Those Who Are Awake

There is a morning call to prayer in "The-Religion-Of-Peace" toward every Muslim,
and there is a mourning call to action for those who are awake concerning them.
For those who are awake are not the ones dividing humanity into "acceptable" or not,
but rather the supremacist assertions of Qur'an, Hadith, Sunna, Shari'a, and Jihad.
Those who are awake may counter absurd accusations with absurd reflections,
of "Islamophobic" with "Kafirophobic" or "Islamophile" - to gage the reactions.
But more important still, is undistracted attention on being awake, staying awake.
Even friends may leave, or at least stop visiting.  Pressure to stop, or to fake,
gentle, soft or solid pressure, social or official pressure, media's manipulations
reassure and reassure, contradictions stir, dumbing-down desired for elite's machinations.

Those who are awake owe themselves the honesty, the respect and sovereignty
to think and reflect, include or reject, independent of the stream of the majority.
They owe this to their spouses, partners, children, and what loved ones look to them
for the one sign of integrity in the grave and testing time ahead, not far, that time.
Those awake will learn to feed their wakefulness, strengthen nerves, straighten spines,
give time to prayer, defense and meditation, inform oneself and others, read the signs.
To stand reverently firm and say yes when yes is required, and no when it's no -
this is how those awake recognize and see, the objective compassion to know
where the Zeitgeist is heading and how to respond with courage and faith.
Those who are awake are indifferent to being jeered, cheered or falling from grace.

For only those awake know really what's at stake.

Ramnam

What is this Ram?

How shall I describe that?

Is Ram a King of legendary pre-Antiquity, is Ram “God“?

This I know and little else:

Ram led me to Maharajji, that Maharajji may lead me to Ram.

Ram is the sovereignty of Love,

the firm ground of Dharma

and the space which frees one from all manner of dogma.

Ram gave Gandhiji vision and means

to free a subcontinental Colony

without aggression: satyagraha.

Where in the heart-liberating Name of Ram

there is room for all Names of God,

even there where the favor is not returned,

the graciousness not reciprocated,

where Ramnam is forbidden with sword and flame.

Maharajji the very embodiment of Ramnam

and its empowerment to love, serve and remember

as he instructed, this Baba of Neem Karoli,

Hanuman incarnate!

O Self to whom I sing!

http://hanumandassblog.com/ramcharitmanas-69-how-can-a-human-be-god/

Anesthesia

A creeping vapor insidiously
pouring into every crevice of our world,
sharing its poison generously in every passage,
anesthetizing entire populations with its

narcoleptic dumbing-down.

Submission, it whispers, and Tolerance,
giving us familiar words in NewSpeak,
treading on once deeply held values full of meaning,
with an ersatz-faith, a cult of political correctness.

Steeped in the stock pathological symptoms
of a long well established Stockholm Syndrome.
Love is foreign to it, though it abuse every word even that;
dignity as well – and sovereignty of one's word is entirely gone.

All becomes relativized, history revised, civilized
is no longer sacred, nothing may be criticized – you're scared
to think, to question, to confront; a huge front
looms before you, a foggy mass of redundant calming.

It tells you, warns you, cojoles you not to fight the power,
not to swim against the stream, not to resist the herd;
It crunches numbers and crushes you, your will to be awake,
it commericalizes, mass produces its message: and it is all fake.

Precious reader, let us stand together, even should we stand alone.
Let us never retreat, though we lose all but not our soul;
Let us become conscious, and stay that, mind and heart, breath and bone –
the sickness is clammy and dense, it can be named –
                                                            you and I must keep ourselves whole.

 

 

Embracing Monday

On Monday the world cranks up again, I feel it,
there's a kind of pressing force and I have to rise
to meet it and to embrace it as it is.
Monday the world of getting and achieving is back.
Saturday's Sabbath or Sunday's Sovereignty
should bring all its fineness to bear,
to temper the material clang of Monday's challenges.
O, smug skeptic and material atheist, do I care?
I entertain no difference between us –
if I have no need myself to "be someone,"
why should I require or desire that of you?
I have experienced seeing that you are divine.
I can only know this because I am.
From that I know to love, and by this love alone
I arrive at belief, and only then faith.
In that order, and this is our only difference –
certainly you don't think there's more to it than that?
We each turn our knob to the best suited radio frequency
and put our shoulder to the wheel.
Embracing this Monday together, who knows
what grace may await?

Salt Of The Earth

Arrogance and Sovereignty are not at all the same thing or even related,
although either could be mistaken for the other – and sometimes or often is.
 
Sovereignty is recognizable for its fineness of character
combined with an inclusive and nourishing consciousness,
revealing itself by humble awareness and a sense of inner wealth,
quite regardless of outer material circumstances.

Arrogance, parading as sovereignty, is marked by poverty of character.
Whatever accomplishments or seeming wealth or beauty or achievement,
arrogance will claim these for itself and poison everything with its narcissism.

Sovereignty leaves a scent of generosity in its wake, and an after-taste of culture;
arrogance a scent of insecurity, an after-taste of bitterness;
where the former is capable of expressing lovingkindness,
the latter is left cynical, and its display of kindness is actually
an empty, self-promoting indifference.

Even a Mercedes driver might be seen to show the least arrogance,
whereas grossest arrogance can be hopelessly glaring at one
from the faces and actions of bicycle riders – one may please
take Münster for example, there one has an entire city of them.

Love is known for being sovereign, for to arrogance it is entirely foreign.
Sovereignty is a challenge to attain (not maintain,
as that wouldn't be authentic sovereignty – for if you've got it you've got it,
regardless of what you are doing);
in arrogance is a daily challenge to rid oneself of it.

Arrogance is primitive even when being stately or sophisticated,
turns the knife in the wound even when holding a glass of the best wine.
Sovereignty can afford to be noble and gracious because it has nothing to lose by it;
sovereignty knows itself – and that is what makes it sovereign.

Arrogance may well find itself nestled in the breast of crawlers as well as kings alike,
of peasants as well as presidents, of sycophants or sultans, secretaries or CEOs,
of ruled as well as ruler, those of standing or those with little or none: it eats equally
into their psyches all, like a cancer, poisoning the heart's blood as with lead.

Sovereignty likewise may be found in those of high or low station – it is the birthright
of every living Being, especially Human. It is that light in the eye,
it is the salt of our own earth.

That This Beauty Shall Prevail

In the humble expression of this poor servant,

let this be known:

Better to fall on the battlefield

than choke on my steak in the War Room.

For it is my intention, in this my lifetime,

here-now and in reality, as in eternity,

that Sufism shall defeat Islam, prevail over and replace it entirely

with knowledge of God, with love of God.

That the Sovereignty of Love shall prevail over

and replace Muslim bigotry, racism, misogyny, hypocrisy.

That the prayers of the Great Ones and faith of the Heart

shall prevail over and replace Muslim arrogance, ignorance,

aggression, and its most primitive brutality.

That music and dance, creative literature, reason,

beauty in all its variations, shall prevail over and replace

the Muslim's native bent toward pronouncing death-fatwas,

toward pathologically underdeveloped, grossly self-conscious

phobias against any nonconformity, as against all freedom

of self-expression, against any notion of critical self-reflection,

of maturity in relation to the rest of the world:

over this shall prevail the nectar of Rumi, the fragrance of Hafiz;

the madness of Kabir and of Rabi'a shall prevail over and replace

a Muslim mentality which shuns pork but evidently not cannibalism.

That the creative openness of Sufism which embraces all faiths

and all paths toward God shall prevail over and replace this Islam

of domination, delusions of supremacy, of bludgeoning with Shari'a

every Muslim who is "other" and every culture which is not of itself.

Verily, the song and movement of Dervishes,

the Movement and the Message of Sufism through the Ages

cannot be annihilated, it is here in spite of historic repression,

and shall prevail over an Islam which never could appreciate

Sufis, Sikhs, Hindus, Christians, Jews, Buddhists - and murders them

century for century.

O Beloved Lord and Cherisher of the worlds:

let these words not prove empty, no -

let this love be active, this harmony penetrate through hearts:

that this beauty shall prevail.

Let it so Be as I, Sheikh Samuel Inayat-Chisti, have said,

who shall raise the banner of Love on that battlefield

in whichever form that comes,

and shall not fall, after so many lifetimes of this, but shall prevail.

Insha'llah.

"What's love got to do with it . . ."

No one realizes God through fixation on "reward" and "punishment" - rules and regulations and laws and codes and creeds:  all dogma and doctrine, binding one to a belief.  Belief is not faith and faith is not realization.  Belief is "taught-religion", faith is at least something like conviction, but neither of these is realization.  Realization or Knowledge of God can only come through love,  and through nothing but love.  Everyone is on the path, whether atheist or fundamentalist.

Ultimately love is its own reward because it bestows a sovereignty which no dogma ever will.  Nor does its mere absence mean God wants to "punish" one.  Hopefully we mature, because love is mature.  Love is objective, non-sentimental, stimulating one to love more and to give oneself into it.  I've seen more humanity, more empathy and openness among some "non-believers" than among any hard-core fundamentalists of any faith, Muslim, Jewish or Christian.  Envy, spite, judgment from fear & loathing of the "other", supremacy and self-pity based together on a deeply insecure self-loathing which extends outward.

Every mystic from any tradition knows this, that's why they recognize each other right away when encountered, but are respectively never understood or recognized by those in their own traditions who are still ruled by dogma and doctrine, by hope of "winning paradise" and fear of "courting hell"...

The mystic doesn't love God because s/he believes in God, s/he believes in God precisely because s/he loves God, call that what one likes, God-Goddess-AllThatIs.  The mystic might then say, reversing the logic of this world:  "I believe (or place my trust) only in That which I love, and I can only love That because I know That."  This is why the mystics demonstrate "remembering God" - not like remembering your car keys, but in going back into a deep and intimate knowing, perhaps first only sensed, then followed - and this is really religion - a knowing of one's own origin and source of Being.  And how can one not love That?

Sovereignty of Love

 
Lovers know neither heaven nor hell,

visit neither, seek nor avoid either

full of hope or fear.

Heaven is for egos that do good, hell is for egos that do evil.

They are only dreams of the ego, as is the ego.

The lover is not an ego, the lover is empty, effaced in the beloved,

gladly serving the actual living truth of this.

The lover reflects and embodies, channels and radiates

the Sovereignty of Love.

No ideology known to Human-kind, and no outer garment

of dress or style or appearance or exotic uniformity meant to distinguish,

can ever Be this.

The authority of love, the sovereignty and dominion of love:

concentrated and married to it internally,

manifesting it outwardly here, now and always,

establishing It, rather than an imperial church or a caliphate,

one inherits the earth.

And is good to it.

The lover only acts with lovingkindness

out of sheer love for and appreciation of the divine Being,

or of Being divine, or of life and of giving life.

There is no thought of reward for the lover,

as love is sovereign and no beggar after crumbs.

One's origin and one's destination are one and the same: light.

Sacred song is only called such and experienced so,

insofar as it introduces and projects, establishes into a space or realm

The Absolute Sovereignty of Love,

producing joy, anchored in spirit, in light, nourishing without limit

those living and departed who can receive it.

Even these words are not It.

Yet if they disturb or inspire one single mind,

or move or open one single heart . . .

it's a start.