The longer the gap between my posts, the harder it is to finally write one, because I get inundated with the varied possibilities of each post: shall I talk about pottery, the new hobby I sort of stumbled (or did I leap) into? shall I talk about our recent profound discussions at book club, about suicide and happiness? or the fact that at a class discussion tonight, we revisited this topic and S shared about her friend surviving a recent ordeal and being glad to be alive? This lady apparently has three kids and I remember marveling how there's no telling what makes someone happy or otherwise. You hear of someone going into depression and getting divorced for not being able to have children, and then you hear of a mother with three children on the brink of suicide. It's mind-boggling.

And then I think of walking home from pottery class the other day, by my lonesome, feeling unbelievably good and happy. Alhamdulillah. Feeling so happy with how much I've grown, how much I've learnt to nurture myself and live in the world as the human being I aspire to be, to have faith and look towards goodness (the clouds of goodness I'm always waiting to rain on me! the retrospectively prophetic name of this space). I have been feeling eternally grateful and somewhat in awe that I have been allowed to feel this way or have this space; this space to be okay. To be okay, Alhamdulillah.

It just feels really nice to work on something with my hands; I just felt the need to do that at some level. It's been really therapeutic, I think. I'm about to splurge more $$$ on tools etc., and god knows how I will obtain an endless amount of clay to play with once my official classes are done. But essentially, the quiet art work is just... something necessary to my well-being, I feel. It's been really good... grounding? Maybe. Inevitably, I also remember my brief stints in art club or art classes when I was younger, and wonder what would have happened if I'd been allowed to pursue this side of my inclinations instead. Typically, everything I do or work with most of my life, even for fun, has been exceedingly cerebral; to be whole, one has to be rounded and delve into those corners too long ignored.

To bring this back around... 

what is happiness? An eternally-debated philosophical question, certainly. I'm just glad that I'm developing some skill or perhaps a reflection, that I can choose to be happy. To realise every day that I am alive. To be glad to have faith, the oft-taken-for-granted soul-replenishing element. To look to the pregnant clouds, happily waiting for rain.

It's been raining heavily too these few days! 

And we were hoping to walk the Rail Corridor tomorrow. 

Ja!

realer than real

I recently had a dream, that had a quality to it... like glass. Or a mirror. Something about the dream jarred me to attention. Perhaps, I'm more attuned now to growing my Self so that at some level, I am more conscious of the times when I am staring straight on at myself.

The bit that I remember vividly, started when the laughter of family faded away, and somehow I was sitting by myself, in this corner of an old, almost vintage room. It had turquoise walls and low wood paneling, and I was behind a huge desk... with a narrow corner right behind me. For some reason, or because of a low rumbling I sensed from the outside, I went to the window to peek out. I saw beautiful, deep blue waves rolling towards the shore, approaching so close to the walls of my space. I remember feeling stunned, and thinking, my goodness, it's coming. I had also noticed that this beach house I was in was strangely, sitting solidly on the sand. I rushed to another window, and even from this one -- blue waves were approaching. I rushed out, standing on the sand. And these... calm, beautiful, deep blue waves were just quietly approaching. I didn't feel so much scared, as overawed. The water started to wet my feet and reach my ankles. Then I woke up.

All this stuff, in my head. Just like that other dream I once had, about finding eyes behind my eyes. It makes me think about what is real, what is reality, where does it connect... and as Robert Johnson termed it in his books about the psyche: realer than real. Whatever that truly means. But it seems to hit the nail, it seems to hit right.

Then there are other nights -- breaking the somewhat somber mood of this post -- when my dreams consist of insane levels of frivolity, like finding BTS's Park Jimin in my vicinity. And thinking, oh, he's here again, I shan't disturb him. Haha, what a joke! Like Jimin is a boy in my neighbourhood or something. He had fans bothering him (although he looked perpetually kind and smiley) and I had a thought about catching him at another time. In retrospect, I wonder why Jimin. I never declared him my bias (that spot has always toggled between RM, Jin, and Jungkook -- but then, I really love them all, so who knows the deep levels of my mind). Perhaps amidst all the fan-level crazy of this part of my brain, there's meaning somewhere in there too; I have since learnt that all dreams are messages of some sort...? This one though, clearly with a far different level of urgency and gravity.

---

In other happy frivolous news, I have stumbled on possibly a new lister for my top 5 kdramas of all time, Sell Your Haunted House. This drama snuck up on me quietly. It aired a little while back and I didn't jump on it immediately at first. It's about friendship, family, the pain and hurts of life and how humans fail to release them. It's about the choices humans make and how evil comes back around to haunt you. It only teases at romance and leaves us all wanting, not in a bad way. And the backdrop for all this: a story about exorcists chasing ghosts away. Awesommmeee. Also, the cast chemistry is awesommmmme. Jang Nara is phenomenal; I've watched so many of her stuff and she has always been a solid actress, but she blew me away in this show. The ever-charming Yong Hwa added the right level of levity to the story, and balanced out the heavy themes and Jang Nara's gravitas. Chef's kiss for this combo.

Also, Yong Hwa sings the theme song! 
It's like a boppy anthem for the ghostbuster gang or something, haha.

I love it.

and here's an especially adorable one, around the bickering that happens, hehe.

 Lao-tzu says, "Of the one comes two, and of the two, three. And from the three come ten thousand." By the time we come to the 'three' power of anything, that is, to the transformative moment, the atoms leap, and where there was once lassitude there is now locomotion.

~Women Who Run With The Wolves, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Esta

It's approaching (hopefully) the end of another work-from-home period; therapy sessions have been suspended, I haven't been able to dine out with friends, and my level of lethargy has steadily risen the longer I lounge in my bedroom. It's all been unbearably soporific and I suppose I should make a point to at least walk outside or something.

I've been spending unhealthy amounts of time on youtube and on one rather productive evening, stumbled on something called Readwise -- which is basically an application that stores all my kindle highlights and notes and reproduces them into bite-size daily information for me to review. What an awesome treasure to find. I started rereading old notes and especially revisited this book, "Women Who Run With the Wolves". Which, I have to declare, is probably the most stunning and impactful nonfiction text I have ever read.

I needed the nuggets of wisdom I found in this book. It felt like I was starting to hit a little wall internally.

The time with Wild Woman is hard at first. To repair injured instinct, banish naivete, and over time to learn the deepest aspects of psyche and soul, to hold on to what we have learned, to not turn away, to speak out for what we stand for... all this takes a boundless and mystical endurance. When we come up out of the underworld after one of our undertakings there, we may appear unchanged outwardly, but inwardly we have reclaimed a vast and womanly wildness. On the surface we are still friendly, but beneath the skin, we are most definitely no longer tame.

the wisdom of the body

Prescriptions assume that something needs to be fixed; transformation brings forth the healing -- the coming to integrity, to wholeness -- of what is already there. While advice and prescriptions may be useful, even more valuable to us is insight into ourselves and the workings of our minds and bodies. Insight, when inspired by the quest for truth, can promote transformation.

~ Dr. Gabor Mate, When The Body Says No

Unrelated but wanted to record my synchronous moments happening in little happy bits: like M sharing with us on bookclub chat that she was visiting a bookstore in Paris and right behind her was our current read (Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun). Also last night I started revisiting some movie soundtracks and came across this awesome song:

And then today, on the way home in a grabcar, this song came on. 

Coincidence? More like synchrony.

Of all the times that I'm finally posting during this fasting month, it's tonight -- as I trudge through some work with the television on. And after re-watching a fun chick flick romantic movie (as I intermittently work, I promise), I finally had the urge to blog and my computer was conveniently in front of me, so here I am.

This was what was running on Netflix as I worked through some random IEP reports.

From the movie, Leap Year:

I've been in a little bit of a mood lately; I also recently re-watched Flipped, which is seriously one of the cutest love stories ever. And maybe it's my adult-ing thing going on, but I feel like I haven't encountered very many romantic movies in recent times. Is it just me? Being all nostalgic? It's the old ones I'm watching.

Anyway -- I can feel myself unreeling a little; it's far too late to be blogging already and I think am far too tired to think straight. So I shall stop. This has been utterly random. 

But happy Ramadhan 2021 -- 

and these last ten nights -- 

lots to pray for. 

Amin.

the sacred paradox

I hope I find some other time to blog fully about this; but for the moment, I'm just sharing what for me, has been enlightening to the point of tears:

When the unstoppable bullet hits the impenetrable wall, we find the religious experience. It is precisely here that one will grow. Jung once said, "Find out what a person fears most and that is where he will develop next." The ego is fashioned like the metal between the hammer and the anvil.

--

Jung has said that to be in a situation where there is no way out, or to be in a conflict where there is no solution, is the classical beginning of the process of individuation. It is meant to be a situation without solution: the unconscious wants the hopeless conflict in order to put the ego-consciousness up against the wall, so that the man has to realise that whatever he does is wrong, whichever way he decides will be wrong. This is meant to knock out the superiority of the ego, which always acts from the illusion that it has the responsibility of decision. Naturally, if a man says, "Oh well, then I shall just let everything go and make no decision, but just protract and wriggle out," the whole thing is equally wrong, for then naturally nothing happens. But if he is ethical enough to suffer to the core of his personality, then generally... the Self manifests. In religious language you could say that the situation without issue is meant to force the man to rely on an act of God. In psychological language the situation without issue, which the anima arranges with great skill in a man's life, is meant to drive him into a condition in which he is capable of experiencing the Self. When thinking of the anima as the soul guide, we are apt to think of Beatrice leading Dante up to Paradise, but we should not forget that he experienced that only after he had gone through Hell. Normally, the anima does not take a man by the hand and lead him right up to Paradise; she puts him first into a hot cauldron where he is nicely roasted for a while.

--

To consent to paradox is to consent to suffering that which is greater than the ego. The religious experience lies exactly at that point of insolubility where we feel we can proceed no further. This is an invitation to that which is greater than one's self.

~ Owning Your Own Shadow, Robert Johnson

 ...we must make a shadow, or there would be no culture; then we must restore the wholeness of the personality that was lost in the cultural ideals, or we will live in a state of dividedness that grows more and more painful throughout our evolution. Generally, the first half of life is dedicated to the cultural process -- gaining one's skills, raising a family, disciplining one's self in a hundred different ways; the second half of life is devoted to restoring the wholeness (making holy) of life. One might complain that this is a senseless round trip except that the wholeness at the end is conscious while it was unconscious and childlike at the beginning. This evolution, though it seems gratuitous, is worth all the pain and suffering that it costs. The only disaster would be getting lost halfway through the process and not finding our completion.

~ Owning Your Own Shadow, by Robert Johnson

a vertical reality

 I finally finished a book of my brother's that I have been hogging, and the final quote in the book put me to tears, despite most of the book being really dry and factual:

We allow ourselves to be blown by the winds because we do know what we want: our hearts know it, even if our thoughts are sometimes slow to follow -- but in the end they do catch up with our hearts and then we think we have made a decision.

~ Leopold Weiss, from 'The Road To Mecca', quoted in Apostate, by Joram van Klaveren

...Dr Umar Faruq Abd-Allah (who) spoke of a horizontal universe, a worldview in which matters are explained solely by comparing them to those that appear to be similar to the object of research. In such a reality there is no purpose, there are no absolutes. Everything is subjective and there exists no absolute Truth. Within it, any metaphysical expression is irrelevant, absurd even. This is the worldview of the postmodern West. I call it macro-nihilism. Opposite to that, he places the earlier mentioned vertical universe. Within the framework, one also looks 'upwards' to the philosophical principles and fundamental points of departure. By inserting the vertical aspect, a proverbial tent arises, a building structure with a benchmark and definitive reality. Human perception of reality, by way of previously mentioned 'first principles', points to that one Reality, God.

hermeneutic leap of mercy

been having great reads this past week.

"... if one accepts the premise that the ethos of the Qur'an and Sunna compels a hermeneutic leap of mercy, then the end result is a positive ambiguity -- the kind of ambiguity that leaves believers with a deep sense of humility and hope for humanity."

~ Islam And The Fate Of Others, by Mohammad Hassan Khalil

💗

 After repeated plays of this on youtube over the week, I figured I should finally post it here:

I really love this; it's so lovely; and the original song is just awesome to begin with.

The other day, I was doing action picture handouts with this kid for language therapy, and I told him to colour the pictures as a break (typically because child, let me document for a moment) -- I then saw after a while, that he had coloured the hair of one of the boys in the picture blue. So I said as a matter of conversation, "Oh, his hair is blue! That's interesting..." He then said matter-of-factly, "Like BTS."

It took me a few seconds: "Wait, what -- BTS??? HAHA. His hair is like BTS!" My kid cracked a smile because clearly I was excited to find a fellow fan in my little client. But then again, which child isn't a fan of BTS these days. I then proceeded to ask, "So who has blue hair? Was it Jungkook, or V... or...." (I believe it was both of them, at different time points. I can't be certain.) But my little boy's vocabulary limit had been reached, haha.

oh cute moment that made me fangirl amidst work.

Speaking of work, and not just professional work,

there's been a nice flow of observable, tangible progress;

little dominoes that build on each other and make clacking sounds in (my) real life;

and for persons like me who typically drift along amorphously in soups of ideas,

it feels almost unbelievable that I'm not sinking. I'm afloat; I'm swimming someplace.

It's not just soup here; we're making something.

I believe, and I hope, that this is what secular spiritualists refer to as manifestation.

As a Muslim, in addition I say, Alhamdulillah and Insya Allah.

May every day be beautiful and bring me to beautiful things.

the full embrace

If knowledge is for the mind, and experience is for the body, then when you apply knowledge and create a new experience, you teach the body what the mind has intellectually learned. Knowledge without experience is merely philosophy; experience without knowledge is ignorance. There's a progression that has to take place. You have to take knowledge and live it -- embrace it emotionally.

~ Breaking The Habit Of Being You, Joe Dispenza

the openness of the heart

Thought I'd just post this here, as a personal reminder to stay steadfast on this path of learning to know myself and thence the world, and thence God.

---

Somewhat in relation to this, on a happy Sunday afternoon when I was having one of my book clubs with my cousins, we ended up not really discussing the book (because it did not fly with most of us, haha) and celebrated the new year, sitting at Hvala for yummy matcha and cakes, and then lounging in a nice spot outdoors. (Also, an official yay to gatherings of 8 people!) One of us had brought out a cool game that had sorta-truth-or-dare questions, and we went around digging deeper into each others' lives and personalities (not that we haven't known each other for literal years, but you know).

At one point, that was really strange in retrospect for me, was A looking at me, all-perceptive, head cocked to one side, and making this announcement about how I was different now, and his words: "you're like ready to love now". Which of course got an outburst of laughter from everyone, me included. But internally, I was like whaaaaat. There was further probing of me, at which point I learnt that I had given off very closed-off vibes, and I had to explain that I had since sorted out a lot of my anger. I really have, which explains my fairly recent posts circa end-2020 about having shifted something core inside me. (How this came to be is probably an accumulation of many, many little things that included self-love, love, prayer, and forgiveness, and reading, and learning, and reparenting.) It just stunned me that A had read something of that in my body language; really, the question card was only innocently asking, "What does my body language say right now?" Haha, and we went down a rabbit hole with our discussions.

My cousin asked again, "Do you think you're at your peak now, like you're the best you've ever been?" I honestly was just taken aback by his questions (but seriously, A does have some skill, controversial or not). I hesitated to say yes, although my inner self had already agreed. I said I hope so! only because my logical mind was tempering instinct and tried to rationalise that I can't possibly say this about every aspect of my life or know this with absolute certainty (my weight hasn't been the best for instance, but I'm working on it!) But I have sorted out a lot of crap and understood a lot of things about my self that have helped me face the world (hence the resonance with the video clip about self-knowledge), without anger at every lack of ideal, without an outlash at every real or perceived injustice.

A had hit it spot on again when he said, you have let go of the judgments that people make. I have, in most cases; they are exhausting, and draining, and rage-inducing. People seem to think that people have to badmouth you for judgments to be made; nu-uh. They are simply made and seep into the actions they take towards you and the world. They're still all there, the social issues of the world, the prejudices that surround our lives; but... I hope to address it with more of the love, and less of the anger. 

Indeed, I am ready to love. Insyallah!

...authenticity is very much a person who lives in alignment with their meaning, with their purpose, with a sense of self-awareness, with an accurate appraisal of their strengths and their weaknesses, and yet don't allow the strength to escalate them into grandiosity, and don't let the perceived weaknesses allow them to fall into a pit of despair. They tend to be relatively well emotionally-regulated, in fact very well emotionally-regulated, however are able to engage in appropriate and vulnerable shows of emotion. Basically they're very self-possessed people. Oftentimes they present as quite serene... Authentic people are interesting because stuff doesn't tend to get under their skin as much, because they're good. They're not necessarily rich or at the top of their game. They're just authentic.

~ DoctorRamani

striving for this! 💜 insyallah

 okay okay random midnight fangirl post --

(excuse this as an accumulation of stress with work that has spilled over from 2020 but still hasn't ended)

I was binge-watching random youtube videos and then happened to rewatch BTS's Dope, which FYI was my first BTS video ever, and I'd apparently forgotten how energizing this music and video was. It really is an old classic for them (and I can't believe I've been an ARMY for 6 years now!) I remember seeing this for the first time and how my jaw dropped at the performance; just. I hadn't known it then, but it was the start of the descent into the rabbit hole.

but anyway, the point being. This song is awesome when you need to work and slog! Because it says we hustleeee, we work hard and we're dope, and we don't care what you think. I reject rejection!

and oh man, this is so fun, your energy just goes up.

I've been meaning to post properly for so long, but I keep being side-tracked by other things, including a mountain load of reports that are waaaay overdue and lectures to watch -- and my end-year post was too short to be satisfying and I need to produce something a little better for this space! Absolutely absolutely feel the need to write, which I haven't felt in a long while.

But in the meantime, while I sort out the logistics of life, let me just post this here, that I heard:

Don't let your illusions and fear keep you from your inner knowing.

---

Also, happy things I wanted to fangirl about but didn't get around to doing yet:

I had a rewatch of this recently, and realise how few Hollywood romcoms there are nowadays, and Hugh Grant was so great at it in his time. Love the song!

And also, this: which made Dis-ease my newest favourite track on BTS's BE Album.

It reminds me of the kinds of songs that got me into BTS in the first place; 

it isn't so much the glamour and flair and aesthetics of BTS that capture me per se. 

It's the beauty in the storytelling and the perspectives offered 

(wrapped up in all the pretty help too, of course). 

This reminds me of Baepsae and Whalien 52 

(about a crow-tit and a whale respectively; so cute right!) 

and talk about the problems of society and questioning life. 💜

I'm pushing it too close to the finish line this time, I'm not so sure this will successfully publish before the turn of the year. The procrastinating is terrible; I was stewing over various thoughts the past days and weeks, about what would be a good summary of this year other than the same virus story everyone shall be lamenting about. But aside from surface events that often bear little change in my life (or at least I fail to report on...), I really wanted to give a nugget of conclusion to this year.

If only it was as easy to crystallise what has changed internally... I simply know that something core has shifted, and I am afforded increasing glimpses of a future serenity. Of a calm and knowing. I had, I think, almost a week of such a state, wherein my mornings felt energizing and the ground I walked on seemingly limitless, seemingly only a temporary path as I surely will trod on somewhere greater just around the corner. There was almost a buzzing expectation that maybe I hadn't felt since I was a child. Somehow, I feel this year, was my relearning all this; the little secret behind things. And while I flow in and out of this state, my most major goal henceforth, cryptic as I always am, will be to sustain this.

I am perhaps understanding... that it is the door to every success in this world and the next; a gratitude that is not just lip service, but lived. Insya Allah.

Life Goes On

So. BTS came up with a quarantine-themed song;

Song of 2020, really.

💜

They also have a song called Blue and Grey on the new album, 

which didn't capture my ears from the first listen; but then I looked up the lyrics --

oh my heart.

It's about depression and melancholia, 

and BTS has a knack for making things so beautiful and ach-y.

Suga's lines killed me.

I don't know where it went wrong.

Ever since I was a kid,

I've had a blue question mark in my head.

Maybe that's why I've been living so hard.

Everyone's reflection for this year has been a general negative;

I'm meeting the birds tomorrow (possibly for the first time as a group this year...? yikesy.)

and I've been thinking, maybe we don't have to look at it all so bad.

I'll save my proper end-year reflection for December, but --

despite the general global human mess we're in,

I feel like this year, finally, my internal growth has solidified. 

I feel like there's a solid core now.

It's been purged for me, the blue question mark. 

I've confronted it head on,

and I can actually smile thinking about it all.

 I like this. Especially apt since I've been managing my health recently.

Radical nonpathology is the antithesis to the medical model taken up by conventional psychology and even some proponents of Eastern spirituality. The medical model is rooted in the notion that if somebody has a symptom of some sort, there is a disease down below: there is something wrong with the person that ought to be fixed. A nonpathological model, then, is rooted in the notion that there isn't anything wrong with any of us. Nonpathology sees symptoms, even painful ones, as evidence of our innate drive towards health and well-being. A fever, for example, is just your body "cooking" a virus or bacteria out of you. The symptom of a fever isn't evidence of an inherent problem in your body. It's evidence of your body's innate intelligence, responsiveness, resilience, and robust drive toward health.

~ Don't Tell Me To Relax, by Ralph De La Rosa

How wondrous the affair of the faithful Mu'min, as there is good for him in every matter and this is not the case with anyone but the faithful. When he encounters joy, he gives thanks and thus this is good for him. When sorrow or distress befalls him, he is patient, and this is good for him.

~ Rasulullah s.a.w. (Sahih Muslim)

I was having a class about loving goodness for others, and someone shared this again. It's funny sometimes how words you've seen multiple times only hit you proper later in the future, and not now exactly, not necessarily the present moment when your heart initially twinges at an unseen-yet significance. I just recently reread a quote from Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, and this line really got me today:

...no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity.

ohmyheart. There's this funny thing that happens when one strives and struggles; whether one achieves the dream is a separate story. You start to have to rely on something amorphous and intangible and something deep inside you that we often hear referred to as the inner self, the higher self, intuition, and above all God. It's almost like... through the striving for your dreams... you're meant to connect with the bigger divine purpose and reaching eternity, and even the dream you chase falls into its requisite lower but essential place, marking itself as the necessary signpost to the bigger scheme of your life. As you finally marvel at this tapestry, Alhamdulillah... what can you do but simply marvel. Everything, within this marvelous moment, is beautiful and good.