Heightened Senses

Hello. I'm Imraan. This is my attempt at a productive silence.

Category: Religion

December 23, 2014

Pride and Indignity

The psychologist whom I visit from time-to-time suggested to me some months ago that I’m living a life of utter indignity. It’s not something that would naturally occur to me; I live in a time where all manner of proclivities, lifestyles, quirks, inclinations, and even illnesses, are, if not entirely embraced, well they are at least tolerated or given some modicum of acceptability. We live in an age of identity-politics, do we not. The greatest marker of being able to write your own narrative is to have your identity embraced by, well if not the entire populace, then at least by the ‘establishment.’ But that’s more a digression, I suppose, from my main point about indignity.

But recently, this cuts close to home. This isn’t unusual to me, in fact, many who suffer from chronic, tedious, gruelling illnesses who remain in the care of mere mortals will experience this. Some of them have told me.

After years of chronic illness, particularly with one that shows very little sign of letting-up in the medium-term, it’s only understandable that the patience of your carers wears thin. Oftentimes, we find ourselves subject to all kinds of abuse, psychologically, and sadly, in other cases, physically. It gets to a point where those that have cared for you suddenly make you think that they’re doing you a favour by doing it in the first place.

I suppose, it could be argued as such. That no-one actually owes us anything. And so, when my parents keep their adult son in their home, rent free, whilst he spends all of his money more or less on all variety of expensive alternative treatments which they reckon is wasteful, I suppose I could just turn inwards and shut-up about how hard things can be, sometimes. Yet, at other times, I cannot help but wonder why it is that the least of us is made to feel so small.

“We all have problems!” is one that I often hear. I’ve never denied it. Sometimes, I want to say, “well talk to me when you’re bedridden!” before I remember how cataclysmic my problems seemed in a past life.

I’ll give you a terribly small example. On the grand scale of things, this is not world-changing. Yet, after years of being made to feel this way, some things really get to you.
Today, I started panting from having to stand up from my wheelchair after dinner. I was already bent-over, exhausted, from the mere strain of sitting at the table. So, once wheeled back to my room (I try to walk the short distance on most days, today I did not have the energy), it wasn’t supposed to signify anything; I had not ‘intended’ anything by this panting, yet someone in our homestead took it as an opportunity to remind me of how negative I was being. I had said nothing, and had behaved as I would have was I on my own in the room, but apparently the moral they drew from the fact that I was panting had to so with, “well, some of your friends got better without needing [such and such need] from us; you need to change how you think.” Basically, stop demanding things. I hadn’t mentioned ‘such and such’ demand just at that moment, though had asked for it in the hour previous to it, though, I’m in no way able to enforce said demand. But apparently, it really got to them and they took this as the opportunity when I was most vulnerable to remind me that I was being unreasonable.

To which I said, “none of them got better from mere positive-thinking alone, though.”

“Well, maybe they did,” they said, before walking off leaving me standing, still panting, in agony, left to think that somehow it was my fault that I was feeling this tired.

And so ended the conversation. What do you do with such intransigence? I suppose, that’s what they were thinking of me, too, what with my clever retort.

“Imraan, every time we call, or you call us, you’re constantly groaning. Makes me want to take a knife…no, [they said, thinking that it was too violent an image] a hammer and clobber you on your head and tell you to be more…happy!” was another one I heard today.

I said, “but that’s not always the case, and it just happens to be the case when I call you I’m feeling at my worst [ergo, that’s why I’m calling you in the first place!]”

To which they said something about how I sound different with people outside of the house but am never a positive person to be around.

Violent imagery aside, for obviously they didn’t mean it [you can tell by how they said it], the point stands that somehow it is expected that if you’re in agony or struggling to speak, you ought not show it. I don’t tend to ‘show’ it for the sake of showing it, but it just tells you a bit about how such things are received .It upsets me that, if they’re telling the truth, that I need to work on being less negative in disposition and haven’t quite mastered how to be someone that doesn’t suck the oxygen out of a room; but equally, the point I was trying to make was entirely missed on them.

But the point remains, there comes a time when you live with such a condition that it has not only taken all of the fight out of you, but seems to have taken some of the humanity out of your family.

Maybe, again, this says something about the age in which we live, too. Look at it socio-politically  – the most needy among as are somehow made to feel that they’re being done some huge favour by benefiting out of some of the welfare policies designed to promote some (increasingly feint) notion of social-justice or wealth-redistribution. Foreign migrants with legal rights are reduced to criminals among some sections of the media. Ethnic minorities with full citizenship are somehow treated as if they’re pariahs in their own country.

Or – parents who really ought to be cared for by their families are shipped off to ‘homes,’ whereupon they’re made to feel grateful for a weekly visit from their eldest child for an hour.

Or – somehow, we need to be grateful for the fact that the ‘City of London’ brings in masses of revenue that props up our beloved nation-state and the system that maintains the status-quo, whilst the poorest in our midst are robbed of their remaining dignity and well-needed resources because of the recession brought on largely by the ‘City’ and the system upon which it is predicated.

But back on point, and forgive me, for I don’t mean to come across as whining. I don’t mean to sing the Blues, as it were. But the larger question, of course, is how do we respond in such situations.

There are very few ways in which I can escape my current situation. Earlier on in the night, I found myself begging for death, with tears streaming down my face. Only so that I could be lifted from this indignity. In all honesty, I’m terrified of meeting my Maker. I have sins to atone for, yet. That said, I’ve never considered myself a terribly proud or haughty person – though perhaps some part of me wonders why then, I was so bothered by the fact that I felt and feel so utterly belittled by them?

It’s not the first time, nor will it be the last. But the question is, is when you are in such a position, how are you to actually respond to such situations?

Mum’s always taught me, “beggars can’t be choosers,” as a means to tell me not to expect ‘too’ much out of life, especially when I’m at the mercy of some other person. But the question, I suppose is, should I be made to feel that way in my own home?

Sometimes I think she might be right  – I don’t exactly ‘expect’ that my family has to look after me, when there are other options, technically. At this moment, any other option seems a bit unfeasible; at a stretch, was I to give up my alternative treatments and claim independence from my family and be set up in a government-owned home by myself, with the state sending carers periodically to help me with my needs, I might be free of this. I suppose, then, if I really ‘wanted’ to, I could just move out, and not feel so hurt at my family, and they not resent me so much.

But on the topic of responding, there is a time when chronic illness will teach some of its loftiest lessons. I’m still to learn it, for if I had, I wouldn’t be so upset, or bothering to voice my thoughts. Humility. I think a major reason why I hurt so much is that I seem to think that I’m ‘worthy’ of being treated in a particular way by my own family, or that they really ought to give me the type of care that I would like from them. But of course, we’re dealing with other human beings. A microcosm of problems, worries, anxieties, hopes, dreams, aspirations, fears lives inside of someone else, too. Mine are obviously most apparent to me.  As are theirs them. What gives me the gall to believe that they should set aside theirs and somehow avail themselves to mine?!

But that said, why can I not yet see past ‘me,’ yet? Is that ‘home’ where I think I ought not be a beggar in the first place even ‘mine,’ to begin with? How many people have I known who’ve been thrown out of their parents homes because their parents refused to accept their illness, for example? And they’ve perfectly, legally and apparently legitimately, had no recourse to any other alternatives. How many people do I know for whom the term ‘family’ bears little significance over some rudimentary formalities and a couple of legal obligations, aside from the odd social one.

Why should I or anyone expect that my own family treat me better than I would expect strangers to, in the first place? (I admit, largely, I am treated pretty-well here, and it’s not all doom-and-gloom; but the larger point remains!) What is so magnetic or electric about me that I would expect others to somehow feel duty-bound to my own cause?! Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t pretend to be a martyr. Considering I live in the United Kingdom in this century in a thoroughly middle-class part of the country, I really have nothing great about which to complain; on the whole, my life is pretty-darn comfortable.

But the point will stand, what is it in me that demands to be treated in a certain way, or wishes for better behaviour from certain people; surely, they can equally expect it from me!

To this I have no real answer; I can only keep remembering that if the only reason why I expect better treatment is by virtue of the fact that its because of ‘me,’ then I’ve completely missed the point. What is so special about ‘me’ that I can dare to deign to expect anything? No-one owes me anything. What have I done (and I mean, ontologically) to ‘deserve’ that my expectations be met? To ‘expect’ anything, in the first place?

This world is, by design intended to break our hearts. Not such that we could grieve over it, more so that we could truly realise the fact that we are in the first place not intended for it.

 

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November 11, 2014

Pain and Presence

I’m writing this, not so much as to tell the world about what’s happening with me these days; rather it is so that I might have some-place where it is recorded.

Last night, I went through a (small) ordeal, which necessitated a trip to the Emergency Room to tackle an extreme bout of pain to my abdomen, and chest. In fact, as I speak now, it feels as if it might recur and I’d need carting-off.

Pain,  which I’m not exactly a stranger to, is something that when it seizes your being, it feels as if it consumes you.

Something happened, though, when this particular pain took. It was so intense, so extreme, I was writhing around in agony, sweating, retching, burning, shouting, shaking… it was unrelenting in a way I’ve never known. Its appearance to me was profound as in a sense, it was the one thing by which my reality was defined entirely at that moment.

But I realised something at that moment, when things felt so bleak.

My mother was running around fetching me drinks to cool off, rubbing on my legs to stop them from writhing around, whilst we were waiting for the paramedics to arrive.
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September 8, 2014

O Man, you make me wonder so!

Sayings by Imam Ali (a)

More wonderful than man himself is that part of his body which is connected with his trunk with muscles. It is his brain (mind). Look what good and bad tendencies arise from it. On the one hand it holds treasures of know- ledge and wisdom and on the other it is found to harbour very ugly desires. If a man sees even a tiny gleam of success, then greed forces him to humiliate himself. If he gives way to avarice, then inordinate desires ruin him, if he is disappointed, then despondency almost kills him. If he is excited, then he loses temper and gets angry. If he is pleased, then he gives up precaution. Sudden fear makes him dull and nervous, and he is unable to think and find a way out of the situation. During the times of peace and prosperity he becomes careless and unmindful of the future. If he acquires wealth, then he becomes haughty and arrogant. If he is plunged in distress, then his agitation, impatience and nervousness disgrace him. If he is overtaken by poverty, then he finds himself in a very sad plight, hunger makes him weak, and over-feeding harms him equally. In short every kind of loss and gain makes his mind unbalanced.

Imam Ali

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June 27, 2014

Why Democracy is Evil!

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kPwW8nBVc0g

Remember this from last month?

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June 6, 2014

Pictures of the World – Between Method and Zeitgeist?

“One of the most disagreeable present consequences of the failure to understand what method is, and hence what the limits of any method must be, is our current fashion in respectable pseudo-science. Every scientific epoch has been hospitable to charlatanry and hermetic nonsense, admittedly; but these days our shared faith in the limitless power of scientific method has become so pervasive and irrational that, as a culture, we have become shamefully tolerant of all those lush efflorescences of wild conjecture that grow up continuously at the margins of the hard sciences and thrive on a stolen credibility. This is especially true at the fertile purlieus of Darwinian theory, which enjoys the unfortunate distinction of being the school of scientific thought most regularly invoked to justify spurious theories about precisely everything. Evolutionary biology, properly speaking, concerns the development of physical organisms by way of replication, random mutation, and natural selection, and nothing else. The further the tropes of Darwinian theory drift from this very precise field of inquiry, the more willfully speculative, metaphysically unmoored, and empirically useless they become. Yet texts purporting to provide Darwinian explanations of phenomena it has no demonstrable power to describe pour in ceaseless torrents from the presses and inexhaustible wellsprings of the Internet. There are now even whole academic disciplines, like evolutionary psychology, that promote themselves as forms of science but that are little more than morasses of metaphor. (Evolutionary psychologists often become quite indignant when one says this, but a ‘science’ that can explain every possible form of human behavior and organization, however universal or idiosyncratic, and no matter how contradictory of other behaviors, as some kind of practical evolutionary adaptation of the modular brain, clearly has nothing to offer but fabulous narratives – Just So Stories, as it were – disguised as scientific propositions.) As for the even more daringly speculative application of Darwinian language to spheres entirely beyond the physiological, like economics, politics, ethics, social organization, religion, aesthetics, and so on, it may seem a plausible practice at first glance, and it has quite in keeping with our cultural intuition that evolutionary imperatives somehow lie at the origin of everything (an intuition, incidentally, impossible to prove either as a premise or as a conclusion), but it is a purely analogical, not empirical, approach to things: pictoral, not analytic. It produces only theories that are neither true nor false, entertainingly novel metaphors, some more winsome folklore to add to the charming mythopoeia of materialism; and there is no way in which it could ever do any more than this. As soon as one moves from the realm of physiological processes to that of human consciousness and culture, one has taken leave of the world where evolutionary language can be tested or controlled. There are no longer any physical interactions and replications to be measured, and no discrete units of selection that can be identified (assuming one is not so gullible as to take the logically incoherent and empirically vacuous concept of ‘memes’ seriously). Even if one believes that human consciousness and culture are the results solely of evolutionary forces, one still cannot prove that they function only in a Darwinian fashion, and any attempt to do so soon dissolves into a rosy mist of picturesque similes.

“No doubt it says something about the extraordinarily high esteem in which the sciences are held today, after so many remarkable advances over so sustained a period, that there is scarcely a field of inquiry in the academic world that would not like a share of their glamor. It also goes some way toward explaining the propensity of some in the sciences to imagine that their disciplines endow them with a sort of miraculous aptitude for making significant pronouncements in fields in which they actually have received no tutelage. It is perfectly understandable, for example, but also painfully embarrassing, when Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow casually and pompously declare that philosophy is dead (as they recently have). They might even conceivably be right, but they certainly would not be competent to know if they are (as the fairly elementary philosophical errors in their book show). Every bit as silly are the pronouncements of, say, Richard Feynman or Steven Weinberg regarding the apparent “meaninglessness” of the universe revealed by modern physics (as if any purely physical inventory of reality could possibly have anything to tell us about the meaning of things). High accomplishment in one field – even genius in that field – does not necessarily translate into so much as the barest competence in any other. There is no such thing, at least among finite minds, as intelligence at large; no mind not constrained by its own special proficiencies and formation, no privileged vantage that allows any of us a comprehensive insight into the essence of all things, no expertise or wealth of experience that endows any of us with the wisdom or power to judge what we do not have the training or perhaps the temperament to understand. To imagine otherwise is a delusion, no less in the case of a physicist that in the case of a barber – more so, perhaps, as the barber, not having been indoctrinated with the very peremptory professional dogmas regarding the nature of reality, would no doubt be far easier to disabuse of his confidence of the limitless capacities of tonsorial method.”

David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss (Yale, New Haven: 2013), pp 72-74. Okay it has been a while since I’ve had to cite anything properly, but that ought to suffice, one hopes! Typos are most-definitely mine.

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March 24, 2014

On Tennyson, and on M.E.

“‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
——-

Tennyson wrote that. (I think!) It made me reflect on what resolve my family and other loved ones wish that I had. But what could they see of it when Will alone is not reversing the treachery that is M.E?

I am not terribly eloquent, so you’ll have to excuse my musings tonight.

I’m sorry that it seems to you that I’ve given up. I know no other way to keep the symptoms at bay – I am literally trapped in my own body that betrays me at every hurdle.

Sometimes, I see no way out from myself.

Despite my best efforts.

The physical pain is unbearable and I have borne it. The exhaustion is inexhaustible and I’m exhausted by that fact.

Being ceases to ‘be’ in any meaningful sense sometimes, yet I have no choice but to exist, awaiting its passage from me. At least in this world.

Often this seems the most pragmatic. But it lets me reflect on the blessing that it is to ‘be’ at all.

You claim my bed sucks me into an abyss, sometimes you see in me no more than my physically debilitated self. You identify me with this bed.

The bed that I despise. Or, as I once heard said, I try to unshackle myself from her bondage, yet the symptoms Amplify and I’m filled with anxiety.

Your Will clouds your Vision. I wouldn’t have it any other way, though; what right have I to ask you of anything else – you persist in feeding and sheltering me despite your Will for me? How dare I?

Life speeds on ahead at thundering pace, and is leaving me behind, and holding you back as you care for me whilst I lay, almost always limp, yet tense, in my bed.

I fear sometimes that your comments hold a great deal of Truth. Yet the relentless illness, that strikes with such caprice in her manifested symptoms, are the only kernel to which I cling that convince me of what is Real. Or at the very least, what seems Real to me.

Though the fear of the Next Life haunts me – did I really fail to do my best to rid myself of this state?

Often I wonder what His Will holds for me; and what vision I can manufacture of it. It’s hard to know the Mind of God.

Tell me what choices I have, and I will tell you that you have freed me.

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March 4, 2014

The Path to God

image

I thought I’d share something that I found myself drawn to, this morning.

Some verses as found in one of my most-cherished possessions, a highly-recommended book entitled:

The Inner Journey: Views from the Islamic Tradition, Edited by William C. Chittick as part of the PARABOLA Anthology Series, Series Editor Ravi Ravindra; Morning Light Press (Idaho, Sandpoint: 2007), p. 206.

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February 16, 2014

On Suffering

Tell me what you do with your suffering, I will tell you who you are.

Dr Tariq Ramadan’s understanding of suffering through Nietzsche as a transformational experience.

I wonder, what do we do with our  day-to-day suffering that elevates us above our current selves? There’s something to be said for the current fad of ‘self love’ and ‘self acceptance’; where is the depth of our thinking?  Why do we turn away from the radical power of transformation that our lived experiences can provide for us. The pursuit of material felicity through accepting oneself and thus turning a blind eye to our lower selves is wholly unsatisfying for the soul that is now so clouded by its own self-reverence that it cannot see its innate purpose.

“Man is the proof of God. A man of God is proof of religion.” (I believe that one is from Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad).

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Quote | February 15, 2014

Critical LiberatIon?

When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.

– Archbishop Hélder Pessoa Câmara OFS

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January 20, 2014

‘The slave remains the slave’

“Universal man realises eternally in the Truth that he is nothing and yet He is Everything. But such realisation is beyond his human soul, and this is what is meant by the saying: ‘The slave remains the slave.’ The slave cannot become God, since he is either the slave, as in appearance, or nothing at all, as in Reality. Universal man cannot make his human soul divine; like the souls of all other men, but with an outstanding difference of quality, it implies the illusion of an existence apart from God. It differs from them not in kind, but in what might almost be called an organic consciousness that this separate existence is in Truth no more than an illusion. There is a saying that ‘Muhammad is a man, yet not as other men, but like a jewel among stones.’ Albeit the souls remains the soul just as night remains night, or else it vanishes and there is day. But though the soul of Universal Man cannot itself attain to the direct knowledge of the Truth of Certainty, yet unlike other souls it is touched in its centre by a ray of light proceeding from the sun of the Spirit of the Truth; for this perfect soul, represented in Islam by the soul of the Prophet, is none other than the Night of Power (lailatu ‘l-qadr), into which descend the Angels and the Spirit; and the Heart, that is, the point of this spiritual ray’s contact, is as a full moon in the unclouded night of the perfect soul making it better than a thousand months of other nights, that is peerless among all other souls. …

“Universal man with his two natures if figures in the Seal of Solomon, of which the upper and lower triangles represent respectively the Divine and the human nature. In virtue of this duality he is the mediator between Heaven and earth, and it is owing to this function that he is sometimes referred to as ‘the isthmus’ (al-barzakh) as in the Chapter of the Distinct Revelation:

And He it is Who hath let loose the two seas, one sweet and fresh, the other salt and bitter, and hath set between them as isthmus, an impassable barrier.    Qur’an, XXV:53

“In His Heart alone does the sweet sea of the next world meet the salt sea of this; and by reason of this meeting his human nature itself is the noblest and best of all earthly things as is affirmed in the Chapter of the Fig:

Verily We created man in the fairest rectitude. Qur’an, XCV:4

“The nearness of Heaven, by reason of his presence, even causes sometimes the laws of earth to cease perceptibly, just as the moon grows pale at the approach of the day; and it is at such moments that a miracle may take place, such as the changing of water into wine, or the step which leaves a print upon the rock and none upon the sand. As in the Seal of Solomon, his central function as mediator is also figured in the Cross, which is another symbols of Universal Man in that the horizontal line represents the fullness of his earthly nature, whereas the vertical line represents his heavenly exaltation; and yet another of his symbols is the Crescent, for like a cup it indicates his function of receiving Divine Grace, and at the same time, like the horns of the bull, it indicates his majesty, his function of administering this Grace throughout the whole Universe.
Blessed is He Who hath made the distinct revelation unto His servant, that he might be for all the worlds a warner. Qur’an XXV:1.”

Abu Bakr Siraj ad-Din, The Book of Certainty: The Sufi Doctrine of Faith, Vision and Gnosis, p 8-11

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