Life is fragile.

All can change in a second and leave us in despair.

Marriage can end. Relationship can break down. Job can disappear. And the midst of Coronapandemic we know that death like lurking at us in every single corner.

Facing with uncertainty people will slowly show their true color.

Their true fear will emerge as well as what is their true desire and need. In the brink of abyss of unknown territory people tend to just let go and focus their mind in what is. Our grandparents who were experience living in poverty and war know about this. They have survived the most unthinkable thing in our life time. It what gives them wisdom to live life full of gratitude. It is in such helplessness situation the quality of hero within will surface. They are courage, patient, forgiveness, letting go and all good quality that makes us once again being human.

Yes, life is fragile. And we are as if building a castle in the sand. But the meaning will last forever. It is the moment that we have spent together and create happy memory. It is the lending hand when others in need. The smile on our face that makes other feel safe and welcomed. The good quality that radiates from our inner heart because we choose to raise above all.

A wise men once said, "Even you know the end of time will come and you still have a sapling in your hand, by all means plant it" We might not see the fruit of our good deed, but do it anyway. That's how.

 Feeling bored can be a sign that you are just simply not in-tune with your self or with your surrounding. It's also the condition when you losing your focus on your personal goal. Because when you are really into your goal, you are pratically immersed in it. Just like a gamer who can spent hours and hours on quest of conquering and playing the game from one mission to another. In a way, feeling bored also can mean that we are at that moment is out of our own game. 

Perhaps it's the sense of mission or goal that is being vagued. It can be you simply out of your breath and get tired. Human's feeling is a very complex, usually it never be one or two factors involve to invoke certain feeling.

That's why in time of boredom, you need to pause. Just stop from whatever activity or schedule and deadlines that you are busy with. It's time to give yourself a break. Because what you need is to reoriented and refocus on what drive you from the beginning. Something that slipped out of your mind and heart somehow when we are so get used with doing routines and repetitive chores and activities. 

When you pause. Try to find a comfortable space and position on your own. A quiet environment where you are able to listen to inner heart without any distraction - and yes, it involves turn your mobil to silent mode if you are not expceting any emergency call-. Because the next 5 or 10 minutes that you are going to spend for your own will change the way you deal with your live, in this context - the boredom.

Try to get in touch with your feeling by feeling your breath. It's the essence of life. Breathing is a nature's way of bring in and let go. Not withhold. Just work with the flow. This is also the very basic element of overcoming boredom. Because most often you feel bored because your mind take you somewhere else but at your present moment. And when that happened, you are losing your connection with whatever activity you are doing. When you lose connection, the sense of meaning will automatically fade away. And you feel like you are doing nothing. Hence, the boredom feeling came into your senses.

Feeling bored is not a bad thing. On the contrary, it means you are alive! Because then you can feel something. Take a look at it as a signal that asking for your attention. Stop for a while. See within, what you really need. Where are you going to go. What you really need and what you really want to accomplish. [] 

Do we really have to pursuit happiness?

 It was John Locke (1632-1704) whose coined the phrase 'pursuit of happiness' in his book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he was a major English philosopher whose political writings in particular helped pave the way for the French and American revolutions. Later on, Thomas Jefferson took the phrase and incoorporated it into his famous statement of a peoples' inalienable right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" in the America's Declaration of Independence.

What most people don't know, however, is that Locke's concept of happiness was majorly influenced by Greek philosophers, Aristotle and Epicurus in particular. Thus far from simply equating "happiness" with pleasure, properties or the satisfaction of desire, Locke distinguishes between imaginary happiness and true happiness.

And since happiness in Aristotle concept came from the word "eudaimonia" - what later on translated in many ways become "holy spirit" (daimon = spirit). Then we can understand that the notion of happiness is actually came from within, it never depend or cause by external factors. Because life naturally will always change. The cycle of life is like the rotation of the earth towards the sun that created day and night phenomena. So does with life. Sometimes, night fall and everything seemed dark, vague, even hopeless and scary. But when the morning come, you started to see things clearly. Your fear fade away, the light of the sun makes plants grow and animals alive. All of the liveliness we feel in life is like "the day time of our life". And it is absurd to always want the sun shines in the sky while creatures also need to sleep, and we need some degree of coolness. Just away from the heat of life for a while.

When we contemplate on that. Then we realize that depending our happiness in this ever changing life is kind of tragic, because along with the come and go, we feel evertime the pain and sadness. While there are other way to deal with it. To accept that the night will come, to embrace the pain and loneliness as a part of life. Even a seemingly tragic event happen to us can be a good remedy for our soul. And with that, we don't have to pursue the happiness. By being okay with what is rather than always want to chase what we want. []

Amsterdam in the beginning of fall season, 2 October 2021

Why Doesn’t God Answer My Prayer?

Do you ever feel when you have been waiting SO long for something you wish to happen and it still hasn't happened? Don't worry, i can surely relate!


One of the challenging thing in life is to learn or embody the lesson of patience. It is a BIG lesson for me and i have come to realise that the more we insist on seeing the scenario in our head to happen the more we suffer. Why? Because there is a flow in life and it's NOT in our control.


I personally found consolation in the word of Ibn Atha'illah in the Book of Hikam. He wrote,

"Don't let the keeping back of something you are fervently asking for, make you despair. He has guaranteed an answer to your prayers in those things He chooses for you, not in those things that you choose for yourself, and at the time He wants, not at the time you want."


I read that over and over again

"He has guaranteed..."

"...things He chooses for you..."

"...not at the time you want..."

It takes awhile. To digest. To internalize. To really get it.


Because when you feel that God is not answering our prayers, there is an empty space of knowledge that we must seek and fill. Why? Because essentially every prayer we say, every need we have, every desire that is emerge is merely a reflection of object that God has prepared. This is the truth. We won't be wanting something in our heart, unless there has been an object. In short, without the object God has provided, basically everyone will have no desire to pray.


It's like when we wanting a food because the smell is already smelled from afar. It's just that people are often trapped by impatience and misconception. Like when one of a friend of Prophet Muhammad SAW asked the Messenger of Allah to pray from him because he want to marry a woman that he desire. Prophet said, "Even though yourself and all angels (malaikah) say prayer but if it not his right and not written in the Lauh Mahfuzh (The Book of Decrees), then it would not happen."

His desire to have a soulmate is a hint of an object that God has provided, but his desire for a certain woman is due to his lust.


So when we think when our prayers have not been answered. There is a possibility that we are asking for a wrong object. When God said "Call on Me, [and] I shall respond to you!" In reality He is actually opening a door for us. But it's so often that we are keep knocking at the wrong door. And that explained why we think our prayers have not been answered all this time while His answered came sometimes not in the same reality that we wanted.


Therefore, it is better if we realized our position as a humble servant who does not know the consequences that will happen behind our wishes. And surrender ourself to the will of All-Wise God who choses for us something that is best for our own sake and accept the choice of a Loving, All-Knowing and Wise God. Even though in the beginning it tastes bitter and painful.


But do you know what the most important aspect, the most beautiful purpose and the sweetest result of the prayer is actually NOT in the result of getting what we want. That is just a bonus. But the person who is praying realizes that there is God, a Power, a Consciousness, A Divine Being,  -whatever they want to call it. That is ABLE to do anything. ANYTHING. Who is ABLE to fulfill our never ending wishes and The One who has such Compassion for our weaknesses. And that makes us a better human being.


So, never give up prayer, it is the key to the treasure of mercy and means to endless power. Pray, right now.

How Gratitude Changed Your Life


There is a guy who’s telling a story of how he was going through hard times 20 years ago. He has a Masters degree with a lot of experience and yet could not find satisfying work.

To his shame he was driving a school bus to make ends meet and living with friends because he had lost his appartement. He had been through five interviews with a company and one day between bus runs they called to say that he did not get the job. It was the day when he went to the bus barn like a zombie of disappointment.


Later that afternoon, while he was doing his rounds through a quiet suburban neighborhood, he had an inner wave – like a primal scream – arise from deep inside him and thought “Why has my life become so hard? Give me a sign” he asked. A physical sign, not some inner voice type of thing.


And immediately after this internal scream. He pulled the bus over to drop off a little girl and as she passed she handed me an earring saying that he should keep it in case somebody claimed it. The earring was stamped metal, painted black and there was a letter said “BE HAPPY” in a capital letters.


“Be Happy” – yeah, yeah, he thought. At first he somehow got angry. But then it hit him that he had been putting all of his energies into what was wrong with his life rather than what was right! Then he decided there to make a list of 50 things he was grateful for.

At first it was hard, but then it got easier. Until one day he decided to up it to 75 things to be grateful for. That same night he got a call from a lady who was a manager at a large hospital. About a year earlier he had submitted a syllabus to a community college to teach a course on stress management. Yup, a stress management. She asked him if he would do a one-day seminar for 200 hospital workers. And of course he said yes and got the job.

He did very well in his job with the hospital workers that he got a standing ovation and many more days of work. He spent the next year conducting training workshops all around his city area and met his wonderful wife of 15 years as he told his story. To this day he know all of that changes comes from his attitude to gratitude.

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Life seems difficult when we are not grateful for “What Is”. Because when we are ungrateful, instead of accepting “what is” and be okay with it, we are dreaming of having things that are out of our reach. And that gap between “reality” and what the scheme in our mind create discomfort , if not an agony in our life.


If we are aware of this situation. Then it make sense that in order to cut-off all of our discomfort and suffering in life is simply to adjust our expectation of life in our mind. Let go of what is out of our reach and make the best with whatever we have in our hands.


Start with small steps and apply this on a daily basis, and before you know it it will become your character. Just like Rumi said, “Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life.”[]

Fear is not real

FEAR IS NOT REAL

There was once a town where the thing everyone feared the most was getting lost at night in the "Cave of Fear". No one had ever returned from there, and whenever anyone got lost and ended up there, the last that was heard was a great cry of terror, followed by a few enormous guffaws. The townsfolk lived in terror that one day the monster would leave the cave. So they regularly left gifts and food at the mouth of the cave, and these always soon disappeared.

One day, a young man came to town, and, as he heard about the situation with the cave, he thought that it was unfair. So he decided to enter the cave and confront the monster. The young man asked for some help, but everyone was so afraid that not a single person approached the mouth of the cave with him. He went inside, finding his way with a torch, and calling out to the monster, wanting to talk with it and discuss the situation. At first, the monster had a good long laugh, and the young man followed the sound of the monster's voice. But then the monster went quiet, and the young man had to carry on, not knowing in which direction to go.

Finally he arrived at a huge cavern. At the bottom of the cavern he thought he could make out the figure of the monster, and as he approached it, he felt that something hit him hard on his back. This pushed him forward towards a hole in the rock. He couldn't avoid it, and fell through. Believing that he was about to die, he let out one last cry. Then he heard the great guffaws.

-"Darn it, I think the monster has swallowed me,"

he said, whilst falling.

However, as he fell, he heard music, and voices. They got clearer, and when he made a soft landing at the bottom, he heard a group of people shout:

-"Surprise!!"

Hardly believing it, he found himself right in the middle of a big party. The partygoers were all those people who had never returned to the town. They explained to him that this place had been the idea of an old mayor of the town. That mayor had tried to accomplish great things, but was always held back by the fears of the people around him. So the mayor invented the story of the monster to demonstrate to people how such an attitude was so limiting. So the young man stayed there, enjoying the party and the company of all those who had dared to approach the cave.

And what about the town? In the town they still believe that to enter the Cave of Fear is the worst of all punishments...

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Most of the fear we are confronted in life is not real. There are debris of our past that still dwell in our thought and provoking our emotions. It is not easy when to see it when you are caught up in your fear. But then the only way to deal with it and finally make peace with fear is to recognize it in the first place and confront it eye to eye. And show the fear that you should be the one who is in control of your life. It might not happen in one night. It may take months or even years. It’s okay. As long as you are aware that you and your fear are two different entity. One day, after all long battle. You will find that fear will lost it’s own strength and that is the time to claim back your full control of “self” and finally freed yourself from the haunted ghost called “fear”.[]

If someone tells you, “You are a wonderful person!” and this pleases you more than if he said, “You are a bad person!” know that you are still a bad person.

- Sufyan Ath Thawri