winter solstice 2014

winter is medicine.

the earth rests on her greatest lean today, back further than the cool cats at parties like fat joes and busta rhymes and the illusive realm of idols most of us inadvertently worship, praise, debate at parties on who is better, get starry eyed and groupie about.

i keep it pushing, barely noticing bon iver, kendrick lamar, hozier, drake, wocka, nikki, taylor swift, meek, j lo, rick ross, shakira, and the curly haired, and braided and dred locked and blonde groupies with thin waists and big hips surrounding them. i push past, pausing inches from the culture of spectacle, to see the caged tree on lafayette and bleeker, touching its roots, closing my eyes and hearing the words of the tree...la illaha illalla...

winter soul, sis, is upon us.

brother i see u bowing in the forest, head down at dawn in jamat with pines, so quietly, deer walk past you in salam, noting your ancient mathematical movement, as taught to u by your father and he taught by his all the way back to the guru muhammad...who continued the teachings of the invisible yogis of yore, messages lost on those of us who chose idols of stone and paint to bow down to. that lineage still continues...the lineage of idol worshippers, replacing deities on temples with jimi hendrix and bob marley and bob dylan, and van morrison, and black and white and latino and asian and indian. but mostly black and white. obsession.

winter solstice, the conclusion of months of declining days, of growing so dark that night has conquered day, draws us to meditate on dark, on the night.

the night is sacred, i am reminded, when i am in the forest, preparing bedding and a tent at 7pm, before dark settles in and i am left to close my eyes, listen to, and tell stories, after staring at the quilt of a starry starry night from beside a stream in idaho. all praise is due.

hidden words appear after midnight, in dimensions that leave me outside the shackle of this body, and phones and keyboards and screens.

night is a time to lose self. when i am lost enough, i find that there is nothing more important than being next to my ammu n abbu n bhaiays n nanu n nana n dadu n dada, n all of us in cave-like mud house of my abbu's childhood, listening to stories of a time before my encapsulation into this body. this body is often a mystery to me.

this new moon, i look to get deeper in path of being medicine man by way of bowing lower, of learning surahs, and saying these spells so quiet that the Qur'an can be seen across the cell membranes that make up the tissue of my cardiac muscles.

this winter solstice reminds me that life is a contiuum, that the 5 bowings a day, the same 5 bowings, are proof in constancy, that the sun goes up and down daily, that without this bowing, my great great grandparents ad infinitum would be buried as a thought...

i cannot speak to religion, or make you feel better about why i bow the way i do, but i do it. and this doing has become so clear, that no words of master philosophers, whose words like the warned of poets/musicinas,twist reality to constantly be in question, stir the roots of spirit that leave me so deeply rooted i emerge in jupiter. their words get lost before they reach me. they are words that pause like refrigerator magnets-words. i breathe into hoo, and rooooooohhhh comes out.

this new moon i grow deeper in responsibility, in growing deeper in being so present that the money war has no grip on me, that the irs leaves the roofs they snipe from, next to the privately hired para-military of credit-card companies that call me and remind me of debt that i never had till they found a hole. they always find a hole and fine and fine and penal codes emerge like the words on degrees. peace vulture-peoples who are white and black and latino and asian and indian and arab. i hear your appeals of creating a black wallstreet and a brown empire state, and pray for your soul, and let you keep your blackness and browness and indian and jamaican and polish and nigerian and mexican flag to yourself. no sympathy for your devil walk, no matter how mtv the swagger. prayers for the new-age, multi-cultural crackers - i see you.

walk two worlds, my cuzin once told me. this one, the world of maya, and the real one, the forests. this new moon i am walking both with presence, with clarity, with techniques that serve both. this new moon i am getting bills handled, debt dissolved, and managing money for building ummah. i am doing this as i grow deeper in asana, in bowing, in food and dikr and work. this new moon, i am clear that everything is ALLAH, and that which is off frequency requires technique to flow through.

this new moon i grow deeper in the letting gos and embracings of intentions of previous moons - deeper in the disicpline, in the few, in loving closer, deeper, through deeper work and presence...