This is where it all started, and this is where it’s going to end.
I feel the impermanence of my life, the fleetingness of everything I touch.
The ability and willingness of everything to slip out of my hand.
I woke up in this body. Awakened to my family, my culture, and my country. It does not matter whether I believe that this was an accident or by design. Whether I “chose” these lessons consciously, somewhere before life on earth began, or if my personal journey and development was orchestrated by an intelligent system. Designed to shape me into a desired or destined outcome. I’m here now and I must make this life my own. I must find ways to live it up to its full capacity. I must learn how to be human, through this body, through the character, ethnicity, body, voice, and personality I am. There’s no use in trying to do it just like another; someone else I idealize.
Perhaps that is why there is no ‘one’ manual to life. There is no one book that will tell you how to do it. No instructions that are applicable for all, everywhere, all at once. Because the experience of figuring out who we are and what we came here for, is deeply personal and intimate, and unique to each one of us. How I figure out who I am, is very different from how my friends and lovers do.
How do you live with the mystery?
When I awake in the morning and flicker my eyelids, with my eyes still nearly shut, the mystery shows me my environment, and within seconds, it reveals to me my heart’s state. I flicker a few more times, and based on the state of my heart, I decide what I’m going to do first. Mostly, I crawl onto my floor to a corner and shut my eyes, to meditate, or attempt to. I imagine what I want out of my day. What I want to see, how I want to feel, and who I want to be. And I believe that I can choose this for myself.
On occasion, within the first few seconds of opening my eyes, there is pure bliss. There is a gentleness mirrored by the mystery, where everything is beautiful and ecstatic. Like in the arms of a lover. Life is exactly as it should be, and I feel mercy for myself and my family. I feel compassion for the birds chirping outside in January’s freezing air, and the animals astray. When the Amazon worker drives his truck down my street and blocks me from leaving my driveway, I want to offer him a cup of tea and a smile. When my grandmother opens my bedroom door and intrudes, I want to say good morning to her gently.
The states of my heart, my Qalb, the Mutaqaleb, are not mine to take credit for. They are a result of my interaction with the mystery. How much I open to it, She reveals to me. The more trust I build with Her, the more She guides me. The whispers are life itself. How I feel when I walk into a room. The responsiveness of my heart to my states. To the challenges of life. That is life. The mystery greets me when I am anxious, and unsure. The mystery is closest in the dark. When I am vulnerable and alone, the mystery offers all of it to me. The mystery itself is not experienced through the state of total perfection, where every trial and tribulation leave us expanded. The mystery is in the muck, too. God is in the painful encounters, in the unknown, in the contraction. In my mother yelling at me and turning away from me. The mystery is in my body. In what I am attracted to. The mystery is in my voice. In the lovers that stop along the way to greet me. In the hearts that gravitate towards me. The mystery is I, in the people and places I call home. In the heart of my hearts. The mystery moved me to write today. To arrive at a coffee shop, feeling constricted in my expression, and yearning to spill over. Every experience wants to move me towards expression. My mystery, whispers to be let out.
May I honor it.
How do you live with the mystery?