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changing the world breaking the ego

Change can be an immeasurably bleak phenomenon for some.  Its phantom haunts even the greatest as their feats feel wholly inadequate in the face of the kinds of global oppression's that exist. 

How do you even ‘defeat’ shadows?

I was once told that some selfless acts will benefit mankind in veiled ways that only appear to the most perceptive eye. 

That, the softly sung lullabies of a mother to her child relaying the stories of Prophets (May Peace and Blessing be upon them All) can have a seismic affect on the world. 

I believe they do and I refuse to believe we can create a “perfect world.”  Not to say I am a cynic but rather, perfection is beyond our means.

To put it bluntly, our limited senses cannot imagine perfection in all its holistic manifestations. 

We can only see, hear, feel, touch and taste.  It’s both a blessing and a reminder.  A blessing to know the limitlessness of what can be achieved and a palpable reminder that time cannot be stopped.

We can invent drones and nuclear energy but time cannot be stopped.  

Utopias are dangerous because it is not so much that the Earth needs to be adorned but rather ourselves.  Adorning isn’t an outward act but an inward act of struggle.

Locked down by the mortgages, loans, jobs, cities, routines and hustles it’s close to impossible to elevate to any deeper understanding. 

So learning becomes a privilege of the super-rich but when that wealth is subsidized by hedonism it’s impossible to elevate to any deeper understanding. 

Deeper understanding isn’t universally taught so it must be sought.  You won’t stumble upon it on the internet but through encounters with guides.  

Righteous guides are not necessarily the ones held up in glorious and bright lights.  Often they are the ones few look to and are learned in ways we seem to think are unconventional.

Unconventional means of learning are not by products of institutions but instead are taught in honourable lineages which hold secret truths.  Secret truths are unlocked through purifying oneself. 

Purifying oneself is no mean feat.  It is a lifelong struggle.

It requires year upon year of polishing the soul. True combatants and wearied jihadi’s know that the smallest acts can have the most catastrophic of consequences. 

So we keep polishing, we keep tidying up the endless possibilities of flaws we have.  We draw them out to destroy them and keep fighting until the end. 

Some leave this world before they even get a whiff of the secret truth.

But this is no tragedy.  This is instead, martyrdom. 

Egotism is not taught in classrooms but is built up, brick by brick until its wall stands firm to sustained pressure.  The subject builds walls around himself to new heights until anything beyond these walls is blinded to him.

Lessons are learnt through each worldly victory, no matter how minute.  You either receive each victory as divine ordinance, a sign that your impact on this world is ordained by something higher, more powerful than you can ever imagine and requires of you a deep sense of responsibility wherein each action requires careful consideration. 

Or you can take it as a sign from a dark place within, that it is you who grafted to achieve and you who deserves acclaim.  That your place should be affirmed in the pantheon of other great men and women and you should stand on top, proud and righteous, basking in the celebration of yourself. 

The latter has built the walls.  The former seeks to constantly destroy them.  Don’t be fooled because every person is susceptible.  Man is weak and when we think we are least vulnerable, we are often most vulnerable.

Sight is afforded to those who are engaged in debilitating the ego because all we can do is weaken it.

To say otherwise would be arrogant. 

These are just words, and while they might be a comforting reminder, they are just that, comforting. 

Comfort is absurd in an unequal world just like words become absurd when they become meaningless slogans.

To quote Paulo Friere, “when a word is deprived of its dimension of action, reflection automatically suffers as well; and the world is turned into idle chatter.  On the other hand, if action is emphasised exclusively to the detriment of reflection, the word is converted into activism. The latter – action for action’s sake – negates the true praxis and makes dialogue impossible.  Human existence cannot be silent, nor can it be nourished by false words, but only by true words with which men and women transform the world; to speak a true word is to transform the world.”

Freeing Freedom

Last academic year at the end of March, The SOAS Spoken Word Society teamed up with The Black and Minority Ethnic Network (BME) at The University of Nottingham to organize a poetry tour entitled Freeing Freedom.  The tour would have been held at universities across the UK including SOAS but unfortunately it had to be cancelled on short notice due to a dispute with the management of the poet headlining the tour.  

However, our intention as organizers was to entertain and enlighten.  We hoped that the tour would be the platform for students to re-evaluate and re-conceptualize a term ingrained in our moral consciousness.  We thought we would articulate our thoughts on 'Freedom' in this blog piece and expand on what we meant when we said 'Freeing Freedom.'  

Can freedom be emancipated? 

Very few words hold the weight that ‘freedom’ holds.  In the 21^st century, its emancipatory power and its oppressive potential has liberated and destroyed nation states.  Today it’s been used to describe largely economic freedoms, the freedom to choose to buy, sell and go about our daily lives.  It has increasingly become the neoliberal’s choice phrase in the construction of what constitutes ethics today. 

When this very narrow, specific type of ethics is considered something that needs to be universal, problems arise.  There tends to be a focus on the literal unveiling and liberating of communities when our collective veil of moral legitimacy in the West remains firm.  Whether it’s the ‘civilizing’ of states in the Global South or the coerced liberalizing of economies, our way is the only way and The Enlightenment is the ultimate vindication of these values. 

The very same elite setting the agendas and discourses of today hold freedom prisoner.  Its emancipation requires a discussion on the concepts, norms and realities we treasure as universal truths. 

From the Kuffiyeh to the Bindi, symbols which represent cultural, spiritual or religious significance are stripped of all meaning and left commodities, reserved only as decor.  We are often left to occupy the vacuum left by this rationalistic purge and told these remains consummate modernity.  Similarly, appropriation of language has meant terms like freedom have been rebranded to fit the narrative of the 21^st century globalized world. 

But this exchange of ideas is a one way street and alternative ways of thinking often silenced.  In the face of this continued suppression, it is essential to reclaim freedom.  

Part of this reclamation is in understanding that the struggle of the self is still incomplete.  If we subscribe to the binary view of freedom being a battle between good and evil, right and wrong and the oppressed and the oppressor we often forget the oppressor is the self.  The fear, anger or jealousy in the heart of a human being is often reflected in the actions of his leader.  

But how does this spiritualism relate to the reality we face today?  A world where global inequality remains an unquestioned physical reality.  A world where Bangladeshi garment factories collapse for the West to enjoy the latest trends for cheap.  The problem comes down to control.  The control that money has over us and the control we have over our self. 

For these problems, the East’s spiritualism has many answers to the rationalism of the West.  As Persian poet Sa’adi Shirazi’s beautifully articulates in The Rose Garden;

In deserts, amid shifting sand and drouth,

Nor pearl nor shell is manna to the mouth.

Ah! what avails, when food and strength are gone,

The girdle with its pearls or pebbles strown?

In the enormous capacity of the dessert, the pearl means nothing.   Money cannot be consumed yet its consuming capacity puts humanity on its knees. 

These messages of sages, scholars and spiritualists of the East have offer solutions to the global issues we face today.  That wisdom and intellect are two separate things altogether.  That if freedom were a caged bird, we must discover it and let it go rather than put a price on it.  That land is to be roamed rather than sold. 

The persistent habit to measure, weigh and count is detrimental to freedom.  These norms imprison us.  This collective search to measure the other up to our standards is antithetical to the very beliefs the West espouses.  Freedom should be independent of ideology, agenda and even people.  It transcends these things. 

In contrast to this Farid Ud Din Attar’s poetry informs us of the necessity of introspection.  This introspection is echoed in the works of Jalal ud-Din Rumi and Rabia Al Basri.  In their poetry, there is a clear link between the inner and the outward state of man, the ruled and the ruler.  That self reflection necessitates greater control over the self and ultimately that is all we have control over.  This process of realization is true liberation. 

The tendency to quantify comes from the hubristic inability to accept our limitations.  Figures like Persian poet Sa’adi Shirazi or Farid ud-Din Attar understood freedom like they understood the universe.  They saw the universe as something that is forever expanding and evolving, often beyond their own understanding.   

In accepting this infinity, these men were better in tune with it, only then did they exercise control over the self.  This is where freedom starts and ends, evolving and expanding and where it defies all definition. 

Hadi Abbas and Mohamed-Zain Dada.

The eye of the storm

Calamity and catastrophe

are neighbors

but the fictitious kingdom

lives on

Home of the displaced

who crave home

stand where Moses stood

and see it

See Hell and Heaven

From the transitory kingdom

Britain’s purgatory

Lifeless as its Sea

Inhabitants float

on salty wounds

Strife has been burnt

its pulp has stopped beating

Words of war fall

lazily out of mouths

and

melt

Raging cogs twist and turn

tired eyes observe

the scars of ancestors tears

are dry now

life pursued on knees

dusty and arid

where men neither

build or destroy

The struggling

seek refuge

breathing a sigh en masse

its force reverberates

The breeze carries nightmares,

broken dreams.

The blood has dried

the living seek an afterlife.

Calls to prayer

do little to wake

those in deep slumber

since echoes ceased existing

The Levant a myriad of mysticism

and martyrs

The Holy Land

and its sacrilegious city.

juvenile prism
letting light shine through
we hide our emotions in four corners
you'll have to smash my mirrors to see them

Indestructible Consequence

memories are like vessels on the ocean
poisoned and floating
sunk for our own good,
buried deep.

Until time ebbs away
it's ruins
and they rise to the surface
like shattered mirrors

reflections of once broken lives,
remembered with a sombre silence.

The hairs on my body stand
as if they too uphold respect
of passing moments
be they beautiful or not

and I shudder
trying to remove each pin and needle
dug into my skin
like enforced acupuncture

unbearable heat attacks my pores
I rub salt into the minute passages
eyes closed, I grimace at the pain

regret taught me that
self-inflicted anguish
is relief.

So I emerge from shame
like the widow emerging from a pyre,
burning.

Screaming to the skies at Indestructible Consequence

As inadequate rays
keeps me cold
and a disappointed sun
watches on.

acquaintances are like pit stops on a journey,

while true friendship should be as rare as a purple sunset

As for the rest of humanity,

you make a traveller out of me.

Catharsis

It soothed my worries,
its drip providing me with a brief reprieve
All the stresses of the world flowed down my cheek
like tears of relief

The street stars shone, in a scintillating backdrop
I looked to my right, a shop sign read "imagination"
It was too surreal to be true, just in case it was
I staggered home slower to take it all in

eyes closed and neck arched
I insisted the heavens shower down more,
As my jeans grew heavier
I stood still, wishing the moment would too.

its swirling patterns were like a flock of birds
searching for warmer plains,
taking care in its landing
easing pain wherever it travels

This was not the normal, harsh pitter patter,
not concerned with hurting
not the kind the common man has disdain for
Just saintly, soundless drops of hope

That night I dreamt,
I wanted to rise like puddles under the sun
But the reflection scarred me
I wished to magnanimously watch the world in the clouds

it dawned on me,
man's erratic nature mirrors the skies misgivings,
acid rain eroded into the Earths crust
until I changed my core

I awoke knowing, my state and weather were one
the choices I made determined whether,
I sailed softly back home filled with love,
Or hit the ground fuelled with hatred.

"The Idea that moisture, which has risen from the ocean, resided in a cloud and then consolidated itself into a raindrop will return to the ocean, where it may lose itself completely to the immense waters.  This was most mystics hoped for: a return to the original unity.  To become one with the primordial sea."