A Journey to Ressurection: Part II Update 06-05-2015

Note:
please read the part one first if you haven't read it earlier . the links are below

http://rahmanarshad.blogspot.com/2014/06/rejuvenation-part-i.html

One Month Back

Writing and deleting, rehearsing and forgetting, mumbling and shouting Navid had spent the whole night working and walking through his thoughts.

A few modest things change the normality of a universal day for someone. He was aware of this fact but never actually realized it before this day. The constellations of his thoughts were acting weirdly the whole night. He could feel coherence between them and the celestial stars.

‘Why people put their fate in the hands of mere constellations when they had always been here to brighten away the darkness of night and show us that hope exists even in the darkest paths of life by guiding us towards our destinies?’

All through the way he kept on looking towards the stars that were guiding him towards the twilight. He had read all the manuscripts of Meem. and was ready to take down the path to self but before undertaking this journey he wanted to meet his spiritual guide, his North Star—Meem. for the very first and the last time.

Navid Maliksabet belonged to a Persian family settled in USA for three generations now. From his childhood he was contemporized with the fashionable, self-selective idea about religion and he never had time to opt one for himself. After obtaining his degree of Civil Engineering in 1986 he decided to move to Dubai as it was now on the verge of setting foot in the race of economic giants.

When we don’t have a religion or faith to follow, we become possessed by barrenness and life seems like a Pandora box. Soon this barrenness starts to project the rejections of despair and we start to hallucinate evil. After the outburst of the evil glitches a person becomes contrite and tries to find a path beyond this despondency.

In times like these, people start looking for guides, mentors, and gurus to lead them to a path of peace or possibly a Faith to accept.

Similar situation arose to Navid when he started to realize that he had no one to repent his sins to, no one to ask from and pray to and no one to whom he could look unto in despair. His days were spent in the office working, designing new buildings and his nights were spent demolishing the damaged skyscrapers of his empty soul. Emptiness gives birth to demons and they are nurtured in the darkness of soul.

Angels as we all know are made of light...a pure light called Noor. Till the time this light is undisturbed it stays purer, serving the one goal; positivity.
But God knew that this light has another perspective, its shades and its reflections.
So He made our soul with the same light and gave us a body made of soil & flesh---specie given a brain acting as a prism a device to reflect back the shades of this light by their own desire. The clearer the mind the light will pass through unreflected. Some minds absorb the whole light and the light is lost and reflection of darkness stays back while others like Navid reflect various shades trying to focus all the shades of light towards their heart to make it pure again.

One day on the demolition site of an old building he came across the hand written notes of Meem. He cleared the dust from the notes with a blow.

The notes were titled as ‘Reflections of my demon.’

Going through the leafs he stopped at a paragraph which was writtern as; “ every morning me and my demon met at the banks of lake Izmis and every night I hoped that a flood will wash him away someday. It took me three years to understand a simple fact that it was not my reflection that was the demon it was me who was the demon.

It was the day of revelations.

It was on this day I realized that I was not the only nomad in this area and I met Dara for the first time. After a small introduction he told me that he had been witnessing my act from the very first day I arrived at the lake. He told me that he didn’t want to disturb my ritual as its purity lied in the serenity and if there were to be any intrusion in its performance I would never have succeeded.”

Navid was moved by the manuscript at that very instance and he decided to read it all. He spent the next few days going through it word by word, page by page. It was a travel account of Meem, a journey that he took towards freedom from his demon.

The notes acted as the cold air in summers telling that there is a thunderstorm nearby and it’s raining there. All Navid had to do was to look for the origin, so he started to look for Meem. He had seen the lightning and was now moving in its direction that would lead him to the roar of freedom.

He started with his search through internet first, hoping that Meem would be some renowned writer. When the search came out empty he started to look for him in the convention centers, mosques and universities thinking of him as some religious scholar. Desperation and hopelessness had started to set in but it was his only chance to find out the answers that were bogging down his existence and he could not give up now.

He asked a colleague for help who told him to visit a shrine and asked him to pay alms to the poor. His friend told him that the ritual often led to wishes being granted and prayers being heard. On the Friday morning Navid went to that shrine. When he reached the shrine he saw a lot many people bowing down to the grave of the saint buried in that shrine. He was confused about the way people were paying respect to that man.

He asked a devotee about the purpose of this ritual. The devotee answered that these people think that their sins were blocking the path of their prayers and the spirit of the saint helps them by carrying their prayers to God.

Navid, in a confusion asked, ‘doesn’t your God say that He is closer to you than your own jugular vein, then why need the medium?’ The devotee was startled by this question and sufficed on this answer only ‘religion is not for those who question. Go away.’

Navid looked towards the sky and said in the tone of conversation’ I have known no God or Allah my whole life. I have always thought the world existed without any reason. The deeds never mattered to me. I never helped anyone or prayed to anyone out of reward or fear. It was always because my heart guided me that it was the right thing to do. And now my heart says there is some force that drives this universe. If this tiny world needs governance to run smoothly, to provide justice, to fulfill needs, to reward then there is no way that this universe can run on its own. I have seen you being known in so many shapes that I cannot decide which one are actually yours. Please listen to my plea and guide me to the person who is actually capable of revealing the true you’.

With this thought he walked to the people sitting outside the wall of the shrine waiting for alms to be distributed. He started to distribute the food he had brought with him. After distributing the food he walked towards his car, unlocked the door and lit a cigarette. Though smoking is a bad thing for health but at that time it was acting as a soul incinerator burning down the harmful thoughts of failure from his heart.

Unsure of what to do next to find Meem, he drove back to his apartment and started to read the manuscripts of Meem to ferret out clues to find him. He was turning over leafs in exhaustion, almost destroying the already damaged manuscript. A sudden fixation occurred and his eyes got focused on a word “pearl hunting”.

Pearl hunting is an ancient occupation in which a person dives in the ocean to depths of hundreds of feet carrying stones to aid in diving and holding down his breath to collect pearls from the oysters found in the shallow sea bed. Dubai was a big market for pearls and was renowned all across the world before the discovery of oil.

“How a person like Meem could end up in a business like this and how did I miss this clue?” with an amazement and brio Navid started to read the page

‘With just dried dates to eat and a pint of water to drink daily, we sailed from Gulf to Sri Lanka in search of pearls for months. I had no interest in the wages offered or the pearls found. The only thing I was looking for was a cure that could heal my soul and diminish the voices of my demon. The captain (Nukhada) whose name was Abdullah bin Al-Tawhidi used to call me Majnoon (mad man).

The alias “Majnoon” never bothered me and I never complained about it. Abdullah was a very practical man and believed in simple realities of the world or at least I guessed so. The blurry eyes, stern look, slurry voice and white untidy beard clearly indicated that he had taken the beating of a life. He used to say that one only sails a ship if he is a sailor or a tourist, one dives into the ocean only if he is looking for a treasure or hunting for fish. In my case however none of this was true and I could not explain my cause to anyone. Every morning we dived into the sea bed tying baskets and ropes around our waist and searched for the oysters.

I never really searched for oysters and my focus was always to attain seclusion. The demon of my past had infected me like a plague and I wasn’t able to find a cure. I felt its qualm all over me whenever I came out of the water. I had become a contagion which needed to be quarantined from the world.

Other divers (Ghasah) bullied me for being a Burdon as there were no wages on this ship and the divers shared only a part of the profit earned from the pearl sale.

We humans are just like Oysters.

A natural pearl begins its life inside an oyster's shell when an intruder, such as a grain of sand or bit of floating food, slips in between one of the two shells of the oyster, a type of mollusk, and the protective layer that covers the mollusk's organs, called the mantle.

In order to protect itself from irritation, the oyster will quickly begin covering the uninvited visitor with layers of nacre — the mineral substance that fashions the mollusk's shells. Layer upon layer of nacre, also known as mother-of-pearl, coat the grain of sand until the lustrous gem is formed.

From the time of Adam we have erred, infected our soul and after that we protect it by forming layers of grief, atonement and prayers just like a pearl.

The only difference between us and the oysters is that we plant the grains (sins) ourselves, we embrace despondency and then a very few fight back like the oysters whereas most of us mourn the demise of our soul.

I was lucky enough to have realized that a soul could be contaminated and cured as well.

One evening, Captain Abdullah invited me on the quarterdeck of Al-Sanbook (name of the boat). He offered me a cup of coffee which I accepted thankfully as it was rarely served--if there was a huge catch, when news arrived about the rise in pearl sale or while the ships were returning home after the hunting season.

Looking up in the sky Abdullah spoke in a suggestive tone ‘Son, I have spent whole life navigating these seas and travelling far ends of this world but never in my life have I encountered anything strong as well as suicidal like belief. I have seen people becoming storms and I have seen people turning wrecks. We witness this war our whole life--between mind and heart, between body and soul, between our thinking and our deeds. No matter how many boats you travel in, the ocean remains the same. Belief is just like the ocean, it will nourish you it will provide you comfort, it will test you and it will accompany you wherever you go.’

“Remember”, He said adding, when guilt and despair combine they become an incurable disease called suffering. It’s even than leprosy; a leper at least knows that he is falling apart”.

“Am I suffering”, I asked in a grief.

He said” I am not a scholar son. But I can tell you about a person who surely can help you. Solitude may not always provide you the answers you are looking for because you are fighting two fronts at that moment, your guilt and the demon inside you. In times like these it is always better to look for a companion who can guide you towards the light.’

It was the first time I came to know about Dara.’