Bob Marley ... How To Treat A Woman ...

You may not be her first, her last, or her only ... 

She loved before she may love again ... 

But if she loves you now, what else matters ??? 

She’s not perfect ... 

You aren’t either ... 

And the two of you may never be perfect together ... 

But if she can make you laugh, 

Cause you to think twice, 

And admit to being human and making mistakes ... 

Hold onto her and give her the most you can ... 

She may not be thinking about you every second of the day ... 

But she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break ... 

Her heart ... 

So don’t hurt her ... 

Don’t change her ... 

Don’t analyze ... 

And don’t expect more than she can give ... 

Smile when she makes you happy ... 

Let her know when she makes you mad ... 

And miss her when she’s not there ...

Ram Dass ...

The most important aspect of love is not in giving or the receiving ... It's in the being ... 


When I need love from others, or need to give love to others, I'm caught in an unstable situation ... 


Being in love, rather than giving or taking love, is the only thing that provides stability ... 


Being in love means seeing the Beloved all around me ...

God's love is enough #JafarAlamPoetry

I got a certain smile ... And only a certain kind of love can bring it out #JafarAlamPoetry

Love is in high demand low supply #JafarAlamPoetry

Ignorance got its own kinda depth #JafarAlamPoetry

You gotta go with the one that makes you smile ... Consistently #JafarAlamPoetry

Real love stories never have endings ...

3 Years ...

Toronto. Afternoon. My skin. My heart. My poems. Failed love. #JafarAlamPoetry

Eye To The Horizon ...

Love asks for love #JafarAlamPoetry

Rumi ...

Now that you live in my chest ... 

Anywhere we sit is a mountaintop ...

Why We Shout In Anger ...

A saint was visiting the Ganges river to bathe one day ... He overheard some family members on the banks, shouting and bickering angrily at each other ... 

He turned to his disciples, smiled and asked, "Why do angry people shout at each other ???" ... The disciples thought for a while, then one of them said, "Because we lose our calm, that's why we shout" ... The saint replied, "But, why should you shout when the other person is just next to you ??? You can simply tell him or her what you have to say in a soft manner" ... Other disciples supplied answers but none satisfied the saint ...

Finally, the saint explained, "When two people are angry at each other, there is a great distance between their hearts ... To cover that distance they must shout so they can hear each other ... The angrier they are, the stronger they will have to shout to hear each other, such that they can bridge that great distance ... What happens when two people fall in love ??? They don’t shout at each other but talk softly, because their hearts are very close ... The distance between them is either nonexistent or very small" ... The saint continued, "When they love each other even more, what happens ??? They do not speak; they only whisper, and when they get even closer to each other in their love, finally they do not need to whisper; they only look at each other and that’s all ... That is how close two people are when they love each other" ...

He looked at his disciples and said, "So when you argue do not let your hearts get distant, do not say words that distance each other more ... Otherwise, there will come a day when the distance is so great that you will not find the path to return" ...

Bruce and Brandon Lee ...

War Is Not Easy ... It's Beyond Imagination ...

What you fight against, controls you ... 
To overcome a problem you must not fight ... 
But lead the problem to its resolution ...

Imagination is where all magic is stored #JafarAlamPoetry

Wislawa Szymborska ...

Let the people who never find true love, keep saying that there's no such thing ... 


Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die ...

A life without God is all around unappealing to me #JafarAlamPoetry

How do you find inner peace ??? ... Be and then do ... 
And then do-be-do-be-do ...

Her eyes get heavy and her voice breakable, like cracked soil ... And there she plants and grows everything she has ever loved and wanted #JafarAlamPoetry

Tariq Ramadan ...

If you don't have respect, consistency, and humility ... 
The dialogue is just exchanging words ... 

Bring your light ... Leave your f(l)ame #JafarAlamPoetry

Bruce Lee ...

I have come to discover through earnest personal experience ... 
And dedicated learning ... 
That the greatest help ... 


Is self-help ... 


Doing one's best ... 
Dedicating one's self wholeheartedly to a given task ... 
Which happens to have no end ... 


But is an ongoing process ...

I miss you looking at me, like you had everything you wanted #JafarAlamPoetry

I Need You Baby ...

Only The UnLOVEd HATE ... Charlie Chaplin ...

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