Living … in a Nutshell

LIVE, for without life, nothing matters. That’s why you take good care of your health.

LEARN, for that’s how you gain the knowledge and skills that enable you to exercise the divine within you by creating things. That’s why you feed and take care of your mind.

LOVE, for nothing created without love can be truly divine and life isn’t worth living without love and the divine. That’s why  you remain steadfast through pain and darkness in building relationships and exercising your heart.

DIE, for a sad as it is, it is what makes life precious (it will come, don’t rush for it)

Leave a LEGACY, for that’s the only way to conquer death, and that’s why you listen to your conscience and reach out to the world with LOVE

And DEATH may well be a break between one life well lived (loving, learning and leaving a legacy) and another life of PEACE and GLORY. Even if death is the end, a life of loving, learning and living a legacy is ENOUGH!

Walking the Valley of the Shadow of Death

You do so, not with joy in your heart, sometimes not even with courage in your own abilities.

You do it with FAITH in your heart, fueled by what you BELIEVE in, by those you LOVE and by a CONVICTION in your heart for WHAT YOU STAND FOR.

Oh, and that valley is not always dark, the thorns in you way are not always visible and the sun might well be shining bright on that path.

Watch your step, for your sight in this valley depends not on the eyeballs but on your faith and powers of perception.

Watch your thoughts, open your heart for your strength comes not from your flesh, but from somewhere deep in your spirit …in that place that is the temple of God within you

Human Quantum Entanglement

Recently at a shopping mall in Madrid, I took the lift to get to an upper floor, and there was this elegant old lady in already in the lift. I bowed slightly (yeah, my  mum did do her job well) and she greeted me with a smile that just raised the energy of the lift like the golden rays of the morning sun lighting up the underbrush of a forest, and she did that while saying “hola!!!” as if I we had known each other a long time. I responded with a ‘hola’ and another bow and smiled back.

Just then, another woman (about late 30s) comes in with her daughter (three or four). The little girl had those large pretty eyes that are filled with curiosity in the way only a pure and innocent spirit is capable of. The kind of curiosity that is undefiled by the drudgeries of adult worldly cares. In the short time it took for the lift to get to the upper floor, I witnessed a moment so intense it felt like forever.

The little girl looked up at the old lady and with those seeking, trusting and lovely eyes which said “right now, you are the most important thing in the world to me”. And the old lady’s response was a smile even brighter and warmer that the one she gave me. Her smile was so brilliant it would put a thousand suns to shame. As her smile radiated from her mouth, throughout her face, you could feel the entire lift electrified by the strands of a wave of pure, holy connection between those amazing women. One at the dawn of her life, the other at the dusk of hers. Amidst the magic , I could sense a bond link these two and within that bond, I felt elegance, innocence, admiration, hope, faith and lots of other good things of which the human tongue couldn’t bear witness. They must have had a conversation, but they did not use words and I and the little girl’s mother must have ceased to exist. We looked at each other, across the lovefield infront of us and instinctively, we knew that this was a magical moment and we were blessed to be caught in its energy.

After what seemed like 30 minutes (but was really like 30 seconds) the lift doors opened and I held it for the ladies to get out. I got into the lift a guy with ‘stuff’ (gadgets, clothes, books) on his mind and got out of the lift a being touched by the divine within humans and the desire to get other stuff I might not need was totally gone. Those two women gave me renewed faith in this life. Yes it is hard, it is unfair, it sometimes seems futile and even cruel but it is also filled with beauty and magic and when we permit ourselves to rise above the petty demands and wants of our egos and lower selves, we can experience those magical moments. If this is the sign of things to come in the Liberated Life (Heaven, Englightenement etc) then the path that leads there is one worth dying on.

To see an elderly lady look back on youth without regret, with a gleam in her eye was a sign for me to also have hope in a better world. I don’t imagine life had never dealt this lady a bad hand, but she had taken it all in stride and from across the ages, she was holding out a hand to the younger woman: “Come on my dear …it is a beautiful life and you will enjoy it!”. I challenge you today, inspite of your circumstances, find something beautiful and let yourself be consumed by it and the moment. I am sure your own magical moment is waiting at the corner. Please share it with us.

Thread Softly …for You Might be Threading on Someone’s Dreams

I was going to say I don’t know what to call these experiences I get sometimes when it downed on me that is was a moment of Shibumi — a moment of profound insight, truth and an ideal coming to life in a poignant way.

I was listening to a TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson …and of course his usual wit and humour was great, but at the end, he quoted the poet Yates and my heart almost stopped beating, and for a moment, Yates, Ken and I were linked in the deep beauty of words so profound they are timeless, so true they don’t need to be explained or defended and so beautiful they almost made a cold geek like me cry (sob sob). The words were these:

“Had I the heavens embroidered cloth

En-robbed with gold and silver light of blue

And the dim and the dark clothes of night and light and half-light

I would spread the cloths under your feet

But I being poor have only my dreams

I have spread my dreams under your feet

Thread softly, for your thread on my dreams“

The magic lines for me are the last two lines. The magical thing about profound words like these is their ability to thread various moments of space and time into a string of utter and breathless amazement. Just as I wrote this, I recall that in one of my favourite movies “Equilibrium” this same quote is used by a character, a quote which when he read, made him question his life and job and made the ultimate sacrifice.

Sir Ken Robinson used those words to caution us that children all over the world spread their dreams under the feet of an educational system and that we (as part of that system) should thread softly.

Simultaneously, I made the link to what happens in countless organisations all over the world, excited employees walk into a job and spread their dreams under the feet of managers and I say to managers every where … thread softly, for you thread on their dreams.

Every day, other people put their hopes, their faith, their trust, expose their egos/fears/dreams and all sorts of priceless things under our feet and so we must be careful how we proceed for all our actions bear consequences.

While I don’t think that people on the path of light should let their dreams be trampled upon, I also realise that for the majority of us, there are those moments of vulnerability – at work, in love, at play in which for whatever reason, we spread our dreams under someone’s feet and how they thread has the potential to scar us forever or elevate our dreams to a reality so beautiful it seems like fantasy and lasts an eternity in a moment.

Every day in your life, you too could be threading on someone’s dreams, what will you be? the one who shatters the dream to feed your own ego? -aka an Agent of Dispair or that one who nurtures the the dream to life and in so doing creates another nurturer?

Thanks to the following who have thread carefully on my dreams: Mum, Nubed Isaac, Nji George, Fortung Amos, Acha Nicholas, Augusta Bah Fon (RIP), Rose Adejoh, Susan Okpapi, Omotola Anna Ogunsote, Iliya Yusuf Joshua, Danjuma Dajab, Boyi Jimoh, Makut Fuki, Dahiru Sani, Tanyi Henry, Tanjong Helen, Amina Ogrima, Bukky Babalola, Wale Adedokun, Mosi Mosugu, Nurudeen Ibrahim Suleiman, Kabiru Chafe,

An Old Couple’s Love Lesson

Whenever I am back on the island of Mauritius, saturday mornings are my moments for feeding my body and spirit, so I usually jog round the lush green streets of Ebene, sit and meditate in the spiritual park near Rose Hill then walk back home. It was on one such trip when I met this man pushing a woman in a wheelchair. I exchanged pleasantries with them, the man and I had a little chat, after which bid each other good bye and I went my way. I also found out they were married and I deduced she was wheelchair bound.

The next saturday while at routine, I met them again and we talked, exchanged pleasantries…and went our separate ways. This happened for about six times, and then one day as I came round the corner, I saw the wheelchair backing me, seemingly on its own…and when I got closer, I realised the man was squatting infront of the wheel chair, massaging the woman’s feet. The care with which he did it … as if he were touching something sacred … fragile …priceless, the gentleness with which he spoke to her, as would a mother speaking to her only child, all that struck a cord within my spirit and I stood there mesmerised. When I got closer and greeted them, the man asked me “Are you married?”. I froze at the question (it wouldn’t be the last time), then quickly recovered and told him that I was not. Then I noticed something else…the twinkle in his eye when he asked the question, you would think he were asking me “would you like to join us in heaven?”. Yes, I felt in his eyes love, no regret and … and almost sensed pity for me for what I was missing by being single.

And I thought to myself wow!!! The woman is wheelchair-bound, I doubt they go dancing, or how often they make love … that is if they even get round to doing it at all or … she that she cooks for him. In short, I just didn’t see her giving him all the things our culture has brainwashed us into thinking women must do for their men and yet there in his eyes was all proof I needed that he was in love, … and loving it. He did go on and tell me I must get married but it was what he didn’t say, or more accurately, how he behaved that left and imprint in my spirit to this day.

I walked home … meditating on what I had just seen (did I really witness this? or had my hyperactive mind gone into overdrive again?) and I offered a prayer of thanks to God. In my heart I believe God sent those old lovers to teach me (or more accurately remind me) of a key lesson about what love is …. not first and foremost a feeling (something I know but have a hard time actually getting to grips with), like Stephen Covey will say …it is what you do (a verb). Love the feeling is a fruit of love the verb, it manifests itself in the loving things we do, like care for others, like put their happiness before ours especially when it is not convenient to us. If we could do that even 60% of the time, we just could live our romantic dreams … to love the woman/man in our life, with every breath we take, every day we wake up (I know a bit of how that might feel, I once fell in love with my own girlfriend). Isn’t that amazing?

Now I don’t know how far those two have come to get where they are today, what quarrels, arguments they’d had, but somehow, they never lost sight of what mattered most. That, and the fact that they probably dealt with their mutual challenges in a way that made love blossom in their lives. It might not even have been ‘they’, sometimes it just takes one person to not lose sight of what matters during the thick of things and to sacrifice a bit of their ego … to give love a chance to grow further.

That was the last time I saw that couple; I have gone back to jog on that same path, and I keep hoping to see them and maybe thank him for the lesson he had taught me, but I never saw them again. They serve as a reminder to me, that romantic fairy tales do exist. If you are reading this, I hope their story inspires you and I hope you will join me in praying: “Father, please teach me how to love like that man, selflessly and totally, with devotion worthy of a child of the path of light. Amen”

[Thanks to Stephanie for editing this post]

My ‘ekigai’ – Why I Wake Up Every Morning!!

“To master a bit of more of myself every day, so I might give it to the service of humanity, as an instrument of peace to the glory of God“ – Mukom Akong

This was one of those things (revelations? realisations) I had in the early morning of 3rd January 2011 when I couldn’t sleep. I got there because I still am always asking myself that question “what specific thing did God create me to do on this earth?“ – an old question I have been asking for some time (still no crystal clear answers yet).

I first heard the word “ekigai” from TEDster Dan Buettner during his brilliant TED talk “How to Live to be 100+” in which he pointed out from research that one of the things common to people who live long is – “ a personal sense of purpose” and for a Japanese community he studied, their name for that personal sense of purpose is called “Ekigai “, which is an Okinawan word meaning “the reason I wake up every morning”. When I heard that, it resonated so deeply with me in the spirit of purpose not as some big grand goal or ideal in your head but one that is all pervasive and helps focus you day by day, moment by moment.

Just think of the following days in your life:

• Your first day at school.
• The starting day of a favourite project of yours.
• Your wedding day (ok, not being married, I can’t relate anything original here, except what I have heard and observed)

Was that day boring? most probably not, and I will submit that the reason these days were fulfilling (not necessarily beds of roses) was that you woke up that day with a reason for waking up that day. Those days for me include days I am to start teaching a new class, the day I am to start learning a new skill. But there is something just plain magical about having that daily sense of purpose that makes you jump out of the bed, with praise in your heart, a dance in step, a twinkle in your eye and anticipation to DO something. And I am one of those who knows and believes in as much as we watch our thoughts carefully to lead better lives, better lives only actually materialise when we DO those beautiful things that we have conceived and those that are revealed to us in the spontaneity of a spiritual moment of enlightenment.

And so in the early hours of that morning, I stumbled on my ekigai

“To master a bit of more of myself every day, so I might give it to the service of humanity, as an instrument of peace to the glory of God“

As I reflect on why this ekigai resonated so deeply with my spirit, I realise that it is because it resonates with something else I have come to realise in my awareness practice – that you can’t give that which you don’t own or master. Our ego is always grabbing our resources – emotional, physical, spiritiual etc to feed itself, the only resources you can give to humanity (in terms of service, compassion, helping etc) are those that you have freed from the grasp of the ego’s needs. Why an instrument of peace? …because “instrument of peace” is a phrase from St Francis’ famous prayer that struck and continues to strike a deep cord in my spirit, (“lord make me an instrument of thy peace“) and as succeed at these acts of mastering a bit more of my self, my preferred form of service is to be an instrument of peace, wherever I find myself. And where I succeed in being an instrument of peace, I will give God the glory for I am always conscious of the fact that such success is it is not due solely to my capability alone (not even from self mastery) …but due to luck and God’s help, for I am sure there are others who will bring more human effort to it and still not succeed.

And you, what is your ekigai?

Freeing the Present from the Clutches of Fear of the Future

In its ever increasing lust to keep our attention focused on itself and control us, our egos often feel threatened by those moments of bliss in which we are so totally engrossed in another person or something larger that us that we pay no attention to ourselves. The ego then finds a way to hijack that bliss by suggesting a threat to the most precious parts of that it. It thus this by suggesting that that which we value most in this moment cannot last for example:

1. Death when we are enjoying the company of those we love.
2. Impending disaster when we are enjoying peace and solace.
3. Betrayal, insincerity or manipulation when are are in a blooming relationship.

In a nutshell, a small voice gets us worrying about the a possible time in the future when the precious thing which now gives us bliss is no longer available to us.

I have wondered, how can I deal with this device of the ego and I think the short answer is “presence and mindfulness“ and here is what I mean:

First of all, realise like all enlightened people do that “nothing lasts forever in this realm and even the sun shall die.“. With that realisation, ask yourself “what can I really do about this fear here and now?“ and you will realise that there is nothing you can do now about that fear of something that may or may not happen in the future. When you realise the utter futility of even continuing to worry about it, you can then push that fear and worry out of your mind and come back to the bliss of the moment.

In terms of practice, when the fear arises, don’t flinch and try to block it off, instead, focus on it and see it for what it is – a tool of the ego to take your focus off the bliss in which it is not the center of attention and bring it back to itself. By putting those dark thoughts and suggestions of fear to the glaring light of conscious observation, they lose their power over us and thus we can put them aside and return to the bliss of the moment.

Sure, the future might be uncertain, but by staying present in the moment in enlightened awareness and concentration, we can live an eternity in the protective hug of loved ones, the effortless mastery in the execution of the task at hand, the trusting and win-win collaboration of working with colleagues and the time-defying, all-healing passionate kiss we are sharing with our lover. Don’t let your ego ruin that moment.

How do you deal with such ego-grabbing? Please share.

Purpose in Life – A Daily Perspective

“Why was I put on this earth?

What is my purpose in Life?”

These are questions that every person who aspires to self mastery must ultimately ask and answer of themselves. And the answers don’t come easy, it might take the first 15 years or more of your life for those question to even cross your mind, probably another 10 years of ignoring them and then maybe another 10 years or so to get an idea.

By the time we get the answer to the question, refine it into a clear and compelling personal vision and mission and develop the resources, relationships, capabilities to actualise it, probably we’d be in our forties. Of course some lucky ones or divinely touched ones can figure it out earlier.

Yes, it can be frustrating and this morning I had a thought (as usual it came to me in the bathroom). While pondering the bigger question of purpose in life, we should not ignore the smaller and probably more important question of purpose in the present, in the NOW. Afteral, we can only live life in the now, by being present and if we could ask and answer the questions:

a. What is the purpose of this task I am doing right now?

b. What is the purpose of this encounter?

c. How may I serve in this situation?

Then we could bring purpose to the present and our day need not be a ‘grind’ but a dance to the tune of clear purpose that changes and responds to each situation and in interlaced moments of spontaneity, we’ll find rest from purpose and just BE …be tools/instruments to be used by the divine, for good, for peace, for progress.

And if we can find purpose and meaning in each day, is it possible that our lives will be without purpose? I don’t think so.

 

The NEW has GONE, the OLD has COME – The Transformation

I stand at a threshold in my life, one I know so many other people have stood at – looking back at 3 decades of life (thanks to all that have been there, even the obnoxious ones) and looking forward with my physical eyes to at least another 5  decades (Insha Allah) and with my spirit, to an eternity.

The cracks of degradation of my physical body are beginning to show (I can no longer work for 48 hours without sleep) and rather than cling to the vanishing sands of my past and youth, I must now make the decision to either embrace the winds of the future, or languish in fires of regrets of what could have been in the house of yesterday. A transformation is going on …whether I choose to accept it or not. I make the choice to accept it and intentionally make what ever adaptations I must make in other that this transformation be one that will bring me and those around me more peace, more love and more fulfillment.

Part of that transformation will be to give up the ‘glory’ of youth for that of old men, and to do this I must transform or let be transformed :

• Youthful strength into strength of character.
• Reliance on my intellect into knowing by intuition and awareness.
• Desires to make myself better into a yearning to serve others and make another life better.
• The need to take into a desire to share and give.
• Independence in for interdependence.

I know it is a journey and it won’t be easy, but it is a journey I must make – one I have chosen to make because I KNOW that it is one filled with reward … I cannot lose and there is ultimately only happiness and peace on that path.

Thus, as I thread this path of light, I pray that a life of discipline, of learning, of service, and of contribution will bear the fruits some of which I have always desired but never had: Patience | Selflessness | Spontaneity | Presence | Silence | Oneness with God.

This I wish myself, every moment …and I wish it to you too.

Giving Up Clinging to the Past

The greatest lesson I have learnt from the Buddhists (..no am not a Buddhist myself) is this:

“At the heart of all suffering and pain is desire“.

After meditating and pondering this for almost four years I have also found by experience its complement, which I state as:

“All the suffering or pain in our lives comes from either desire, or its close cousin … aversion”

Yeah like someone said …”screwed if you do, screwed if you don’t” ie when you desire something and don’t get it … the result is suffering or pain. On the other hand, when you are averse to something and it does happen, you get the same pain and suffering.

A similar dynamic plays out in our relationship with time … for most of us, we go from worrying about the future (either that we won’t get something owe desire or something we are averse to will happen) to reminiscing the past (for the good things that did happen) or regretting it (for the bad ones that did happen)

Well if we think of it …either one of those mindsets is only bound to bring us pain. Not that it isn’t a good thing to think of good times though, sometimes I find myself in strange places amongst strangers that the only thing I summon to keep my spirits high is the image of Perpetua’s smile.

Of recent, I have caught myself in that dangerous mode … specifically trying to sustain dead or dying friendships, conjuring up to the present a past that once was great but is no more. I remember in my dark days I used to have a policy of going through my phone to DELETE the number of anyone I had called thrice who had never called me back. Back then, the motivating feeling was anger … but now that I have resumed that practice, it’s one of detachment, letting go. I still care about those people, after all they were once great parts of my life …but I choose to let them be, with their new friends and priorities and I ACCEPT THAT I AM NOT ONE OF THOSE PRIORITIES.

So if we should not desire or be averse, what then should we be? … The answer for me has been to SAVOUR the moment. This moment right here, devoid of all my desires and aversions that are yet to materialize, this moment is the ONLY thing I have any real experience and claim to. An by being mindful, I choose to live  and savour it by…

• Letting the act of kindness happening in front of me fill my heart with love and my brain with serotonin.
• Counting each of the lavenders, bougainvilleas, wild tomatoes and lemon grass blades that smile and sing to me as I jog in the morning.
• Letting the glorious melodies and lyrics of whatever song I am listening to lift my spirits.
• Reveling in and bursting with admiration for the creativity in the painting, the movie , the dance, the football moves et ..

And with all that I hope that by not clinging to the past or the future, I will not ruin the great present of the present moment which I have NOW.