Lost

I get lost in my own mind sometimes. I know, that sounds cliche and meaningless but that’s the only way to describe it. You know when you’re on the phone, deep in conversation, you sometimes pick things up and place them elsewhere, then forget where you put them? It's kind of like that. I get so entrenched in the swirling abyss of the unknown and the unknowable, so disorientated in the fog of the past and future, I forget where I began and how I ended up where I am. I could wake with rose tinted glasses, thinking all is well, and end the day in shades, seeing everything as dark. A kind smile can become one of deceit, something wicked could seem justified. A field of happy children, playing, screeching with joy. But I only see the evil yet to come, or worse, a graveyard. I often find myself at these low points but I rarely reach the depths of existential dread. The kind that fills your soul until every breath you take is excruciating, where all you can see blackness. Deaf, dumb and blind. Trying to scream but your lips are sewed shut and besides, no one can hear you. No one knows what this feels like.

It's not all doom and gloom, however. Like the breath, which rises and abates, my consciousness sines between the peaks of joy and the troughs of deep emptiness, where all that exists is the void. Time spent at either causes me to forget the other. A dip or peak large enough can appear to be a straight line, continuing infinitely into the horizon. But like anything, it's never permanent. This is the only thing I can cling to when I find myself drowning in the depths. It won't last, I desperately try to convince myself, this too shall pass. I repeat it over and over like some crazed mantra, forcing it from mere words into the truth. This will pass, this will pass, this will pass.

For now the clouds are at bay, which is the only reason I’m even sane enough to write this. I’m not, however, at a peak or trough, but in the valley inbetween. The opposite of pain is not pleasure. I may not be joyful right now, but there is a calmness, a stillness, in the absence of emotion. This is the feeling I long for. Not joy, which by its very nature is impermanent, but calm, which holds a powerful promise of stability, of order. It's in this space I can see all the parts working together to pull me apart. All the tangles of doubt can be viewed from far above. Things lose the ‘intrinsic’ good and bad labels I applied to them. I see things as they are, and nothing else. The optical illusion of a narrative is broken. The woman's face turns back into silent craters and seas. The constellations turn back into stars, millions of miles apart, nothing connecting them outside of my neuroses. From here I can see clearly all the tools I have, and everything ahead as a blank canvas. Every person, every event. Any and all things that occur to me. I can connect these dots however I wish, deriving inspiration from anything. The middle-class, burnout housewife in the sitcom I’m watching isn’t crying because her husband left her, but because she’s going through the pain that I myself experienced. The cheesy motivational posters telling you to ‘Believe in yourself’ are not just generic advice, but they speak directly to me. The sun is not shining brightly just because of chemical processes deep within its bowels, but because today, this day, is a beautiful day, and no one can tell me otherwise.

On these calm seas, I truly feel like the captain of my own soul.

On Truth and Reading Widely

Reading poetry gives me the words to express the thoughts I've always had but never been able to express. It gives form to the haze of thoughts, ideas and feelings. To the repressed guilt and the dark memories. To the daydreams and the disturbing fantasies. It gives me a clear view of my mental terrain. I can discern the mountains of firmly held convictions, and canyons of my ignorance. Between them stretch the valleys and plains, everywhere my mind has ever traversed. This expanse of land is the territory of thoughts I inhabit. But there are other lands to travel to. Reading the words of others takes me to these distant places, but I can still make out the familar landmarks from my own terrain. Sometimes I can even see my home in the distance from the mountaintop of another author. Sometimes they have canyons where I have none, and vice versa. Overlaying all these maps together gives me a much higher resolultion of reality than just wandering alone in my own small corner of the collective human psyche.

When reading poetry and other literature, I've come to learn that the views and background of the author, even if diametrically oppsed to my own, do not affect the truth contained within their writings. Each human mind ultimately draws from the same aether of reality, shared human experience and the divinely breathed soul that each person has. Thinking backwards to this point, it becomes clear to see how their words describe reality, and if they are wrong, it can be seen how they strayed from the true path. This can only be done of course, if the reader themselves is reasonable grounded in understanding the true nature of reality i.e. the correct Islamic paradigm.

Once firmly rooted, all knowledge of the world is opened up to you. Instead of being at risk of becoming a blind ideologue, influenced and then controlled by powerfully communicated ideas, you can now cooly detach youself from the works of any author and weigh them up objectively. You have a golden filter that enables you to extract value out of anything, not just works of well written islamic literature. One of the many benefits of wider reading is how it can help reinforce certainity in Islamic doctrines. When a certain ideal or concept is argued for by someone outside of the Islamic paradigm, it demostrates the universality of the idea. It gives strength to the convicion that was previously based solely on accepting divine wisdom blindly rather than understanding it. This is especially true if the concept is argued for based on first principles, or has documented psycological, sociological or historical precedent. Of course, an important distinction must be made between using non-islamic works to demonstrate the wisdom behind an Islamic ruling, and on the other hand, looking to non-islamic sources for validation of an Islamic ruling. The former can only be done by one who is already firmly rooted in faith, whilst the latter can be destructive, as it makes the acceptance of an idea outside of Islam as the basis for it being correct.

Whilst one is still maturing and figuring out the world, it is essential to establish roots within Islamic doctrine and limit any other kind of influence. Beyond this stage, however, opening up to the full spectrum of human thought can greatly enrich the mind. It cannot simply be argued that works written by disbelievers in Islam have no worth, due to their existential ignorance. Some are closer, others further, from the truth, but all, as long as they are physically sound of mind, can conceptualise true and useful ideas. The journeys of converts to Islam is testament to the fact that half truths can lead to the Truth with a capital T.

An atheist may be affected by reading the Bible, and thus want to become closer to God. Along the way, he begins to question the nature of God, becoming disenchanted with the trinity, and yet still feeling attached to the figure of Jesus and the idea of a loving, all-powerful God. This leads him to Islam, which gives him exactly what he was looking for. If we wind back the clock on this story, we can see that the exposure to Christianity, a false religion, ultimately played a meaningful role in the person's journey to the truth.

Viewed through this lens, the struggle between good and evil, as described by the Quran, can be seen in places and times far removed from any direct Islamic influence. Whilst both sides of the struggle were not Muslim, the seperation of Church and state in Europe can be seen as a win for Satan, as it was a precursor to the nihilistic western decadence that is even affecting Muslims in their native lands today. The political commentators and public intellectuals arguing against the dissolution of traditional values and the global hedgemony of western nations are fighting for values that are true, even if they themselves haven't actualised these truths in their full conception by accepting Islam. This is not to make a perennialist argument for the truth in all ideologies, rather this is an observation that, since Islam is the oldest and only true religion, every other way of life is but a distorted version of it, to a lesser or greater degree. Islam could be studied forever, and the scholars of Islam could only write so much. The works of other nations gives us access to countless hours of human research and innovation that, whilst not grounded in abslute truth, can be used to make headway in furthering our understanding of Islam and reality.

I want to read as widely and as much as possible so that I can have the highest level of iman possible before I die. That is the true value of reading.