A small secret about life…

There is something about being cozy. Being surrounded by warmth, friends, loved ones, happy faces, there is something joyous about color, cleanness, space, good weather, music, scent, and there is something about good company, positive, ambiance, freedom, share, happy thoughts, present moment. It is not about where you are, as much as it is about who you are with, even when you are with yourself. Living the moment is not about waiting for the right moment to live it, but about living each moment as it comes without trying to force change or dwell in the expectations.

How Changing One Thing In Our Routine, Can Lighten Us Up.

Yesterday I posted on my instagram asking people what they do first thing in the morning.

The answers I got were mostly the usual things of opening our eyes, looking at our phones, heading for a shower. One different answer was, doing 3 yoga poses in bed which I thought must be a really good thing to try and do (if you are interested in yoga).

I sometimes feel it is always good to give our routine a change, an upbeat, something a little more ordinary to add on something new to our day, to our minds, and our attitude to life.

Some ideas I can throw in here are; watering your plants, doing a little prayer, kissing your loved awake or still asleep, meditating, or writing your morning pages.

Writing Morning Pages was my answer on my instagram in response to my question. It has been introduced to me a few years ago first, through a leadership camping training in Switzerland and second, in my writing group club in Amman. The former was used as a method to reflect and write at any time of the day on an empty page without thinking, just writing, letting all our feelings go into writing. And the later was taken from the book ‘The Artist Way’ and is done first thing in the morning, every day, religiously. It is a method to clear our minds and set our attitude positively to our day by using positive affirmations, positive thoughts, and goals.

Nothing is necessary for writing our Morning Pages, nothing is right or wrong, and no one needs to read them. They can be private or can be torn apart if it makes you feel more comfortable, but the idea is to write everything down every morning, first thing in the morning. Let it all out on empty pages. It is a great new start of the day.

They helped me make new self-realization, reflection, understand feelings, hidden thoughts, aspirations, dreams, neglect, it is just a very great way to understand oneself better, put what is unimportant aside on the pages, and put what we wish to attain from self-motivation on paper to remind us of our basic goals and dreams. Be gentle to my self, today, be gentle to everyone I encounter, smile, be graceful, walk with grace, speak with grace, listen with grace, give, with no expectations, no judgments, live, freely, loudly, happily, share, your dreams, and your love, be generous to yourself and to others… and this is how it goes.

I hope this blog post helps us live more positive. If you do have your own tip to share for a morning ritual, please comment and share.

Our Beauty

The perfect place for coffee time… or journal writing, book reading, self reflecting, listening to a podcast or favorite music, this place is the perfect place for good time, for inner time, for culture time. Take a dear person, show them around what really is ours, our culture, our history, our art, our ambiance. This is the meaning of true beauty, not trying to hard to be someone other than the self, but trying enough to be the best self.

Spring in Webdeh

What about closing out the outside world,

What about staying inside your own being exploring your own ventures,

What about not giving a f and listening to your inner sound,

What about being sure your not missing out and instead you explore the movements within you,

What about you ignore it all and just give yourself the chance to explore your being,

Create some art, your kinda art, the art that is just different from anything else, and guess what, it is only art when it does not necessarily make the same sense to everyone else…

What is inside you let it outside,

Make it your outside world,

Make it what you have been missing out on instead,

Make your own art your life.

A book of faith…

I was so happy to see the Quran displayed for people to look through at The Sheikh Mohammed Center for Cultural Understanding, not because it is the Quran per say but because of the fact that I believe religions in general have been misunderstood. We make of them what we want, we look at them from different perspectives, and rigidity in such is what brings much complications. But how the Quran were displayed was a welcoming way to retell us what it really is; a book of faith, that its goal is not to divide but to unite, is not to differentiate and separate but to guide us to love and accept. Just because I am Muslim and I choose to read the Quran, it does not make me any less of a Christian or a Buddhist. They all call for one God and for one Love. If I choose to go with one it should not mean I have abandoned the other, I instead chose to respect them all and accept them all. I am not deviant if I choose to read the Bible or visit the Synagogue. I believe they are all books of faiths and homes to connect with the higher power. All temples that are respected and that we feel we can spiritually connect with should not be or seen otherwise. Or thats just me. But thats how I feel when I see books that call for faith. I see love. And when we try to facilitate them to encourage us to love, then they suddenly shine upon the world.

On Meditation 

To the perfect place to meditate, a minute to look into your heart, a minute to breath and fill in your body with the right type of oxygen, a minute to let go of your stressful thoughts; to loosen up your tight muscles, a minute to withdraw from everything holding onto you and pulling you elsewhere, a minute to cherish heaven that lies here within us and between us, a minute to feel silence & appreciate the serenity that exists amongst all chaos, a minute to hear the sounds of life’s music; the wind blowing to the right side, and the birds that sing right above you, the sound of leaves moving, and the sound of echo’s from faraway. A minute to sit back & be grateful; from every hour that passes, can be a transformation method to take you from wherever you are to your very current present. 

Be present today, be open to changes, be open to hear the sound shift, be open to walk it without having to be pushed into it, be open to trust the choices of life to you and not struggle with wanting to control your choices upon life. 

To a wonderful day, the first Monday of may, to choosing the present. 

From the miraculous view of Marriott Hotel, Petra. Thanks to Saif Khlaifat Photography for the beautiful photograph 

 

An inspiring short story on Wisdom

One upon a time, there was an anthropologist who discovered a lost tribe living far from civilization. The people of this tribe were friendly and kind and seemed very wise. In spite of the fact that the man’s inner confusion and unhappiness was disturbing to their harmony, they accepted and made him feel welcome.

He befriended one of the inhabitants of a small village. One day this friend took him to the top of a high cliff overlooking a fast-moving and tumultuous river with a small island in the middle of it. There was a calm, mysterious beauty about the island, but it seemed impossible to reach. Dangerous currents and whirlpools swirled around the island, and there was no bridge from either shore. The water looked too dangerous even for boats. The man gazed for a long time at the island and was curiously moved; he felt that it was his destiny to visit this island.

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After a time, another man climbed down the cliff over a barely visible path and stood quietly on the edge of the shore. Eventually a rainbow appeared and seemed to make a beautiful bridge from the shore to the island. The anthropologist was amazed when the man on the shore put his foot on the rainbow and crossed over to the island!

“How did he do that?” he asked his friend. “It is very simple. You just need to know your color. Put your feet exactly on that color, and you will be able to cross over.” The anthropologist was very excited because he thought he had found the answer to fulfilling his destiny and visiting the island. He said to his friend, “You are a very wise man and surely you can tell me: what is my color?” His friend said that that was not possible. “The color is inside you, and only you can discover it. However, I can help you to find the way.”

The anthropologist was impatient and kept asking “How? What must I do?” His friend explained that he must study, read, and meditate and that he would bring him to other wise people who could guide him, but he said, “Only you can find your color.”

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And so the anthropologist worked with the wise people of the village, studied and meditated, and after many, many months, he felt he was ready to try to reach the island. With his friend, they climbed down the cliff path to the edge of the shore, looked across to the special, magical island, and waited patiently. Soon a rainbow appeared and made a bridge to the island. He put his foot on the color that he recognized as his and, yes, he crossed the river on that rainbow to the island of his destiny. He spent many days exploring the island, finding it full of marvelous colors, the colors of all the wise people who have visited before him. He finally understood that he had to leave his color here on the island, that very special and personal color it took him so long to find. But when he left, he knew that he would take away with him a little bit of the color of each wise person who had come before him.

Now he is truly finding harmony for himself and learning what wisdom is.

Adapted from a story by Patrick Condamin

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Quotes are powerful – Quote of the day

acumen, change, makes

Photograph taken at a village in Zanzibar, Tanzania.

On being Awakened – Words to Live by

If you want to believe that what your physical eyes can see is all that’s there, then fine, you can. Stay in that small fraction of perceptual reality if you choose. But at some point, even if that point is at the point of death, we all know better. I’ve seen cynics become mystics on their deathbeds. We are here as though in a material dream, from which the spiritual nature of our larger reality is calling us to awaken. The magician, the alchemist, the miracle-worker, is simply someone who has woken up to the material delusions of the world and decided to live another way. In a world gone mad, we can choose to be sane. In order to move ourselves, and our civilization, into the next phase of our evolutionary journey, it’s time for all of us to awaken. – Marianne Williamson from the book “A year of Miracles”

You who live by the life of this world, shame on you. Why do you live like this? If you don’t want to be dead, never be without love. Die in love if you want to be truly alive. – Shams-e Tabrizi

Swing at the Brandenburger

From my Readings |Let your Heart be your Reflection| 01.12.2015

I have read this verse from the Quran not so long ago, and it really struck me, and it stayed with me.

How beautiful it is written,

how beautiful it means.

From my understanding, the verse stuck with me in the sense of allowing myself to be a color reflection from the colors of the Divine. And what are the colors of the Divine, I then asked myself? How many colors can I wear to be a mirror of the Divine?

But as I continued living, I would remember this verse at different encountering, and I would see different colors to put on, to reflect the act that comes from and within the Divine in us.

‎صِبْغَةَ اللَّهِ ۖ وَمَنْ أَحْسَنُ مِنَ اللَّهِ صِبْغَةً ۖ وَنَحْنُ لَهُ عَابِدُونَ [Al-Baqara : 138] (We take our) color from Divine (Allah), and who is better than Allah at coloring. We surrender to Him

We all face difficulties in our lives, and staying true to yourself is the best possible way to deal with everything you come across. Being true to yourself, is being true to your heart, and this is where the Divine in all of us reside. So be a reflection of God, surrender to your inner love, become you, the love that is within you.

The spirit within leads to joy, as it inspired me to see the love in everyone & the possibility of miracles that lie inherent in all things. The universe itself is the handwriting of God, as He constantly creates & re-creates the perfection that he is. Within that perfection I have my true being, and within my true being I am happy & at peace. [from the book: A Year of Miracles]

Become a Dervish, become free of everything and anything, surrender only to the color of Love, to the Divine, to the Divine in you, the reflection of everything else.

What does “Dervish” mean?

He is the heart of the world, because by means of his heart, the body attains to its true art.

If the heart is not there, how can the body speak? If the heart doesn’t seek, how can the body seek & search? The dervish that glows with the fire is the theater of the holy rays; and so the heart, not the body; is the theater of God.

All lesser hearts are like a body to the heart of the human being whose heart is complete, aligned with its original source. [from the book: the Rumi daybook]

Rumi, Serhat Atlığ

Photo by; Serhat Atlığ