Often, all sort of sorrows, anxieties, hardships, and turmoil is to prepare us and to put a pathway for joy. As a famous Persian poet puts it, sorrow violently sweeps everything out of your house so that there’s space for new joy to enter. There’s beauty and gems of wisdom in going through hardships. It matures our souls and puts an appreciative spirit and a sense of profound gratitude in the blessings we count. Cultivating gratitude is key to several delights.
Impatience leads to resistance. Trust in divine timing.
“Patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in mind.”
― David G. Allen
I was reading a Persian tradition, and it speaks about a beautiful way of improving perspectives and regulating outlook both during suffering and joy. It says that in any event of suffering or rejoice, try the level best to think about the far times and the far results. In any suffering, the end result of it could be thought of. This way of thinking reduces that suffering. In the same token, after tasting any joy or pleasure, try to think about its end result. This reduces its sweetness and prevents being carried away and drowned by it. “Then What?” is the question to be asked.
Illustrated by: The Border Of a Mind.
There are many intricacies that often stay in the realm of thoughts that is yearning our awe. Think of the trees with their branches spreading through the air and producing fruits. With the ease of them growing and diverging into the air, their roots also spread and diverge through hard rock and earth beneath. Seeds and grains bear huge trees within them. Thinking casually about them takes into a realm of an unexceptional everyday sight. At the same time, pondering deeply lifts this curtain of blindness from our eyes and opens the windows of realization that these are indeed spectacular miracles. There’s kind of a solace on realizing that everything, be it a new leaf forming, an old leaf tumbling down the branches, things happening to us beyond our plans are under a divine command. Realizing bounties is key to a state of remembrance, gratitude, and reflection, the key themes that I’ve thought of today. The illustration you see in inspired from an image in my mind around a cottage garden in Ooty, South India.
A slice of photographic memory from a desert goes well with a story that I read recently.
“Someone who makes a journey through the deserts of Arabia has to travel in the name of a tribal chief and enter under his protection, for in this way he may be saved from the assaults of bandits and secure his needs. On his own, he will perish in the face of innumerable enemies and needs. And so, two men went on such a journey and entered the desert. One of them was modest and humble, the other proud and conceited. The humble man assumed the name of a tribal chief, while the proud man did not. The first traveled safely wherever he went. If he encountered bandits, he said: “I am traveling in the name of such-and-such tribal leader,” and they did not molest him. If he came to some tents, he was treated respectfully due to the name. But the proud man suffered indescribable calamities throughout his journey. He both trembled before everything and begged from everything. He was abased and became an object of scorn.
My proud soul! You are the traveler, and this world is a desert. Your impotence and poverty have no limit, and your enemies and needs are endless. Since it is thus, takes the name of the Pre-Eternal Ruler and Post-Eternal Lord of the desert and be saved from begging before the whole universe and trembling before every event.”
– Excerpt From The First Word, “The Words, The Treatise of Light,” Bediuzzaman.
I have read somewhere that mind is akin to a magnet in a certain sense. It’s concomitant of the thoughts espoused within. If we put our thoughts about blessings, the mind tends to attract and discover blessings and their deeper meanings. In the same manner, channeling thoughts of problems would bewitch and attract problems and restlessness. Nurturing and cultivating good thoughts would help in assuming a positive and optimistic frame of mind. That’s a lifetime of learning. Remember the humble life illustration?
Being calm about everything allows your mind to find solutions. Calmness is also a state of trust. Instead of overthinking and overreacting, you just surrender for that moment and allow yourself to receive guidance for what doesn’t make sense – Idil
I’ve personally felt that the strength of calmness is often derived from a trust in the divine timing of events happening and not harboring or apprehending any internal dissent or distress in the way certain things are in the way they’re supposed to be and in accepting certain aspects on the way they are. I believe that’s a quality that’s to be built up with time and experiences and everyone would have different journeys. God bless.
It’s about having the eye to see the internal within the external. It’s to probe purpose and beauty in chaos and noise. It requires patience, intention, and humility.
“Intellect is the knowledge obtained by the experience of names and forms; wisdom is the knowledge which manifests only from the inner being; to acquire intellect one must delve into studies, but to obtain wisdom, nothing but the flow of divine mercy is needed; it is as natural as the instinct of swimming to the fish, or of flying to the bird. Intellect is the sight which enables one to see through the external world, but the light of wisdom enables one to see through the external into the internal world.”
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My vehement fascination with petals and the art in their arrangements transcends to tree trunks and stems as well and this is what we have pulled off : )
This is a mobile photograph taken from Al Ain Oasis. Down the memory lane, my 2019 year started on top of a mountain in the UAE. Instead of chasing fireworks, we pursued mountain trails in 2019. In place of the rabble and gaggle of a fireworks crowd, we tried to embrace the assuasive and soothing equanimity in the mountains.
“You are most beautiful in your purest form. You are a manifestation of God himself. Open your eyes and let the light flow right through to your core. All it takes is for you to notice a flicker of leaves, a momentary glance from a loved one, or for a wave to hit your toes and freeze you in that timeless place where you know with every cell in your body that God, indeed is real.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams
“You only truly possess that which you cannot lose in a shipwreck.”
― أبو حامد الغزالي
