Someone else is happy ... 
With less than what you have ...

New experiences trigger change, only if they cause us to question our beliefs ... Remember, whenever we believe something, we no longer question it in any way ... The moment we begin to honestly question our beliefs, we no longer feel absolutely certain about them ... We are beginning to shake the reference legs of our cognitive tables, and as a result start to lose our feeling of absolute certainty ... Have you ever doubted your ability to do something ??? ... How did you do it ??? ... You probably asked yourself some poor questions like "What if I screw up???" "What if it doesn't work???" "What if they don't like me???" ... But questions can obviously be tremendously empowering if we use them to examine the validity of beliefs we may have just blindly accepted ... In fact, many of our beliefs are supported by information we've received from others that we failed to question at the time ... If we scrutinize them, we may find that what we've unconciously believed for years may be based on a false set of presuppositions ...

Freedom ...

Love poems are quicksand #JafarAlamPoetry

Hafiz ...

    

Illusion fled from all my ecstasy ...

It is no small thing to be loved by God #JafarAlamPoetry

Reason and Revelation ...

TIME ...

Time is the twine to tie our lives into parcels of years and months ... Or a rubber band stretched to suit our fancy ... Time can be the pretty ribbon in a little girl's hair ... Or the lines in your face, stealing your youthful color and your hair ... 


He sighed and smiled sadly "but in the end, time is a noose around the neck, strangling it slowly" ...

An underwater sculpture off the shore of Grenada, West Indies ... 
In Honor of the African Ancestors at the Bottom of the Atlantic ...

Before I die ... I really want to tell someone how I feel about her #JafarAlamPoetry

I had her at "oh hell no" #JafarAlamPoetry

A heart, my love, is a bloody organ ... But maaaaan, the music it plays #JafarAlamPoetry

It was the potential of everything we could be ... And won't be ... That broke me #JafarAlamPoetry

Be mindful of how you release your negativity ...
So that it does not reflect back into your reality ...

The script to my love for you starts with the worshipful heart of Rumi ... And ends with every line he ever wrote #JafarAlamPoetry

Afghan Box Camera ... Kamra - E- Faoree ...

Mining for Gold in the Qur’an ... By Naima Alam

This is a short speech my sister gave at this past weekend's Richmond Hill Muslim Association (RHMA) seminar ... 

RHMA Seminar: Mining for Gold in the Qur’an

(May 5, 2012)

Salaam Alaikum,

My journey with the Qur’an began in University, but RHMA’s Sunday classes and seminars have encouraged me to become a student of the Qur’an.  I had often asked God to bless me with the proper understanding of His Deen, and with the knowledge I’ve gained through the classes I realize I had very shallow, doubtful understandings of very immense life lessons and that Divine Guidance never leaves room for doubt. Contrary to popular belief, a new analysis of the Qur’an has taught me that God is not arbitrarily good or mean, because every action we take, every event, has a good as well as an evil aspect to it, and every result happens according to established universal laws. Namely the Law of Compensation: we get what we give. 

The Qur’an tells us that it already contains everything we ever have to know or ask about anything, and that’s because it’s a book of self-actualization and action. In other words, if we proactively cultivate the enhancing characteristics outlined in it, we’ll achieve success, as this is God’s way of giving us everything we could ever ask for within our selves so long as we allow these innate but sometimes dormant capabilities to surface. As Galileo once said, you cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within himself. As I skimmed the fifteen lessons in a book called The Law of Success by Napoleon Hill, I realized that they were essentially everything the Qur’an comprises: having a definite purpose and clear definite plans to achieve the purpose, cultivating self-confidence and a spirit of fearlessness, taking initiative and leadership, avoiding words and deeds that antagonize others and oneself, practicing sound judgment based on all facts connected to any problem at hand, developing self-discipline and freeing oneself of greed, selfishness, avarice and egotism, analyzing people accurately instead of what we wish to see in them, ridding ourselves of pessimism, doubt, fear, cynicism, and procrastination, being firm in our decisions, deductive and inductive reasoning, willingness to work and take action, being enthusiastic, cooperating with others without friction, turning our desires into reality regardless of the time or effort required, performing more unselfish service for the benefit of others based on generosity, having attractive personalities which includes good health, neatness of appearance, fluent speech, tactfulness, having an open mind and never being closed to logic or Truth, seeking general and specialized knowledge, freeing ourselves from bias and prejudice, meditation and seeking God’s assistance and Divine Guidance, being tolerant and forbearing with those who hold different views, having a sense of justice and sympathy, having a thirst for truth regardless of its source or the subsequent changes one will have to make to one’s life or views, having an ability to analyze things in retrospect, studying cause and effect, understanding the law of growth, understanding economics, and of course the Golden Rule which entails honesty, love for humanity, willingness to forgive, and a recognition of the interdependency of men. 

In RHMA’s Sunday Qur’an classes we’ve truly mined for this gold; with our shallow pans of understanding we’ve delved into our stagnant, murky waters of culture and tradition, which typically encourage wishful thinking and not enough personal accomplishment, and through our class discussions we’ve been able to shake away the dirt and rubble of centuries’ worth of superstition, nonsense, and unsound beliefs to separate them from better, authentic meanings that radiate with rationale, motivation, scientific facts, and logic. Because this gold is denser than all the other things we’ve been brought up with, it quickly settles into our hearts and minds when we swap our numerous untruths for One Truth.

If you truly love a person, you would want the whole world to know that you love that person #JafarAlamPoetry

I love singing to my food ... But only when it sings to me first #JafarAlamPoetry

I am unashamed, unafraid and unapologetic for my belief in God #JafarAlamPoetry

God can do far more with the broken, than we could ever do with the functional #JafarAlamPoetry