Ramadan 2018: Episode V

Every year I kick the tires and ask myself does it have another year left in the can? The answer is always yes -- just one more year, one more step, one more time getting up.

This post is about Ramadan -- my fifth personal spiritual practice I began during a time of transition when I was seeking direction in my life.

I began my practice on a tense, fortuitous whim in Maryland during the dog days of Summer of 2014. On that day, I walked from Wheaton, Maryland to an office where my friends were working to deliver flowers. I had the idea, with nothing to do, wandering around Wheaton mall. I thought about the delivery for hours, as I marched to Downtown Silver Spring. I had never been to the office and didn't really call in my visit. I hung out with a street merchant and chatted in Spanish while I waited for any one of my friends in the office to get back to me with an address. I dropped the flowers off to a receptionist I'd never met, and I was too embarassed to see my friends, and too nervous to ask, and I never heard a word of thanks.

I'm unperturbed. I used to get furious about percieved things owed, logical or not. Now, I'm good with what I give regardless of what's given. They say if you love, you have to let go, no?

In Lana Del Rey's Coachella - Woodstock in my Mind she refers to her own little contribution to children and also their parents and the little things and attachments we have, along with dreams they hold so preciously, as they are in their most vulnerable moments, during a third prayer. Perhaps her inner writer got the better of her on that mouthfull. Her contribution, she says, is just that MAYBE her wishes will turn to birds, and birds would send her thoughts your way.

When I tell people I fast for Ramadan, it propels us apart. People percieve me slipping into a foreign identity, and they look at me like they never really knew me.
They wonder at whether I am Muslim. Nah, bitch, das a Jedi. 

"I could never do that" is what people often say. Today, I was hiking, training on a 10 mile hike for a march I will undertake across Spain. I thought of military training, which is way, way harder. Few people complete that traiting. For my walk, the El Camino de Santiago, more people complete it, but not everyone. Some people have even lost their lives on the pilgrimage.

I don't like when people self-depricate. I wish we'd share fewer inspiration quotes, and live out more dreams. Your dream is not at your 9-5 job. It's in your dreams and maybe in your life, to some extent, if you're lucky, smart, and can quiet your mind.

When people say they cannot do it, they mean they do not want to do it. Perhaps my story will show will help you consider and undertake a ramadan fasting practice...

My story illustrates that continuous work within the spirit, year after year, does culminate in something great. I ate fruit from an invisible tree that grew up on my sweat.

What is attention? This is something I've been thinking of. It's someone else impressing their opinions on you. But in your mind, what is attention? It's conceding a power that is uniquely yours, to recreate the world around you. Does that make sense? Is that what a baby does when it cries out for mama? No, not really. It's not the warm embrace of mom, either, because people seek attention through causing pain and destruction too. When I acted out as a child, I'd feel a compulsion out of anger it even felt like. Other times it feels like getting high on burning garbage. It's a singular, filthy high. It's not a good thing.

You can give yourself attention, too. You can regard the falling in the tree as a gift from your own deepest consciousness and celebrate yourself -- jump up and down, buy a whole pizza, and buy yourself a new car. What is attention? You can give the world around you attention, too, just by narrowing your focus and considering a thing. I am starting to think that the word 'attention' is many things we use the same word for.

Sorry, Qui-Gon, but you will find that you were mistaken about a great many things.

The Fifth Ramadan

The approaching inception (BRAAHMMM) of my fifth and most recent Ramadan brought on my yearly bout of jitters. After some regular ear-pulling and waffling, I was in...

I haven't written in my blog for more than a year. My last post is about Ramadan, actually. That's the last time I shared about my life. I wrote on the subject of intolerability. Specifically, how I would no longer tolerate other people's bullshit. That was a reaction to a grating and lackluster practice.

After that disheartening experience, I wanted to enhance my practice. I sought nothing less than a breakthrough. Without anyone telling me, I had the idea to raise the difficulty of my practice.

I added a personal challenge to my practice. I set out to have four conversations I feared for many years. I believed them to be impossible. These conversations ricocheted around my mind with such regularity they had carved themselves into the walls. They became recurrring, destructive, and negative shadows in my mind. Fear is sadness with teeth. I could not uproot this sadness privately; attention wasnt enough for me. I had to speak with these people and do something more real.

I had forgiven myself and the concerned parties one million times in my head to no avail. I came to realize a difficult truth: I had to talk to the person to exorcise their negative and lingering existence. 

July got hella spooky!!!

After each conversation, I told myself I was incapable of the next. 

"Our responbility begins with our imagination" -- Haruki Murakami

I believe in that, because I realize it's evident in my most honest moments. When you fail your imagination it's a little death and what people call a reminder of the smallness of the human experience, but there is nothing that forces failure. If a team of monkeys with typrewriters can write the bible, you can succeed in any design of the mind. Time culls your impetus, never your imagination. I think the major skill in life is designing systems that move on your call, so that your designs can still be projected, deftly and powerfully, but what do I know?  

After each conversation, I took a humongous breath and gave up on the next one. Days went on and I rededicated myself to my practice of Ramadan each morning, eating my final meal before the sun rose at around 4:30AM. My pain throughout the day, when I felt it in pangs of moments of weakness after a spiritied jog to catch the bus or a long walk in the sun, reminded me of everything I've gone through to get where I am - my whole life in those racing moments. I knew I could do it!!!!! If I could do Ramadan, I could have those conversations. 

I don't think its right to use names even in my private blog, so I depart from the specifics right now.

I am still elated I actually did it. In fact, I actually precipitated a tremendous fucking change in my life. I was going to compare it to slamming a sledgehammer into four different dams and one of them breaking loose and creating a new river -- but I think a more appropriate likeness is going around Luigi's mansion kicking furniture and then a great big ghost pops out and you suck it up and catch it in your ghost-vacuum!!! OOOooooOoooOOOOooooo!!! SPOOOOOOKY! 

I always felt rejuvinated once I could eat like a normal person again, after Ramadan had ended. But, especially after #4, I always felt like I needed more. Maybe I didnt push myself hard enough was my foremost supposition. Maybe I needed to not wake up late and eat at 6:00am so many times. Maybe I needed to cut water from my practice (which I actually did for the first time during #5 when I met a 16 year old standing up on a chair testifying to the wholistic benefits of his practice and I jumped in as a random person and we celebrated together but I felt guilt when I realized it was fear that held me back from fasting water too and not attention to my own health -- and by the way its total horse shit when people say its not healthy, but im not arguing for that here go goole it -- YEAH I SAID GOOLE AND IM NOT FGONNA CORRECT IT EITHER). Anyway...

What I found was that patience brought reward for all five of my practices to me in the way of the benefit I derived from personal challenges I devised after pushing myself to a higher and more spiritual standard for five consecutive years. 

I still have trouble explaining to people why I fast, except for the abundence of strength it affords me, for the firestorm of positive energy it floods my life with. I do not believe in God or Allah as the primogenitor of my benefits, but perhaps the onus, and the reason any of it moves in the first place. I can get down with that. I mean to say that in the moments where I 'cannot do it' I dont defer to a strength outside of myself. I re-dedicate myself in each moment of my practice and that reminds me that I can, indeed do it, becuase I do it every moment anyway and the truth is my mind conceives of impossibilities I simply need to smash through by consciencious effort. 

Update after Three Months

Ramadan changed my life. I have a woman I love and we will be living together. Before that I will be walking across the country of Spain, some 500+ kilometers, to reward myself for everything I've given to the world around me. On this trip I will reap the great bounty of things I've given to the world. It sounds paradoxical that I would gain anything when, for in the example of the flowers, I got nothing so much as a thank you -- but some of life's most profound discoveries are in de-puzzled paradox. A gift, without manipulation, should be loved, but does not have to be. The gift is as much to the giver and the reward is to the intention, not the joy it creates. Hmm, again I run into the paradox. Each time you give, you create an anchor within your consciousness and your soul that your mind considers in the amorphous swirl of the subconscious or river of eternal realities (whatever you believe) and there are moments when you call upon each of those anchors to inform your next move. That is very abstract, but that's how I've conceptualized of my own life. I know there's good in my heart and it can create a deep conviction I feel outward from my core and can be seen through my eyes. It's how I've faced down deadly competition and used dancing creativity to surmount impossible odds. It's a reality about the world and a rule that I defer to in every moment, because it's beneficent. Some might call it luck, or god -- I dont name it, I know how to feed and be fed. Right now, I am affixing a bib to my mother fucking self and performing competitive eating water-stretches, so that my stomach can be packed to the max on this trip, and I absolutely know it will. This trip is also dangerous. I've decided to go by myself. I hear that you link up with others on the path, and so that is a possibility, but I acknowledge that I accept a great gift with morbid peril in its shadow. I like to ascribe my willingness to naivety but its not and it never has been. I've always been more than willing to accept dangers other people shy away from and I won't stop until it kills me or (I imagine) I have children who I care too much about being a father for to endanger myself and, thus, them. All of this was galvanized by my Ramadan practice... Like, what the fuck... I've become the biggest proponent of the fast and I look forward to learning about the machination and applying its principles to my life more and more. 

I hardly remember the moment. I either dare not to look upon the words or have not found them in my journals when, in July 2014, I swore to myself I would, in my own thoughts... 1. Move to Seattle 2. Start Two Businesses 3. Move to Morocco... I succeeded in the first two and I am now going to Morocco, not to move, but to visit expectorante. In my mind, that means with the expectation of greatness to come on your sleeves. Yes, come on your sleeves -- it's the way to live. With the come on your sleeves so that everybody knows. A friend, Jerica, called me expectorante -- I believe was the word she used. In my memory, it is. I've either co-opted another word to this usage or I am correct. My investigation into Google suggests that I am wrong. Maybe it's local slang from Puerto Rico. Who is John Galt? I will go to Morocco with the opportunism of a colonizer, making connections and sensing opportunity. I will truly explore the countryside and draught deeply. It's the carrot I've held before me and I will take a bite becuase that's what's done with the carrot. Whether this is a grave misstep or not I'm not totally sure. It seems wrong to walk across Spain on a spiritual journey and then embark on a trip of luxurient business consideration in a strange land. Then again, I am the kind of guy who will eat ice cream on a lettuce leaf for breakfast. Still, there's something niggling that feels wrong here. I will continue to think and write of it. I believe that everyone feels a draw to zig and zag as they near the finish line, but that's something humans must never follow (?)