Same Old Place...Brand New Me

Breaking news: I'm back to my workplace after nine months of a career break that was more than amazing. Well, I have to tell you that I've always dreaded this moment of coming back to the office life of continuous stress, endless deadlines and politics...lots of politics!!!

Yet, I had to be back, because this also happened to be the place where I learned quite a great deal about a cause which I'm so passionate about, that is child protection and child rights; and that was also the place where I got to meet very inspiring people and mentors, and work together to turn our dreams into a successful projects on ground.

So, my challenge was not really going back to my work, but was to find the answer to the question of how can I protect myself from the destructive stress and negativity that slowly creeps in your body and psyche.

I just started off this week, and although I had the usual stomachache on the first day of work and reluctance to become an office prisoner, I gradually adjusted myself to the environment while integrating my new Zen practices and regime.

 I start off my day early in the morning at 6 am, I do meditation in the fresh air of my balcony, and then a bit of yoga followed by  a delicious healthy breakfast. this gives the right kick start to your day.

On my way to the office, I do things that gives me peace, like reading a good book, listening to good music, or simply planning the schedule for the day.

I stopped drinking coffee at the office, replaced it by endless mugs of herbal drinks which leaves me feeling rejuvenated and at peace. I still drink coffee but only twice or three times a week.

A healthy meal during the day is a must. I stopped doing the regular ordering of heavy junk food at the office (thanks to peer pressure!) and replaced it by light meals that gives me the energy I need without leaving me sluggish.

I also use the lunch break to have a slow meditative walk in the sun, which refreshes my body and mind and energize me to continue on with the day.

Finally, I play a chakra healing music in the background while working and it puts me in this peaceful meditative state all day long!

I'll keep experimenting and sharing my good vibes with you all!! :)

Namaste!






 

Mother Eve

When God created Eve, everything was made perfect; She had a man who was crazy about her, and a God was so loving that he made it his own business to make sure they’re both happy. She was living in a paradise, a queen on a throne…nothing to disturb her..she had a world of her own.

Yet, do you think that made her happy or at least satisfied?! Well, I don’t think so. She was still looking for more..she believed that God was tripping her and hiding the most precious of all…the knowledge of bad and good she desired..and for the sake of a lie she destroyed it all..the love, the man of her dreams, the God of her youth…and the truth.

Well, she chose…she chose to believe in a lie..to forsake the good for the evil.. to worship herself instead of the creator.. to eat the forbidden fruit even if it meant death. .and death was just the beginning.

Death was not only promised to her body , but to her spirit, her core of being. She was dethroned, disconnected from divinity, and her once natural nakedness brought her shame.. she covered herself with leaves and ashes..but deep inside she knew nothing will bring her back her dignity. Once a queen, She became a slave…

My mother Eve…you brought us shame, and a curse that keeps flowing from a generation to the next..We, your daughters, still make the same foolish choices over and over again…putting our ego first..destroying what has been built in years with our careless words and twisted hearts..our bodies that once had the image of God are now a playground for the devil..a hook to catch stray souls, and a shrine for offerings of blood and sweat.

We roam the broken world aimlessly looking for a cure.. fantasizing about a world so pure..a paradise that once existed and embraced our souls…and more than that..a king out of whom we were brought to life..our second half..the masculine of our feminine and the strength of our tenderness ..but we know that he himself is lost as well, looking for his missing rib..for his womb and sanctuary.

But mother Eve, don’t you cry, for in a dark world there exists light that guides us back home, back to the promised land, back to ourselves… this light is the power of love that flows right from the heart of God into the heart of his creation, a power so strong and so sharp that it strikes our hearts regardless of time and space.. it hurts yet it heals..and the only way to receive it is to surrender and believe to be able to receive. .. Mother Eve, it is sad that this power is still mistaken by so many lies…we still mistake lust for love, possession for love, greed for love and loneliness for love. And we end up losing faith in finding true love, that it when it finally finds us and reaches out to give, we refuse to receive.

Mother Eve, I know you are now redeemed back to your kingdom, back to your king..I ask you for a sense of direction , healing and redemption, a new heart to believe in the miracle of love, and a new spirit guided by a divine light.

Why people gave up on love in Cairo

In his book "How to Love" the legendary zen Buddhist teacher Thich Naht Hanh mentioned that



"The essence of loving kindness is being able to offer happiness. You can be the sunshine for another person. You can’t offer happiness until you have it for yourself. So build a home inside by accepting yourself and learning to love and heal yourself. Learn how to practice mindfulness in such a way that you can create moments of happiness and joy for your own nourishment. Then you have something to offer the other person."




well, I keep thinking about Cairo, a city with around 8 million people, and yet it is difficult-almost impossible to find love. This is not only based on my experience, but the testimony of thousands of young men and women who suffer from a life devoid of romantic love, and the potential to settle down and have a family of your own. A lot of articles, Egyptian soap operas and movies have been produced to discuss this phenomena and analyze "why did Egyptian young people give up on love?"




I don't want to analyze the scientific reasons behind that, but I want to shed the light on my own personal experience- being a thirty-years old woman who always found it easier to fall in love with non-Egyptians in a country other than Egypt, and I always wondered why. As one friend once told me when we lived together in the U.S. in 2011 "Here, You will find love as easy as pie, you don't even have to go looking for it like in Egypt." For you know in Egypt, you have to do an effort to find love, all these arranged dates and advertising that you're looking for that special someone among your family and friends, and eventually you might end up being practical and getting married to someone you're not even compatible with just because you're too afraid of "missing the train."




I started with Thich Naht Hanh's quote because he really summed it up all for me: "It all starts with you." we often blame the other side for not being able to give love: men blaming women for being too demanding and greedy, and women blaming men for being cheaters and uncommitted, but rarely do we do the effort to look at ourselves and ask: what is it that we're missing? I would say that living in a strict society like Egypt with lots of rules about "should and should nots" make children lose confidence in themselves very early. They fail to choose their way, to be who they are, especially girls of course. We grow with a flawed emotional system that fails to receive love, we are so afraid of receiving true love because a lot of things have been mistaken with that exact same word. Now, when anyone talks about love, we often joke about it or label it as being "drama talks" because we stopped believing in it, if not in everything that matters in this life. And I don't even want to go further with speaking about self-love or self-acceptance because the term "self" is already an issue in such a society.




Moving from the self to the society, this is not a free country. The society has strong unspoken rules and guidance that it takes a rebel to break. Most of these rules are twisted I believe. Rules like "the most important thing for a woman is to marry a rich man from a high social class to be able to feel proud in front of her family and friends." and "a man has to choose a pious, religious, beautiful, submissive woman. to make a good wife". And "love is created for the sake of marriage," as if marriage is the ultimate purpose of love and not otherwise. and then the influence of the elders, whether they are family or religious leaders and they being the ones who have a final say when it comes to love and marriage.




And more and more chains: the traffic, pollution, noise, dirty politics, sexual harassment, poverty...can one really find love amid all this...can one even stand for a moment and ask herself/himself: what is love?




And then the emotional baggage, and accepting the fact that we can really survive without love, but we can't survive without watching porn, smoking shisha for hours, or drinking endless cups of tea.




That's how love looks like in Cairo!

The Artist’s Pilgrimage

Very few realize the artist’s path is a spiritual one in its essence- for art is a talent to express one’s most personal, vulnerable thoughts, feelings and perception of life.  If art is not vulnerable and true, then it can be anything but art; and the audience feel it, they can only relate to what is genuine, what is uncensored. Any fake or unoriginal art no matter how skillful it is will fail to reach the hearts and minds of audience.

The artistic process is itself  an organic one. How many times did we try to impose a certain process or to reach a certain destination only to find ourselves heading towards a different one ?  I have a story to share from the last Artistic Meditation Retreat organized by Peace Revolution in Thailand last August.  In the first week, I was forcing myself to write using certain techniques, I wanted to impress myself and others, and I started forcing ideas down on paper, but every time I started working on an idea, I felt blocked, as if this is not the path. After trying out so many times, I finally surrendered and decided that whenever it happens will be the right time. I remember that day when I went for a long siesta, and then I woke up in the middle of the day, and without thinking, I grabbed my small red notebook and pen and walked out of my bungalow into the woods. The words started flowing out onto the paper while walking. I found myself singing them , feeling them and writing them down. It was a  spiritual experience for me as it required patience, solitude and faith in the process. The next step was to share what I’ve written with others,  and this required having a safe space where you feel secure enough to share a piece of yourself with others.

True art is also life changing. It changes the life of the artist before it can change the life of the audience. I still remember how the process of writing a short story about a Crow’s life made me revert to a vegetarian diet, just because I felt so connected to the crow, putting myself in his skin, and sharing his emotions, his being. I’m sure many of us can still remember this one movie or one story we read when we were children that changed our life and made us pursue a certain life dream.

Another feature of true  art is being egoless. It might be challenging to explain this one but I’ll try. Have you ever felt that there is a force inside of you that needs to come out either on paper as a poem, or on a canvas as a painting or in a piece of music or a dance maybe…? This force is inside of you, yet it is somehow greater than your ego. Sometimes the ego will actually resist the emission of this force because it might make you look vulnerable or expose you in front of the whole world. Maybe you will resist and go forward with your life, or maybe you won’t be able to resist it any longer and decide to surrender, and when you do, the most amazing and breathtaking form of art will emerge out of you.

Now the persisting question is how to find that organic, life changing and egoless path in a world full of lies, egocentrism and meaningless distractions?  How to free our souls from peer pressure, and the continuous need to be praised by others to confirm  our self-worthy? I can’t give you the answer, for the answer is inside of you. It is in the center of your body which is the purest, truest place inside of you. It is a place free from the power of the ego and distractions of the outside world. It is a pilgrimage you need to go on to connect with your purest form before you can express this form in whatever way you desire. It’s a journey that requires no transportation or money, only a desire to find that sacred space within yourself. Just go to a quite place where you can find solitude and silence, sit in a comfortable position and close your eyes and be still. The mind be too distracted with thoughts at first, but your only weapon is to wait  and be still, don’t resist and focus on your center, you will surely get there.

Living in a busy city like Cairo and being brought up in a culture that believes the value of a human lies only in what s/he is doing, I had never heard before about meditation and the Dhamma- the plain truth.  Only through Peace Revolution, I got introduced to the meditation practice through the 42-days online development program, through which I learnt a great deal about meditation and the five acts of self-discipline.

I then applied to the Artistic Meditation retreat taking place at Thailand on August 2015, and got selected. I can easily say it was a transformative and intense journey of self- discovery and connection with the truth that lies inside of me. It was not an easy process and I faced lots of tribulations and doubts, but it was true and pure, and that was enough.

And now, going back to Cairo I face the real challenge of keeping the connection with my center and feeling Sabai all the time. However, I keep reminding myself that when everything around me gets so chaotic and noisy, I just need to close my eyes and go to that peaceful place inside of me—my sanctuary, my center.