Category Archives: Spiritual Practice

Metaphysics, Modern Living, Spiritual Practice

The Two-Legged Tripod – Where is the Ikhlas

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The Two-legged Tripod of Current Islamic Practice

 


Umar ibn al-Khattab reported: We were sitting with the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, one day, a man appeared with very white clothes and very black hair. There were no signs of travel on him and we did not recognize him. He sat in front of the Prophet, rested his knees by his knees, and placed his hands on his thighs. The man said, “O Muhammad, tell me about Islam.” The Prophet said, “Islam is to testify there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, to establish prayer, to give charity, to fast the month of Ramadan, and to perform pilgrimage to the House if a way is possible.” The man said, “You have spoken truthfully.” We were surprised that he asked him and said he was truthful. He said, “Tell me about faith.” The Prophet said, “Faith is to believe in Allah, His angels, His Books, His Messengers, the Last Day, and to believe in providence, its good and its harm.” The man said, “You have spoken truthfully. Tell me about excellence.” The Prophet said, “Excellence is to worship Allah as if you see Him, for if you do not see Him, He surely sees you.”

I feel like, without pretension inshallah, I have become the conscience of our religion?! At least to me and a few people near to me. That is NOT because of superior knowledge or piety. Many of my co-religionists have more of both of these! But rather because I am a convert and am able to see things from numerous perspectives. Having been through secular Judaism, left-wing politics and Marxism, Humanistic Psychology, Buddhism, New Age Sufism and finally traditional Islamic Sufism I have experienced the world from numerous perspectives. On the other hand, most Muslims have lived their entire lives in an ethnic echo-chamber. Even when they immigrate to a Western country they resist the local wisdoms in favour of their cultural platitudes! So I can see more than most!

Therefore, when I go to the Muslim venues including the holy sites of Mecca and Madina and the grand mosques of Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt and Turkey, as well as local mosques, I have noticed the following phenomena-relating back to the cited hadith

1-The Iman is good-almost everywhere in the Islamic world and even in the West! The mosques are full for jumaa prayer, overfilled for the Eid and well-attended at Tarawih during Ramadan. This tells me that the faith is there! By contrast, at the churches, including the one where we do our group dhikr(another issue to be explained further on) the pews are empty. Some of the Evangelical Churches may well be better attended but that remains the exception in the Christian world!

2- Islam, i.e the outward practices. Most of the Muslims I meet are trying to keep up the outer practices-doing the obligatory ones and avoiding the prohibited things. Most Muslims do not gamble, do not drink alcohol or eat pork. Most Muslims avoid fornication and adultery even though the modern world prevents them from having second wives and concubines- like in the days of the Prophets. Verdict: Islam, the behavioural component, is  well -respected.

3-Ihsan?! I look around the mosques at jumaa prayer and rarely do I see people of light?! The same was shockingly true in Mecca when I did hajj many years ago. I kept walking around the Kabaa looking for people of light. The site was luminous but the people were not! Finally I ran into a group where it was manifest! They were a group of Bangladeshi Naqshbandi Sufis. I found a similar small group in Madina not far from the Prophet’s mosque! But overall the people were in a pitiful spiritual state. The maqamat (the holy sites) were luminous but the people were not!

Interestingly enough, John Bennett tells the same story about the great Indian saint Shivapuri Baba who visited Mecca in the 1890’s!  He made the following statement which concurs with my own observations” The pilgrims at Mecca are inspired with true religious fervour (strong Iman) but I do not find myself attracted to Islam as it is today”. This was before the end of the Ottoman empire when the Wahhabbis had not yet done the damage that they eventually did to the spirituality of Islam. I guess he did not have the occasion to meet some real Sufis! I believe he would then  have felt their camaraderie(like-mindedness) with his own aspirations!

The Causes: How did we get here?! This is, no doubt, a complex question! Our Prophet saws had warned that each generation after him would be worse than that before. Nevertheless, there have been great Sufis throughout the ages from Abu Bayazid Bistami to Abdul Qadr Jilani, Ibn Arabi and Jellalludin Rumi.and Abu Hassan Ash-Shadhili-all many generations after him saws..I think it is safe to say that they all had a high degree of Ihsan! So what happened?!

Did the corruption of the Ottoman empire have something to do with it? Or the wealth in the Muslim countries that our Prophet saws feared so much? All of that is possible.

1-But the one unavoidable factor is the rising up of Wahhabbism/Salafism that started in earnest after the defeat of the Ottomans in WW1.By 1925 they had taken over the holy sites and began imposing their dry, lifeless, despiritualized version of Islam throughout the Muslim world-via their petrodollars.

Nowadays, even when you go to far away outposts of Islam like Trinidad where I spent some time, you find people who know nothing about Sufism and retain a negative image of it! They have lost the essential tool for developing Ihsan!  I consider Wahhabism as the extension of the Khawarij heresy into the modern world. It appears that the great scholar of Islam- Tahir al Qudri- agrees with me on that one.

2- The second obstacle, a descendant I believe of the Mutazili heresy are the movements like Ikhwan Muslimeen. Like the Mutazilis, even though they are not often recognized as such, they emphasize reason beyond anything else As Joshua Philipp, of Epoch Times,  pointed out in his astute reporting on the Islamic Brotherhood, Sayeed Qutb studied social sciences in the U.S. and then brought Marxist thought into the Islamic paradigm. ( Quite an achievement of understanding for a non-Muslim!) From there, we start hearing more and more about political Islam -the very type of Islam so popular in the modern world that my sheikh-Sheikh Nazim denounced every time he met them!” You do not understand our religion” he would say! “People get the governments they deserve .You cannot impose Islamic governments from above”. What insight that man r.a. had!

3- A third source is the modern world-full of Materialism, Empiricism and Rationalism. The scientific paradigm, economic planning and all other types of over-planning and overthinking. When we consider this “toxic soup” of Wahhabism, Ikhwanism and Scientific Materialism , we should not be surprised that the Islamic world is in such a pitiful state spiritually!

 

The Consequences :  I will make a bold statement here!  I would state that almost all the problems in the contemporary Muslim world and yes that includes Palestine and Iran and Lebanon etc.,etc. come from this loss of Ihsan (P.S. I will be writing a future article on the Causal Nexus as most Muslims have bought into the logical version of causality rather than the moral one.)   What we find is a lack of subtlety, a lack of refinement, a lack of empathy and a lack of the true sense of the sacred. It is like we have a body without blood and without breath. Emptiness and Deadness. Men addicted to porn sites. Hijabi women walking the streets of Western cities looking miserable and bitter. Parents who do not understand their children and marry their daughters to the first rich man they can find( Yes,it’s still happening!) Dissatisfaction everywhere!

 

The Solutions:

So what are the answers?

Bring back the Sufis! They contain the lifeblood of the religion. Bring back the group dhikr and the Samaa and the Hadrat. Bring back the private dhikr with the name of Allah. Push back on the critics of Sufism-whether they be Wahhabbis or Ikhwanis or Orientalists. What we see instead is the glorification of scholarship! Scholarship has its place, no doubt. But it is not the highest nor the deepest part of the religion. We can learn our Shariah from them , how to recite Quran with proper tajweed, how to do wudhu and ghusl. But mostly they are cerebral people with limited hal-for those who can perceive hal in their souls.

The real Sufis, however, are glowing and energetically powerful. The first one I met, in Jerusalem, put me into the hal of fana immediately and the second one had me in a state of ecstasy that made it difficult to find myself in the streets of Philadelphia-the city he was residing in at the time. These are the people of God! These are the carriers of the most intense forms of Ihsan. These are the people we need to align with. Not the people who have memorized the most Islamic ilm. These are the people who can revive the nation. The others are more like University professors and less like true awliya of Allah. May Allah fortify and invigorate our Ihsan.

Salaams, Sufi Ibrahim

 

Modern Living, Spiritual Practice, Sufism

The One Body metaphor

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The Metaphor of the Umat as one body!

Narrator: An-Nu’man bin Bashir (RA).

  • Sources: Found in Sahih al-Bukhari (6011) and Sahih Muslim (2586).
  • Arabic Text: مَثَلُ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ فِي تَوَادِّهِمْ وَتَرَاحُمِهِمْ وَتَعَاطُفِهِمْ مَثَلُ الْجَسَدِ إِذَا اشْتَكَى مِنْهُ عُضْوٌ تَدَاعَى لَهُ سَائِرُ الْجَسَدِ بِالسَّهَرِ وَالْحُمَّى
  • Translation: “The likeness of the believers in their mutual love, mercy, and compassion is that of a single body; when one limb suffers, the whole body responds to it with wakefulness and fever”.

 

Since the recent events in Gaza this metaphor has come up over and over again. When I would criticize the policies and actions of the Palestinian leadership, as often did my Sheikh-Sheikh Nazim-I would be reproached on numerous occasions: ”Don’t you have any empathy for their pain?” Of course I do- like any normal human being would have. But that was not satisfactory. I would have to display my loyalty by blaming Israel and America and never putting into question what the so-called Muslims in Palestine were doing!

My own Sheikh-Sheikh Nazim- would regularly criticize their behaviour. I recently saw a video of him being asked about it shortly before his death- in a weakened state” What they are doing I am not understanding” he would say. ”This is not the way of our Prophet saws nor is it Islamic war. I don’t know what to call it” Then he hesitated.. ”It must be …..corruption” he said. And he spoke the Truth.

Mohammed, our Prophet saws went, once he got to Madina, from victory to victory. And yet the Arabs in the Middle East have gone from defeat to defeat. Something must be wrong! But they are not reading the signs as we are instructed to do, over and over again in the Quran. The Muslims are acting from pride and vengeance not from wisdom-the true inheritance of the sunnat. Our Prophet saws never took on the Persian or Byzantine Empire in his time. He knew they were too strong. The Quran itself says explicitly not to take on enemies that were more than twice their size (8:66). So the Palestinians and Iranians take on Israel and the U.S.A -How much stronger are the latter-100 times or 1000 times. These wars are pure folly!

Now to expand the analogy from the hadith about feeling the injured limb. What do you do then?! Let’s, for arguments sake, say that you had a broken leg from a car accident. Now you have to use your intelligence to deal with it . Does it serve any purpose to blame the car, or the brake manufacturer or the other driver?! Useless . Get to an E.R. quickly and get the fracture set and a cast put over the injury. Instead, the Muslims are content to blame others and go even further. ”To avenge your broken leg, go kick the other driver’s car. That way you will get your vengeance” That is what is being recommended .Reinjure your leg in the name of Justice! What foolishness?!

2- Simultaneous in timing with the hadith about empathy are the exhortations in the Quran and hadith to unity. I see all kinds of well-meaning Muslims saying: ’We have to be united to gain strength.” United with whom and with what? In this body of the umat I see a cancer of Wahhabbism (see my previous article about Ihsan)  and an autoimmune disease(call it Systemic Lupus if you wish lol) -the Shiism of the Ayatollahs. Are you asking me to unite with my cancer and my autoimmune disease?! No way! I want to detoxify them quickly and extirpate them from my body. Asking me to love them because they claim they are Muslim is anathema to me. My loyalty is to Truth not to tribe.

Let me add in one final but crucial note. Muslims including our scholars have a lot of difficulty with contextualization. Because we believe the Quran is for all time and all places, we forget to take into account what was actually happening at the time of the Revelation(“asbab al nuzul” it is called in Arabic).So when the Quran appeals for Unity, the Muslim nation was weak ,vulnerable, under what we now call “an existential threat”. At this time however, Islam is very strong and robust-no matter how the Muslims feel about it. There is NO actual threat to our religion! The real threat is from within! We are 2 billion strong! So what is needed is not unity-but cleansing! What use is unifying with disease and corruption?!

May Allah make us people of awareness and practicality-not purveyors of tribalism and bigotry. That is NOT what our religion is about!

Salaams , Sufi Ibrahim

 

Comparative Religion, Politics, Psychology, Spiritual Practice

Muslim Nationalism-the Third Scourge

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Muslim Nationalism-The Third Scourge

Quran 49:13 O humanity! Indeed, We created you from a male and a female,and made you into peoples and tribes so that you may ˹get to˺ know one another. Surely the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous among you. Allah is truly All-Knowing, All-Aware.

Quran 11: 118 Had your Lord so willed, He would have created one single community of believers but they would still dispute ( and so it is!)

This is the Third and hopefully the last of the series on the scourges affecting modern day Islam! The first was Islamism-the Marxist version of Islam. The second was Materialism-the Capitalist version of Islam and this time we are taking on Nationalism-the Jewish/American version of Islam! But before we go further let me issue a disclaimer!

Disclaimer: I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea here. I am by no means denouncing Islam. I love this religion, I am convinced of its veracity, have deep respect for our Prophet saws and have no regrets about having converted to the faith 47 years ago! However, during its history a lot of corruption and misunderstanding has entered the faith. We were warned about this by our Prophet saws who told us Islam would follow the ways of the Jews and Christians and enter the “lizard hole” with them. With what I see around me-“kaza’(shaving only part of the head) haircuts everywhere in the masjids and an obsession with the evil eye and magic in some Islamic circles we could add Paganism to the list of traditions being followed.

Like in any pathology being studied, we need to identify the symptoms and the treatment. So here goes…

In terms of signs (ayat)  that this subject is very timely, just as I was planning out this article I came across a brief video of Sheikh Omar Ibn Faruq, an American Islamic scholar with a very good reputation in Islamic circles.I  have long held doubts about his quality of teaching as it always seemed overly abstract but that is beside the point for now .In this clip he was arguing that Judaism is a fairly new religion that only occurred in the 2nd CE with the work of the Talmudic scholars in the diaspora!

There was something wrong with the argument. It felt biased and denigrating from the git-go. So I began thinking about what he was saying. The facts were generally correct. The Jewish Talmudic tradition of scholarship only began in the 2nd century CE. But the conclusion, that this was the beginning of Judaism seemed totally false and fabricated! Judaism began, in fact, with the Prophet Yaqub(Jacob) who was the father of the Bani Israil .The references to them are all over the Quran and I am sure Sheikh Omar is well aware of this!

I think that what he was trying to say was that the advent of Talmudic interpretation started a whole new religion! Forget Jacob, and Yusuf and Moses. A totally new religion had started. That would be the equivalent of deciding that Islam began with Imam al-Ghazzali in the 12th century A.D., the well-known scholar  who started the tradition of serious intellectual analysis in our religion. No Muslim would accept that narrative! So no sincere, knowledgeable person should say that about Judaism either.

Now when I went back to look at motivation (I was trained in psychiatry and psychoanalysis lol) I could come only to one conclusion. This is an underhanded attempt( conscious or unconscious) to discredit one of the great religions of the World. This is Muslim Nationalism!!

And why do I compare this to the Jews and the Americans?! One of the greatest theological mistakes of the Jews was thinking that because they were the Chosen Nation(and they were for awhile) that they were safe from consequences and systematically better than others. That the revelation was mostly for them. And the goyim(the gentiles) were unimportant. Wrong again! All of Allah’s created beings are important. Because of that error in perspective they, the Jews, even made it difficult for others to enter their religion which long-term has led to their diminution in numbers and therefore in strength. So nowadays we have 16 million Jews in the world and 2 billion Muslims. Islam has won the religious battle lol. But Muslims continue to act like victims. And victims they have become!

In terms of pure Nationalism, the Americans have outdone everyone else! ”We are the greatest nation on Earth” their politicians proclaim?!  Often enough , they go further and state:  “The greatest nation that has EVER existed”1! Really?! What chutzpah (forgive the vernacular lol).Where is the proof?! Whenever the U.N. does surveys of social variables-like infant mortality, poverty, violence, efficacy of the medical system etc.,etc. the U.S comes systematically last of the advanced economies! Last each and every time! That shows the depths of delusion that can occur with Nationalism . We seriously need to stay away.

Other manifestations of Nationalism:

Exaggerating about our Prophet saws

2:136 Say, ˹O believers, “We believe in Allah and what has been revealed to us; and what was revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and his descendants; and what was given to Moses, Jesus, and other prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them. And to Allah we all submit.”

Hadith 1“Do not exaggerate in praising me as the Christians praised the son of Mary, for I am only a Slave. So, call me the Slave of Allah and His Messenger”. 

(This is a sahih (authentic) hadith recorded in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī )

Hadith 2 Sahih al-Bukhari: Narrated by Abu Huraira, the Prophet said: “No servant should say that I am better than Yunus ibn Matta”.

Another Narration: The Prophet said: “Whoever says that I am better than Yunus ibn Matta has told a lie”.

And yet the Muslims regularly go against both the Quran and the hadith on this point. The Qasida al Burda, one of the most cherished recitations at Mawlids, is full of these exaggerations. And yet no-one is willing to point out the contradictions! In fact they have become part and parcel of the Muslim narrative?!

Quotes from the Burdah.  

 

The Opening Salutation (Refrain)

O my Lord, bless and grant peace always and forever,
Upon Your beloved, the Best of all Creation.”( What does that even mean?! There is no Quranic or hadith reference that says it! And how can you compare a human being to the cosmos or the oceans or the moon. This is pure rhetoric!)

 

The Source of Nobility

“He surpassed all the Prophets in physical form and character,
And none of them approach him in knowledge or generosity.”

 The Light of Guidance

“All of them (the other Prophets) obtained from Allah’s Messenger a handful (of water) from the ocean or a few sips from continuous rains.”  ( And I always thought it was from Allah that we got this rizq?! Back to the books I guess lol)

Do we not see exaggeration and comparison here?! Is that not what the Prophet saws explicitly prohibited?! When I asked a well-known  scholar friend of mine about it, all he could say was: ”Why does that matter?As long as people are happy saying and singing it, it’s fine. Really?! Why does it matter going against  both the Divine and Prophetic prescriptions?!! Time to go out and have a ham sandwich lol. Why does it matter. The Canadian Health Authorities have said it’s perfectly safe!?

 

 

Other Features of Nationalism:

Not being concerned about and not respecting  other nations

2:62 Indeed, the believers, Jews, Christians, and Sabians1—whoever ˹truly˺ believes in Allah and the Last Day and does good will have their reward with their Lord. And there will be no fear for them, nor will they grieve.

You would think that would be clear enough?!  Jews and Christians will be fine on the Day of Judgment. The good ones will also go to heaven! And if you read the n.d.e( near-death experience) literature and also know Christians who have seen their pious relatives  on the other side, in paradise, you would know that it is true!

But the scholars are not satisfied. They need to do some intellectual acrobatics and say that is only true for those before the time of Mohammed or who haven’t heard about Mohammed (not too many of those left lol!). Why do they need to twist the obvious meaning. Muslim Nationalism once again.

In another vein, back in the early2000’s I was studying Arabic in Jordan. One of my room-mates was of Palestinian origin and we had become good friends generally. Then I made the statement that each of the religions had certain special qualities. Almost by spinal reflex lol he said incredulously: ”What about the Jews?” obviously displaying his bigotry. I was at first taken aback and then I got the inspiration- “ Humanism” I said surprising myself as much as him

Now I totally understand, looking at the behaviour of Israelis, why someone might not get that. Israelis are atypical Jews actually. Jackie Mason, one of the finest Jewish comedians, once summed it up this way:” These Israelis, I don’t get it. They are not like the Jews I grew up with in New York .  They are like.. and he hesitated.. like Puerto Ricans- the ones who are known in NYC for their aggressivity and violence. I think he was on the right track. In the line of the anthropological theories of Robert Pirsig in Laila (odd synchronicity of naming) I would say that the Israelis have become Arabized Jews-some would say by necessity others would say by geographical influence! They have generally lost that human softness present in the diaspora Jews although they have maintained the scientific intelligence. Touchy area here no doubt.

My own Jewish ancestors were nothing like that. And their language (Yiddish not Hebrew) contains some of the richest terms to describe the human dilemma. So much so that they have entered the Anglo-Saxon lexicon-words like “chutzpah”, and “schmuck” and “mishigena” and “clutz”. They all contain an element of acceptance of human imperfection-the opposite of the emphasis in Arab society of pride and dignity and idealization.. No wonder they couldn’t get along!

More evidence…Practicing Muslims will notice at the jumaa prayer, the dua is inevitably about Victory for the Muslims. I have yet to go to a jumaa prayer where the Imam makes dua for Peace. OTOH the Pope is doing it regularly! I don’t know what happens in the synagogues as I haven’t been there in a very long time. But for sure, the Christians are often focused on peace . The pope recently went so far as to denounce the U.S. president for the war he has started! Maybe that is why there are so many Africans converting to Christianity-most of them pagans but some of them of them Muslims first.

I had an old German friend who was a very ardent Muslim with some mental health issues . We have reconnected recently on Facebook. I was surprised that he had converted back to Christianity. When I questioned him about it he simply stated:  “They were more helpful to me. More charitable” H-m-m. And how many Africans have they converted over the years through that same generosity.

And what about the Jews- the nation Muslims love to hate. No, not only Zionism, the Jews themselves. One of my Muslim colleagues in Great Britain disputed that assertion . So I brought him a Pew poll.

According to a 2010 Pew Research Center survey, overwhelmingly negative attitudes toward Jews were found in predominantly Muslim countries and territories, with roughly 95-98% of inhabitants in Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt holding unfavorable views. These perceptions, often linked to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, highlight widespread disapproval of Jews across these nations.( Not Israel here, Jews-PS The unconscious always conflates these categories anyway so that the distinction often becomes purely semantic!))

The Attitude to Conversions: Another Aspect of Nationalism

Muslims are always happy and proud when someone converts. And indeed it is a thing of beauty when someone opens their mind and their hearts to a new way of looking at reality. They now have a clear way to virtue and piety. I must admit to having some of the same feeling when someone realizes how dangerous vaccines really are lol! Opening to the Haqq (Truth) is always a beautiful thing.

But at times I sense something somewhat darker in the thoughts of the people around. Like: “Welcome to our club. We are now more numerous. By your conversion, you have proved, after all, that we are right and everyone else is wrong” That, too, is Muslim nationalism and it is not healthy.

The stats are not that good either- in case people are feeling inflated by what they see, occasionally, in the mosques. As anyone will tell you who has converted, like myself, it is very hard to convert people. There was a time when Black Americans were converting in large numbers (think nation of Islam and Muhammad X). But now, there is not much of that in evidence. In fact,it appears that there are just as many Muslims leaving as entering-in America at least, and that is worrisome. In Africa there may in fact be more movement of Muslims to Christianity than the inverse. With groups like Boko Haram and Al Shebbab and the various al Qaida derivatives all over the continent, this is hardly surprising.

 

The Cure:

So what is the solution to this Nationalism Scourge? Let’s go back to the beginning .. The ayat says “to get to know one another”. That means respect and acceptance. That means finding out what the others have that we don’t! That means suspending judgment. That means learning-an open inbox, not a closed one lol That is not dawa and it is certainly not proving that your religion is better. It means a Multi-Faith, Multi-Cultural approach. It means acknowledging the other, “altérité” the French call it. It means empathy. And many of the Muslims are very unskilled in this domains-even within their marriages and family. They prefer to operate by principle and denial-the worst of psychological defenses. So we certainly have our work cut out for us. May Allah make us strong and aware at the same time .Anything else will lead to disaster- like we now see in Palestine and Iran. May Allah protect us!.

 

 

 

 

 

Comparative Religion, Modern Living, Psychology, Spiritual Practice

Spiritual/Religious Bypassing

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Spiritual/Religious Bypassing

As opposed to most of the articles on my blog, which come from my own observations and inspirations, this article is written due to a special request from an old friend who feels it is an important issue to address .I felt that my own writings on the bio-psycho-socio-spiritual model were sufficient to prevent people from a uni-dimensional approach to practice. Obviously that has not been the case lol. Old ideas and habits die hard. So let us proceed to formulate this same teaching in another way.

So what is “spiritual bypassing”? This is a quote from Wikipedia; Spiritual bypass or spiritual bypassing is a “tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks”. The term was introduced in the mid 1980s by John Welwood, a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist.( A Buddhist?! No surprise there lol. Anyone refusing to believe in God, and by extension Divine Law, is at risk to justify any errant behaviour as a justifiable personal choice!)

On this particular question I have concluded that the Dalai Lama is the second-best marketer in the history of religion lol. He saw that most Westerners were inclined to atheism, so he made a point of saying repeatedly that Buddhists don’t believe in a Creator God, despite the fact that the Buddha himself never made such a categorical statement! So who was the best marketer of religion?” you may ask…. Paul of Tarsus lol .He similarly observed the sociology around him and concluded:  ”The Greeks and Romans with their long polytheistic traditions will never accept Mosaic Law! So let’s drop that as a criterion for being a Christian and say that all you need is to love Jesus and you are a Christian. This, despite the fact that Jesus a.s. himself said: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17).Talk about not listening to your teacher?! But he was wildly successful lol! Just look at the world around you! Christianity remains the most numerous in followers!

Based on personal experience, I would like to broaden the category to Religious Bypass as well. My definition: ” Religious bypass involves people practicing the outward form and rituals of a tradition without paying attention to the deeper issues of self-awareness and self-control (what we in Sufism call “jihad -a -nafs-the battle with the ego) which inevitably overlaps with a lack of morality and ethics.

Let’s start with a few examples… While I was on Sabbatical in Damascus in 2007-2008, I had a good friend who was an Egyptian engineer. He kept insisting that I go pray with him the Fajr prayer at the other end of the city. Usually we prayed at the Sheikh Muhyideen mosque near my house. But he wanted me to experience a certain Imam who gave lectures every morning after the Fajr prayer. So one day I accepted his invitation. My Arabic was not good enough to understand what was being said but my friend did his best to translate what he could. Honestly, not very impressive lol( the Eastern scholars all sound the same. It’s the echo-chamber of the ulema- no place for original thinking! but that is not the point here.

As we left the mosque to have some breakfast, he said to me: ” Did you see the man sitting right next to the Imam.?” I had seen him but had no particular impression that I could acknowledge. ”Well, that man comes here every morning without fail -as an act of piety. In the past, I worked on contract for three months for him but he never paid me! He always had reasons not to pay” H-m-m. So this pious man was cheating his employees as did Trump with his contractors building the Casinos in New Jersey lol. At least Trump makes little pretense of being pious. Although his near-death assassination experience got him thinking lol.

Another example in the same spirit from the same time period. During Ramadan that year I would have people over for Iftar -to break the fast .One of them was a very studious, pious man- an Indo-Pakistani man living in England who knew a lot more Arabic and Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) than I will ever know! He came to break fast regularly at my place during Ramadan. At one point I noticed that he never brought anything himself. So I mentioned it to him. No response. Then I told him that if he didn’t bring something, anything, I would no longer receive him. He tried again! So I put him out-never to be seen again. It should be mentioned here that this same man was bragging to me about his various properties in England-so he was no pauper or I would have fed him willingly!

Now these are the kind of stories that non-believers use to show how bad religion is. My own Dad would tell me stories of men who prayed regularly at the synagogue but would cheat people in business just as regularly So these are the religious bypassers- people who do the outer practices but are missing the essential attributes-like generosity, compassion for others and kindness.! But what about the spiritual ones?!

For that let’s go back to the sheikh who probably had the greatest influence on my understanding of our religion and of Sufism-Sheikh Nazim I followed Sheikh Nazim for 12 years in the eighties and early 90’s. Whenever I would arrive at his zawwiyah or mosque in Peckham, London, he would say “Dr. Ibrahim. We are so happy to have a psychiatrist here. Welcome to our Mental Hospital “lol. Outwardly, this was a joke but if we dig deeper, as in many of the statements of the sheikh, there was a deeper meaning. Many of the people that came to be with him had mental health issues. Now, there is nothing wrong with people seeking spiritual help for their psychological issues. And many of them did need that help. But generally, that is not enough. Some could have benefitted from psychotherapy, others clearly needed medications and still others might have better started with job training so that they could earn a living for themselves and their families.

A related anecdote…Just before I embraced Islam in East Jerusalem, I met a teacher of Kabbala at the Western Wall. I asked him what it would take to study with him and he said that first I would have to be married, have a job that would allow me to provide for my family and have studied Torah for seven years! Then and only then would he teach me. My first thoughts were that this man had no idea about Western spiritual seekers lol We are way too impatient for anything like that. And I went on my merry way to find a Sufi teacher who started the journey right away. In retrospect, though, I realized the wisdom of what this Kabbalist was saying. No spiritual bypassing for him! Get your feet on the ground and then we will embark on the spiritual journey. Much misery and even tragedies could be avoided with that philosophy!

Ok. Let’s get back to the Wikipedia definition: “avoiding facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks”. I would add in here moral issues ( “superego lacunae” the psychoanalysts call them lol.)

Another story. I had a good Sufi friend who lived in upstate New York and drove a taxi in Manhattan for a living. Nearby where he lived in South Fallsburg was a Hindu Guru known as guru Mayi- Swami Chivilisanada. She had lots of followers in America as well as in Quebec. One of them had a used car to sell and my friend bought it from him without having it properly checked out by a mechanic- believing that the seller was a moral person-being a spiritual-seeker.. After a short time, he realized that the car was full of defects and wanted to return it. The Yogi aspirant outrightly refused saying: “The God in me (a very Hindu concept) sold it to the God in you (are you kidding?!) So how could there be anything wrong with it?!” Can you believe it?! Unfortunately, I don’t know the end result to this story but that is not the point here. The point is that one can use spiritual terms to do very unspiritual, even evil things.

But what about the issues of emotional development that the Wikipedia definition points out? One of the most common places it shows up is in marriage and other relationships. Now, the Islamic tradition encourages us to look for partners who have piety. But often that turns out not to be enough. It must be said that many of the Ethnic Muslim parents prioritize wealth and social status before piety! That is even worse! What is really needed is an overall assessment of” fitness to marry” but very few people are able to do that .So conflict and misery and failure ensue in many cases.

So what may be some of these factors that overshadow the spirituality of the partner and cause havoc in the relationship. Probably the most common ones are personality disorders! There are Narcissists galore amongst the outwardly pious, psychopathy is by no means rare also (from whence the sexually abusive gurus like Mooji, Swami Muktananda and Sai Baba.) We have them as well in Sufism but the adherence to Shariah does limit some of the more obvious manifestations. Then there are the dysfunctional males who are not able to earn a living or think that having a second or third wife will solve their problems-whereas that usually ends up multiplying them, As well, there are the unempathic-completely unable to put themselves in the other persons shoes.

So what are we to do about all of these issues? Many spiritual seekers are unwilling to undergo psychotherapy. Many of those who do end up outwitting the therapists who believe in their narrative and end up colluding with their clients in “other-blaming”.  Job training is fine, but then the individual needs to exercise initiative in order to translate that into a regular income stream. And empathy? That is a tough one-hard to teach and hard to learn. Some people just don’t seem to have it. More “Swiss-cheese brain “- like the ones with superego lacunae?! Not usually observable on MRIs lol

At this point, many people are sure to ask me:  ” So, what do we do about it”? Good question, I guess. But we have to start with observation-to see what is really going on- besides projection, distortion and self-justification. Then we need to proceed. But there is one element missing most of the time in both psychotherapists AND spiritual teachers alike-appropriate confrontation “Nehi al Munkar” (forbidding vice -in Islamic terms) .Both therapists and spiritual teachers like to take the “nice-guy” approach and thereby enable their clients and followers.

Many years ago, a young Italian lady came to see me for relationship issues. These had been going on for more than ten years! I asked her why she had not come earlier and she said that her best friend told her not to saying:” It’s no good. Because even if you do something wrong. they will tell you that you are right”! I complimented this lady’s friend : ”Your friend is spot-on “I told her.  She has seen an important flaw in the therapeutic process. But don’t worry” I’m not like that” lol. Which is why some clients choose to leave. Sorry, I am not going to avoid “the elephant in the room”. In my defense Terrence Real the well-known and brilliant Couple Therapist tells similar stories from his practice! Some people can’t deal with the Truth!

The exact same thing can happen in the Spiritual Process! My last sheikh Abu Qassim Bilkhairy was the first one I met to articulate this clearly: “There are sheikhs of Barakat (read good vibes, good feelings) and sheiks of Tarbiyya (training)” he stated. And he was of the latter. But most of the shuyukh are people-pleasers-despite Islamic teachings to the contrary. And, in that way, they enable their disciples in their bad behaviour.

Another form of spiritual bypassing, other than simply not fighting their desires, can only be described as “hypocrisy”. How many times have I seen murids who praise their shuyukh to the heavens but, when they are told to do something they don’t like, they completely ignore the instructions. My medical practice taught me the need for “follow-up” and if you don’t watch closely you could easily miss this one. But it is an essential error. And it occurs much more often than you imagine. In all fairness, some of this is due to the subtleness of the instruction. And that can be the fault of the teacher who “doesn’t want to upset” his student. I remind people regularly that the Prophets a.s. all of them, upset a lot of people! So getting people upset is not a sign of vice! May Allay protect us from all of these  deviancies.

.Salaams, Sufi Ibrahim

 

 

 

Comparative Religion, Islam, Modern Living, Spiritual Practice

Super-egoic Distortions in Islamic Fiqh

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Super-egoic Distortions in Islamic Fiqh

Yes, that’s a mouthful lol. Let’s break down the vocabulary before we get started! Freud separated consciousness of human beings into three parts-ego, id and superego. (We will not address his lack of understanding of spirituality and religion at this point. But his psychological understanding was ground-breaking.) So, for him, the ego was our rational aspect, the id was our desires (“hawa’ in Arabic) and the superego was our conscience. Then he went further and saw that in some people the conscience, which although deficient in some, like psychopaths, could also be overactive in others- those we are going to address in this article. He then labelled those superegos as “punitive” or “sadistic”. And that-the sadistic superego- is one of the major toxins in all religious communities and one of the many reasons why people reject religion!

Now let’s be clear. The founders of our religion-the true Prophets and saints had no need for this overactive superego. They were universally energized, uplifted, even ecstatic beings by definition. That’s why they were appointed to those high positions in the spiritual hierarchy. But amongst their followers and often amongst the priestly class were people of lesser upliftment and less transcendent motivations. We can consider them as the religion’s bureaucrats and like all bureaucrats they get bored and unmotivated. So they need some “juice”. And the juice they get is from making other adherents guilty and miserable and afraid. In that way they are manifesting their “sadistic superegos”.

And don’t be fooled! All religions have them-not only Islam. I remember as a Jewish secularist, seeing young boys at their Bar Mitzvahs going up to the altar to recite the Torah from memory and being harassed by elderly parishioners for mistakes they made in the recitations! In Islam we could call these “tajweed” lessons lol! They are all fine and good if carried out with wisdom and kindness. I remember literally losing it with my tajweed teacher in Jordan when, after reciting two ayats perfectly, I tripped up on the third and he pounced on me -as was his habit! “You have no idea of pedagogy “ I said to him in my weak Arabic. ”At least the Western teachers know how to congratulate you when you do something right”. He was dumbstruck-because that is the way he was taught. My father told me that, in his days if you got something wrong, the rabbis would twist your ear until it really hurt. And we wonder why the conflict in the Middle East persists lol. In these two anecdotes, you have the entire story. But let’s not deviate into politics for now! It’s too tempting and too controversial!

Christians, of course, are not immune from this phenomenon. Catholic sisters used to whip their thighs, much like the Shia do on Ashura, until they bled. Priests would go around their neighbourhood,  threatening women if they had not had a child that year, with the hellfires. And God only knows what went on in the Missionary schools as expressions of the teachers and administrators “sadistic superegos”.

For the sake of brevity ,I am not going into details about the Hindu-Buddhist lineage .More of the same I am certain. We all know about Zen masters and their nasty bamboo sticks. The Chinese showed us pictures of the Tibetan Buddhist cages where they kept their prisoners(not that the Chinese do any better1 The atheists are just as cruel. Often more so. And the Hindus have some of the most painful ascetic practices as well. While visiting a guru in Kerala I was told that one of her German disciples was living in a hole underground for the last several months. That was considered a high-level spiritual practice!

Ok. That’s the intro. I think by now you get the point. But what I really wanted to do here is give more ordinary examples of this phenomenon-things that we may encounter on a regular basis in the practice of our religion. What triggered my reflection on this subject was something I noticed every year during Ramadan. Towards the end of the fast the Imam would almost inevitably say something like the following. ”Ok It’s all fine and good that you have now been fasting for 25 days. But many of you will slip after Ramadan into your previous behaviours and it will all be for naught. If you don’t continue with your Ramadan level of piety, all is lost” That all seemed to me cruel and heartless! How about instead  “Congratulations for all your efforts -fasting for three and a half weeks. You will certainly be rewarded for it. And I hope you keep it up”. Never heard it in 48 years of Ramadan. No the superego has to chime in and say “it’s still not enough. You could be doing better.”!

Now, the second term that may be unclear in the title is “Fiqh”. Usually translated as Jurisprudence-the rules of the religion and how to apply them. Let us take three examples of how the superego surreptitiously creeps into the equation.

  • The Niqab(face-covering) .(We will not discuss the issue of the hijab at this point. Almost all religions, Buddhism may be a notable exception, require head covering-both for males and females!) But the niqab is special. And many of the shuyukh recommend it or even require it. Yet if we go back to the two most important scriptural references on the question Quran 24;31 and the Asma hadith ,in both cases the face is excepted from the covering .In 24:31 it says: ”They should not display their adornments except what ordinarily appears( (most of the traditional scholars said that refers to the face and hands).The Asma hadith is even more clear! The Prophet tells the older sister of his wife Ayesha to cover everything except(again!) and then he points to the face and hands.
  • So where does the niqab idea come from. A strange twist of logic, where A becomes not-A lol. And I thought “mantiq”(logic was one of the Islamic sciences that scholars were supposed to study! One of the possibilities is the “more of the same” logical error. If something, like covering the head is good, then more, covering the Face, must be even better. That is patently bad logic. Ask a toxicologist if you need more proof lol P.S. I once had a patient who almost died from an overdose of water which gave her cerebral edema1 even too much water can be dangerous.

The other explanation I have heard from Taliban sources. That “zinat” the word in the ayat for ornaments also can refer to beauty. And the beauty of the woman is in her face. Interesting twist, no doubt, but a twist nevertheless. That is not what the ayat says!. So more misery for the l,adies from the superegos of male scholars.

 

2– The Time of Fajr prayer.

N.B. I was put onto this problem by none other than the somewhat unorthodox Trinidadian sheikh Imran Hossein. I am not very impressed by his politics and his eschatological theories where Russia saves the world?! But he does have other more valid theories and an interesting way of approaching studying the Quran. I think this insight about Fajr came from his studying what the Quran and hadith actually said rather than how the ulema have interpreted it!

 

Nowadays most Muslims use a printed or online calendar to determine their prayer times. And these times are mostly generated by astronomical calculations. It appears that for fajr there is some debate about 15 degrees and 18 degrees. I haven’t got into the minutiae because I disagree with the premise of using science when we have clear-cut sunnat to follow.

When the ayats appeared about prayer time and the beginning of fasting the Sahhabbas were not clear. The Quran stipulated 2:187  that it was the time when you could see the difference between a white and black thread. Still it was not clear how to use that directive so the Sahhabbas asked the Prophet saws. Then the Prophet saws explained that it was at the appearance of the first light on the horizon (the scholars call that the second dawn).

Now, if you use the calendars that are provided to us , you will never see that light at the given times. The scientists got it wrong again! Any surprise after Covid?! A friend of mine claimed that was due to light pollution in the city. Possible? But I have now verified it in the countryside on several occasions and in Third World countries-like the Tunisian villages. And it remains true in each of those contexts. The light is never there at the times on the calendar! For the ulema, this should be a serious concern. After all, it means that many Muslims are praying fajr during the time of Tahhajjud. Personally, I am not such a stickler for details but many of them are.      On a sidenote here, but one that gives us some context, Western meteorologists also try to determine the time of dawn and their definition is similar to ours-“the first appearance of light”. However if you look it up in your local area, you will be shocked. It is often at least an hour later than our calendars say about fajr. So twice the time gap that Imran Hosein is claiming. Much to reflect on!

 

3-Miscellaneous issues-all involving the operation of the punitive superego

 

  1. a) The Habashi sect have their own qibla calculations. According to them if you are off by a few degrees your prayer is not accepted. So go back and do your last thirty years of prayers?!
  2. b) One of the scholars from the Sheikh Nuh community went to Pakistan to study Islamic finance. He was shocked by the rigidity of the students around him. They were more or less condemning him to the hellfires for his pants going down beneath the ankle. He came back quickly to Jordan lol
  3. c) Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen bank. The economist Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Prize for the development of microcredits with the Grameen Bank. (Yes, I know he has become a controversial figure in his own country but that is not germane to our present discussion) With this tool many of the poor citizens of Bangladesh and India were helped out of poverty. This did not prevent him from being severely chastised by the Islamic scholars of Bangladesh as interest is considered by most of them to be prohibited in Islam. They couldn’t factor in all the benefit people were getting. Fortunately the Bangladeshi people are of a mild temperament. If this had happened in an Arab or Afghani context ,he may well have been assassinated!

The list goes on and on…I hope the overall message is loud and clear. As Sheikh Nazim used to tell us: ”Wear your religion lightly-not like a heavy cloak that burdens you” Otherwise you may become one of those religious malcontents whose only real plaesaue is in making other people miserable.

Joy and Happiness and Upliftment to you all, Sufi Ibrahim

Islam, Spiritual Practice

The Grozny Conference

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The conference was dedicated to the 65th anniversary of the birth of Kadyrov’s father, Akhmad Kadyrov, the first President of Chechnya.

The conference was notable for excluding representatives of Wahhabi and Salafi movements, and for its definition of Sunni Muslims in the final communiqué of the conference that included Sufis, Ash’aris and Maturidis, but not Wahhabis or Salafis. It condemned Salafism and Wahhabism as “misguided” sects, along with extremist groups such as ISIS, Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Muslim Brotherhood and others.

The conference definition stated:

“Ahl al-Sunnah wa al-Jama’ah are the Ash’aris and Maturidis (adherents of the theological systems of Imam Abu Mansur al-Maturidi and Imam Abu al-Hasan al-Ash’ari). In matters of belief, they are followers of any of the four schools of thought (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i or Hanbali) and are also the followers of the Sufism of Imam Junaid al-Baghdadi in doctrines, manners and [spiritual] purification.”

Metaphysics, Modern Living, Psychology, Spiritual Practice

The Good, The Bad and the Conundrum of Activism

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The Good, the Bad and

The Conundrum of Activism

The Trigger: This article was triggered by an interview of Francis A. Boyle, Human Rights Activist and Professor of International Law on CHD TV. What we learn in this interview is that the U.N. banned the use of biological weapons in an International Convention adopted in 1971.The United States signed on in 1972 with both bodies of Congress voting for it. In 1989 the U.S. added to the International Law its own prohibition with the U.S. Code 175-an addition to the Terrorism Act! Code 175 says “whoever knowingly develops, produces, stockpiles, transfers, acquires, retains or possesses any biological agent toxin, or delivery system for use as a weapon shall be fined or imprisoned for life or any term of years”

So, it is a criminal offense to be developing these weapons with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment (the lawyers and politicians who drew up the act didn’t like capital punishment lol) And yet since at least the 80’s under Ronald Reagan American scientists have been doing exactly that and keeping it undercover! We can understand their justifications: ”The Russians and the Chinese are doing it so we musn’t get behind”. Excuses, excuses! This is VERY dangerous stuff. And at this point ,I am convinced that Covid-19 Sars 2 is a product of that research! And it could get worse!

The thought immediately came to mind:  ”How could people be so evil, so reckless, so self-serving? I guess I am still naïve! This kind of evil has been going on for a long, long time. The Romans crucifying people and throwing them to the lions. The medieval tortures like the Iron Maiden. The Jews led into the gas chambers. The list goes on and on!

I still remember Sheikh Nazim in Peckham , London during one Ramadan in the 80’s saying “We are now under the hegemony of shaytan” and thinking “I think he’s going too far”! And hegemony was a word that should have been outside of his TurkEnglish vocabulaty lol. But, no, he was absolutely right. And those wooly-minded thinkers like Steven Pinker (“The Better Angels of our Nature”) and their data-analysis approach are sorely out of touch. No news there lol!

So…can it really be that bad?! And the simple answer is “Yes!”. Besides the usual human rights abuses like those of the Uighurs in China, the Chinese harvesting organs from Falum Dung members(that’s a new one but not dissimilar to the Nazis doing “scientific” experiments on Jews and not so long ago the Japanese torturing Chinese and Korean opposition forces, we now have a new slew of evil habits.

Let us name a few. So we have researchers in the U.S. and then in China doing “gain of function” research and calling it vaccine research which it clearly wasn’t. We have American pharma companies, exempt from all legal liabilities, having public health authorities mandating their ”safe and effective” vaccines (which were neither) to the entire population. We have large institutions- private and public- including universities (no surprise there .New and critical thinking left those premises a long time ago.)We have prestigious medical journals blocking the publication of useful research into repurposed medications for treatment and instead publishing misleading research some of which was so bad they had to retract the articles themselves. We have decades of vaccine mandates for children without any placebo-controlled studies and no long-term research on their overall effects on children. The list goes on and on! Man’s creativity in the field of mischief is truly astounding! No lack of new ideas there.

Once our inner vision begins to see all this, we may well feel overwhelmed and hopeless. How could this be and what can we do about it?” we may well ask. In Islam we were recommended to go to the hills with our sheep when the Last Days were approaching! Are we there yet?! We may well be but before we all become forest dwellers and hermits ( but btw the forests are no longer safe either nor the water in remote areas. In the forests we now have a plethora of ticks and Lyme disease and some of the most remote lakes are so contaminated with heavy metals that there are no fish left!) So there is no real refuge left!

There may however be a simpler answer. We need to seriously remember that, in any case, we are only here for a temporary period. As I like to remind myself and others from time to time, “the fatality rate of Earthly existence is 100%!” Sorry for the bad news, but none of us is going to survive anyway! So perhaps we should be thinking of the after-life and how best to be right with our Creator. Nothing else will do and nothing else can be so beneficial. All the religions teach that more or less! As say the A.A. people: ” Let go and let God”. He (the Light of the Heavens and the Earth) is the only trustworthy protector. All the others are destined to fail.

But what I really wanted to address in this article ,since good and evil have been contemplated from the beginning of time, is the question of activism. This question emerges out of the observation of endemic evil and what do we do about. Many times in history social activism and political theories have tried to address and redress the problem. Perhaps the most obvious in recent history was and still is Marxism. According to that philosophy, the problem is the exploitation of the working class and the solution is “The dictatorship of the proletariat”. We see where that got us when we look at Russia and China and North Korea to name but a few examples.

But nowadays we have newer and more limited actors in the field of activism-like “Doctors without Borders” trying to help people in war zones and “Amnesty International” trying to protect political prisoners, and Greenpeace and other environmental groups trying to protect the planet. One thing that surprized me in my practice as a psychiatrist was that the clients I saw who were in intimate relationships with these N.G.O. types were some of the people who were most disappointed by their relationships. It made no sense! Good people, no? Amnesty International, Médecins sans Frontières-how could these be bad people! As I contemplated this conundrum, I realized what was going on. These N.G.O. types were ideologues-people of principle! Often their hearts were dead. In fact they were so insensitive that it took really gross abuses in their environment to be able to fell anything! It sort of made sense!

Btw, I have my own personal history with activism! It started with student newspapers in high school and university, continued with protests against Canadian complicity in the Vietnam war and ended with Marxist medical services in a Community Clinic. It is a long story that I will only be able to tell it adequately when I eventually write my autobiography. Inshallah. But let me highlight a few episodes that eventually led to my disillusionment with this approach.

While I was at the community Clinic in East End Montreal I participated in a legitimate strike at a company called Carter White Lead. Many of the  workers there   were actually suffering from documented lead poisoning. We had a toxicologist on board who confirmed the diagnosis. In my mind I still held the slogan of “the dictatorship of the proletariat”lol. That was our salvation!.Boy can we be delusional at times! As an example it took Sartre, admittedly a brilliant man, more than a decade after being made aware of it  to denounce what was going on in Russia at the time of Stalin . In the meantime he had denounced Camus who was his informant in this matter as “intellectually not up to the task of analyzing the subtleties of the Russian Revolution ”(paraphrasing here).I still know very intelligent scholars who are unwilling to denounce Stalin. Their names will remain anonymous lol

 

When I saw this “proletariat” at Carter White Lead, my gut reaction was: ”These people in charge of our government?! No, thanks!” I had my first breakthrough!

Then I went to China with a group of community workers. That was 1973 and the Cultural Revolution was still going on but well-hidden from our view. We went to a school and when one of my companions, a College teacher at the time, realized that the principal of the school was earning much more than the workers and he confronted the workers about this inequality (which went against all Marxist principle) they said it was alright. He literally had a melt-down and a few hours later had to be rushed to the hospital with acute pneumonia! If you ever needed a clear example of a psycho-somatic reaction, this was a spectacular one. This fellow’s entire world had fallen apart Many people lost their faith in Marxism after that trip! Some melted into the “soft left” like the N.D. P. in Canada . Others, like myself, left activism and politics for good!

The third event that closed the chapter on Marxism for me was a large meeting of leftists, unionists and hard-core Marxist Leninists under the umbrella of a Marxist Group called “En Lutte” . At the head table were all the major leaders of the left wing. And when I saw them, it was obvious. ”No way, José” This group would be far worse than the current government under Robert Bourassa at the time. That was the last straw .Bye-bye Marx.

Another paradoxical thing I realized during these events, and I believe it is still true nowadays, is that the left-wing leaders treated their intimate partners much worse than their conservative homologues! Doesn’t make sense, right?! They are humanists and progressives and yet in their relationships they are egotistical, unfaithful and hedonistic.

You can see the same phenomena in American politics! Compare how the Bush’s and Reagan were with their wives to the string of philandering Kennedy’s all the way down to the present iteration. Yes there were exceptions like Carter and Obama on the Democrat side and Trump for the Republicans. But “the exception confirms the rule” as they say. If you are a woman, I would stay away from progressives lol

There is so much more I could say but the two major points I really wanted to raise in this article were the state of the world -where evil reigns forcing us to adapt to it and the particular conundrum posed by the latest iteration of a Kennedy, in the person of RFKjr,

The latter has presented a particular dilemma for Truth-seekers like myself. On the one hand, I agree with almost everything he says. It is all well-documented and referenced and he is very careful to get the facts right. I agree with almost everything he proposes to do in getting rid of the “captured” health agencies and government institutions. Perhaps the only thing I disagree with is trying to run for the Democratic party. I am convinced they will run him out of the primary as they did with Bernie Sanders in a previous election . But RFKjr. is a very strategic person and may well be using the Democratic platform to gain visibility and then planning to run for a third or fourth party once the Democrats succeed in running him out of town as they are almost sure to do.

None of this is problematic for me! But what is seriously problematic is his “ghoulish” presence! There is something deeply wrong with this man and it has nothing whatsoever to do with his voice. I have tried to come to some convincing conclusion about what that is but for now it evades me. Could it be what he calls “the lust demons” which have been haunting his family including his father and two of his uncles going all the way back to his grandfather?! Or could it be unresolved substance use which he has apparently conquered (Btw I saw a similar thing in the famous Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers and then learnt that he uses Ayahuasca as a means of spiritual upliftment. Ok. Case closed there!)

But there may be another explanation-at least a partial one- which applies to many, many people-Activism!? You see the real problem of activism is that it focuses on the negative. Even though it is attempting to resolve the problems, it can easily become obsessed with them. I saw that in medicine and psychiatry as well. My first wife, a true California Spiritual seeker nlol, confronted me with that: ” That’s the problem with you psychiatrists” she said in a moment of fury. You are in love with neurosis” She had a point.

My own Dad, who was by no means an intellectual, had the same issue. Although he had some dyslexia, I believe, he was so interested in history and politics that he worked his way through the entire set of volumes by Will and Ariel Durant called “The History of Civilization”! His conclusion: “Man is worse than animals ”. That was his final statement about Reality! And despite the fact that his argument is well-taken, it ultimately led him in the wrong direction. My own direction is the opposite! I go, rather, by the statement of Sheikh Hashimi of Damascus. ”Fi kooli shay khairan”(in everything there is good)What a revelation?! God created us, He knows more than anyone else our foibles and our defects. He created us that way. And he will lead us to the right path, if we trust in Him and follow His guidance. If, on the other hand, we follow the god of our own minds we are doomed to failure and disappointment. I am still working on it. And I hope you will be inspired to do likewise. Salaams, Sufi Ibrahim

Comparative Religion, Metaphysics, Spiritual Practice, Uncategorized

Theology?!

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Theology is the entry of the philosophical mind-set (i.e “mind productions”) into the domain of religion. It’s cost /benefit ratio is probably nil i.e. the costs( over-riding the need for actual spiritual experience and mysticism in favour of mental gymnastics) is at least as onerous as its benefits- at least when well-done (providing clarity in one’s formulation of beliefs- on which to base one’s behaviour.) Much unnecessary confusion and conflict has been generated by this form of activity!For best effect, it needs to be detoxified by actual spiritual experience-of one sort or another. Salaams,Sufi Ibrahim

Psychology, Spiritual Practice, Sufism

The Four Klesas

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The Four Klesas and the Four Responses

The Buddhists have a lot of interesting classifications for states of mind. Most of them are completely consistent with Sufi Islamic principles and in some sense provide a unique and clear formulation that is “actionable” on the spiritual path. One of these formulations is  the 5 klesas.

The 5 klesas (obstacles to Enlightenment) are Attachment/desire, Aversion, laziness,agitation and doubt.For the sake of clarity I have reduced the list to four.I consider both laziness and agitation to be a derivatives of the others-laziness being a product of doubt and desire and agitation being a derivative of fear and anger.I  have also divided Aversion into its two distinct components of Anger and Fear.

So we are left with 4 klesas that we need to struggle against-Desire; Anger/upsetness; Fear/worry and Doubt. So here are the responses we can use as we come up against these four states on a daily basis. This is a formula for serious and effective spiritual struggle that can be done by anyone serious about their path.

1-Desire:

Response: This thought is a lie, a trick of my mind .Even if I managed to obtain the object I am wishing for,I would still not get the ultimate satisfaction it is promising!

2- Anger (upsetness):

This too is from God and has a purpose. How could this have been worse?Allah will bring this matter to its proper conclusion!

3-Fear/worry:

Allah is aware of everything that is happening including this. Do your “due diligence”, follow your inspirations in managing it and trust in God.Tawakultu aleyhi wa hua rabbal Arsh al Atheem.(Trust in god and He is the Best of Managers)

4-Doubt:

There is no Doubt. God Exists, He is aware of everything ,He is Just and He will bring it all to the right conclusion.

So try it out and see how much you can shift your consciousness with this simple formula!

Salaams, Sufi Ibrahim

 

 

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