I share my observations about the world, how I've metabolized the information overload, how I've navigated trauma and created frameworks of meaning where I weave together the political and metaphysical
I reflect on the months since summer and what a reality not in communication with the body looks like. How not everything good is compatible. And how an incompatible life puts one in constant conflict between the safety of the body (the whole) and the security of the mind (the part).
When your inner resources and abilities mature, you arrive at a crossroads: to either sell your energy to the highest bidder and have the meaning of your life depend on how well you can market it, or to follow what fills your heart and which your whole being responds to in resonance. A path of creating something entirely new.
No is my energy redirecting me to where it's unfolding. I'm unlearning the fear in diverting from routines and established norms when it doesn't inspire, and the societal lie that routines give us stability and predictability. Adapting my life to the natural patterns of my energy creates a life of harmony as opposed to one of conflict, compulsion and control.
As I face new levels of relational threats bc I'm sharing more with society and in real time, I'm reflecting on how that's affecting me. That as I share what's emergent it disrupts and triggers the status quo, it sometimes backfire where I receive projections which force me into resistance. This resistance doesn't actually help me as it shuts down my heart and disconnects me from Allaah and what I receive from Him
I explore how breakdowns can also mean the end of the past and the beginning of the multiple choice point that is the future. It is a dreadful place at first, and our response to the fear creates our new direction: going deeper into the unknown or circling back to what we've already built.
I explore a meaningful insight I received about isti'aana and seeking to be regulated by Allaah that made me understand how I could match my inner resources/urges to my window of tolerance without having to rely on my mind or fall into shame for there not being enough external resources or support.
You may fight and wrestle however you can,but it's not until you release what's been digesting in you that things can land to take root, to sprout more of you. I explore the connection between rest-trust-flow and how we may release what we hold without losing what we are.
I realized that my constant search for context was my mind still hungover from trauma survival, and an implicit understanding that if I centre something other than myself, I can adapt & not disrupt. Learning to centre nothing but my engagement, experience & experiment with the present moment is so alien. I'm realizing that I can't live to predict. I have to drop that in favour of a broader understanding of safety. One that encompasses each & every moment, regardless of what is occurring.
I'm yearning to find the direction to what magnetizes my spirit. I want the world that makes it possible & safe to show up & share. I'm not settling for what version of the world is being presented for me. I need a life-affirming horizon to guide my sail. I want the horizon that's being weaved by this newfound inner sun.
I sense that humanity is entering a collective era where logic & control will dissolve bc things will be unexpected & disruptive. And what happened in my own life that made me realize that the only way forward is through surrender.
I talk about my journey to tawakul & reflect upon the lessons of prophet Musa alayhissalaam & his exodus in surah ash-Shua'araa (26) & how remaining present makes you a conduit for miracles.
I'm exploring how a sunny day lead me through a network of analogies involving the immune system, personal power, movement of energy & coordination of the body. Be warned that it's very scattered brained.
I'm exploring the impact of losing the context of a culture, shared experiences, collective meaning & being judged & demeaned for buckling under that life-distorting impact. When we understand what's behind difficulties & inability to move forward, we can have more compassion or at least hold back on the acidic shaming.
When you're in a survival mode, you're decentralized & preemptive while suppressing all other non-essential parts of you. When healed, these parts come online with their own energy & need, requiring you to become more centralized in how you interpret need & meet those needs.
Part of post-healing is to examine the images & visions that provided motivation. For me it meant that they expired bc they were part of the old conditioning of adapting to the status quo for survival bc of shame. So I'm in a liminality where creating space is very painful bc I have to connect to everything that was blocked before.
No one prepares you for what healing actually entails: disconnecting from the filters & contexts that automated living for you. You're now forced to immerse yourself in existence, & to feel the tension of that complexity. Post-healing is like the ashaabul kahf who woke up after 300+ years when their reality framework had expired.
I'm thinking about trauma as our sun dying and that death destroying how planets & life functions. And how healing is to discover an internal sun but then discovering that you can't go back to your old timeline, to society with that much energy. You have to get rid of yourself to be accepted. So now I'm in a space of being stranded. How do I form a new context for myself?
There are missing pieces connecting the mental health crisis, ecological destruction & hyperconsumerism. Any attempts at solving these problems in their vacuum only works to suppress & further fragment our collective psyche. Will we stop this runaway train in time?
I analyze the soul urge that made me pull the plug on the machine & some of the worrying patterns emerging on platforms like Twitter, changing us without our awareness.
The defining feature of this world is rupture & it's a reset that contrasts illusion &truth, what's superficial & what's enduring. Rupture signals the inherent limitations of this world. When we reject it we might start to personalize the limitations as being indications of our own insufficiencies. We try to overcompensate but we're always interrupted nevertheless
I talk about what a month of following resonance and doing things that pushed my bandwidth while trying to retain my pace entailed. Ambition aint shit. Healing is anti-urgency. Compassion is the root of healthy movement.
We agree to play the role of being a cardboard cutout for the fantasy of someone else in exchange for having a predictable and steady stream of being needed. We seek out a leverage to stave off uncertainty about our safety and we think recognition is the only form of love available to us.
Being caught up in a threatening torrent of Western onslaught on the continent has shifted the focus from the collective intelligence approach that defines African cultures, to an overstatement of materialism as the only means of surviving. Many have lost the ability to identify and extract the innate meaning in our cultures, judging the absence of hyperintellectualism and written language as an absence of intelligence.
Healing doesn't initially mean end of pain and living your best life. It's a paradigm shift in the meaning of pain and a reclaiming of the pain that caused your system to oust parts of you, resulting in fragmentation and incongruence. To gain continuity you have to witness its antithesis. Not knowing that the primary function of healing is disruption may cause despair and may make you misinterpret success as failure.
Looking at the Polyvagal Theory through an Islaamic framework to make the knowledge of Allaah accessible when things are really overwhelming or dismal
An intro to a freestyling podcast where I share how I've navigated the world as a black Muslim woman