My Awakening

Over the past few days, I feel like I have come into a new Spiritual Awakening, a complete and total understanding. To keep this locked up inside of me would not service me, or whoever might be reading this.

For too long, I have tried to find “understanding” within the walls of religion. Recently, I had a comment from someone that was very negative in its very words, but in comprehending, pondering, meditating, and then understanding, I find myself sitting here tonight with complete understanding.

The individual who wrote to me accused me of having an “identity crisis”, they told me that I should have “gotten over” my identity crisis years ago. While my initial reaction was one of complete shock and hurt at the words, I now am grateful for those words because it caused me to open my heart and my mind to complete and total opening up to my Self.

Over the years, I have traversed many spiritual paths, gone on spiritual journeys, and tried very hard to find my sense of “belonging” within the walls of organized religion.

This started in my mid-teens when I was in a foreign country attending school in a distant location from the town I was living in with my Grandparents. Alone, lonely, away from “home” (the home that I had grown up in with my parents), and without the friends I had known most of my life, I was friendless in this town. The only people I could consider as “friends” from school lived in the city, a distance from where I was.

In that loneliness, I was introduced to the Mormon Church via members of the church who embraced me and accepted me as one of their own. At 16-years-old, it was no wonder that their complete, total, unconditional acceptance appealed to me and drew me in. Whether I actually believed in the teachings of the church, I felt that I had found my place of belonging.

After I was baptized in to the Church, I found myself leaving within 9-months. I began my true “journey” through many different paths and religions, returning often to the Church, but never staying long.

For so many years I could not understand why I was not “satisfied” to just give up my life and any other beliefs that I might have and remain within the bonds of the church; at the same time, I wondered why I kept being drawn back to the church.

So when I was finally “out” of the church, my name removed from their records as if I was never even in existence; in essence, wiping me away from the mind and the cognition of God, I felt freed and relief. Now, I was finally released to truly explore my own truth.

After my father died, I delved in to the religion of my ancestors, my father and my birth; Islam.

Initial study taught me that Islam was more a way of life; it was a spirituality where Allah (God) was everything, not merely IN everything, but actually WAS everything.

Removed was the belief and teaching that God was a mortal man, an image that I simply could not comprehend since first learning about this “white-bearded Deity”. My mortal conceptualization of an omnipresent being contained within a body of flesh and bone seemed overtly limiting to me. The idea of a Holy Ghost and Son seemed even more foreign to me.

So, as I delved more into the study of Islam, things began to make sense. And that is why when I was first harassed by what are known as “haraam police” (haraam meaning “forbidden”), I was shocked. These individuals claiming that their “correcting” me was “sunnah” and that if I was to be a Muslim, I had “better get used to it”.

Often, I felt like I was a mere child being scolded continually by individuals whom I had never met and whom I did not know; strangers, that were labeled as “sisters” simply because we were both Muslim.

I became increasingly frustrated and angered at these people who were correcting my every thought, my every belief, my every action, and most often these individuals were much younger than me.

A couple of times, I came close to giving up the entire aspect of Islam because of the nastiness that was spouting out of these individuals, followed up by the prevalent “I say this because I love you for the sake of Allah”. What the hell did that sentiment mean? They only “loved” me to keep in the ‘good graces’ of Allah; and that “I”, the “you” they were correcting, had no matter, no meaning, no worth?

I began to withdraw from a lot of the social and religious activities within the community as the offense of more than one unnerved me. I was told by the select few I confided in to just “ignore them”; but in my doing that, I was continuing to give them permission to act in such an abusive manner.

An individual with my background does not accept abuse by simply rolling over and taking it. I have long-learned to open my mouth, stand out strong and tall, and shout out against abuse.

In my frustration, I tried to understand why I kept delving back in to different spiritual paths. Why was I not simply satisfied with “me”? What was I truly searching for, and would I ever really find it?

In a moment of complete and sheer frustration, I unloaded on a dear friend, and divulged a part of myself to her. I let down my barriers and opened up to a secret I kept long buried. In my doing so, in her amazing response, and in my thinking about her words, I finally saw clearly the whole picture. I finally understood myself, my frustrations, my “need” to hide behind organized religion.

This was a process that first began last year, but I could not let myself go enough to be honest and truthful with who I was and “why” I was.

In this openness that I finally began embracing, I began to SEE and see for the very first time.

I began addressing issues that I had seen crop up time and time in religion, and especially what I had recently learned within the confines of Islam “the religion”.

One of the biggest issues was the idea of covering in the hijab. When I first covered, I did it for myself. I did for my own reasons and it had nothing to do with the common misnomer held within Islam. And I had often questioned myself if my own reasons for covering were “in line” with what was common thought within the religion itself.

The verse in the Quran says; “And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty…” Qu’ran 24:31

And when I finally came to understanding, I realized that when God speaks, He speaks in the whole sense of the explanation and it is us mere mortals who understand in literal, and in so-doing, MIS-understanding.

“Guarding” one’s modesty is something that most of us do already. What is “modesty” in the true understanding of the word? In the online Princeton Wordnet definition it says that modesty is freedom from vanity or conceit. When we guard against this, we are removing EGO (Edging God Out) from our lives.

So covering the body in “modesty” as the literal translation has been interpreted, might not be what the original belief was.

When I meditated on “lowering their gaze”, I realized that this was not something that was also literal, but realize that this was the precursor to guarding modesty. Again, I finally understood it to mean that we need to be aware of our surroundings. When we lower our gazes as we walk, we are being cognitive of the path ahead of us. While this is indicated towards us as individuals, it has a much bigger meaning to it. A deeper, more spiritual meaning and not the literal translation that has kept so many women covered in cloth for so long.

I questioned why, if modesty was such an important thing, were we all born naked and emerging out of our mother’s naked vaginas. And then I understood the complete picture…

We are already “covering our modesty” as we emerge out of the womb, as we are forming IN the womb. Our “covering” is our physical bodies, and this covers that which “drives” our bodies, our soul.

In discussion with my husband, he asked “So does this mean that we’ll all be naked in heaven?”

No. We will not be naked; we will not have the bodies which we have now, because we are nothing but forms of energy.

We say Allah is everything, not just IN everything, but IS everything. How could that be? What is true omnipotence? The concept is difficult to comprehend on so many levels. But as we transcend in Spiritual awareness, it makes complete and total sense. Upon shedding of our mortal bodies, we too are omnipotent in that we can be in more than one place at one time because we are nothing more than energy forms.

Does this concept align us with Allah and “enjoin” us to him? Yes and no.

Yes we are aligned because if we truly believe that Allah is the creator of all things, therefore OUR creator, we hold a strand of His DNA within us. This is shown in the mere fact that we are alive, we are breathing and we are feeling. We have a soul, and in that soul, He holds a part of us. This is what is called Divine Connection. This is also what links each and every single person upon this earth to each other.

Does this mean that we are in essence “Gods”? No. However, we do hold a part of God in us through that Divine Connection, but we are NOT Gods, at least in my comprehension.

In answering my husband’s question, no we will not be “naked” because we will have no form to be naked with, but rather we are energy.

Someone asked tonight “how can God judge us, and why God would like some of us or dislike some of us when he doesn’t have a character and human emotions?”

I replied, “From what I have learned over my years (not IN religion), I have learned that this "judgment" is truly that Divine source in all of us (our soul connectedness) that will be responsible for judging us based on experience culminating with the intensity of Love on the Other Side, as well as complete and total understanding of the ages once removed from our physical form and limitations as well as human, earth-held, understanding. I have a very difficult time comprehending a "court" with the energy force that is Allah at the head handing down judgment and "sentencing".”

And I truly do believe this. It just makes complete and total sense to me. I suddenly “get it”, I understand and I feel completely freed in my understanding.

I no longer feel confined within the bounds of man-made religion. I finally can understand the concept of living and experiencing without the man-made rules and regulations.

Am I no longer “Muslim”? Yes I am, because I understand the meaning of Islam being “to submit” or “to surrender”, from the Arabic root word “Peace” (Salaam). Muslim means “one who submits”. But again, I do not believe that it means this in the literal sense, but rather in the limitless sense.

We all submit and surrender in so many aspects of the meaning, being “submissive” does not mean the same thing which many have come to understand the meaning.

As a tree bends in the wind, so to we bend with the winds of change. It is a natural process.

Life is as easy or difficult as we choose to make it. For me, I choose to make life easy, without all the confines of rules and regulations, rights and wrongs. I choose to simply Be.

The true purpose of life; is to experience, and in those experiences we learn, we expand our minds, and we live.

Why On Earth Islam?

Very soon after I took my Shahada (conversion) on You Tube, I received an email from an individual telling me how awful living under Iranian law was, that they were forced to live as Muslims or suffer death. This individual continued on to tell me all the horrible ways that life was for people over in "Islamic" countries, and "why on earth" would I "choose this life" for myself. Emphasis on "choose". They further asked what was this "new thing" that I found that I was calling a "peace" within Islam.

OK, so let me start at the beginning; I was born to parents who were Muslim. My father, and his father, and his, and his... so on were all Muslim. My mother, converted (reverted) to Islam prior to her and my father's marriage. So by all rights and purposes, I was a Muslim.

However, as life would have it, my father was not a strict Muslim and my mother also did not adhere to the teachings past her own conversion; so it was not something that was taught in the home, nor forced down my throat. In fact, as I entered my school years and had the day off for the Eid celebrations, I had no idea what or why I had the day off, just that I did and I was able to spend it together with the family. It was also the only times of year that we prayed together as a family. Something I loved, something I craved, and something I missed when, after attending high school, I was no longer taught to stay home and continue this tradition with my family.

Were my parents wrong? I don't think so, I think they may have been fraught with a belief that allowed me to find my own path in life and to follow it.

However, in this openness and permission to seek out my own path, I found a life filled with confusion as I traversed a path which I made very well-trodden, looking for religion and faith.

At 16, I was introduced to the Mormon church, and was baptized into the faith at 18. Within 9 months, I was "inactive" and stumbling through a darkness that was overwhelming me. Was I simply not "strong" enough to stay, or did I simply allow myself to fall in line with the religion to "fit in" and be a part of something that seemed "cool"?

I remember praying about the religion and receiving an overwhelming testimony to the truthfulness of the gospel, but if it were so true, how come it was just as easy to fall out of the religion? Of course, many would tell me that it was Satan and his cunning ways, but I also had a choice in the matter, and as staunch and stoic in my beliefs as I was, how then could I just as fast and just as easily, begin falling away?

Over the years, I studied and aligned myself with many faiths, yoga practices, kundalini, meditation, chanting, Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism, Krsna, Hinduism, Mysticism, Kabbalah, Spirituality, Indian gurus, even going as far out of the realm as possible with Paganism. And intermingled with these years, I would return back to the church for a "stint" and then leave again.

I had questions, but the gospel, and the members, could not provide my answers. I wanted SO hard to believe; even going to the temple and expecting such an overwhelming clarification, but to be sadly let down. Each time I asked a question which was not on the "standard books", I was told to pray harder, to fast longer, to read the scriptures more, attend the temple more often; but still never an answer came.

When I married my husband in 2002, he had no idea that the next eight years would find him tossed and turned on the tempest sea of religion and faith finding, as I dragged him along on every roller coaster ride of emotion and faith-seeking. I felt that we shared this journey together, but what I did not take into consideration was the turmoil it was creating within him.

Then, on July 25th 2010, my Dad passed away suddenly and the pain of his loss was overbearing and overwhelming. I had already been going through a depression which started the week after my husband and I were "sealed" (married) for time and all eternity in the highest ceremony that the Mormon church offered its members. In being sealed, we were assured that our marriage would transcend and cross from this physical mortal existence, into eternity; where, if we are faithful and loyal members, that we would inherit worlds and reign upon them as Gods and Goddesses.

The day we were sealed, was a dream come true for me, since I was 16 years old and first introduced to this concept of "forever marriage" and "forever love".

So, one week after this beautiful ceremony took place, the fact that sudden questions were rising inside of me, and depression was taking hold baffled me. I no longer desired to go to church or be around the people from church. I hid myself away in a self-imposed exile of confusion and questions that seemed to have no answers.

After Dad died, and kind members offered their condolences and love and support by telling me how lucky I was to "have the knowledge of the gospel and the plan of salvation"; however, instead of feeling comfort, I felt increasing resentment towards them, and cynicism about their precious "plan of salvation" and their humanoid God. NONE of that would bring my Dad back, and the pain that it brought me, dug its heels in deeper and caused me further resentment towards the church, their teachings, and the people who followed so blindly.

The questions I had burning me so deeply were now finding their way to the surface, and for the first time I began to acknowledge them and ask them.

In the 24-hours that followed Dad's death, an experience that I had was one that would change my life and begin to set me on a path to finally understanding, finally finding and placing the pieces which had been missing.

Over the next several weeks, I began to embrace the teachings of Islam and found within the very answers to the questions that I had been on a lifetime journey seeking.

Eventually, there was no more denying the truth, or the path that I had to take. On September 13th, 2010; I set up my camera, and before it (and eventually the world) I took my Shahada and reverted to Islam.

When I received the email from the individual asking me "why", I had to answer honestly; I simply picked up the Qur'an for myself and began to read it with an open mind and an open heart. The message is so clear, so concise, and the message that the Qur'an brings is more often, NOT in line with the way that many countries living under Sharia Law and Ayatollah law, mis-guided law, and cultural diversity, teaches.

Islam itself stems from the root word in Arabic for Peace. In greeting one another, Muslims will utter "A'salaam alaikum" which translated means "Peace be unto you".

So in reading, in studying, in delving; I found an inner peace that I had never experienced before. If I felt the "testimony" I received regarding the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was strong, the testimony and the witness I received about Islam, went even deeper. Inside of me, I found something awakening; whether it had been there all the time and was, for the first time experiencing oxygen and life, or whether it was something that had been there and then was placed aside by my self-consciousness, I don't know. But what I do know is that finally, I came home; I AM home. Alhamdulillah, the salaam (peace) I feel inside me, outside me, coursing right through me, is one so different from the experiences I have ever had on this long and arduous journey.

THIS is right, and it is right for me.