a daylight dream

In the spaces between my breaths, I linger there awhile, returning to the darkness of the source. I allow all my doings to become undone; for the less I have of that, the freer I am. There is so much brokenness inside. So much brokenness deep into my roots. When it’s winter and all my blooms and leaves fall, there is only brokenness left. I’m not sure what it is, but there is something I miss so deeply. I miss God, I miss the truth, I miss the darkness and the infinite wisdom that knows and does with so much love and benevolence. And I miss you. I miss you till it hurts, till my eyes well up, till the storms clear. I miss you till I’m filled with the sweetest blaze.  And that’s the deepest longing, to be with you till we know we were never really separate, and in some afterlife, we will never be separate. @sunlightafterdark

  I’m up at dawn in the quiet stillness of my room. The worm-eating birds have concluded their songs, and now it is time for the others to rush in towards their cacophonies. Sometimes I know what they’re singing about, but this morning, I’m not so sure anymore. I spent this morning heaving with uncontrollable tears. I’m not sure where they’re coming from, but they’re purifying, healing and eye-opening. They seem to swell from every part of me that has not opened the gates of love. I’m heaving with a plea of forgiveness for forgetting the essence of who we truly are. This morning, I just can’t wait to see the truth. I truly pray to see God and thank Him, kneel down in infinite prayers, thanking him for bringing light to the darkness of my life. I used to be so torn, so afraid, so filled with doubt and hurricanes of hatred. I used to be so far away..  And now I know what real gratitude feels like, and I am carried by the day to relive experiences of gratitude over and over again...

  I now know what love feels like. It’s a reducing force, and paradoxically expansive. I’ve been touched by a glimpse of it, and it has rekindled a golden flame that is ever-present and ever-glowing. I now see that all is a gift. It is not I who does now. What is before me is quite nameless and unidentified in the light of God’s doing. Gifts come in pilgrimage to God’s light that scintillates for brief moments of my day. This is how it feels like, now, for there is no other explanation. It’s God’s goodness that attracts and repels, just so that all annihilates in his presence. I’ve been touched by love, and every moment feels like a prayer. My heart aches and pains, and I’ve been spending most of my nights now in tears for my helplessness. I wake up each dawn remembering, and find ease paving the way over again. There is longing, but there isn’t, too. The self dies while it longs, and it is captivated by the serene equanimity of a soul that has been touched by love. It is held and ...

This week was just filled with many blessings. Everyday I come home and feel a sense of lost wonder, in awe at how I’ve lost the words to truly describe all the beauty that has been captured. My eyes have grown to become so accustomed to see God’s love, and it’s rippling all throughout the realms of existence. It gets too hard on me sometimes to begin to explain how grateful I am. My trials get mistaken for enthusiasm, passion and energy— but it’s simply that I’m just trying to explain how beautiful God’s love is. This light is impersonal, and it has nothing to do with me and my efforts. That is what keeps hurting me incessantly, forking a deep wound of just wondering why all these gifts are so unreasonably abundant.   I can’t help but go back to my fears of not feeling like I deserve this. I go back to judging myself so that I am worthy enough to receive this light, and the trail of imperfections is ever-infinite. My companion told me, just this morning, that we never deserved it....

Last night, I was triggered by how my energy just seemed to touch everything I came across. There have been wildly beautiful occurrences: gifts, people asking for help in healing and witnessing the light of love transform everything it lands upon. Upon sleeping, I felt afraid of this light that seems to be out of control. One cannot really predict the way God’s light ripples across unexplored terrains. This is how it has been lately, echoes of lands and hearts touched by this light have been reverberating back to me, and helplessly, I’m not sure what to do to contain it all. I told myself that perhaps it would be time to be invisible and cast away this light for a while. It has happened to me before, perhaps when I was younger, I’d decide not to speak and not show my truest nature in fear of the love in my heart and it’s uncontrollable power. But this when I had the most heartbreaking dream that woke me up with insides shaking in fear. Until now, my hands are shaky and I can’t seem to ...

I will never regard myself as proficient in language until I have found enough words to give thanks. As I walked this crisp morning, crows hollered at me as they ruffled their feathers on barren silk floss trees in tormenting dismay. They sped through the pristine sky with their pointed beaks in fatherly dominion as if taken aback by me not bowing to their distinctive dawn chorus. And oh, it is such a pristine, clear dawn— a gift from the southern and western winds the day before. If it weren’t for the hostile dryness of last afternoon, the sand bellowing in excrements, it wouldn’t have brought us northern, moist and friendly clouds. It wouldn’t have made spring possible, without the rather inapparent dew that covers the grounds for the grass blades to shoot in confident conviction for its place in the wilderness. How I felt agony at my heedless planting of chamomiles when it was not timely, they would have been better planted in warmer times. I always wondered why bananas and strawber...

Our wounds have been carried to healing shores and for this, all is a gift. Wordlessness combats the never-ending drive to say something of use, and even at peak moments of delight, there is not much to say. Do you hear my heartsong? This life is a gift of purification, even the darkest seasons show us the need to detach from non-surrendering convictions. And how I fall to my knees now in deep thanks for all the things that keep resistance afloat so that it can be carried gently to loving lands. All what cut deep in hurt, so unjustifiably, made us realise that beneath it all is a fabric of truth were loved is weaved in through. I look at all what I’ve never accepted, and it collapses, even dissolves in the light of God’s unrequited kindness. I’m wordless and I see our wounds. The gift is the smallness that carries us to forgiveness.

I never really though life could be lived with such effortlessness. The most intimately beautiful things that have occurred to me were merely gifts. I grew up knowing for sure that chasing ideals was the way forward. But how is it possible that I don’t need to do anything to receive substantial blessings that turn my world around? It keeps happening over and over again. Blessings fall from open skies to my open heart, and right in time. In retrospect, even the delay is a gift. There is no way now but to walk through the alleyways of this world with trust that all is guided and foreordained— the faintest whispers of my soul have already been heard. It requires both time and timelessness to receive, and somewhere in between, one spends the time in forgiveness and selfless giving. That is the change of heart, it seems. It is subtle and faint, hardly noticeable, a transformation that sheds the weight of fear and uncertainty. All at once, the sky floods with all what we need with unrequited...

I know I am a human, and in Arabic  insan , coming from the root word  forget . I know I have forgotten my essence, my truth, my God and my path of surrendered love to Him. Yet, I remembered, and in those glimpses, it feels like all is well, all is cosmically aligned, integrated, entwined, balanced, recycled. In those glimpses, all need dissolves. I remembered, and I changed. I don’t need to look into a mirror to see myself— I see myself in all that is my life; wherever there is darkness, there is me, too. I remember, oh God, I remember. I remember once, I was so intimate with your wisdom. I knew You, and I trusted your power. I trusted and gratitude overcame me. I surrendered and nothing mattered anymore. In between forgetfulness, I remember again, and it is so elusively sweet to remember your Love and your compassion, your flooding benevolence. It’s all there is. My fluid joy manifests beauty in the world, and truth is expressed through me. My existence becomes your servant....

With awakening to love, the illusion lifts softly. All of my life I’ve lived believing that the destination was the essence of all that mattered. With that in mind, I’d ruthlessly look for something that exists outside of my own being. Chasing, worrying, doubting were natural ways of trying to walk through the path of the unknown. It never felt right to find myself in the land of my dreams like this. With the truth in heart, the journey is identical to the destination. What is done with soft currents of love yields the dream. Intention becomes the most essential, and with that, forgiving the time it takes to truly get there once the land is ready to receive. Sometimes I forget, but my intentions don’t. The heart mirrors the intimacy of my soul to reflect itself upon the path I walk. It is a path to be walked with reverence, ease and co-creation. And so as I walk, I am transformed to be the person who’d always needed to reach the land of my dreams. The soul always finds itself home, eve...

I’ve always dreamed of planting trees and gardening somewhere forlorn, where attention is never deep and nurturing enough. Back when I was seventeen, I’d look for places around me to garden, and I’d find myself chasing dreams every Friday during my long walks around the city.   I never knew why I wanted to garden so much, but I just knew that the child-like spirit in me always lived in the wilderness. A picture of me when I was four years old, crouching by the sand, daisies in my hair and a water bucket in my hand always haunted me. This was the  truest  me. And now I’m almost 24, and this dream came alive. I desperately longed for it ever since I was in university, but it was just never the right time. There was a distance that had to be covered traipsing up towards it. I gazed lovingly at my life intentions list on my bulletin board and surrendered it’s happening. I had to go through so much to garden with reverence. The sacredness of the experience is humbling. Somehow...

  It’s happened to me the first time in October of 2019.   I’d be sleeping soundly when all of a sudden, I wake up with a jolt, my eyes filled with tears and my heart being ripped apart with deep longing and intense waves of love. Sometimes it’s a dream, but I must say it’s not. It’s something beyond that. I’d not be seeing anything before that moment, but when I do open my eyes, something just falls into my lap. An intense dream-like vision of a timeless space where transformation begins. Just like today, I woke up before 3 am, my body squirming as it comes alive after a deep sleep. Instantly, I’d find myself streaming with a knowingness so profound of some experience that will change my heart forever. It hurts. My chest collapses and I keep turning, feeling resistance to what the mind cannot comprehend. I cry because it transforms me, this knowingness, and I stare into the blankness of the night with such helplessness, not really knowing what to do. I’m not afraid, but I don...

When it’s dark again, and it gets darker later now that it’s spring, I go back intentionally. I go back to when the world was coloured in the sweetest green and gold. When the sky was soft in lilac hues and the earth was the perfect kind of dry grey, softened by the moist sand underground. I go back to when I sat with you, your eyes wide but at peace. Your eyes soaking the beauty of the world so gently and my doubt dissolving in sunshine. It’s been two nights now and I keep going back. I pray not to forget. Oh God, why do we forget? I don’t want to.. I want to remain this soft, this present, this selfless. Please, help me not to forget. Help me remember how it felt like so I could keep giving with such grace. Help me remember so that I continue to serve You in the name of love. Dearest God, help me remember, even if it feels like dying. I’m willing to die again and again— but I just want to keep remembering my truth, and it’s who I saw in your wide, inscrutable eyes and your skin glowi...