Love’s Unfolding
by Adila Ahmed
Its peculiar to me to speak about my ‘mental health issue’ as though it exists in isolation separate to life’s natural unfolding, or indeed the context within which I exist. For me it raises the question, is it unique to me, organic only to my physical and emotional being and separate from a more interconnected world? I don’t think so.
The very way we speak about mental health is in fact problematic. I suppose it can serve a purpose in that it might help communicate an experience, inform one of where to direct the delivery of therapeutic services: but it can simultaneously condemn an individual and become an inevitable if not predictable part of a movement to disempower and isolate individuals when they are already facing numerous challenges, and in fact may be the sanest people in a world gone mad.
I have questions about failing systems that collude in abusive and unequal power distributions. I have questions about whether service industries manage to sustain themselves ethically in a world where so much spin exists to engineer a constant demand for pharmacopeia and cosmetics on the back of people’s insecurities & vulnerabilities. I have questions about the exploitative methods used in marketing which generate perpetual feelings of failure, failure of not achieving, not having, failing to succeed or be enough. I have questions about therapists who themselves might live by heteronormative patriarchal production & acquisition focused models and not be aware of how these may reproduce subtle and not so subtle systems of abuse and inequality. I am not necessarily cynical about individuals providing services, but I do wonder about how aware we are of our own collusion in exploiting individuals and maintaining systems of power and control that are inappropriate if not outright abusive. I am becoming more and more aligned to the perspective of ‘normal’ being a myth. Dr Gabor Maté speaks about diseases being a culturally manufactured culturally constructed paradigm. My inclination is to agree.
‘I pray they both rest in eternally loving peace.’
With this preamble out the way I suppose I can continue. Broadly speaking one could say I have experienced vicarious trauma and bereavement. I could also elaborate a little by saying that my identity presents its own challenges, a British born Muslim woman, an ethnic minority, second generation immigrant, being queer, and committed to activism, I am always trying to navigate my way through spaces safely & with some integrity. It is a landscape fraught with challenges as well as opportunity. What do I do when my inclination to not ruffle any feathers and keep the peace can lead to me burying myself in unlife and unlove? A friend of mine shared a book with me earlier titled Michael Rosen’s Sad Book. It is simple in communicating how changed Michael is in the aftermath of his son Eddie’s death. My eyes filled and I felt a responsive ache in my heart when I read the words “sometimes because I’m sad I do crazy things”. Such simplicity and unwavering acknowledgment.
My mum, who passed away in July 2016, would tell me about a recurring memory for her. It was a memory of my late sister as a child. She told me that my sister would sit on the edge of the bed and swing her legs back and forth. They were in Pakistan, and it was shortly after the partition, war planes would fly overhead, the loud noise would frighten my sister who was just a toddler at the time, she would run and seek protection between my mother’s legs. My mum told me this with a soft gaze, beheld in her mind’s eye a memory so vivid and dear, her voice would quiver and I could hear the pain of loss and eternal love. I feel it too. I have my own memories. Of walking through the door of my house and finding that it smelled like toast, my sister and mum would be talking and laughing. They would call me to join them have tea. I remember that I did not understand their conversations, I was too young and they were talking grown-up talk often in code and hushed voices, but I felt their love. I pray they both rest in eternally loving peace.
Coping
For a time after my sister died I managed to numb myself so completely that I was not even aware of any pain. Sometimes people drink or do drugs to cope, I threw myself into meditative activity. The thing about numbing oneself through this method is that it is so sophisticated. There’s no opposition or apparent carnage, just approval & encouragement, you learn quickly to reel off all the words from the scripts you’ve become so familiar with, yet internally there’s dissonance. Everybody around you breathes a sigh of relief because you’re not getting messy. You yourself aren’t even aware of what you are doing, and then there’s always the reliance on God to seize and deliver you into the right place at the right time.
In truth, I only connected to my own pain when I started to listen to others who dared talk about theirs. If I’ve learnt anything it is that sadness happens. It is loves own testimony & expression. It is not bad, it is not one being ungrateful, nor being overly identified with emotions or being stuck. It is just love doing what it does. A dear friend shared this reading with our spiritual group recently. I wonder if I’m being fanciful when I think it was a sweet ploy, an invitation for a few of us to come back to life and be more animate? I do feel like I am just going through the motions sometimes. Like there is really nothing alive in my interiority. I was so touched nonetheless by his gesture to share this reading.
Love’s Unfolding
If anyone asks you about Houris,
Show your face and say, “Like this.”
If anyone speaks to you about the moon,
Rise up beyond the roof and say, “Like this.”
When someone looks for a fairy princess,
Show your face to him.
When someone talks of musk,
Let loose your tresses and say, “Like this.”
If someone says to you,
“How do clouds part from the moon?”
Undo your robe, button by button,
And say, “Like this.”
If he asks you about the Messiah,
“How could he bring the dead to life?”
Kiss my lips before him
And say, “Like this.”
When someone says, “Tell me,
What does it mean to be killed by love?”
Show my soul to him
And say, “Like this.”
If someone out of concern
Asks you how I am,
Show him your eyebrow,
Bent over double, and say, “Like this.”
The spirit breaks away from the body,
Then again enters within.
Come, show the deniers,
Enter the house and say, “Like this.”
In whatever direction you hear
The complaint of a lover,
That is my story, all of it,
By God, like this.
I am the house of every angel,
My breast has turned blue like the sky—
Lift up your eyes and look with joy
At heaven, like this.
I told the secret of union with the Beloved
To the east wind alone.
Then, through the purity of its own mystery,
The east wind whispered, “Like this.”
Those are blind who say,
“How can the servant reach God?”
Place the candle of purity in the hand of each
And say, “Like this.”
I said, “How can the fragrance of Joseph
Go from one town to the next?”
The fragrance of God blew from the world
Of His Essence and said, “Like this.”
I said, “How can the fragrance of Joseph
Give sight back to the blind?”
Your breeze came and gave light
To my eye: “Like this.”
Perhaps Shams Ud-Deen in Tabriz
Will show his generosity,
And in his kindness display
His good faith, like this.
Divan-i-Kabir: 1826
‘they plant them in the soil of their souls’
Over time, my strategies to cope have changed. In the beginning, I felt it was important to be naked in vulnerability. A legacy of my sister’s, that in vulnerability was an incredible authenticity and refusal to shy away from one’s circumstance or state. There was no denial. I always admired this in her, and I vowed to be more like this myself. I would share openly and trust the process because it was something I had learned from love, from her. This came with its own lessons. Sometimes I would feel the shame of oversharing, when I’d look to the face of a friend and find instead of compassion, a reactive mirth. Inevitably of course several times I’d feel disappointment & betrayal, which would then translate into self-reproach for sharing in the first instance. Other times I would sit with friends who would hold space for me and they would give meaning to it all. I feel deeply grateful for this.
More recently I’ve retreated into a different set of behaviours, a quieter more private space, and I realise that it is because the very sacredness of loss and pain, and my need to honour it with the most exalted company. You are probably familiar with the sacred domain of the mahram? Where because of the sacred nature of the intimacy a veil is drawn. I think for me, my retreat is something like this. When sometimes I read from the divine names Ya Rauf, Ya Rahim or Ya Hakim, I learn that some wounds are so raw and so delicate that even some forms of love and compassion are too thick to apply to them. There is a line in the book of Physicians of the Heart that states, “ar-Rauf is the one who genuinely says, “I can be with you in the unbearableness that you feel”. It is possible that one might only experience the ra’afah of ar-Rauf in solitude and aloneness. When the wound is such that it has “human beings screaming day and night”, to invoke ar-Rahim would be to wait for the gentlest ointment, gentler than a feather, a subtle perfume perhaps. Sufis sometimes chant the divine names out loud: sometimes in silence they plant them in the soil of their souls.
Ya Rauf Ya Rahim, Ya Rauf Ya Rahim, Ya Rauf Ya Rahim, Ya Rauf Ya Rahim, Ya Rauf Ya Rahim, Ya Rauf Ya Rahim, Ya Rauf Ya Rahim, Ya Rauf Ya Rahim, Ya Rauf Ya Rahim, Ya Rauf Ya Rahim, Ya Rauf Ya Rahim
In Surah At-Teen (95, The fig), there’s a reference to Allah in the superlative as ahkam-ul-haakimeen, meaning The Most Wise of all instances of healing wisdom. I recently read that only knowledge that heals qualifies to be called wisdom. Perhaps you, like me, intuitively recognise this to be true? I guess reminding myself of this cuts through the noise sometimes.
After being prompted by a line in the Mathnawi which instructs one to be like Moses under the authority of Khizr, I decided to familiarise myself with the story again. It’s well-known and can be found in Surah Al-Kahf (18, The Cave). The surah is made up of parables and allegories, the story of Moses and Khidr is just one of these. However, woven between these are verses which address the Prophet Mohammed directly. When I read it I found it was like a how to survive guide for the faithful activist. There’s a verse which reads “Would you torment yourself to death with grief over those who are not willing to trust this message?”. For me this illustrates the humanity of our Prophet, and shows how deeply distressed he would get, but it also applies to all of us once we become convinced of the truth of an ethical purpose and feel hopeless at the indifference with which our social environment may react. The Prophet, and we too, are assured by Allah in subsequent versus that Allah provides help.
An example is given of the impossible becoming a reality. The prophet is reminded that it is easy for Allah. Remember earlier when I said my identity presents its own challenges? Well despite my identity, I don’t think I’m all that different from anybody else. In the Quran one can find solace. There may be a lot of opposition to people of differing grain in the larger communities, but I am convinced that love is the message as well as the way, and for Allah it is easy to bring change. Though I feel dismayed sometimes, having a little faith in Allah’s immense and powerful love helps.
And to everyone who is conscious of God, God always prepares a way of emergence
And provides for him/her in ways he/she could never imagine
(65, Surah At-Talaq)
Adila Ahmed is a member of the London Threshold Society. She has interests in radical/queer feminism, and is a former student of the feminist researcher and activist Professor Liz Kelly CBE.