What a lot of baloney ... I am actually very angry with You right now ... I mean, what the hell did I do this time to deserve having to do such a shitty job and no way in hell of being able to save, much more pay off that stupid government debt ... I mean, I went through THREE PSYCHOTIC EPISODES ... Isn't that enough for You, You Stinking Son of a Bitch ...
Sure, I complained a lot about the job that I was fired from, but that doesn't mean I wanted out ... If this is Your way of saying that I needed time out to write my absolutely brilliant novels, well, it sucks like hell ... So, I wrote two novels, but no money to publish them, You Big F**king Idiot!!! ...
Okay, so I had to let it out ... And God doesn't talk back at me ... He just does things that you wonder whether you're already in hell or not ... Although my life right now doesn't exactly feel like hell, I do wonder where exactly am I heading with the way things are going ...
I am in a shitty job with shitty pay and shitty hours ... Do I go on doing it or can I look for something better? ... I already did, for eight f**king months ... I think I may have applied for more than a hundred jobs ... Now I'm thinking I should brush up my scatter-brained-looking resume so that it may look impressive to potential employers ... Then again, maybe I should do something about that unpublished novel ... Which needs a lot of money to self-publish and I don't have any ... What the hell am I supposed to do??? You have all the answers and You care not to share them ... For the first time in my life, I have no idea where I'm heading ... Even back after I regained stability from the relapses, slowly but surely I managed to find my way through, erm, well, life ... But now I am frustrated ...
The only reason I need a job is just to pay off that f**king govt debt ... Otherwise I am just happy doing nothing else but writing ... I have managed to get some sort of stay on the monthly payments, using my mental health situation as an excuse (well, technically, I am a schizophrenic and therefore have a chronic illness) except of course I can function pretty well in society ... The salary I'm earning from the shitty job is not enough to cover daily expenses and pay off the monthly installments at the same time ... So, in the end, not knowing what I am supposed to do, I have decided that if those higher-ups in the Finance Ministry think I have to continue paying off that debt, I'll just declare bankruptcy ... The worst that could happen is that I'd be blacklisted, or I won't be able to travel overseas ... As long as I don't end up in prison ...
As for You, I think I have been incredibly naive thinking that my faith would never be tested this way ... You did it, You've proven Your point, which is, from the way I look at it, is that nothing is ever certain in this life ... The only certainty is You, I guess ... Well done, God, well done ... You've just given millions of non-believers more reason not to embrace You ...
Posted 11 January 2016
The first time it happened, God wanted to see whether I would return to his Path ... He gave me five years, and in that five years, I never repented ... The second time it happened, God was giving me a second chance to return to his Path ... It didn't happen immediately, but with a gentle nudge from a friend, I began my long and slow journey towards the Path ... I recited 10 Ayats per day in the Qur'an and finished it, but did I understand? Had I truly given myself in to God? ... The third time it happened, God wanted to test the strength of my faith in Him ... It took a while, it jarred me ... I stopped reciting the Qur'an for some time ... I thought repentance alone was enough ... But, no ... Faith is much more than that ... Faith is absolute trust in a Higher Being, a Supreme Being that has no association with any other ... Faith is illogical as humans cannot perceive beyond that which they can prove with their limited perceptions ... Thus, I come full circle to this ongoing quest of enlightenment ... Allah gives life to me and brings me to death (and on Judgement Day, He will bring me back to life and all my deeds, good or bad, will be recompensed) ... I prayed for a husband, but Allah showed up instead ...
Take note: Allah has 99 names, and of all the names, the Arabic words for the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful is used in the phrase that Muslims utter before ablution, before every Solat, before reciting the Qur'an, before everything that we say and do each day ... Allah is also known as Al-Qahhar – The Subduer; Al-Khafid – The Abaser; Al-Mudhil – The Humiliator; Ad-Darr – The Creator of The Harmful, among others ... But The Most Compassionate, The Most Merciful is stressed over and over in our ibadah, our actions, our speech ... Why is that? I wish I can give an answer ... But, this blog is not a platform for me to preach about my faith ... It is simply an open channel for me to voice my thoughts, opinions and feelings ... I just hope anyone who reads this will at least try to understand that my faith is peaceful, that is all ...
Post dated 31 January 2013
With the new year ushered in, you may already getting a head start on all those resolutions ... Then by the end of the year, you find yourself sitting in front of the TV, watching disconsolately as people celebrate the ushering in of yet another new year, and as you look at the list of resolutions not achieved, you wonder, "What the hell, man?" ... This unfailing cycle of hopes dreamed up only to be dashed at man's imperviousness at his own failings only serve to strengthen my resolve not to waste not a second anymore ...
I'm on the eve of turning 40 ... It's not so much the question of what's ahead, it's more of "what the hell have I done in the last 40 years?" ... I have nothing to show for it ... Plus, I am completely off the wagon in my attempt to become a reformed junk food addict ... I'm practically on a downward spiral of a long and dark roller-coaster ride of junkfood binge-fest...
All this misery tends to lead you to God, somehow ... I don't know about you, but my thoughts turn to God whenever I'm in a dark place ... Not too sure whether it's because of my Muslim upbringing, or that we are naturally wired to turn to a higher Entity when we're sad, lost, broken or downtrodden ...
But that's what happened to me nearly three years ago, in February 2010, almost a year after I had my second psychotic break ... I was having lunch in the break room of my former company, which at the time I worked for on a temporary basis, after being out of work for some time ... My friend from when I started at the company in 2007 was there ... I can't remember most of the conversation, except that whatever she said, it made me realise that I should turn to God, I mean, really ask for His help, in my hour of need ... Very recently, that friend and I had dinner, and she said she is proud of me ... I asked her, why's that, and she referred to our conversation in that break room back in February 2010 ... She said that I told her I could not work anymore because of the "break", and that was what the doctor had advised ... But look at me now, my friend added ... I'm holding a stable job, I enjoy it, and am doing well ... So, I told her, it was something you said that day in the break room ... I remember God because of you ...
Or maybe God wanted me to remember Him, and my friend was just a sort of messenger, though I can't be saying that my friend is God's messenger because only Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and the prophets before him are God's messengers ...
From that day in the break room, I started to pray ... Try not to miss five times a day, but there have been times that I have missed, not by accident ... As a Muslim, one is not supposed to miss the 5 prayers in the day ... It is the second pillar of the Foundation of Islam ... Nonetheless, my thoughts on the metaphysical and spiritual became less abstract and more defined ... More tuned in to my sense of well-being ... A hole in my heart was slowly being filled, though of course up to today, or at least until very recently, I still feel the emptiness ... Until I decided to start reciting the Holy-Qur'an and understand its translation ...
It took me a read-through of the translation of the "Ummul-Qur'an" (Mother of the Qur'an), which is the "Al-Fatihah" surah, to know, to finally put this sense of feeling something amiss but not just sure what exactly it is, to finally realise that Islam is the faith for me, that Allah, and only Allah, and Allah alone, is the One I should prostrate myself to in humility and respect ... In the final part of the translation, which is ascribed in the Interpretation of the Meaning of the Qur'an, as published by the Department of Islamic Development Malaysia (English translation and commentary by Sheikh Abdullah Basmeih), "Only the right knowledge of Allah's religion can truly guide and lead its adherents towards achieving the real happiness in the Hereafter" ...
The real happiness in the Hereafter ... As my mind mulled over those words, tears came out of these worn, cynical eyes out of nowhere ... Real happiness is what I have longed for my whole life, my entire being seems meaningless without such real happiness, for it truly was never there to begin with ... And to know that real happiness does exist, happiness that is unbidden, unexplainable, ungovernable, so much so that it seems, ironically, to be unreal ... That I am promised this real happiness, that such a promise is made to me, and not to me alone, if, and only if, I stay close to Allah, to His Path, so that I could join Him in the Hereafter ... That, my friend, gives me hope, hope that is true and lasting, unlike the empty promises made by men, and women, in this, what is after all, a temporary life ....
I'll admit, my knowledge of Islam and the Holy Qur'an is very limited, and thus my understanding of its interpretation is open to misunderstanding, which is why it is important for Muslims to seek out as much knowledge as possible ... However, the point that I want to stress here is that I have found faith, and hope, and religion, all the things I was looking for when I started this post (see below) ... There is no such thing as a reborn Muslim, but that is as close a description I can give to my state of being now ... I have found the perfect version of Islam, and it is the version as intended by God in the Holy Qur'an ... More importantly, I am finding myself less apathetic and more concerned with my moral grounding as I continue to recite the Holy Book on a daily basis, like not so much to do with how I am affected by the things I say and do, but how people will be affected by my actions and speech ... It's like my Conscience becomes more pronounced with each day that I recite the Holy Qur'an, and I think this is one of many, many miracles of the verses passed down from Allah to Prophet Muhammad pbuh.
Post dated 26 December 2006
I'm hard-pressed for a good opening when it comes to talking about God, Religion and Faith ..... I know jack when it comes to any of these topics, but it seems appropriate for me at this point of my life to talk about them in light of recent events that have happened to me ....
What I say here is all just opinion, of course (so don't get your panties in a bunch, alright?) .... I don't intend to offend or rebuke anyone who has strong beliefs in an idea or a way of life, but personally I believe in the questioning of beliefs itself ... because our way of thinking is such that we become accustomed to and comfortable in a certain mode of seeing and understanding of this world and beyond once we reach a certain stage in our lives ..... For me, I was way lost in my own comfort zone, and it was high-time I re-boot .....
I'm ill-equipped to talk about religion because I am quite ignorant of other religions, much less know about the religion I was borne into .... So how is it that I have come to this point in my life where religion is no longer part of my Psyche, part of my Consciousness but just a superficial, external facet of my identity? ....
It has been a long journey, one which began with an innocent, naive point of view of this world .... My perspective changed with outside help, no doubt, but to me, my spiritual transformation took more than just counter-arguments and living the lives of other people .....
Whether by design or by default, I wouldn't know .... Perhaps it was Divine Intervention .... the motherboard that hosts my thinking processes got fried some time ago, and in that moment of darkness and despair, I thought my mental hard drive was going to crash as well .... It was as good a time as any to test my own faith in the mind's ability to re-boot .... but perhaps it was God's own way to show me that, hey, he's a cool programmer ...
(Who knows, he's probably sitting in some cubicle right now in slacker mode playing City of Villains with this super-way-cool version of PS2 ... Added 13/12/2007: Darn it, don't have any idea in hell what's the latest RPG/FPS/Strategy/Whatever videogame that's the coolest now .... but there's PS3, which apparently is not as good as its precursors according to Aimo, my would-stay-up-whole-days-to-finish-a-certain-Japanese-dating-simulation-game-friend ... it's much better to get XBox apparently) ....
The mind is a mind-blowing invention - a self-aware, self-programmed bio-organic super computer .... In my opinion, a number of programmes are not installed in there since conception, but only uploaded after birth, and one of these programmes is called Religion ver. 1.0 ..... Perhaps the mental shutdown I had was a blessing in disguise after all .... It was God's way of telling me, "Alright, if you're so smart, you install whatever programmes you want in that brain of yours .... Don't ask me to troubleshoot when there's a problem, but that's the thing, isn't it? You always come to me when there's a problem" ....
Erm, I admit I romanticise God a little too much .... But like I've said, religion is just this programme that is installed in our thinking since birth .... All I have to do is just delete it ... or do I really want to do that? .... Why don't I just delete Prejudice instead? Wouldn't the world be a much better place if we could just delete prejudice from our programming? But sadly, to me, prejudice is one of those programmes that although was installed at birth, becomes hard-wired into our thinking .... Probably because it's such a simple programme ..... Try installing something complicated instead ... like Love ....
Back to what I was saying, we can come up with version Omega of Tolerance, but we just can't uninstall prejudice ..... However, religion is something I can uninstall from my consciousness .... right? ..... I can't uninstall it, it's going to be there along with rest of the junk that's stuck in my brain ..... I can, however, partition my brain and put religion in the I'm-Taking-A-Break-From-This section ..... it's something like ROM of my brain ..... What am I talking about here, I know jackshit about computers, sheesh .....
But that's it, I'm taking a break from religion because all my life, religion hasn't helped me understand the people who should matter to me, and understanding them matters to me a whole lot more than living this so-called way of life which ultimately, in my opinion for all that it's worth, is just some other people's idea of a way of life ..... Hence, that is what I think of religion .... It is mainly a system in which there is regulation .... and the ones who perform such regulation are ultimately only human .....
If religion is the perfect programme, then shouldn't it count in human error? ... Am I wrong in thinking this way? ..... For me, just because I've taken a break from religion, it doesn't mean I have completely stopped believing that it works .... I'm simply looking for the right version .... ver. Perfect-For-Me ...... So I have decided to be my own self, not by rejecting point-blank values that were instilled in me from birth, but by questioning them openly in front of people whose hard-line viewpoints of the world propagated those self-same values ......
So far, I've never had the opportunity to question, because my refusal to do or not do certain things has automatically erected a fortress of dogged denial and flat-out stubbornness around said people ......
Where God is concerned, I'm really in a weird place .... I believe there is a God, but I have stopped believing in him .... The god I was brought up to know, the god that was superimposed on my consciousness, has a nature of duality .... I was taught to believe that if I serve him, and serve him well, I would be granted an eternity of gratification in the afterlife (Is there an afterlife anyway? Why couldn't Death be like what Albus Dumbledore say it should be - death is only but the next great adventure?) but if I diss him, or turn my back on him for good, I would face an eternity of punishment ....
So god, to me, has come to mean eternal Pleasure and Pain .... but I refuse to believe him in that manner ..... God, to me, is all shades of gray because that is how I see the human condition, or the ways of the world ..... If God is supposed to be reflected in all these things, then shouldn't it naturally come to our thinking that God, after all, is a plain right mess? ..... More importantly, when I distance myself from religion, I find that I could disassociate god, or the idea of god, with this be-all and end-all superpower entity ....
In the end, I find it a lot easier to connect to God, once I realize that I'm only looking for Faith, searching for Meaning, and God is simply a symbol of a greater scheme of things .....
So when I say I have stopped believing in God, that also means I have stopped praying to God .... I have been called an apostate because I have stopped praying, but nobody has stopped to ask me why .... most probably I wouldn't be able to give a straight answer anyway .... I don't really know why I've stopped praying .... Most probably because it is an inconvenience, a lot of bother .... Or probably I just don't like the idea of praying and having to show for it ....
I don't like the idea of people (especially people who think it's their rightful business to judge other people) checking up on me to see whether I've prayed or done certain things to show that I'm a believer .... because then it becomes a burden to me, and I'm doing it not because I sincerely want to do it, but because other people tell me to do it ..... But just because I've stopped praying, it doesn't mean I've stopped thinking about God ....
Why couldn't that be a form of prayer, thinking about God? I guess why I'm all bothered about this is that people always pay attention to form, and never function ..... In definition (The New Penguin English), prayer means:
1) A personal request, confession, or expression of praise and thanksgiving
2) An earnest request or devout wish
3) Something prayed or earnestly wished for
So, in other words, when we pray, there's always something that we ask for, isn't it? Sure, we pray for the good health, well-being and happiness of our loved ones, but we also pray for a lot of other things that have nothing to do with saintly intentions ....
Why couldn't it be when we pray, we just want to talk to God, or rather talk with God? What bothers me is that whenever I'm in a rut, I always turn to God and ask for help .... and that bugs me to hell 'coz it seems I always pray for an easy way out .... It's like God has somehow become a wishing well for me, like I hope the problem would magically go away ....
But this isn't true for most people, I know that .... They pray for guidance, the way to find the solution ..... For me, I have decided to pray for the simplest thing - Hope ..... and that's how I see it's possible for everyone, irregardless of beliefs, to have a place in our hearts for God ..... It's called Hope ...... Well, hope is a prayer in itself ....
However, it's a lot less easier to define Faith .... there is no order to faith, one can't use Logic to explain it .... What I want to talk about here is that along with my questioning of religion and god, it seems I have lost my own sense of faith ..... but if I'm praying for hope, then I'm sure to find faith along the way .... I'm not altogether bothered about having lost my faith in religion, but I wonder where I actually stand in this great scheme of things when I have lost faith in faith itself .....
But when I distance myself from religion, I find a lot more room to form questions on faith, or ways to understand it ...... So far, I haven't formed an opinion on faith ..... I guess it's because I'm still looking for it ..... And how would I know what I'm looking for? ..... To me, it's the search that I have faith in, and perhaps some people would agree with me on this - that it's not what we look for that matters in the end, but the journey that takes us there .....
In conclusion, I have taken a break from religion, or rather am trying to look for a better way of understanding its meaning in my life; I'm still trying to figure out God; most importantly, I'm still searching for my own sense of faith .... I hope I would find faith .... I hope (The Shawshank Redemption ending score playing in the background ... This is a little bit too melodramatic ... But you know Brainjuice, always the drama queen) ...
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