...5.26.22... growing deeper in empathy...

 ...somehow these writings feel like the most important thing in the world... somehow they keep me alive... from drowning in one of the gorges with all the other bodies of people i know and don't know... people who found that the bottle was too crowded for their drown and that they needed to crack their skull and release their Light through the sahsasara chakra to return to something that made sense... somewhere better...

...we all have moments... and in keeping this in mind... empathy happens... that there may have been a split second of murder in your head... someone who enraged you to the point of a glimpse of harm... use this to understand that someone else might commit it... someone else might do the deed... that even though it is an extreme leap from a nanosecond of thought to an action... that thought is the action... so check your thoughts... really what i mean is i need to check my thoughts... 

...there may be someone who makes someone do something against their will - rape, sexual assault, torture them into confessing something... it's you that thought it... me... in our desire to control, to want to control how someone responds to us, how they behave, how they should be... that's it... that's the seed for the act of the extreme... it may sound disconnected... a leap from one thing to another... but it's connected... it all is... 

...someone walks by in their summer shorts and tank top... you notice them... more than notice you check them out... have some thoughts around it... have thoughts that are graphic and may even lead to an entire scene playing out in your head... that's the seed for violation... for going beyond someone's will as your desire had nothing to do with that person... wasn't consensual... but what you wanted to do with that person... 

...thoughts are the seeds of voice and actions... how we move in the world... how are you transforming your self?... how are you going deeper in so that the 18 year olds who shot up people in buffalo and in texas are not happening?... it's afterall you and me... and maybe you don't see it in you... but i certainly see it in me... 

...as much as i clock the hours of yoga i do a day... as much as i engage in veganism and stay away form flesh and flesh derived products... as much as i read spiritual texts and listen to talks on overcoming ego and as much as i talk about it... i got a lot to work on... a lot of work to do... 

...i realize this at least once a week... but it came to fore in a more pronounced way this week... when a Love went through a challenging situation and instead of feeling empathy i felt upset and hurt by her action.. like it was her fault... like it was a personal affront to me... instead i could've listened deeper, cried with her instead of for myself... could've consoled her with kind words instead of harsh ones... 

...empathy is an internal action... it is being engaged in the Spiritual process of meditation... of spending time watching thoughts with equanimity... of observing instead of assessing... afterall the desire for happy/pleasure has the same common denominator as pain... aversion and pleasure are sides of the same coin... i see it in me... hopping from one to the other... seeking what makes me happy... feel defeated by what makes me sad... wanting to be in control and when i don't feeling a sense of powerlessness... of having not control... and instead of being okay with this... growing deeper in self involvement... spiralling down into base again... base actions... words... harm... 

...empathy i am realizing requires pause... it requires breath and pause... a moment... moments... being okay with taking these moments... instead of having to have an immediate response... 

...empathy requires a practice... on and off the allotted practice time... it requires being steeped in witness consciousness.... in building samskaras of Love, Respect, Honesty, Compassion... and dissolving the sanskaras of anger depression control fear anxiety... doing this through the Work within and the Work without...

...empathy requires going within yourself when you feel hurt harmed upset angry jealous... slowing down... Listening to what's coming up inside you with equanimity and with compassion releasing these things that exist... with Love taking away from the concrete you've created... breaking it apart with every opportunity... 

...and if you didn't engage with empathy... if you hurt someone in your judgement of them... you know the feeling cause it hurt you to hurt them... so use the opportunity to go within... see where it came from... going deeper in your journaling to see patterns... learn from them... go deeper in the wounds that led to your feeling the right to judge another... 

...for me it has always been not having control... not having control of poverty, of being other, of facial and bodily features, of physical ability, of not fitting in with clothes/language/ethnicity/talent... etc etc... and taking what other people who participated in my feeling this way as the gospel, as what was Real, instead of accepting that the only Truth is Oneness, is non-separation... is Divine Order... that we are all in this together and other peoples walls are only from hurt and their hurtful words only their own hurt... and that who You Are is beautiful... has Always been... however that looks - dark as blue or white as chalk... all of it is part of the Divine Order... and when you arrive at this place you will Know that You have nothing to prove... nothing to fear... that All their is Love and subtraction from Love... that You Are here to go deep in Love and whatever takes you away from Loving fully, from giving of yourSelf is the Work... 

...go deeper in the pause... in embracing the difficult... in sitting with it... in asking what am i afraid of? what gives me discomfort... what would the One who Loves do?... Love... Honor the wishes of others... Be vulnerable... acknowledge their mistakes and Work to grow from it... be in a state of uninterrupted presence with everything - writing, eating, cooking, listening during conversations, packing, unpacking... Be okay with silence, with a lack of stimulation... be okay with stimulation... take moments throughout the day to meditate and dissolve sanskaras and grow the Ones that will grow their Love - Giving, Listening, Compassion, sharing, selflessness... 

...in the breath and Sight of the One... the Most Compassionate... the Most Merciful... 

...5.24.22... medicines for specific Guidance...

 ...what medicines do you need?... 

...a medicine for you failing to help your parents get out of the ghetto they raised you in because you don't want to feel stuck in a job or in a place or can't make up your mind about what you're doing in your life, when they have toiled jobs around the clock and cooked and cleaned and took you to school and the doctor and found a way to get a dentist, bartering their bodies, feeding everyone that ever said a kind word to them with 13 course dinners from ingredients they bought without foodstamps, with the coupons they clipped in their downtime between feeding bathing clothing you and your siblings...?.... what would you call that issue you have? inability to make up your mind? to make a decision? to think beyond your self? to commit? the proclivity to be romantic with friends, women, artistic pursuits without a care for what is happening, for the clock that is ticking...?... what about something like :letting your parents down for your self-involved quixotic pursuits ...?... something like that... this may involve a combination of pages paper clipped together to write forgive me notes, from a place of deep understanding of how you might have hurt those who loved you most from recognizing their grandness in your life... a nose oil with some burn to get you out of your self and being engaged with reality... a tea that you can drink that conjures nostalgia,  

...a medicine for how to deal/make sense of your girlfriend laying in a bed with a recent-past lover while he is pounding into some other chick and trying to get your lover to participate?... to make sense of all the layers of it... of why she was spending the night in his house knowing their is tension... how/why she ended up in the bedroom?... why she was lying there... why she spends her nights staying in ex hook-up's houses when she has other options for living, albeit inconvenient...?... how to make sense of this knowing you do the opposite...  being boundaried, vocally and physically preventing yourself from engaging in relations with other women outside an occasional afternoon hang... far from going over to their place... far from staying over... how you feel devastated by it... how it makes you question yourself... what your karma is... makes you feel at once sympathetic for her sense of violation by it and hate her for putting herself in the situation... how a million questions clutter your mind, a million f you's... a crumble from overwhelm... from not getting it... of not wanting to care... of giving up... of disappearing from her... of feeling the world stuck in your throat... what kind of medicine can address this?... what would it be called?... what could the issue be boiled down to?... the Lovers devastation from his love participating against her heart in staying over and pressured into witnessing the sex act of a recent years long on and off hook up partner?...  being violated by your lover being violated by one of the hook ups she still hangs out with... what could the medicine for this be?... a bottle to drink and throw up... in the forest, under a tree, by yourself... instructions of how to come out of this - a bottle of water with lemon and salt.. dipping your head in cold water... a long page to write all that is troubling you... of the anger and hurt and possible ensuing hate... all written down and burned... another page to forgive, to let go, to empathize, to get past your barriers in Love... with the quote from rumi... "your task is not to find love but merely find all the places within yourself that is keeping you from love"... an oil to rub vigorously on the neck and face and then wash it off... a tea to release tears, grief, hurt.. a coffee based facial to scrub off the grief sitting on your face... a tea to build compassion, empathy... 

a medicine to make sense of what to do next in life cause you don't know how to crawl out of the wounds you are festering in... because somewhere along the way you went wrong and keep going wrong and grow deeper in wrong... and along the way forgot how to hold a job and know what makes sense and how to live in the world and how to have community and friends and craving some nicotine and whiskey and still feeling like that's not enough, that having been there before knowing that that won't change anything, and wanting it all to be okay but it doesn't feel okay, and everything is changing, and you have no control, including people leaving your life, people getting older, feeling alone and not wanting the company of any one and wanting company... not wanting touch and wanting touch... so deeply lost in your hurt that you're tired of speaking about it, don't have words for it... don't want words for it... what would this medicine be addressing... lost my way and can't find my way home but wanting to real bad... in this medicine would b a map for drawing home... what are the characteristics of feeling/Being home?... what makes you feel this way?... when do you feel this way?... if it involves how others interact with you, if it involves specific people in your life currently or in the past... think of the feelings, and the way you contributed to this/these... besides the map... some snuff... a smoke blend to smoke... inhale a few times for three days... a smoke to cleanse... a tea to sip while you map... a tea that will give you Guidance... a coffee hair facial to leave on and wash off in the shower... to invigorate your scalp... an after shower scent to smell good for the Guide, to attract Guidance... an ear oil to Listen... 

...a medicine for a summer season that you are entering with a dim light, with a damp spirit, with hurt... summer is a season of outdoors... of long days short nights... of activities concerts heat... use this heat to tap in to a burn... to embrace the burn... to let it burn... to be out more than in... to smell the uplift, taste plants, feel cooled... 

...i guess i don't know... i don't know that there is any medicine out there that will help with these things... atleast not physical medicine... of course everything is potentially medicine and the greatest medicine of all is Spiritual and all others are only effective so long as the Spirit is addressed because no amount of tincture will address the pain that comes from a disturbed Spirit... 

...in the name of ALLAH... the Most Compassionate the Most Merciful... 

...Love so deep that nothing else matters... 

5.16.22 full moon... trying to understand... empathy...

 

...in the name of ALLAH... the Most Compassionate the Most Merciful... 

...instead of posting anything where anyone could see i stay hidden, just as poor asian immigrants have for generations... silently walking along the shadows of store awnings... finding their way into department dollar stores... getting $10 tom-mchan's for their kids... kids like me who grew up preferring the breast feed of the shiny new shell tops and pumas... even if at a later age that meant thrift shop vintage clothes/look and hippie chicks with black long silky hair parted in the middle and sitting on the middle of their cinnamon back... 

... i don't know if i'm asian... my shade of dark seems to be a stroke of allure even to myself... a blend of snow white midnight and peach... don't really identify with it though... don't know what i am or am supposed to be most of the time... don't know that the .38 millimeter pointed at my head by cops on two sides for mistaken identity was worse than the kicks and fists of young men within my complexion in timbs, leaving me inside out but mostly drowning inside myself and on the outside becoming a switchblade... not different from most people i know... not very special... all of us have trauma... a blend of this and that... kicked into believing we are ugly, into believing that others are better, something is better, there is a better... everyone i know brown black white red feels this way... not uniquely the property of one group...

...but the special lies in how we take this all in... sometimes... at my Quietest moments... i Am in Alignment... remembering why smoking and drinking and waking up reeking of long islands at 5am in a train heading back to brooklyn is not an option... why it really only hurts me and leaves me kicking myself in... participating  in my own set up... paying generously at bars to deplete my organs... with a hope to find therapy sessions in new friends who will listen... in women who will hold me... who will say it's okay, it doesn't have to be a one nighter or a one weeker or one monther... that i got you if you got me... i got you... or could... but we get got it seems by the shiny new and newer and newer still by the next month week day hour... sometimes minutes later... already bored... already on to the next... remembering again that in babylon its best to get emotionally engaged within a time period... set your alarm... and let it poof... and onto the next... or keep all doors open all the time so their is never room for boredom... the swivel door... 

...through yoga, prayer, fasting, meditation, veganism, cooking, writing, drawing, reading ancient spiritual texts, through my parents prayers my brothers commissary always at ready, and the company of Kings... i stay Aligned... Knowing that these anchors will keep me rooted in something more than this... that otherwise i get confused... that the affect of the frequencies is alluring... and sometimes i feel myself dancing to the tunes... following the piper to the cliff of the abyss... and sometimes jumping in... forgetting... 

...i guess i don't know... i don't have a clue... i know that time passes... that people come and go... that graduations and weddings and big days are only bigger in their anticipation and planning and hype... that more often that not they are anti-climactic... that the most beautiful moments are those in deep Love... in Connection from this place of Love... of Honoring... of meeting in the Divine... it is conversations and movement and movements that lead to conversations with God... and i don't know what to do about anyone outside myself... i know what type of relationships i would want... i know that i would want a tenderness... a calm... a sweet...  heartbeats... Quietude... bowing down... i Know i would want to be inside from this place... but we control no one but ourselves and even what we know of ourselves is uncertain... 

...maybe this is why going to deep in the realm of intellectualizing is dangerous... as this leads nowhere... that the only thing can do is grow deeper Spiritually... to do this from a place of not trying to make anything happen... not trying to control... not lying or manipulating or reacting... but instead using every interaction to grow deeper in Self...

...last full moon i told myself i would let go of judgement... don't know that i have... don't know if intention without action is enough... that intention is everything except without action... like yoga... it is a practice... these Ways... 

...inside... going inside... using the instance of upset, sad, disappointed, let down to look inside, to see where it came from... to have conversation from a place of Love... of Truth, of seeing whats brewing inside... and accepting the outcome... moving from this Love and accepting the outcome... whatever it is... 

...this full moon... upon reflection of the past months journey from utah back to nyc... through the completion of ramadhan... of bowing down and breaking fast with family... of beginning the full moon cycle with teaching a full moon yoga class... and going deeper in patience... in Listening... in vulnerability... i noticed that this patience is sometimes only reserved for some and not others... that i am not universal in my patience and Love... that i am less patient with family... even though there is history... this should only compound my Love for those who have stood the test of time... who continue to Love me unconditionally, who give with what little they have... 

...in growing upset... i also realized the fragility of relationships... of how sometimes i may tip toe to preserve something instead of Being Truth... and that in the process instead of Being Truth... i react in a way that is less than compassionate, that is absent of pause and equanimity... noticing the hurt and responding from withIn... from a place of Realness... Honesty... Vulnerability... Love... not guilting, not shaming... not trying to hurt... but trying to understand... not trying to get back, but to go deeper in dialogue... this month... in Light of what i experienced... i will go deeper in understanding - empathy - through the process of pausing... breathing to Connect... see what i am experiencing in body and thoughts and emotions, and Honoring that the other is going through something as well that may have led them to their actions, words, and it's not just about me... but also not being afraid to share... to Be Real... to dialogue... in the name of ALLAH... the Infinite... the One without Beginning or End... the Source of Peace... i Surrender... 

5.14.22 ...through Quietness...

 ...time happens whether you do or not... i happened to be in the cafe... on the other side of the commons where bran would meet me in an hour or so or really i'd meet him... and not here... but it felt nice to think that a friend would meet me here, post on the table next to me and do their thing and we wouldn't have to talk except for every so often, after making some progress in life in the screen, we'd shoot out for a minute and hop up and down talking about this and that for 3 minutes before sinking back to Work...

...something about this Work thing... keeps coming up... a pearl provided by the Jewel... 

...what is the Work?... what is the circumstance for the Work... what is the fear in committing? it is that there may be a string... a rope... a tethering... a restraint on siting around and doing nothing for hours... 

...babylon freedom gets threatened by every person we are responsible for, every family member we have to check in with... every friend we build relations with... 

...circumstance?... writing... daily... write daily... journal daily... see what happens... see what comes up... where it could be a space with others...

...one thing that occurred to me during this last bit of the blatant narcissism i witnessed from dude was just how disgusting egotistic-ness is... how i needed to be subjected to that to see myself... to see if i am moving from a place of genuine concern about the world and its issues or am i being like most in the modern world - branding?... how can have my Work an embodiment of the One... ?... a dedication... a not about me... a no one needs to know or see it... just do the Work?... go deeper in Your craft... in yoga in writing... in cooking... in breathing... in bodywork... in foraging... not to know more... not to get your name out there... but to share... to Connect... to be behind the scenes... to do cause it needs doing... 

...this is brief... it goes quick... your grave is besides you... 18 was decades ago... the cemetery is around the bend... but there are some people you will pass along the way... your task is to merely Love them... to understand... to Be Compassion... to Be Honest... Transparent... kind... giving... to Listen more than speak... to bring out their Light to shed a light on their Light... to do this by going deeper in Your arts... in creation... in Creating... in seeing what comes up instead of trying to contribute something... 

...to share Your Works Listen... see if it's needed... see if it's coming from something deep withIn You... what stems from withIn?... what can you do to Connect what you Are doing with this?... 

...share... Love... hold space... no competition... no trying to be better... no judgements... pure Love... 

...rocketship... it goes quick... Love fully... deeply... with presence... full presence... 

.5.13.22 today

 today is everyday and no days and no ways and all ways and alvvays and arcade fire and associations like s.a.t portions in english i spoke a broken version of pathos pathetic in my desire to die into something acceptable and if i couldn't to find the clothes and shoes and hair styles that could make that switch for me 

switched my phone off, for a while, to minimize distraction when she came like the mahdi, return of jesus, salvation for all the people i pissed off, who i wrote off, who became fiction and i barely know if they were ever here, except every so often when the day becomes a thread for night to illuminate the dark world i've been painting ever since i could remember knowing that pretending is more acceptable than not, except i kept tripping, laughed at by pointing fingers, herculean in hilarious, i gave up, mostly

stopped trying to belong... decided to be me, speaking broken bangla, quoting shakespeare, floored by the cure and arcade fire, dressing in cut denims and leggings, doing headstands and skip walking, placing my hands together in namaste and praying for everyone around me as they slice my face into stitches, and i release them of scars, mend my wounds with bismillah hi Rahman ni Rahim... 

...10 may 2022...

 ...fearless... what are you afraid of?... avoiding?... what are you waiting for?... 

...if what you are afraid of is growing yourself as a personality... rightfully so... the world already suffers from too much ego... in fact it is the greatest threat to species extinction... we are out for ourselves more often than not... seeking guru-ship... more often than not...

...success afterall... in the modern frequency is defined by how much of an audience you have... how many people applaud... like... buy your product... 

...what's your product?... 

...have none... let it go... that's not what you or i are here for... we can't be... here for/to... brand... get others to buy our product... applaud us... 

...it's way to common... and somehow victimhood is seen as those who don't get an opportunity to shine in the limelight... as if that should be the goal... fame... pharoah... to be pharoah... to have your golden calf in your condo... 

...worship the One... bow down... learn humility by Surrendering to dharma - Law... Nature... look at the stars, moon, day and night... study the trees birds and monarchs... let them guide you... 

...i'm avoiding fulfilling my responsibilities to my family... to the dream... to our dream of being deeper in our togetherness... we only fall apart in our separateness... a false freedom... a false reality... the only Reality is You... all praise is due... nothing to be afraid of... 

...the only thing there is to do is to let go of that which you are attaching to clinging to that's keeping You from Your Purpose - a Spiritual One... to go deeper in Self by letting go of self... by Connecting/Aligning self with Self and doing what your individual Spirit is here to do... manifest Love... community... it is good to pray alone... better to pray in community... good to fast alone... better to fast in community... 

...do it... now... let go of yourself... and do... if you are reading this you are taking breath... breathe Love... more than just about you or me...