Today we went to the lake and celebrated yet another commercial holiday.. Father’s Day, not that there’s anything wrong with that, all people in the family should be commemorated, but I just say it to point out the very money making nature of the holiday.. like most of the other holidays. But the cool thing is that we celebrated it in nature, with family, and with out the material aspect (that doesn’t always happen though).
Safiyah.. my girl, we are so proud of you because you were looking at the ducks in the lake and you pointed and said “Duck” with such clear pronunciation. You know a great many words now. I think you have about 20-30 words in your vocabulary now.. if not more. The ones you actually say are about 15 of them. But you are recognizing concepts and words daily.
Recent words you say:
duck, hu-hu-hu (as in.. Allah Hu), owl, pooh (as in winnie the pooh), this, that, papoo (as in Kiss), bye, baba, mama, du-du (as in milk), please, thank you, dog, cherry (aunti’s dog), gato (cat in spanish),
Other than these words, you know many songs, which I think i’ve already mentioned. Boy I am one of those bragging moms aren’t i. My kid is so smart!!! Intelligent!!! Because you ARE!!! Okay I’ll stop.
So one of the cool things I wanted to tell you about is this stuff they’ve been talking about on the Oprah show. Its not new stuff.. but once its on Oprah people start talking about these things.. it means that a concept has reached the mainstream once its been on Oprah. As for the rest of us, we’ve been knowing about this stuff for ever. So they mentioned this book called “The Secret” about how to use the laws of attraction to get what you want out of life. They had some awesome “self help” writers and motivational speakers come and talk about their stories.
So it reminded me of some of the stuff I was really exploring when I was an undergrad in college. It all started around 1998/2000 ish. So I read some cool books like “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho, and “The Celestine Prophesy” by James Redfield, and then there is one I read a bit later by one of my sufi teachers, Dr. Robert Frager, its called “Heart, Self & Soul: The Sufi Psychology of Growth, Balance, and Harmony”.
So the point of these and many many other books is this:
Often what you are looking for in life is already there. Perspective is everything. The old cliche of looking at the glass half full or half empty.. and so on and so forth. Why is this important? Because you will come to a point in life where you think you should feel lonely, depressed, or you are feeling EMPTY. It is not something that you have to live with. No person, or thing will ever be able to fill that empty void. It means there is something you are missing in your spiritual life… in the way you perceive life. Every time you think you are having the worst day-worst life, think of someone who is fighting for their life with a terminal disease, or someone who is living in a war torn country, or a woman who has no independence and never will, or someone who has lost their family in a natural disaster. Not that your problems aren’t important, they are, and they need to be addressed at some point, but they shouldn’t control you or your mood. You can easily step out of it, as if you are simply getting up out of a chair. In essence, you are in control of your mind, your thoughts, and your feelings.
You can be happy in life. You can have what you want in life. You just have to pray for it, visualize it, speak positive, and positive things will come your way. One of the things they mentioned was to make yourself a vision board. Basically it can be a magnet board, a cork board, or a poster board with pictures, words, (magazine cut outs) of everything you want.. everything that inspires you to be the best you and to use your God given talents in the best way possible. Soon, the things on your board will come your way. Keep looking at it every day, and it will become a reality. When you really want something, and you do everything in your power to attain it, the universe and everything in it will bend to make that thing a reality for you. One of our most powerful prayers in Islam goes like this “If this is good for me in this life than bring it close to me and bring me close to it, but if this thing is not good for me in this life than pull it away from me and pull me away from it. The thing is to trust in the divine energy that is Allah. Trust that this divinity that has created you and the entire universe from nothing, knows what is in your best interest, and that when you ask for something you should LET IT GO.. meaning .. you don’t know what is good for you or not.. because none of us has foresight.. none of us can tell the future, none of us can see the unseen.. so leave it up to God to decide if you should have that thing, and trust that if it is in your destiny than you will receive it, if it is not.. than there is probably a good reason for that.
This conversation always leads to the whole “Why do bad things happen to good people” debate. So here’s the deal. Life is a test. Bad things happen to good people.. but more times than not, Good things happen to good people. One thing that is not the most politically correct is KARMA. The reason i say it isn’t PC is because I am talking about families, countries, cultures, and groups of people who have to suffer for something because people that they are linked to in one of these ways screwed it up for them. We can look at it from a micro level before applying it to the macro.. like an entire country. So on the micro level lets look at ourselves. Each of us has several issues to deal with in life, and majority of them come from something our parents or grandparents did (right or wrong, it affects you in a negative way).. almost everyone can say that. However, we can sit there and use blame, and go nuts trying to fix it.. or we can LET IT GO, look to the future and decide what we want the second half of our lives to look like.
Another thing that goes along with this is the fact that negative things of all shapes and sizes can and usually are good for us. It may be a blessing in disguise. Its something negative for us at the moment, but it may teach us something that is valuable. It might be a lesser evil than something worse that could have happened to us. It just may mean that if it doesn’t kill us its meant to make us stronger. Use all of these negative and difficult experiences as opportunities to grow and learn about life.. especially how to deal with things. We can’t act like spoiled babies anytime something happens to us.. we have to have hard shells like turtles and resist these things.. use it as a lesson. (I know, I know, easier said than done.. but it can be done, if you really want to be happy).
So anyway, I won’t preach any longer.. I just wanted to share some deeper thoughts this time around. So other than the Eckhart Tolle book which should be my next read, please leave some book recommendations in the comments section so that my little Safiyah has some inspiring reading to do when she is old enough to read this blog. Merci Beaucoup!
