersed in the Tao, following the great Way of Life. There, you're stable enough to be secure, but flexible enough to transform.

~ Rule 9: Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don't, from 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, by Jordan Peterson


Alhamdulillah! for the times I've had such wonderful conversations.




God has made nonexistence appear solid and respectable;
and He has made existence appear in the guise of nonexistence.
He has hidden the Sea and made the foam visible,
He has concealed the Wind and shown you the dust.
~ Rumi: Mathnawi V: 1026-27

sayonara sotto sotto

I've been revisiting Monkey Majik's songs,

and really love this one too, called Sakura.

This gives me the right tone and emotion,

for the end of another year of learning,

and growing.

We never stop growing!

as long as we live.

The petals softly, softly flutter like they're dancing.
A new season, surely, surely, is beginning.
Because we won't ever, ever forget these tears.
This moment is dazzling.

Goodbye, softly, softly, to the feelings in my heart.
Until the day we surely, surely meet again.
We pursue our dreams, forever and ever,
under the same sky.
This moment is dazzling,
beneath the row of cherry trees.

It feels like I've lost quite a bit of momentum with writing since my trip, and my thoughts haven't begged to be channeled out yet, which I find... unsettling. I'm used to having that need and urge, to... be verbose, and rant on. But maybe it's the maturity and perspective slowly asserting their restraint on my overall person. I have been feeling... fairly contained. Perhaps it's a wonderful reflection of the amount of healing that I've done for my person, and the amount of equanimity and peace I have won, insya Allah.

My thoughts still swirl around, and typically, I still have the habitual I-should-blog-about-that moments; or ideas and reflections that I think should be penned down. But... I don't know. I feel a little different these days.



I did have a dream this week though, that stayed with me. In this dream, over repeated scenarios, I was arguing and desperately trying to bring my point across and convince people of something. I was using words, and debate -- it might have been a courtroom, or a lecture hall at one point. And there were several ladies that were quite mean and condescending, and I felt so angry and oppressed, and feeling very much the futility of my efforts in trying to win the case (whatever it was). At one point, I had got so upset, I was about to cry in front of them, and resort to saying how horrible they were -- but the scene had moved on to my picking up pieces of glass off the floor. The glass pieces seemed to symbolise whatever it was that I was trying to fight for. My dream self had decided that the arguing was pointless and maybe I could do something with those pieces instead. And I remember a couple of friends helping me to pick up the pieces. One friend was someone thoroughly familiar, but the other person who was just diligently picking up the pieces (despite my protesting her help) was someone fairly unexpected and I was surprised when I looked back on the dream, that she had appeared there.

But after a while, it did make sense that she was there. She was one of those people who I'd always thought was more doer than talker; someone I admired who was quietly observant, and would make her point, by being, instead of proposing or talking. And that's what I think my psyche has been trying to move towards. I feel like, it's the natural conclusion for me now, to stop fighting and being somewhat resentful of perceived stupidity or injustice or overall block-headedness in my environment. Instead, just do. Be the change you want to see. A cliche by Gandhi, but it's true isn't it.

The lamenting and the incessant complaining and the theorizing and abstractly figuring things out I've been doing for years (throughout my twenties and perhaps earlier) and being just appalled with the way the world is in many spaces (rightly or not) -- I'm moving on from that now. One can go blue in the face trying to convince people to change their minds about things. I'm done being angry, I think. I hope. Things don't change when you try to convince people of them. You just do them instead. Or you live it.

I'm taking on this motto for my life now:
see something that needs to be worked on? Work on it.
Don't be angry with people; be kind.




If we're going to make true belonging a daily practice in our lives, we're going to need a strong back and a soft front. We'll need both courage and vulnerability as we abandon the certainty and safety of our ideological bunkers and head off into the wilderness.

True belonging is, however, more than strong back and soft front. Once we've found the courage to stand alone, to say what we believe and do what we feel is right despite the criticism and fear, we may leave the wilderness, but the wild has marked our heart. That doesn't mean the wilderness is no longer difficult, it means that once we've braved it on our own, we will be painfully aware of our choices moving forward. We can spend our entire life betraying ourself and choose fitting in over standing alone. But once we've stood up for ourself and our beliefs, the bar is higher. A wild heart fights fitting in and grieves betrayal.

...

A wild heart is awake to the pain in the world, but does not diminish its own pain.
A wild heart can beat with gratitude and lean in to pure joy without denying the struggle in the world.
We hold that tension with the spirit of the wilderness.
It's not always easy or comfortable - sometimes we struggle with the weight of the pull -
but what makes it possible is a front made of love and a back built of courage.

~ Braving The Wilderness, by Brene Brown