Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Death,Bilquis,Cancer and alternative housing.

Bismi'llah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim...for the sake of Prophet Muhammad saws and Sheikh Nazim may Allah protect his secret.

Pandora left a comment for me which caused me to go and look at her forum again after a few months (there was a time when I had a bit of a lively discussion with someone over there about the twin towers, but that's another story).
I started to leave her a mail and then realised ( as is so often the way) that it had helped put a few things into perspective and could be of interest generally. I therefore decided to post it here, and here it is in it's entirety;


Subject:
My wife Bilquis and death. Cancer and alternative housing.

Hi Pandy!Long time eh ? Life's been pretty intense for me lately. I'm afraid I have to give you the sad news that my beloved wife Bilquis who has had cancer the last three years went into rapid decline in September and died this year on Sunday January the eighth. It was a fairly horrendous experience and that is why there is more stuff than usual on my blog about death and the after life. I'm glad you found some of it useful. I know you had that thing with all those people connected to you passing on and even felt it had something to do with you (which I'm sure you now realise it didn't ). Death is the one thing we can all be sure will happen to us and yet most people don't want to look at it. We live in a society wich adulates youth and despises old age. It seems destiny, karma,life - call it what you will ... from my point of view obviouisly, God, has put a lot of contact with death into your life and, as so often, what at first seems harsh and difficult turns out to be a gift. Death puts our lives into perspective and pushes us to look for answers to questions about wether life has any meaning. Maybe you are finding some of those answers now. For me life is meaningless without some form of spirituality and belief in an after life puts a whole different perspective on our short time here. My brother was killed in a car accident when he was 21 and I was 19, my mum went from cancer at age 54. I believe her illness was sparked by the shock of my brother's death. My dad died at a fairly normal age of angina. Did I ever tell you about The New Medicine of Dr Hamer? If you put that in the search engine you can find some very interesting stuff, including fairly good proof that cancer is a big business and "the powers that be" do not want people to get cures as they make so much money from it.(eght sessions of chemio treatment cost 24,000 pounds !) It is the next biggest business after the petro chemical industry. Dr Hamer found a cure and they shut him up (literally, in prison) several times .. and he's back there now. There are other instances too, such as Rene Caisse and her medicine "Essiac", and Dr Antonio Bru, both of which can be found on the net. I believe Bilquis is in a better place now and that her horrible suffering was a purification for her so that she can go back to God clean and with no more suffering in the after life where I am sure she is enjoying the fruits of all her compassion, generosity and kindness to so many people (especially myself to whom she dedicated fifteen years of her life) while she was alive.She was much loved by many many people from all walks of life and right across the spiritual spectrum. My Sheikh, Sheikh Nazim , says that one of the biggest unknown causes of cancer is living in buildings made of re-inforced concrete. (I think it has a lot to do with the magnetic and electrical fields caused by the metal cage we all tend to live in) and I am getting very interested in alternative housing such as Straw Bale, Rammed earth, Mud Brick and Wooden houses. Sheikh Nazim has a project to build such houses in Cyprus and I am thinking of getting involved, which would be a contribution to the war against cancer and a kind of homage to Bilquis.

Friday, January 27, 2006

To know one's self.

Bismi'llah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim...for the sake of Prophet Muhammad saws and Sheikh Nazim may Allah protect his secret.

The state of identity is inherent in reality and never fades. But identity is neither the transient personality (vyakti), nor the karma-bound individuality (vyakta). It is what remains when all self-identification is given up as false - pure consciousness, the sense of being all there is, or could be. Consciousness is pure in the beginning and pure in the end; in between it gets contaminated by imagination which is at the root of creation. At all times consciousness remains the same. To know it as it is, is realization and timeless peace.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Compare this with the quote from Ibn Arabi below, and then think of the meaning of the hadith "To know oneself is to know one's Lord."

Thursday, January 26, 2006

Al Haq.

Bismi'llah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim...for the sake of Prophet Muhammad saws and Sheikh Nazim may Allah protect his secret.

Indeed the whole world is imagination.Only He is the real in Reality.Whoever understands this knows the secrets of the spiritual path. - Ibn 'Arabi, "Masters of the Path"

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Taffakur. (Reflection).

Bismi'llah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim...for the sake of Prophet Muhammad saws and Sheikh Nazim may Allah protect his secret.

I have been looking at "Journeywoman", a blog by Katherine Randall (who I discovered lives near me in the Alpujarras) .. here and her pieces on Taffakur inspired me to write the following.

"No act of worship is as meritorious as reflection. So reflect on the God's bounties and the works of His Power, but do not try to reflect on His Essence, for you will never be able to do that." Hadith.

The essence is not something that one can think upon.It is precisely that which requires no thinking or non-thought.Perhaps the continual process of taffakur ..leads eventually to the constant awareness or remembrance of Allah to such an extent that one realises that there is nothing but Allah
and eventually to live that reality in the sense of complete dissolution in Him, including all thought and action and in fact consciousness. This would be (one assumes) like living in the heart of awareness as described by the Ashtavakra Gita and all the masters of non duality in the Advaita Vedanta tradition.When eventually the small self or ego or nafs is not in control cheating us with its illusion of separate existence, and one becomes "dissolved" in consciousness of Allah (Allah Himself ?) like the drop which falls into the ocean.Then, where is the drop and where is the ocean ?

Oh for that glorious state! I would say, Oh to achieve that glorious state, but despite all our hard work and reflection, it must be a state which is a gift from Allah.He and He alone is our goal ... but only He can lift the veil and surely we must be extremely pure and sincere and give our hearts totally 1000% before there is any chance of that!
Still, we can hope and try, struggle, fail and return .. because, in the end ... what else is there?

Oh Allah, my petition is, that You help me to drop all my petty goals and desires and cravings connected to this dunya and make my heart and body and soul only for You.

Help me to realise that I will never solve anything through my own petty worldly goals and help me to do the job I was created for,to worship You.
Help me to leave the foolish and low distractions of my ego and the fear that keeps me running from pillar to post looking for peace and security and pleasure apart from You.Make me realise and remember that,in reality all fear is fear of You ..and may I have taqwa sufficiently to keep within the confines and the safety of the shariat and follow the sunna of Your blessed and beloved Prophet Muhammad Habibu'llah saws.

I know that there is nothing better than this for any human being but I am weak. Give me strength and love and sincerity and protect me from my four enemies, Nafs,Dunya,Hawa and Shaytan.

May I and all my brothers and sisters in Naqshbandi tariqat reach the goal while still in this life ... to die before we die,and may You bring all Muslims and all the sons and daughters of Adam back to You with the least suffering possible. Amin. (Fatiha)

Oh Allah protect us and keep us in these hard and difficult times and especially in the terrible times ahead for the sake of Your beloved prophet Muhammad saws and for the sake of all the saints of Naqshbandi tariqat and especially Abu Bakr and Shah Naqshband and Sheikh Abdullah ad Daghestani and our living representative, Sheikh Nazim Adil al Qubrusi al Haqqani.

Amin, Fatiha.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Real Self and body at death.

Bismi'llah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim...for the sake of Prophet Muhammad saws and Sheikh Nazim may Allah protect his secret.

It [dying] needn't be so [painful and ugly]. It may be beautiful and peaceful. Once you know that death happens to the body and not to you, you just watch your body falling off like a discarded garment. Once you know that the body alone dies and not the continuity of memory and the sense of "I am" reflected in it, you are afraid no longer.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Real Self ,false self.

Bismi'llah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim...for the sake of Prophet Muhammad saws and Sheikh Nazim may Allah protect his secret.

In the secret cave of the heart, two are seatedBy life's fountain. The separate egoDrinks of the sweet and bitter stuff,Liking the sweet, disliking the bitter,While the supreme Self drinks sweet and bitterNeither liking this nor disliking that.The ego gropes in darkness, while the SelfLives in light. So declare the illumined sagesAnd the householders who worshipThe sacred fire in the name of the Lord.-Katha Upanishad

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Knowledge.

Bismi'llah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim...for the sake of Prophet Muhammad saws and Sheikh Nazim may Allah protect his secret.

Sheikh Nazim says that Muhammad pbuh always asked to be increased in knowledge, and that we should do the same.He says that for every knower there is one who knows more.There are endless oceans of knowledge and endless horizons.There is knowledge which is for Allah alone and then there is knowledge for His Prophets, but not for others, and there is knowledge for His saints and then there is knowledge for ordinary people.

Here is a quote on the subject.

"God is knowledge; he is knowing; and he is being known. Since God has knowledge of his own essence, and since God is one, it follows that the essence of God is knowledge. And knowledge means that he knows himself, and is known by himself.-Ibn Sina, "al-Risalat al-Arshiya

Is that knowledge of the essence (which it is prohibited to think about in Islam) the heart of awareness of the Advaita Vedanta tradition? Sat Chit Ananda.Is that essence not our real selves and therefore the meaning of the hadith "Know yourself and you will know your Lord."? Is this not the reason why it is said God created man in His own image? Is this not the secret which Allah put in man .. what He blew into Adam from His Ruh when He created him and what distinguishes us from the animals and the rest of Creation?
Atman and is Brahman and Brahman is Atman ..is that not just another way of saying the same thing which was discovered by the ancients in India?

Be still and know God.

If only we could ..leap that existential barrier, as the Zen masters have been pushing students to do for generations.

But ... somewhere Nisargadatta says ... the only barrier to your self-realisation is ... sin.

Mmmm hmmm ....

Alone with the alone .. or just alone.

Bismi'llah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim...for the sake of Prophet Muhammad saws and Sheikh Nazim may Allah protect his secret.

At the end of the day it's facing being alone that it's all about.I was with Bilquis almost 24 hrs a day seven days a week 52 weeks a year .. for fifteen years. We did everything together apart from go to the loo and shower.
There were short periods when she would visit her family here in the north and I would stay in Orgiva. For a while there was the internet and endless investigations of unity and enlightenment .. especially all the stuff on Buddhism whichI got into in an attempt to bridge the gap between us when she more or less definitively returned to her beloved Tibetan Buddhism after the suicide of Manolo her beloved ex-husband.
Then that well ran dry and I would sink into a kind of torpor which could last all day and night .. just waiting for her to come back .. like a lost sad dog pining for its master.
And now she's gone.I am having a bit the same experience I had when my brother died years ago (he was twenty one, I nineteen) in a car accident. I just skated over the surface of life endlessly doing stuff very fast, until finally I just collapsed in a heap and entered a depressive phase which included a time at a day hospital in Canterbury.
I seem to maybe be in the skating phase again.There have been endless mobile messages to the friend in Gerona who's husband died of cancer last year.I am hoping to see her when I visit the region soon. I am hoping to soothe and smooth some of the ruffled waters of my emotions and understand more what is happning to me through interaction with her.Maybe it will work to some extent.
I am trying to stand back and observe myself .. be a witness to this storm inside... but there is tendency to escape into doing stuff, and then, if not into writing and communicating .. The hard part is simply to stop and be alone with oneself.The hardest to just stop and BE. To be with oneself still implies duality .. still being in consciousness .. just to Be means sitting in the seat of awareness.
Really that is the only answer to this situation and all situations ..it is also really (according to Sheikh Nazim..and all masters in their way) the purpose of all worship and spiritual practices.Just to Be .. just Being .. means being with Allah .. means exisiting in Unity Oceans ..
Oh to dissolve right now this petty,separating, cross eyed, double visioned ego!

Here's that piece fromNisargadatta again.

Watch yourself closely and you will see that whatever be the content of consciousness, the witnessing of it does not depend on the content. Awareness is itself and does not change with the event. The event may be pleasant or unpleasant, minor or important, awareness is the same. Take note of the peculiar nature of pure awareness, its natural self-identity, without the least trace of self-consciousness, and go to the root of it and you will soon realize that awareness is your true nature, and nothing you may be aware of, you can call your own. When the content is viewed without likes and dislikes, the consciousness of it is awareness. But still there is a difference between awareness as reflected in consciousness and pure awareness beyond consciousness. Reflected awareness, the sense "I am aware" is the witness, while pure awareness is the essence of reality. Reflection of the sun in a drop of water is a reflection of the sun, no doubt, but not the sun itself. Between awareness reflected in consciousness as the witness and pure awareness there is a gap, which the mind cannot cross.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Another thought for the day.

Bismi'llah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim...for the sake of Prophet Muhammad saws and Sheikh Nazim may Allah protect his secret.

Last night my teacher taught me the lesson of Poverty:Having nothing and wanting nothing.Rumi (May Allah Bless him)

Thought for the day.

Bismi'llah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim...for the sake of Prophet Muhammad saws and Sheikh Nazim may Allah protect his secret.

Observe how the life of this world deceives those around you. It lures them into the traps of vanity, wealth, and fame, and exalts them above others. This splendor blinds them, and they are lost forever in illusion. But then in one instant, life deals the blow of death, and all is gone, and with the Beguiler it stands laughing at their sad end. So overcome your egos that you may be saved from the snares that devoured kings and paupers alike.-Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jillani, "Fayuz E Yazdani"

Sunday, January 15, 2006

Tawakkul.

Bismi'llah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim...for the sake of Prophet Muhammad saws and Sheikh Nazim may Allah protect his secret.

At the end of the day,my big lesson in all this is that I must try not to rely on anything but Allah through His Prophet's example saws and through the spiritual connection to our Sheikh and from our Sheikh to him saws.

What can I say ? Bilquis was everything to me, and now she has gone there is a huge hole which somehow I must fill.I hope I shall fill it with consciousness of and reliance on Allah and not just my re-invented ego in Bilquis's image.

I so often used to say "Ay Dios!Bilquis." and she used to say, "Yo no soy Dios Uthman." ("I am not God Uthman.")...but in a way, she was to me .. and perhaps that is one reason why He took her away from me.
So often the things which seem like the most painful and difficult in life, are in fact blessings in disguise.I reminds me of when the Prophet (PBUH) was going along the lines of prisoners chained up after a battle and he started laughing. They thought he was being cruel, but in fact he was laughing from happiness to see how Allah had actually used the situation to bring them from jahillya (ignorance) to the Truth and belief in God.
I now have to face a lot of pain and loneliness,maybe fear and insecurity, with scant resources and no family and no intimate close friends .... but who will there be to turn to except the Sheikh and Allah and His Prophet saws ?
So often our conscience knows what we should do .. but we get used to turning a deaf ear and wasting time playing at pass-times and nonsense while the hour glass of our lives is fast running out.
I remember reading in Fath al Rabbani (Openings from the Lord), a collection of sohbets from Abdl Qadr al Gilani, how he said to his audience, "You say la ilaha ila 'llah,(there is no God but Allah) but you are liars! You make everything but Allah your God."

May Allah help me and guide me to real faith in and reliance on Him alone, through the example of His beloved Prophet Habib'allah and the spiritual connection with our Sheikh, Sheikh Nazim Adil al Qubrusi al Haqqani an'Naqshbandi. Amin. Fatiha.

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Assimilating as the storm dies down.

Bismi'llah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim...for the sake of Prophet Muhammad saws and Sheikh Nazim may Allah protect his secret.

Thanks to all those kind people who left their comments.(In this moment there are too many to answer one by one.) Each one of us believes and prays, worships or meditates in his or her own way. I believe all those ways are valid and reach to the Source Of All.The more sincere and the more concentrated the closer and deeper.Often pain and suffering deepens our need and our desire for meaning in life. Loss of a loved one makes us look deeper and harder for something permanent.
In these last few days I have had much support from all kinds of people but perhaps I have felt it most from those close to me physically and who are believers.
Bilquis's mother, Dolores, is a wonderful old lady of eighty five with such a faith and such an indomitable spirit. She is so kind and hard working and loved by all.Through her and her sister Carmen I have recieved much love and understanding and a great deal of support from their prayers.
Also, the day before Bilquis's death I had spoken to Abdl Ahad, one of Sheikh Nazim's Spanish murids who lives in Orgiva...and informed him that Bilquis might go that very day. Without telling me anything, he jumped on a bus and came the 1000 kms up to San Sebastian to accompany me in the hospital room on Bilquis's last and most terrible night.
In an almost Godless crematorium (which they now call Tanatorio here after some Greek god I think) he read sura Ya Sin for Bilquis standing firm and strong by her coffin as it waited to be consumed in the flames.(some of you may know that it is completely against the Muslim religion to burn the dead.... but also that it is nearly impossible to get a proper burial now .. with or without much pushing and hasssling and all the papers and connections and family ties in place.) He had slipped a "tawiz" or protection into the coffin when we saw her before in the hospital, he told me afterwards.A phone call from Hamida of Orgiva advised me to pray that the flames did not touch her .. as they had had to do recently for her husband's own brother.
In the afternoon there was a Christian funeral in the local Parochial Church of Zarauz.

Almost a week later the storm, internally and externally, begins to die down. Yesterday was a beautiful day both externally, with a blue sky and sun shining on the green hills and fields of the Pais Vasco,an internally where I felt such peace and protection as I was taken around in the car of Bilquis's "consuegro" (that is her son's father in-law).
Once again a person of quiet and deep faith who shines with goodness and kindness. I went to help him as an interpreter in a problem with a van that had been repaired by his local garage and then left without payment. It was an Irish person it turns out (as I discovered from papers inside the van) who it seems had had a pub in England and run through the profits leaving many debts.I assume he was on the run when his van broke down in "Azpeitia" and so the story goes.When I was asked to get involved in what was, after all, a fairly hopeless case, I had the feeling that this was not the real reason why I was going out on this somewhat strange journey .. but that there was some other wisdom in it.
Recently in the midst of all my recent troubles, the car had broken down and,being the head gasket on an old and English car, it was not worth repairing.Here I am 1000 kms from home with no car and little money wondering how to resolve the problem with two or three alternatives at my disposal.My preferred on was to buy another car and send the old one to the scrap heap... but I was finding it very difficult to encounter something suited to my needs and pocket ... The standard of living is much higher up here and there just isn't the second hand market for cars like that of Andalucia.
My assignment was in the reliable friendly local garage of a good believing man who loves cars and tinkering and helping others."Torribio" is his name and when I saw a little Ford Fiesta diesel on the forecourt, God Bless him, he became involved in the project to buy it as if I were his own son or younger brother.
All of my difficulties were soon resolved as we test drove it and decided to come back in the afternoon after an invitation to a copious lunch at his family home in nearby Elgoibar.My insurance company was helpful, the two secretaries at the garge bent over backwards to help ..Torribio drove me back to Zarauz for money and relevant papers and soon I was the proud owner of the little car.The boss of the garage adjusted the lights, changed the oil, charged up the battery, replaced a brake light bulb. topped up the windscreen washers and insists I go back on Monday to change the timing belt.
Apparently the little car had only come in two days before and had not been prepared for sale yet.It's nine years old, has a 1.8 diesel engine, five doors, being a little hatch back just big enough to fit my stall in,and marks 92000 kms on the clock.(the owner correctly informed me that that could be 192000, as the clock only goes to 100 ooo.) Whatever .. I'm completely chuffed with it .. and am sure it was "written" for me ..I felt the hand of God in the whole thing .. a small gift as if from my Sheikh .. it all happened as if by magic ... I felt no real part in it .. it was as if it was being done for me.
So now I have transport again with which to start my new life.

The whole thing of Bilquis is so all-embracing in it's effect on all parts and levels of my life that it is too difficult to say anything yet. It will take time to assimilate it and thenmore time to express what I have assimilated. For the moment the process is going on and I prefer to keep quiet about it. I will only say that there is one strange phenomenon, and that is a feeling of "re-birth" which is assailing me.
There was a strange symbolical event which involved a double "13", on the first day of Ramadan this year. I knew that those two thirteens were for me and Bilquis and have been wondering if my turn would be soon after hers, as often happens especially with older couples ho have spent whole life times together. One goes, and soon after, the other... but in this case maybe Bilquis's thirteen was physical death and rebirth in the after-life and mine a personality death and rebirth into a new way of living. We'll see.
I have been in contact with a person who is also a follower of Sheikh Nazim and who's husband died last year of cancer. Bilquis had been in regular contact with her, helping and supporting by phone during her trials and we sent a little charity last Christmas when it all intensified.
Her experiences have been similar to mine and she has been a great support, espcially in the last two or three weeks when I felt I was nearly going mad with it all.
Apparently she has had a similar "re-birth" exprience as one suddenly has to adjust to a new situation in which it is necessary to develop all kinds of coping skills which were perhaps originally dealt with by the former partner.
I may go to see Abdl Salaam who lives near her in Catalunya and pay some visits to discuss and interchange experiences and ideas which could be very helpful and therapeutic.I have a desire to get right away from all the places where I have been with Bilquis for a while.Orgiva, Zarauz, even Cyprus, are so laden with memories..perhaps there is a new life for me in a part of Spain I do not know.For the moment abdl Salaam is alone in his house as his children have retiurned to their mother in Orgiva, so maybe the company would be good for him and we have worked together in the markets before..in fact I started out helping him and taking one meter on the end of his lengthy stall years ago in the "Marcha Verde" in Granada.
My prayer time program is calling the adhan for fajr now, so I must leave this for a while... but for sure I'll be back with further developments.
Thanks again to all and for kind comments.

I would like to leave a quote from Nisargadatta of the Advaita Vedanta tradition which somehow satisfies my overactive mind by its perspicacious analysis of how to access that true mystical Reality which really we are all seeking and Bilquis is either enjoying or much closer to right now I'm sure.

"Watch yourself closely and you will see that whatever be the content of consciousness, the witnessing of it does not depend on the content. Awareness is itself and does not change with the event. The event may be pleasant or unpleasant, minor or important, awareness is the same. Take note of the peculiar nature of pure awareness, its natural self-identity, without the least trace of self-consciousness, and go to the root of it and you will soon realize that awareness is your true nature, and nothing you may be aware of, you can call your own. When the content is viewed without likes and dislikes, the consciousness of it is awareness. But still there is a difference between awareness as reflected in consciousness and pure awareness beyond consciousness. Reflected awareness, the sense "I am aware" is the witness, while pure awareness is the essence of reality. Reflection of the sun in a drop of water is a reflection of the sun, no doubt, but not the sun itself. Between awareness reflected in consciousness as the witness and pure awareness there is a gap, which the mind cannot cross."
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

It's sometimes difficult to stop with Nisargadatta .. the danger being, a bit like with Ibn Arabi, that the descriptions are so clear and incisive that one can fall into the trap of thinking that one has made the material one's own, merely by having read and understood it. However I will add a few more quotes that have been useful and soothing to me in the past few days.

"You can do nothing. What time has brought about, time will take away. This is the end of yoga, to realize independence. All that happens, happens in and to the mind, not to the source of the "I am".
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

All you have to do is to understand that you love the self and the self loves you, and that the sense "I am" is the link between you both, a token of identity in spite of apparent diversity. Look at the "I am" as a sign of love between the inner and the outer, the real and the appearance. Just like in a dream all is different, except the sense of "I", which enables you to say "I dreamt", so does the sense of "I am" enable you to say "I am my real Self again. I do nothing, nor is anything done to me. I am what I am and nothing can affect me. I appear to depend on everything, but in fact all depends on me."
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Karma, or destiny, is an expression of a beneficial law: the universal trend towards balance, harmony and unity. At every moment, whatever happens now, is for the best. It may appear painful and ugly, a suffering bitter and meaningless, yet considering the past and the future it is for the best, as the only way out of a disastrous situation.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

To act from desire and fear is bondage, to act from love is freedom.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

To know that the known cannot be me nor mine, is liberation. Freedom from self-identification with a set of memories and habits, the state of wonder at the infinite reaches of the being, its inexhaustible creativity and total transcendence, the absolute fearlessness born from the realization of the illusoriness and transiency of every mode of consciousness - flow from a deep and inexhaustible source. To know the source as source and appearance as appearance, and oneself as the source only is self-realization. "
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
"

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Bilquis has gone.

Bismi'llah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim...for the sake of Prophet Muhammad saws and Sheikh Nazim may Allah protect his secret.

After an apalling nightmare night of pain and struggle Bilquis went this morning around eleven o-clock. Please pray for her and her journey in the after-life.
It's much too close at hand for me to make any comments now.Maybe later when the shock and horror of it all has died down.
At least she is now in peace at last and we hope and believe that all the pain and suffering was a purification and a preparation for her so that she can go home to her immmortal resting place pure and full of light and ready to meet her Lord with no further pain or trouble.

Monday, January 02, 2006

Very squeezing tests.(Dios aprieta pero no ahoga.#)

Bismi'llah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim...for the sake of Prophet Muhammad saws and Sheikh Nazim may Allah protect his secret.

First of all, thanks to Anna and Kit and Nis for support and comments.
I hardly know where to begin with the awful saga of my life that is unfolding right now.
The market was pretty much a disaster even though I did everything humanly possible to make it work.Without going into details,they moved the site this year and it was very uncommercial.Meanwhile Bilquis got a lot sicker and I had to come home and leave the attempt to earn money half way through. So far I made a tenth of what we would normally expect and about a quarter or less of what I hoped to get in this year's conditions.
She is now frighteningly thin,weighing less than forty kilos ... the change was such a shock when I got back. I didn't expect to see her looking like an eighty year old with a skeletal face and large staring eyes.My heart is breaking.
At the moment she has terrible symptoms of diarreah though for the moment it seems the vomiting she had has stopped. It may be the result of the morphine patches which they gave her after having given an injection into the hip joints to try to stop the pain of the bursitis.The oncologist today said that it could be the radio treatment too.
Perhaps tomorrow she will go into hospital again in order to get on a drip that she has needed for about three days, but, due to burocracy, has been unable to get either at home or in hospital.
The whole situation is so excruciating ... When I was in Granada I could hardly sleep at night and was taking homoeopathy to try to get myself a bit stronger and calmer to deal with the situation.Perhaps I overdid it, I don't know.Anyway I stopped the homoeopathy and tried some natural remedies with Valerian and Passionflower and Tila ..and also Californian poppy. None of them really worked and the chemical one called Dormidina (which was actually an anti hystamenico) just left my mouth dry after giving about three hour's sleep.)
The gradual build up of sleeplessness and the endless messages and calls about Bilquis's progress and state became a kind of nightmare drama.The woman where I stayed is an old friend of Bilquis's and there was some pretty strange stuff going off in her relationship as a forty eight year old Spanish woman with a thirty three year old Morroccan guy, who is into all sorts of strange deals and atmospheres.
I found it awful and the lady in question who is depressive and under pressure found my emotional state and negativity over Bilquis too much to bear.I had to pack up and go to sleep on the floor of the sitting room in my son's flat. Very kind of him,but I was somewhat concerned about his work hours and especially his nightly exoduses.
This afternoon I have been able to get a little sleep on the sofa and feel slightly more 'normal'.
On the last night in Granada I had no sleep at all and my fear and insecurity and negative thought patterns, which all ended in disaster,became so intense that I felt as if the forces of evil had got to me and I was unable to get the taxi and train which I was supposed to take.
I was just a mess of tears and emotions with no one to talk to or help.My son had arrived at six in the morning and gone to bed.
I phoned some old Muslim contacts and then Clara, who is a friend from the markets who was going to look after my stall.She came round to Hashim's (my son's place) after going by the market where very little was happening.
I was in such a state that, despite the fact that we both know I have a big work ahead of me to develop independence and strength to confront life .. she decided to say yes to my petition for help and brought me up to Zarauz here in the Pais Basquo,driving 1000 kilometeres in eleven hours and maintaining a very useful and interesting conversation on the way.
I am 52 and she 33. I could be her father biologically speaking, but here I was listening to much of her advice like a little boy.

It is so hard to believe that Bilquis will get better now ... there is always a slim ray of hope. As I am writing this she gets up to get a book ( I don't know what possesed her) and takes a fall "Bonk!" on the wooden parquet floor.

What is God doing to us ? I am not a good Muslim ..I am not a good anything ..I have done loads of things wrong in my life .. I find it easiest and most intellectually/morally/ spiritually satisfying to believe that this is a punishment on me for all the bad stuff I have done. However, as I have said before, it is much harder to apply that to Bilquis who has always been such a good and kind person to everyone, and everyone loves her.
She has said that maybe it is a purification ... I do believe that some things which may look awful and even cruel could be a Mercy viewed in the light of eternal life.Perhaps it is better to suffer here in temporal existence than there in eternal existence. I am even beginning to wonder if cancer (which is now the plague of our times acording to statistics gleaned from the internet where it is said that one in two men die of cancer and one in three women!) is not somehow a blessing for those that are taken away by it,having been cleaned of their sins and bad actions in preparation for the next life and meeting their Lord and ... avoiding confrontation with the terrible events which it seems are just around the corner in the shape of the nuclear Third World War, or Armageddon.

I wish I could be good and alleviate some suffering that way .. I wish I was a good enough and strong enough Naqshbandi sufi Muslim to be in that Third World War under Divine protection.I wish I could alleviate Bilquis's pain ..but .. no matter what we do .. it seems to be Allah's Plan for her to be suffering this way ...
Strangely, each time she has managed to get an appointment with the naturopath ( who it seems cured at least one woman with terminal cancer of the pancreas) the other medicine has made her so sick she could not go.
For now she may go into hospital to get the saline drip and probably there they will try to finish off the five remaining sessions of radio treatment which remain from the twenty five prescribed.

I just hope they don't kill her in the attempt.

Please pray for her or send energy in your way.It would be a good idea if everyone especially tried to do that at about the same time of day to join and increase the effects .. say between ten and ten thirty in the evening European time.

# "God squeezes but He doesn't suffocate." (Old Spanish saying.)

On a more positive note, one wonderful thing that came out of the whol thing in Granada, was the support of friends. Especially one particular little gem which came in th shap of my friend Bill Ducket. He has stall with Indian artefacts and antiques and is quite an extraordinary eccentric character. His continual support and steadiness, advice and generosity have been a bastion and island of calm to me throughout the
personal drama which played itself out down there.

I discovered at the same time his interest in Buddhism and especially a particular Japanese strand which his cousin (who he hadn't seen in twenty years and then just appeared in his life with this connection last year) introduced him to.

It's main mantra is "Nam Miyoho Renge Kyo." and I have been finding it very useful .. At the begining to pull me out of the energy hole I found myself in, in the first house where the atmosphere was so dark I could hardly pray .. and then later for trying to be strong and decisive so as not to be a burden on my friends.

It is said it connects one to the essential energy of the universe and I like not knowing what it means, as it was working that way, just on faith and not on intellectual interpretation and ideas.

One of the most horrible things that is happening to me at the moment is that I never have a normal or comfortable bed of my own to sleep in.I am continually going from one place to another in this wierd story .. here in Zarauz sleeping on the sofa and being woken at all hours to accompany Bilquis to the loo.Tomorrow, once again the oncologico ..sleeping in a chair ..
Sleep deprevation is used as a torture and sometimes it feels like that ... a torture ..I can only believe that it is at the level of my wrong doing ..

Why does everything that we try to do for Bilquis come out back to front ? Punishment enough it is for me to watch her poor little body being whacked by radio treatment .. but what about her ? Why why why is god doing this to her ?
She is so strong and valiant, poor little thing ..she has never been much good at standing physical pain.

One thing I can say is ,perhaps ... she has been caused to say that she needs me ...something that in other circumstances would never have escaped her lips. I have been caused to realise just how much I love her and say it sincerely .. something which perhaps I have been blocked from finding inside myself ever since my parents split up 41 years ago.

My lap top continues to be a pain in the butt as far as the keyboard is concerned ..my mobile (which I bought for being down in Granada) is also horribly complicated and unresponsive ..As luck would have it, it was bought on the thirteenth, as was the lap top.

Up until now, a strange symbolic happening which ocurred on the first day of Ramadan this year,when, after a day reading the eulogies on the site dedicate to Nicholas Battye after his death,I went to the supermarket and my change came to 13€ and 13 cents, has meant Bilquis's death and, somehow mine too. Now perhaps it is beginning to mean the death of her ego and the death of mine, in certain ways.

To see another point of view..more dispassionate and less emotional than my ,supposedly,sufi one ..try this site which will indicate the ,perhaps more objective or scientific view of the interconnectedness of all things and the immediate efffect of our actions thoughts and feelings etc.

http://www.sgi.org/english/Buddhism/nmrk.htm