Emotions tearing you? Love yourself.

Just had a great morning of contrast and resultant expansion. About 40 mins ago I was not flowing with the expansion. Meditating did not help me flow either. Turns out my ego was pulling me apart. A part of me wanted to believe I was right in behaving a certain way while that another part of me was guilting me for. The thought process that allowed this conflict was that sometimes one has to take a hard and difficult stance for justice. And the emotional after tearing is just part of that decision.

But today I realized that it doesn't have to be. Emotions are a result of thoughts. An emotion of guilt should be examined for any teaching it gives regarding whether an action should have been avoided or been better in some way. Once that examination has been made. Love and trust yourself. You are not bad. You are simply learning. Tell yourself to remember to use that learning in the next situation and then enjoy all that you have in this moment and all that you are doing and planning to do in this moment.

Love yourself. There is never a need for suffering.

15 sec pitch for a revolutionary mentality

As someone who grew up in class conscious Pakistan I sometimes have occasions of feeling class inferiority. These occasions have become much rarer over the last few years. But a recent breakup reminded me of some of the same feelings. So I pinged my friend P, a raving San Franciscan liberal--the kind of people I really love and told him about this, thinking that his incredulous-ness will shame these last visages of class inferirioty out of me. What actually happened was much more amazing. It reminded me of the brightness I really am. Here is P's 15 sec pitch for a revolutionary mentality. Read, enjoy, and grow!

First:
recognition that you have come to this country overcoming class and gender, and a powering your way to success all by yourself compared to someone whose mommy and daddy paid their way through life, that's not a big accomplishment

Second:
humans have a divide and conquer system going on
it's a chain

Third
think about womens rights, decolonialization, abolition of slavery, queer rights. All of these things at it's roots have been class struggles

Fourth
It's about empowerment. Empowerment of the individual, empowerment of you
if you had a kid and they said that they didn't feel good enough to date a white person, what would you tell them?


that the future of the world is getting beyond class and race conciousness? :)
it's cool to be working class
it's the best class to be
:)

working class produced punk rock, hip hop, all that in your face stuff
okay, that's my mini rant.

Faith a constant journey in refocusing our energy towards belief in betterment from focusing on its lack

This morning I feel much better. I realized that before my acknowledgement of how my behavior was painful to others and not from source I was spending lots of energy maintaining my beliefs that what I was doing was needed and fun. This reminded me very much of A. I lived with A and his wife in exchange for work on their startup recently.

A is an ex-Israeli army officer. Many times his viewpoints about people, life, and the need for violence depressed me to my very core. Furthermore he focused a lot on violence. Violence in the past, violence in the present. Conflict between groups. The stupidity of action of one group that forced the other to retaliate. Life in A's home was constant talk of violence, pain, and suffering. His view of history was one of centuries of Jewish suffering and the inability to have a home. The most salient in his mind of the aggressors were the Muslims. Under his view there was no period of peace for Jews under Muslim rule (interestingly most Christain covert atrocities such as career and social limitations under Christain rule like forbidding Jews to all professions but usury and shunning them in society for it, was not in his mind an atrocity; I guess its to hard to maintain more than one demon).

The interesting thing about A was that he desired to change the world by creating an online community of openness and positivity where organic food, environmentally friendly practices, and spirituality were discussed. This vision was obviously at conflict with his worldview of depression, anxiety, and anger about the world and certain groups. But this was not obvious to him. He spent several hours working on his community daily. But breaks were always taken up by news and talk of news. At times he would invite friends to practice singing and guitar playing but even then his strong thoughts about world affairs and Muslim extremism almost always came up. My guess is these views were also the reason why he felt justified in scaring people and pressuring them, particularly those who had strong ideas of what they want to do. These tactics were again was in conflict with a more peaceful side of him that he also tried to aspire for.

Living with A was hard. But in hindsight I can feel great compassion for his suffering. I feel compassion for the suffering his resistant non-source thoughts formed within him. I also feel compassion for the suffering he felt from the constant internal tug of war within him. This war was between the hope and belief in the coming of what he has asked source and the constant talk of the lack of what he wants.

Its interesting how easy it is for me to see this now for someone else's issues. But really I do the same thing. And so do you. Faith is not a destination. It is a constant practice in believing in our powers of conscious creation and focusing on them solely while letting go of the resistant thoughts. May God help me and you in this journey.

Polygamy in Islam

My current boyfriend is passionately pro-polygamy and wants me to agree to him engaging in it post marriage. In recent months this topic has led to lots of emotional and mental salsa—one step forward, one step back. It goes like this: I share that monogamy is non-negotiable factor for me and that something otherwise take me away from the vision of life that I want to create for myself. At times when he sees my pain at the thought of having to leave him for his polygamous views, he says he has given the idea up. But at other times he returns to his original viewpoint and tries to convince me of the many ways in which polygamy will add to his life and mine.

Key to his viewpoint is the belief that polygamy is permitted in Islam. He says that as a progressive Muslim I must accept polygamy as valid. To him progressive Muslims should accept polygamy for we say we live by the following principal:

“We recognize the full diversity of Islamic traditions and the free participation therein as a sincere expression of faith.”

To me this argument is a gross misjudgment of what it means to be a progressive Muslim for another principle of progressive Islam is:

“We recognize critical reasoning and dynamic engagement with Islamic scripture and prevailing Islamic practices as an expression of devotion to, and esteem for, Islam and humanity.”

But even before we consider a cerebral argument regarding which values one adopts by affiliating with a religion or a progressive stream within a religion we should consider our inner emotional and mental clarity. We should ask ourselves: What values and decisions make me feel good? Make me feel empowered, loved, and justly dealt with? If values, words, thoughts, or behaviors feel oppressive or preventative of our free will we are keeping ourselves away from self-realization by giving them credence.

Law of allowing--others to be, feel, do anything they want

Today when I stopped by D’s desk for a random social visit she began conversing on a new methodology on strength finding that corporate has been advocating. I told her I that I don’t agree with the methodology since in essence it says that you should identify your inner talents and develop strengths in accordance with them for it is difficult and almost impossible to develop strengths in areas where you have no inner talents. It is best to use areas of inner talent to loop around one’s weaknesses. I instead belief I can develop skills in any area I desire and it is not limited to areas of inner talent.

She kept arguing that is not different from what the book is saying. When I said lets agree to disagree, she said one can’t disagree when one doesn’t see what one is disagreeing with to which I responded that having a argument/conversation on the strength finder is not important to me. She said it is to her and I am being dismissive of her which is disrespectful. I told by insisting I have a conversation on something with her when I don’t want to she is being disrespectful of me.

While, that allowed her to say okay and give me a cue to exit to my mind it seemed like a needless confrontation. As I have have recently learned to learn I wondered what about my response that led to this escalation. It made me realize that the philosophies, ideas, and values I hold from people and especially people in my day job is significantly different. Sometimes to allow smooth flowing it is best to not push against that which is different but allow a parallel path which gives us all a chance to be and believe what we desire; allowing an epiphany to the other to come if their mind state so wills it. In any case, doing so will let others not feel slighted which otherwise is rampant in the close quarters of cubicle life and perhaps even in relationship life. People being free to believe and do as they will.