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Comparative Religion, Metaphysics, Spiritual Practice, Sufism

The Greeks, Oy!

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Someone else*(first ever!) has understood the limitations and potential harm of the adoption of Greek Philosophy by the Muslims! Mashallah. There is hope in the Universe lol!
Aanand Krishnan posts:
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Vedānta, and the Advaita kind in particular, is a fountain of wisdom and looks at reality from within and offers an alternative to the Greek way of philosophy, which focuses on the study of the external universe primarily.
Islamic metaphysics developed under the light of Greek Philosophy primarily due to historical factors. If Islam had conquered the lands to the east before turning westward, things might have been different.
There is no particular reason why an Islamic metaphysics guided by Vedānta could not be developed more fully. And I think it could provide an even more comprehensive system of metaphysics that is consistent with the Qur’ān and the Sunnah of the holy prophet.
He is after all not just al-Zāhir but also al-Bātin. The Greek system enabled Muslims to develop a metaphysics of external manifestation but layers about what lies inside of us perhaps haven’t been fully developed.

P.S. The author goes on to say that the Vedanata makes a distinction between pramata(what I call Epistemology!) and prameya(logical proof).Finally someone else is getting it!

Metaphysics, Modern Living, Psychology, Spiritual Practice

Beyond the “Schtick”

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For those of you not familiar with this Yiddish expression,here is the Myriam-Webster Dictionary definition:

1: a usually comic or repetitious performance or routine : bit
2 : one’s special trait, interest, or activity : bag 
As with many Dictionary definitions,it doesn’t quite capture the modern usage of the term.In the modern  sense,it could be rendered as “neurosis” or “peculiarities” or even “orneriness”. In any case,I think the point will be clear as we continue and the best way to apprehend the word is to feel it in its essence,”the thing in itself” as Kant would refer to it as .   “Schtick”.Feel it.
All of this emerged from a short dream I had last night:
“I was visiting an old client  of mine who I hadn’t seen in a long time.She told me about a long-time friend of hers who had been staying with her.We were both aware that this particular friend was full of”schtick”( quirky ideas and beliefs and behaviours). Then her eyes welled up with tears. “You’re missing her” I stated.And she acknowledged  that it was true.
So,very brief dream but it opened up a deep insight about our relationships with other human beings We need to see “beyond the “schtick” and relate to the person beyond the appearance and beyond the personality or the neurosis.Connect with their heart,their souls,their essences.Deep stuff,indeed.A heady brew for sure.That would change everything,wouldn’t it? Think about it!
 Then my mind went even deeper!We have to see beyond the “schtick” of the dunniya(this world)- its sufferings and diasppointments and pain- to its essence as a gift to our souls for our learning and development.From the appearances of things to their Essence.What a subject of contemplation for this day-and many days to come !
Metaphysics, Modern Living, Spiritual Practice

“Transformational” Films Outed!

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Invitation to a Movie-

Modernism Outed Once Again!

A response to a relative’s invitation to watch “Milton’s Secret”

Sorry guys ! Not my cup of tea! Contemporary angst, overly self-conscious and grim (yes, it probably ends well. Good for the directors bottom-line lol).There is no such thing as a transformational film, a life-changing film! That is more hype from the marketers. Watching a film-no matter how good-is a passive, recreational activity .In any case you have a much better spiritual teacher in your midst than Eckhart Tolle! That’s Sufi Ibrahim lol. Much more balanced, less etheric, more grounded. But you have to figure out how to benefit from it. Eckhart Tolle is a spiritual entertainer. And he looks to be in an awful state in his intro to the film!.So his teachings are not working for himself-let alone his followers. They get a quick hit and then they’re lost! My personal observation. They all have to go elsewhere eventually. Just saying…Bottom line-Never rely on the media hype if you want to advance .Doing that you’ll end up being like Justin Trudeau! And I wouldn’t wish that for my worst enemy lol  Salaams,Joey Ibrahim

Hi again! Since you made the effort to forward me the link about the film, let me make two points here that may help in your understanding;

1) Transformation is an active process. As one California guru lol said: “You have to have skin in the game” i.e. it requires effort and time and money and going beyond one’s comfort zone. Watching a movie, no matter how well done, just doesn’t cut it! Pretending otherwise is just more of the “spin” (i.e. misleading information that we have become so used to. by now.) Anyone who wants to transform their lives is going to have to roll up their sleeves( not their pyjama legs) and get ready to work up a sweat.

2) Especially true about teachers like Eckhart Tolle and other Non-dualists out there- There is no such thing as spirituality without religion! Sorry New-Agers lol. That would be like having a tree with no bark, a body without skin, a gem without a setting-choose your metaphor. None of those options are viable. Where you end up on those paths is “high and lost”. So these pedlars of fool’s gold need to be highlighted and denounced because overall, despite the hype, they are doing a disservice to humanity. And yes,I am well aware of the negative mantras about religion; ”It causes war and corruption and pedophilia and oppression. However what the social consensus is not telling you is that religion also and primarily teaches people self-discipline, virtue and good character. Each of these is far more important than getting “high” on spiritual practices. Hope that makes sense to you. Salaams,Sufi Ibrahim

 

Comparative Religion, Metaphysics, Modern Living, Psychology, Uncategorized

Challenging Elements of Jewish Law

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Asalamu aleykum, i.e wishing peace to everyone lol.All religions begin with a noble,highly evolved spiritual being like Moses or Jesus or Mohammed saws who delivers a message from the Divine! Then the scholars get to work to operationalize and theorize about the religion and that’s where the problems begin! As an  end result of this process, we find ourselves,in Islam, with burqas and extremists who find justification for killing innocent people;in Christianity with God depicted as an old man with a white beard or as a dead body on a cross or in Judaism wearing paiess(sidecurls) and being careful not to mix dairy with meat! It is the latter aberration that I wish to address here! It has actually been bugging me for decades lol and I decided to look into it this morning at Fajr time! It may seem somewhat banal relative to the two previous mentionned aberations but there is the same corrupting intellectual problem involved.It all comes from “mind-productions” -a very different entity from Revelation and inspiration!

1-So let’s take them one-by-one.Firstly , the issue of not mixing milk and meat.I always sensed there was something quirky and unnecessary  about this rule. And that is usually where I start-my initial reaction.Here is the official version if you want to check it out!

https://www.thetorah.com/article/prohibition-of-meat-and-milk-its-origins-in-the-text?fbclid=IwAR3RRlnmwhiGO5_pevoYv-Ua4As5Jfnq9mD2uiZ3mU6Wcp_32gKdPGxF1tI

So we find in the Torah three times the phrase: ” Do not seethe(cook) a kid in its mother’s milk”.Unfortunately the rabbis and scholars who interpreted this did not have the benefit of certain Quranic teachings that came later.But Allah tells us in the Quran that He speaks to us in two ways-either literally (muhakamat) or metaphorically(mutashabihat).Ajib! So in this case, it seems very likely that this is a metaphor of some kind.Even if it were literal all it tells us is to not cook a child animal in its mother’s milk.This is a far cry from having an obsessive need to keep dairy and meat separate-to have two sets of dishes and two sets of electrical appliances in every Jewish kitchen! In fact if you take this statement literally you could cook the kid in the milk of another similar specied mother or in that of another species- like cooking a goat kid in cow’s milk.No problem.Then why can you not have cheese in your meat lasagna lol or milk in your coffee after a satisfying kosher steak lol.This all smacks of obsessionalism-a well-known Jewish characteristic!

On the level of metaphor there may be a few interesting possibilities.One of the things that came to mind was the famous Zidane incident in World Cup Soccer.The Italian player insulted the mother or sister of this Algerian French soccer player who proceeded to head-butt him and get kicked out of the game.So could this statement be a warning not to insult someone about their origins(their mother, their tribe,their nation) because it could cause them to seethe-to boil over.Or could this be a precursor of the psychoanalytic understandinfg of parental internalizations(soaked in the mother’s milk) that cause so much grief in this world?!If you have ever been married,you would know what I mean lol.Or then again we could say it would incite us as children to seek out other inputs beyond the nuclear family environment(the mother’s milk) in order to grow and develop.

The possibilities here are almost endless.However, one of the least likely of all is that God wanted us to have two sets of dishes and two sets of electrical appliances and above all not to put milk in our coffee after dinner  lol

2-The wearing of paiess or peiot in Hebrew.That always seemed ugly and ridiculous! And I am convinced that anything that is ugly and unnatural cannot be from God!

Here is the official version:

Why Do Orthodox Jewish Men Have Sidecurls?

Again,this weird practice comes from a Biblical reference.Leveticus 19:27 says”Do not round the corners of your head”.So how do we get from “rounding the corners of your head” to paiess?Well,the first change is to have men with really short hair-not the custom of any of the Old Testament Prophets btw.So first you Westernize Jews as they have done with Muslims.Then you decide that below a certain level the hair is not to be cut.And voila,you have these odd paieseem! You will not find these odd curls in any of the pictures of Jesus or the Apostles all of whom were practising Jews! so it must be a modernist innovation.

Actually I suspect that this prohibition is the same one as we have in Islam-not to shave the sides of our head-because that is a pagan practice.In any case,this unnecessary oddity of grooming is only essential in the minds of its creators lol.I am totally convinced that this was not nor could have been ordained by God.

So there we are.All religions have a tendency to corrupt their original sources.We need to be vigilant at all times and go to the root of the matter-what is essential to our piety,rather than what is arbitrary.

Salaams,Ibrahim

Metaphysics, Modern Living, Psychology

The Faucian Bargain

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So,we have gone from the Faustian Bargain(the pact with the devil)  to the Faucian bargain!The Faucian bargain is that, in order to participate in society,we accept the risk of taking a vaccine whose cost/benefit analysis is nowhere near as clear-cut as the authorities would have us believe.So we see Faust to Fauci- the German/Italian connection once again lol.We know where that led in the not too distant past?!

I had a dream the other night in which the entire university curriculum was being transformed into Fauci-ism.Intriguing?!Fauci-ism implies a sort of transhumanism where profit and manipulated social consensus take over completely-at the expense of u know who. So we have gone from Aristotle (logic and Rationality) to robotic  and manipulated data-crunching! And there is the Greco-Roman connection as well.Ask the apostles of Jesus a.s. what that was like?!

As opposed to Fauci.it must be stated that Aristotle ,not one of my favourite personalities lol,was concerned about ethics and wrote a famous book called “The Nichomachean Ethics”.We see very little of that concern in Fauci’s version of Epistemology.What we do see is blind ambition,profits and self-justifications galore.So much for “The Angels of our Better Nature” Mr. Steven Pinker,another intellectual I abhor-arguing that we have gotten better over time as a human race.Only a cruncher of data-a Fauci acolyte in another domain- could come to such a blatanly dubious conclusion.Now we have the proof lol. Aristotle was more ethical than Fauci! Case closed!

Btw, Fauci,who is now the saviour for many people, was the one who promoted ,encouraged and financed the production of this chimeric,GMO virus that is ravaging the world! Talk about the fox in the chicken coop?! And he doesn’t seem to bat an eye about the destruction he has launched on the planet.There are only two diagnoses possible here-Psychopath(i.e. no conscience) or Aspergers(no clue!).I actually believe the latter although a very good case can be made for the former- as does RFKjr in his recent book-“The Real Anthony Fauci”

So there we are.Not a “Brave New World” as the New-Agers would have us believe! But rather a “Cowardly, Uncompassionate, Manipulated New World”  . Got to get back to my latest project-developing and expressing positivity lol. Stay tuned!

 

Metaphysics, Modern Living, Psychology

Global Warming-An Alternative Analysis:Response to the Echo-chamber of Consensus.

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Climate is a very complex matter. There are many interacting factors that affect it. From solar energy to sunspots to cosmic rays to ocean currents to El Nino wind effects to the Atlantic Gulf Stream currents to volcanic activity…the list goes on and on. So limiting our concern to one factor like carbon emissions is naive at best and catastrophic at worse-since we may well be missing the boat entirely! There are scientists who actually believe we are close to a cooling phase and others that believe that the correlation with CO2 emissions is due to causation in the other direction i.e. it is the warming that is causing the increased CO2 rather than the opposite. So anyone who says this a a simple straightforward matter is lying to you! What else is new?!

In January 2006 Ariel Sharon, Prime Minister of Israel and ruthless general had a stroke.He was misdiagnosed by his Israeli doctors who treated him for a thrombotic stroke instead of the hemorrhagic stroke which he had had.The anticoagulants used then had a catastrophic effect,worsening the hemorrhage, and he remained in a coma on life-support until he finally died several years later.Diagnosis matters! And I am concerned that the current diagnosis around the phenomenon of Global Warming may well be wrong!

Now there should be no doubt about what is occurring .The climate IS warming! We can see the effects of this all around us.Wildfires,floods,increasing weather events all around the world! That is not the issue! The issue is what is causing this?! Now the current consensus of climate scientists is that the cause is the carbon footprint or the greenhouse effect.And these are caused by humans through burning of fossil fuels .They call that “anthropogenic” global warming.But is that not, once again, an expression of “hubris”. Man is so powerful that he can change the climate?! Not unlike the idea”man is so powerful he can get rid of the Covid virus through a vaccine.Or better still “man is so powerful,he can make Afghanistan and Iraq and Libya into democracies” lol

Now don’t get me wrong.I am fully aware of how destructive and ignorant man can be! He is certainly in the process of ruining our Environment.He has succeeded in contaminating our water supply,our food and our air.So much so that we now have epidemics of Cancer and Alzheimers and autism and many other diseases! But changing our climate?! Not so sure about that one! Has man succeeded in stopping hurricanes or floods or earthquakes?! I don’t think so ! So how come he is able to affect climate in such a dramatic way.

Now,if we start with simple observation-the place I, personally ,like to start with,we will notice that every day the temperature varies up to fifteen degrees Celsius between the night and the day.If we shift to seasonable variation ,in Canada for example,the temperature can vary more than 60 degrees Celsius(minus 30 in winter to plus 30 in summer). No one doubts, not even the most consensus bound climatologists, that this is due to the sun-more specifically the position of the Earth relative to the sun! No-one! So why would we not start with the sun if we are looking at changes in the range of 1-2 degrees Celsius.And there are a few scientists like Henrik Svensmark of Denmark and Nir Shaviv of Israel amongst others who are seriously questioning the Greenhouse Gas theory and linking the change to solar radiation and cosmic rays.And btw there are almost always a few “geniuses” out there who don’t buy into the consenus -like Luc  Montaigne and Didier Raoult and Chris Martenson on the Covid pandemic!

Now,if we look back over the history of the planet Earth,this is not the first time it has been so warm.115,000 years ago, during the time of the Neanderthals, there was no ice on this planet.More recently during the Roman Warming period and the Medieval Warming period the climate was warmer than it is now.I haven’t heard about the Neanderthals or the Romans and the Medieval Christians driving SUVs  or firing up their coal-burning furnaces lol.And I doubt that the Roman chariots were producing enough methane to affect the climate! So how did that warming happen?!In fact, the Earth’s climate has been changing since the beginning of its history-from Ice Cold to Tropical hot!

Even more recently, we have some naturally occurring experiments.For example when economic activity ground to a halt during the first phase of the Covid  pandemic,the skies cleared around the world and carbon emissions were seriously reduced! According to the Carbon Imprint theory that should have cooled the Earth and stopped the warming! But. actually, the planet continued to warm in fact the rate of warming accelerated.When forest fires occur(what could possibly produce more carbon in the atmosphere than that!) one would expect, according to the Greenhouse Effect Theory, global warming to increase.But in fact there are many reports of the temperature cooling down !

At first glance .all of this evidence would suggest that there is a “carbon filtering effect” rather then a carbon warming effect! If that is the case(for now this remains a hypothesis) then what all the International Bodies are trying to do i.e. limit carbon emissions,would be making things worse! Like the afore-mentioned error in the treatment of Ariel Sharon,this would be catastrophic-not only  for one man-but for all of us! It is possible that we NEED the carbon or something equivalent to filter out the sun’s rays.Then again,since this solar energy is not really in our control(tell that to Elon Musk and Bill Gates lol) it is possible that God will relent from this test and start the cooling process.And as we say in Islam “Allah Hu Alim”(Only God knows for sure!)

Addendum! The Confirmation of my hypotheses! https://electroverse.net/the-ipccs-latest-climate-report-is-antiscience-and-antihuman-reject-it/

Holistic Medicine, Metaphysics, Modern Living

The Pandemic -Final Analysis

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The Covid  pandemic is almost over! It will end in the same fashion it began-by another act of incredible human foolishness and folly.So it began by human “scientific” research that developed a genetically-modified chimeric virus.And it will end by another short-sighted “rational” calculation-sending our children back to the schools-the agar plate for the spread of the virus! And btw the reason that the data don’t support this last hypothesis is because they are studying the wrong population! Remember the joke about the man looking for his watch not in the place where he lost it but where the lamp was lol.Exactly! In fact,they should be studying the parents and relatives living with the students rather than the teachers.Nothing new for our be loved scientists – more often than not looking in the wrong places lol.

So the Delta variant, that is so contagious, will lead to an uptick in cases and most likely an uptick in hospitalizations and death and then fairly rapidly as it has done in India and other places it will begin to die off and the pandemic will largely be over-in a few short months we will have arrived at the infamous “herd immunity” .In the meantime,protect yourself as best you can!

Ironically this pandemic will follow more or less the same time course as the “Spanish flu” of1918. Yes in a period where there were no vaccines ,no antibiotics and especially almost no Epidemiologists they ended up with the same curve of disease.How could that be?!

The answer to that question is actually quite deep-metaphysical or theological if you wish.You see, what none of the pundits including the good ones like Chris Martenson and R.F.K. jr. are factoring in is that this is an act of God.Now,the Biblical-minded and the Quranic-minded people, I would hope, understand that this whole event is an act of God!Yes, a punishment for the sins of man.A near-death experiencer saw her guide on the other side and he told her that the pandemic was not about the virus-it was about the hard-heartedness of man currently.The Virgin Mary in one of her apparitions told the young  girls that man’s Materialism and Nationalism(read collective selfishness) would lead to many natural disasters.The Covid pandemic is one of those.

But eventually, as He did with the flood of Noah,God relents and gives man another chance.Will we,then, have understood and reformed ourselves.If the past is any indicator, we would have to be rather pessimistic.Who knows?! Maybe it’s time for another saviour! No,not Donald Trump lol.A real one Only God knows for sure.In the ,meantime get ready for some more turbulence.It shouldn’t be too much longer.

Metaphysics, Modern Living, Psychology, Sufism, Uncategorized

Lamentations of an Aspiring Spiritual Teacher

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Towards the end of his life, Freud made the following statement concerning his discovery of psychoanalysis; “I believe I have discovered the third type of human activity that is both necessary and doomed to failure.The other two being raising children and governing nations” Lol. Well I may have uncovered the fourth- Being a spiritual teacher!

Now, classically, the métier of spiritual teacher was considerably simpler.The teacher spoke and instructed and the murid(student) listened and obeyed.” Listen and obey” That is the instruction both in the Quran and in most Sufi tariqats.But somehow things have changed.That model seems to be outdated.It is still being attempted in many spiritual circles but I myself and many others in modern times have found it unworkable.For example,when we discover the teacher has made a mistake,sometimes a serious one,do we just keep quiet?! Or, even worse, do we deny that it occurred as many murids do? What do we do about it? Unfortunately denial is a very commonplace reaction.

I had a very good friend whose teacher was doing wrong things( many actually haram) on many levels.The evidence was growing by the year and the documentation became overwhelming.But he wouldn’t leave! It got so bad,I eventually had to terminate the friendship as the level of “falsehood” had become unsustainable.This is not uncommon btw!The loyalty to corrupt spiritual teachers is unbelievable at times.and the justifications are as clever as they are disingenuous.

I would like to backtrack a moment to my personal experience here.I say often and I believe it that I would have almost no understanding of life and spirituality if it were not for some extraordinary beings I have met along the route.These extraordinary beings include my first Sufi teacher-Pir Vilayat Khan-my first Tibetan Buddhist teacher,Geshe Lama Gajan, my fist Muslim teacher Sheikh Muhammad Jumal, Sheikh Bawa Muhayideen, Sheikh Nazim al Qubrusi,S heikh Nuh and my current teacher Sheikh Abu Qassim of Erdeyf,Tunisia and many others along the way.I learnt so much more from these people than from my miserable 12 years of University education lol! I would be nowhere without them.

And yet….they were all imperfect.And it usually didn’t take me long to detect their faults and their limitations.However,we were absolutely forbidden, by context,to raise these issues.”Our teachers are perfect.We need to idealize them and obey them” That was the Gestalt of it. No ‘ifs’,’ and’s and ‘buts’ lol.

Eventually,I had to break away from this Absolutist approach to spiritual development.It was not an easy decision.Most of my Sufi colleagues would consider my position as heretical.But my entire path seemed to be leading me in that direction-developing a more comprehensive,all-inclusive model.My heart led me there and my Istikharas confirmed it over and over again.Little did I expect what happened next?!

Once I took on this new role ,I was confronted quickly with a dilemma that I had not expected.The opposition forces grew and grew.Like our blessed Prophet saws I confronted the opposition-as he sal  confronted the ways of the Qurayshi ancestprs!I began to regret the loss of the “Listen and obey plus idealization” approach! So much easier.Excludes all opposition by diktat.But it was not to be.  These were new types of ancestors however- the ancestors of the modern world! And two of these “modern ancestral opponents” stood out from the crowd.One was “transference” (courtesy the psychoanalysts) and one was social-conditioning( social brain-washing if you wish). Let us explore these two in a little more detail.

1-Tranference: Transference was a deep secret in the human unconscious that Freud and his fellow analysts discovered by doing therapy with psychologically troubled people.What they found ,to their surprise initially, was that no matter how neutral and relatively silent they were,the patient eventually reproduced their parental relationships in the consulting room.Then it became the analysts job to “interpret the transference” and that would ultimately be the most important tool for healing.Until they came across the borderlines but that is another story Lol.

As a spiritual teacher,one comes across the very same phenomenon,in a different context.The teacher is trying to transmit knowledge and understanding and practices and even love only to come across reactiveness and obstinacy and stonewalling! “What is he is thinking?! I am trying my best to transmit goodness and life  and I am getting “flack” instead?!” What is happening?” he asks And the answer is usually transference!

The transference can take several forms.If we are talking about a male teacher it will often involve a father transference.”My father is critical,so you are critical.My father is explosive so you are explosive.My father puts me down so you,the spiritual teachers are putting me down” The themes are endless.Occasionally a gender shift may be operative.For example if the mother was domineering and harsh or the micro-managing type, the transference can be a maternal one.

The other possibility, in the domain of the unconscious, comes from the school of “object relations” in psychoanalysis.They clearly identified the process of identification or parental internalization(the inner parental imago). So, in that case, the murid,instead of reacting to the parent becomes the parent.This often happens in marriage,unfortunately.But it can also happen within a teacher/student relationship!

In a classical Sheikh/Murid relationship this phenomenon is either hidden or short-circuited but in the newer model I am presenting it needs to be addressed.This makes the work a lot more difficult but on the other hand more complete and more satisfying.In other words, with this approach we are doing psychotherapy at the same time as spiritual work.Very satisfying for someone who has been advocating the bio-psycho-socio-spiritual approach(i.e a complete approach to human development) for decades!

2_ Social Conditioning: I realized quite quickly that there was another adversary in this process that was at least as formidable ,if not more so,than the transference.And that is social conditioning- the way we have been trained by our parents ,the society around us, and most notably our schools, to think.And that thinking involves at least three elements- Rationnality/Logic; Democratic values(what I call the Democratic Illusions); and Secularism. I am convinced there is much more to this story but let us start with those three;

a) Rationnality/Logic: From an early age, and certainly as soon as we start our formal education, we are trained to be Reasonable and Logical. I only really became aware of this bias when I did an EST training in San Francisco in the 70’s and the trainer at the front began unpacking “the stages of spiritual development“Reasonableness is the lowest level of spiritual development” he stated  i.e. just one notch above animality lol.And yet all around us we can see this emphasis-not only in our schools but in our businesses which are constantly calculating their self-interest and in our governments that are always looking at “the data”. You see gathering of the data and then analyzing it or “crunching it” as they say is one of the most basic aspects of our social processes and our decision -making .

So the Greek Philosophers and particularly Aristotle have found their way into our thinking-actually into our unconscious! And this internalization raises its hoary head as soon as you begin trying to teach people.One of the first manifestations of this is “the contradiction detectors”.They are on all the time in hyperactive,hypersensitive mode!Remember Aristotle taught us that A could not be not-A. Unfortunately it often is lol. “But teacher, you said this yesterday and now you are saying that.How could that be?! It’s a contradiction!” Yes,we are all playing  “gotcha”CNN games with each other and with our teachers.

For the Muslims amongst you and even the sincere Christians ,try to find those kind of interactions amongst the disciples of Mohammad saws or Jesus a.s. or Moses.I have been unable.Take note that we are not talking abort Muslim scholars or Talmudic traditions or Christian theologians.They are all infected with the Aristotelian virus and its variants lol.We are talking about original sources.I have not been able ,in our Islamic tradition, to find one interaction and there were many ,many of those reported,of one of the Sahhabbis saying to the Prophet saws”You said this,but the Quran said that.How could that be.?” Thank God,they had no contradiction detectors as far as I can see.That would come much later! (PS some obsessive scholarly type is sure to contradict me here lol)

2- Democratic Illusions: Make no mistake about it .Our schools are centers of indoctrination! And one of the forms of indoctrination is transmitting “Democratic values“..Some of these include ” We are all created equal”; the best way to arrive at Truth or make dicisions is through discussions”.”All opinions are equally valid”: Each of these is demonstrably false.But that in no way prevents the promoters of democracy from believing them.After all it’s an article of faith,no.

So,for example,all men are created equal” Really?! Have you not noticed?! Want to come to the Children’s section of  the Douglas hospital where I worked and taught  for several years and see the multiply -handicapped(May Allah have Mercy upon them) from birth?Have you not noticed that some people are tall and others short,some are strong and others weak,some are smart and others stupid.How can you possibly believe in this equality.And the same holds for opinions,Many are outrightly wrong and some are really primitive and foolish! So give me a break. And btw an old aphorism of mine “any system or person that denies reality is unlikely to succeed”! Any wonder that we are in such a state in the world?!

And how does this play out in a context of spiritual teaching?! Well,the Westerner believes firmly that his ideas are as good as anyone else s-including,of course the teachers. If they happen to be talented at robotic schoolwork and thus get excellent grades at school,they are even more arrogant.I had  a 19-year old niece who had just taken her first Comparative Religion 101 course vociferously arguing with me about Buddhism! The “chutzpah ” of it is astounding.But, democratically, her opinion is as valid as someone on the path of seeking truth for the last 50 years?! Her democratic right,no?!

c) Secularism; This is another huge subject, all around us, that merits more attention at another time..Fortunately most of the students that enter a spiritual path have graduated from that low level of understanding.But vestiges do remain! And those vestiges often take the form of “doubting”. It is a short step from doubting the existence of God to doubting that the teacher in front of you basically knows what he is talking about-even if he errs on the details at times. PS Obsessionalism, which is another derivative  of doubt is one more obstacle.”How could my teacher be authentic if his Arabic pronunciation is not perfect?” could be an example in the Islamic context.Or ” his pants go beyond his ankles” or “her hair is appearing beneath her hijab” .Yes,I have heard it all, lol

Given all these obstacles,this is ceratinly not a path for the frail-hearted or the weak and weary.This is a path for the “rijal”(the men and women of courage and integrity). Join us if you have the desire and the sincerity to do so.We will welcome you with open arms and  stern admonishments lol

 

 

Islam, Metaphysics, Psychology, Uncategorized

The Real Problem of the Taliban-Religious Materialism

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The Taliban have recaptured Afghanistan!So we see these noble,dignified soldiers dressed in sunnat clothing and if we look no further,we could be impressed.Personally,I find their dress,at least for the males,much more appealing than that of Western politicians who are essentially wearing the garb of the lower echelons of the royal courts-the jacks of the monarchy!.As to the women,the imposed dress code is both awful and unnatural-the product of a misplaced principle of modesty.We will look into the issue of “principles” a little later in the article as they seem to go hand in hand with “Materialism”.

Now,when I say materialism I am not referring to its sense of greediness and avarice as it is commonly used.I am referring to a philosophical,attitudinal position where the concrete is the predominant and determinant reality.So the Marxists say they are “dialectical materialists”. The scientific types say they are empirically-based .But Empiricism is just another form of materialism.And many of our religions are carrying another and even deeper form of materialism-the dress,the rituals the rules of the religion in its outer form.I call that”Religious Materialism”.

Now this is not what religion is supposed to be.This is not what the Prophets and founders and mystics of the religion were teaching.In fact,this common distinction between spirituality and religion is moot,in fact.True religion IS spiritual,by definition.But it appears that the human mind has a need to concretize and codify everything.And therein the problem begins.Now codification may well be necessary to some extant but it musn’t become predominant.Otherwise we are into religious bureaucracuy -an inevitable consequence of Religious Materialism.At that point,we have “thrown out the baby with the bathwater” so to speak.

So, paradoxically the Taliban have fallen into the same trap as the Marxists.The Marxists believed that if you changed the outward,economic situation of the people their inward state would change.And the Taliban believe that if you set up the structure of an Islamic state,people will become good and virtuous.So they are deeply misled.Au contraire what they become is rigid (uncompassionate) or hypocritical! Neither is a good outcome.Neither is what the founders of religion including our Prophet wished for!

So,when I look at the Taliban,I don’t see any of the “nur”(light) of Islam in their faces.I am sure this was not the case with the original Muslims around the Prophet saws.The unbelievers began seeing this transformatioin two generations after the Prophet saws where the nur of the Sahhabbas was beginning to diminish in the Muslim community.At this point in time you have to search it out unfortunately.I remember being in Mecca and looking and looking for it.I finally found it in a group of Bangladeshi people who belonged to the Naqshbandi order.And yes,it is the Sufis who are carrying this nur most clearly.It is not there-neither in the Taliban nor the Salafis nor the Shia generally.

Now,this is a universal phenomenon-not unique to Islam.We can find it in all religions.The original light and baraka and Love becomes a set of rules and regulations and customs and rituals.And the life is lost.No matter how noble the principles,how accurate the scriptrural exegeses,how clever the scholars,the very essence of the religion,the sap of the tree so to speak, is lost.And then we too are lost.

One of the paradoxes of this Materialism is that it is almost inevitably tied to a series of principles -i.e. things that are not material in themselves but of course end up being materialized in ways that are often contrary to the origins of the principles themselves! So the Marxists are bound to the notion of “The Dictatorship of the Proletariat” which then becomes the dictatorship of the top echelons of the Communist party.The Scientific Materialists become the advocates of the “randomized,placebo-controlled, multi-centered , peer-reviewed articles in published  prestigious journals”(That IS a mouthful lol) and then miss the Reality on the ground as they did so ignobly with early treatment of Covid epidemic.That one cost millions of lives on its own!The Christian Materialists massacre those from a different faith as in the Spanish inquisition and the Crusades and burn the witches at the stake in the name of “The Love of Jesus” Wa la howla wala quwatta.And the Muslim Materialists continually talk about “Quran and sunnat” while missing the wisdom ,compassion and humanity of both.These contradictions tend to supplant the original intentions and tend to have a very long life,unfortunately.

Once the essence is lost,the entire structure is compromised.Peoples hearts are dry and all sorts of excesses and cruelties become possible.Thence the critique of the secularists against religions.And unfortunately they have a point.

So now we can see it, in its full manifestation, in the Taliban.Outer,materialistic religion.what a trap?! The devil must be rubbing his hands in glee.And yet,these people think what they are doing is right and pure.Little do they know what trap they have fallen into.I will let God decide their fate but for sure I will not be part of it and I will call them out as I have done many times in the past to the other Islamic Materialists-the Wahhabbis.I clearly remember leaving one of their dinner invitations saying to them bluntly:”I do not see any light in your faces.How can I possibly believe your words” And I said the same to a group of Shia who were also trying to convince me of their ideas.Until I see the light and feel the Love,their empty words are meaningless.

So,is there a way out?! Of course there is!. Allah would not leave us with a problem for which there is no solution.But the way out requires something that few people seem willing to do-self-observation(muraqabat). Let me give you an example!

About twelve years ago, in Jordan, I met an ex-Wahhabbi who had come to spend time with my sheikh of the time-Sheikh Nuh Ha Mim Keller.”How did you get here?” I asked” Wahhabbis never come to see the Sufis.” He told me that he was earnestly following the Wahhabbi way(now they cal themsaelves Salafis after the early generation of Muslims but they are very far from the state of those noble ones!). He continued to tell me his story;’My heart was dry .I could feel nothing.And then I appealed to my Lord for help.He swt sent me a dream in which the Prophet saws was driving a Chevrolet?! ” I knew then that Sheikh Nuh was a true representative of our Prophet and my Wahhabbi teachers were a mere shadow of that reality-at best.That is the kind of lucidity required to break out of the Materialist conundrum that troubles all the religions.May Allah help us to remain inwardly rich and alive and not to fall into the trap of outwardliness. Salaams,Ibrahim

Holistic Medicine, Modern Living, Politics

My Covid Vaccine Decision!

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Asalamu aleykum,everyone.What strange times we are living in ?! So much information and so much disinformation.So much heroism(the healthcare workers) and so much corruption (government officials,pharma company profits,public health authorities and the crimes against humanity of Fauci, Barik,Daszak and company!) You,like me, have probably been wondering how to manage all of this.And one of the major management decisions is whether to take this under-tested vaccine or not.

So i am going to unfold my own process here.You will have to decide,if you have not already done so, and even if you did there will be other decisions down the line- like masks and distancing and attending public events.So I hope these reflections will be of  help to you..

There are many good reasons not to want to take these vaccines.Compared to other previous vaccines they are relatively untested.There was no animal testing,no testing in pregnant  women,no testing in children for starters.The vaccine is not yet approved except under emergency authorization.The mRNA technology has never been used on such a scale.Previous vaccines for Coronavirus have all failed including the disastrous animal studies on Covid 1 where all the ferrets died from ADE(antibody-dependent enhancement)! On top of all that ,the standard vaccine mandates for children that have been touted for decades as safe health-promoting end up causing epidemics of asthma, ADHD, Autism and multiple allergies! It took us twenty years to find out the reality of that one- as they were avoiding studying it for all that period of time?! So how can we possibly trust these people who are promoting this vaccine?!

Then we start investigating the Vaers data(adverse events registry)of the CDC which we know is seriously underestimating problems caused by the vaccine-probably intentionally!- and we find deaths and auto-immune reactions like Guillain -Barre syndrome and Bell’s Palsy and myocarditis in young males and miscarriages in young females.So, we would be fully within our rights to sat wtf.No way José!

But there is one disturbing fact that all of the foregoing analysis leaves out.This is one nasty virus! Forget the misguided statisticians who tell us the death rate is low for a moment!l.Ask the people in the E.R.s and the front-lines of medical care and the people who have lost relatives to the disease .They will tell you definitively;”This is no flu. This is one nasty virus”(man-made on top of it but that is a story for another time). This virus is nothing to play around with,

There is another confounding fact for the ideological anti-vaxers.These vaccines do one thing well.They limit the severity of the illness.And that is one BIG reality that needs to be factored in.True,they do not stop transmission, especially with the Delta variant.They do not prevent infection( although on that one we have the problem of the unreliability of the PCR testing-another story for another time lol).But no informed person should be denying that they significantly reduce morbidity and mortality.So if you get the virus, which you may well do even if you are vaccinated,you do not end up in ICU on a ventilator OR dead! That should be an important consideration,no?!

So like many of you again,I have been contemplating all these factors.On top of it all,over the last few weeks I have gotten ill on at least three occasions by talking to people who were fully vaccinated-without masking.I was able to manage the symptoms with some anti-viral protocols I have developed over the years so these episodes were not consequential.But I started feeling like I was regularly at risk and started wondering whether it was not time to reduce that risk by being vaccinated.On top of that on my way to the market the other day I saw a temporary  open-air vaccination clinic on the street adjacent to mine!(an ayat- sign- from the Lord?)

Then it happened! The clincher! An Istikhara dream. The only consultation I really trust these days! Here it is:” I was in someone else’s car, saw a policeman by the road and drove into a narrow alleyway to avoid him. A woman ,possibly a female officer, came up to me and said “You are on the wrong path.Go back onto the main highway and drive in this way and she pointed out a route to follow..This was happening in Oregon”

So I woke up and knew that something significant had occurred.I wasn’t sure what at first but I knew something had to change!”Oregon”-my first association was to the riots in Portland which have been so destructive.Aha! I am on the path of the rebellious .That is not good.”The car wasn’t mine” This is not my path-the path of ideological positions like pro-vax or anti-vax. My path is the path of discernment! I have to go back into the mainstream on this one.And the mainstream right now is being vaccinated.I made a cup of coffee,went down the road, and almost immediately got the vaccine! It was,of course,almost totally painless .Compared to all the dental work I have had recently,a cup of tea lol.

One of my previous clients told me she took some antihistamine  meds before the shot and then had no symptoms .On the second shot,she forgot to do it and had a headache.She then took her  Sinutab (Tyllenol, an antihistamine and pseudoephedrine also called Tyllenol sinus/allergy)and the headache went away.So I did likewise.

When I began experiencing a mild uneasiness in the chest(?myocarditis ) I took two aspirins.Aspirin is both anti-inflammatory and anti-coagulant so it seemed appropriate .I took two 325 mg. aspirins and was fine after that.

So now, a few hours after the first vaccine I am feeling fine.I am more tired than usual but it feels like a healthy tiredness(Immune system working overtime?). And I noticed my breathing is better.Was I actually having long-haul Covid from my numerous mini-Covid infections? Numerous people have reported being relieved of their long-haul Covid symptoms after the vaccine!Perhaps the immune reaction to the vaccine is clearing out some remnants of the infection. Allah Hu Alim(God only knows)

So there is my story.Now you have to figure out yours lol.I hope that was helpful!

Understood and applied, any one of the posts on this site could change your life-forever!