The Universe As the Signposts of the Poet of Existence
In the name of God, the
invoked[1],
Khuda, the self-defined and sustained[2],
and Allah[3]
(Sufi reading: Al {singular}-la {phonetically “no”}-hhh {phonetically “ahh”
breathing, the breath, the ineffable essence of Life})
The Merciful (Rahman from
the root Raham {womb}) and Compassionate (Rahim intensified from
the root Raham {womb})
The whole world is a sign towards You.
You hold us unto the limbo of ontological
difference and poetic alike,
So that to awaken us from the
slumber of false dichotomies,
Into neither completely
different, nor completely similar,
The superimposition of original
and common, universal and particular,
As each particle, atom, and cell,
alludes to the golden spiral of Whole,
And each whole refers back to
You,
Zero, one, two, three, five,
eight,
Fibonacci sequence[4],
And You stay at the threshold of
the universe,
Completely unknown,
Only through symbols and
signs,
Through the branches of trees,
To the Sky,
And through the roots,
To the Earth.
Only through the trachea, its
tubular branches,
Only through bronchi and
bronchioles,
Only through alveoli and
interstituim,
Only through interstitium and pleura,
I can breathe you in as signified,
In signifiers, in signs,
Oh, the great Poet of the universe,
And the great Teacher of consciousness,
Praise (Hamd) be to You (Alhamdulillah),
That in “praising-loving”, I find myself, as a sign-arrow-of-longing
to You,
Toward our destiny, the focal point of
existence.
The signified is completely Other than the
signifier and the sign,
The ineffable intractable glue of universe,
--The Merciful, the Compassionate (Al-Rhaman,
Al-Rahim),
Is the self-sufficient (Samad, Khuda),
Who can’t replicate Godself (who begot
no one, nor was He begotten [lam yalid va lam yulad]).
Floating above everything existing (sabah),
glorified in perfection (subhanallah),
“Your Lord, the Lord of Glory, is far above
what they attribute to Him.” (37:180) ["SubhanAllahi ammaa yasifoon” (37:180)].
As the letter is Different from the word,
As the signifier is a symbol and allusion to
signified,
As the word “apple” and “gold”—is Different
from apple and gold.
Nonetheless,
In the poiesis of the Invincible,
In the beginning was the Word,
That thought can’t burrow
to the Divine essence,
But by the mediation of harbingers,
And thus, in the journey through
divine poetic signposts,
And prayers of the soul,
One learns to kiss goodbye,
The
shackles of words,
To lose oneself in the Purpose.
As the butterfly sheds the
cocoon,
As the baby bird leaves
the nest,
As the wheat shines
through the sheath,
As the deeds ascend after death.
In Remembering You.
[What happened to us, that
we forgot You?
Layers and layers of
oblivion and ignorance,
Distance, distance,
In Time? In Space?
Distance in Expansion? Distance in Heart? Losing Direct Perception? Forgetting the Words of Prophets?
Getting close to the Day {of
Judgement}, Farther from our Genesis?
That You are the Owner and
Master of the Day {of Judgement}— malik yawm al din.]
Dropping my masks one by
one,
Along the Exit-Signs,
Passing through layers of clouds
to the Sun,
In my prayers, I stretch
myself above daily concerns,
[The first level of uncovering,]
To adore-love You in
immediacy,
In this adoration, I am
sustained.
In the second level of
uncovering,
In my prayers, momentarily
I forget my family and friends,
Whose love is an intrinsic sign and pathway to You.
I lift one by one,
Layers of longing and
belonging,
Horizontally and
vertically,
Diachronically and
synchronically,
Turning the exterior into
interior,
One by one,
Seeing four loves,
As an intrinsic sign of
the Womb (Rahman),
Oh, the Poet of Existence,
In your Mercy [Rahman]
and Compassion [Rahim],
You simulate and sustain
everything in Your Womb [Rabalallamin],
So that we arrive at Your
Love, before the Day {of Judgement}, [malik yawm al din].
I supplicate to You guide us
to the straight path, [ihdina sirat al mustaqim]
Oh, the Guide, whose Mercy
made the maze of existence a directive Sign to the Beloved,
So that we Remember the
Origin,
In praising-loving You, [iyyaka
na'budu]
And being released from the pain of despair and confusion,
And asking help from You
in our hardships and falling states, [wa iyyaka nastaeen],
So, guide us to the
straight path,
Oh, the Poet of existence,
the Teacher.
Hence, in my prayers,
I must uncover You from
the agony of my mistakes,
And the pangs of guilt and
the gloom of sins,
[The third level of uncovering,]
[The third level of uncovering,]
To come to You straight, [ihdina
sirat al mustaqim],
The path of those whom You
have blessed to Your Presence, [sirat al lazeena anamta alaihim].
In my prayers,
In the fourth level of uncovering,
In the fourth level of uncovering,
I ought to lay bare my
vanity and envy,
I ought to give away my
pretensions and hypocrisy,
I must unveil layer by
layer the signs of separations,
To arrive at Signified,
[Purify me so that I read
the Poem of Existence,
And see You in every
Sign.]
In the fifth level of uncovering,
I ought to wash away all my judgments,
And vacate all positive and negative aspects of my self-image,
I need to relinquish all my arts,
And abdicate my industry and profit,
Forget my artifacts and skills,
Even my righteousness and justice,
Step down from the ivory tower of my creative work,
Even giving up this poem,
To immerse myself in the poetry of the Beloved.
Deviation from the air
In the fifth level of uncovering,
I ought to wash away all my judgments,
And vacate all positive and negative aspects of my self-image,
I need to relinquish all my arts,
And abdicate my industry and profit,
Forget my artifacts and skills,
Even my righteousness and justice,
Step down from the ivory tower of my creative work,
Even giving up this poem,
To immerse myself in the poetry of the Beloved.
Deviation from the air
Is suffocation.
Leaving the root,
Is death.
I am the Need and You are
the Needless,
Declaring needlessness for
the Need,
Is self-destruction.
And Objectification of the
world,
[Through my Instrumental
reason,]
Is the Cancer cell dreaming
its autonomous glorification.
Thus, one falls away from the
Light,
Into the Darkness of
annihilation.
Show me the path that
incurs no Wrath, [Ghairil maghduubi’ alaihim],
In Your Mercy You comprised and recite
ceaselessly the guiding songs,
Oh, the Great Teacher, open my eyes to read
Your Magnanimous Poem of Existence,
So that I won’t be among those who have
gone astray, [waladaaleen
Aameen].
Aameen].
In my prayers, I must set aside layers of
low desires,
My fears and concerns,
My guilt and gloom,
Move from one signpost to another,
Moving along the mediums and mediations,
Ascending above the clouds,
Passing over horizon after horizon,
Travelling seven celestial sky,
To arrive at home, here, now, at Your
presence,
Without any interposition,
When the love-adoration and the Beloved,
The path and pathos, the Signifier and the
Signified,
Are superimposed upon One another.
You reside in the opening of my heart,
Before becoming opaque along the curves of
Fibonacci’s spiral,
Away from my Self,
With the grace of God (Inshallah),
I shall return to my undefiled heart,
And in my prayers embrace the Poet,
[Who is essentially different from the
Word,]
Through digging up layers of whims and
desires,
Egos and personas,
Fears and insecurities,
Guilts and glooms,
Reading the Signs through and through,
And traversing the shadow tunnels,
Inside my encumbered vessel,
Arriving at the opening of the Day,
And letting the Divine Light in.
[1] The Root of the world “God”: The
Proto-Germanic meaning of *ǥuđán and
its etymology is uncertain. It is generally agreed that it derives from a Proto-Indo-European
neuter passive
perfect participle *ǵʰu-tó-m.
This form within (late) Proto-Indo-European itself was possibly ambiguous, and
thought to derive from a root *ǵʰeu̯- "to
pour, libate" (Sanskrit huta, see hotṛ), or from a root *ǵʰau̯- (*ǵʰeu̯h2-) "to call,
to invoke" (Sanskrit hūta).
Sanskrit hutá = "having been sacrificed", from the
verb root hu = "sacrifice", but a slight shift in
translation gives the meaning "one to whom sacrifices are made." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_(word)
[2] The term “khuda” derives
from Middle
Iranian terms xvatay, xwadag meaning
"lord", "ruler", "master", appearing in written
form in Parthian kwdy,
in Middle Persian kwdy,
and in Sogdian kwdy.
It is the Middle Persian reflex of older Iranian forms such as Avestan xva-dhata- "self-defined; autocrat", an epithet
of Ahura Mazda.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khuda)
[3] The etymology of
the word Allāh has been regarded as either formed
"spontaneously" (murtajal) or as the definite form
of lāh (from the verbal root lyh with the meaning of
"lofty" or "hidden").
Others held that it was borrowed from Syriac or Hebrew, but most
considered it to be derived from a contraction of
the Arabic definite article al-"the" and ilāh "deity, god"
to al-lāh meaning "the deity", or "the God".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allah
[4] http://philosophyweeklyreflections.blogspot.com/2017/04/divine-pattern-we-are-eager-to-call-it.html
[5] Nafs (نَفْس) is an Arabic word
occurring in the Qur'an and
means self, psyche, ego,
or soul. In the Quran, the word is used
in both the individualistic (e.g. verse 2:48) and collective sense (verse 4:1),
indicating that although humanity is united in possessing the qualities of a
"soul/nafs/consciousness" they are individually responsible for
exercising the agencies of their "free will" that it provides
them. Much of the popular literature
on nafs, however, is focused on the Sufi conceptions
of the term. According to the Sufi philosophies,
the nafs in its unrefined state is "the ego", which
they consider to be the lowest dimension of a person's inward existence - his
animal and satanic nature.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nafs
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