my dream blog

Trying to remember one of my dreams, or any unconscious event for that matter, is one of the most difficult challenges I have faced all semester. I have been unable to remember a dream, if I even do dream, in years. Actually the only dream I remember, that seemed so real, happened from many years ago when I was in elementary school. Although the dream was very real, it happened too long ago to remember everything and it was a bad dream so it is not worth sharing. However, for the sake of writing about the only “unconscious experience” I can remember, I will share the different conditions and emotions felt.

The dream happened at night when the whole house was dark and quiet. I was living alone with my dad in elementary school, but I forgot which grade I was in at the time. I remember it was shortly after the death of my grandfather on my mother’s side of the family. It was also just a few years after my parents became divorced.

When I was experiencing the dream, I couldn’t help but feel terrified and alone. I felt so alone and helpless that I did not even call for my dad. Instead, I layed there by myself through all the events of the dream. I didn’t even think it was a dream until just recently. For years on end I had believed what happened in the dream to be a real event. The dream was so scary for me at the time that it created a huge problem for me. I think it’s because of this frightening experience that I no longer allow myself to dream. Sure, I might have a quick dream here and there that don’t mean much to me, but they usually only last a few minutes before I realize I am dreaming and wake myself up.

Although the dream is bad and I can’t remember the most important part of it, I think I know why it happened in the eyes of people who don’t believe in Allah. I think, maybe, I really missed my Abuelito and Grandma, and I was getting so used to being home alone that I didn’t bother to run to my dad or call him for help. The other part is still a mystery to me and probably will always be. The reason I think I had the dream was because it was from the Shaytan, who whispers lies in the minds of men to distract them.

Dreams or any unconscious events are sort of a way to examine ourselves. Though I disagree with Jung on most of his points in the reading, so far, about the unconscious, I think that good dreams are good to be looked at and interpreted. I do not group dreams all together as some may do. I believe that good dreams are from Allah and can be shared with those that you love and some dreams are bad and should be forgotten. Many, like Jung, group all dreams together in one category and think they are all important and should be shared and examined. It seems that no matter what one believes, though, no one can escape the mystery of dreams. 

being objective in the practice of life

Objectivity in life, by the practice of love, may come somewhat easy when it is an experience with someone who is close; however, if the person is not someone you are close too, it may be more difficult to be objective and productive. An experience that tested my willingness to be objective came last semester when i was working with the president of the Muslim Student Association at SFSU. The experience with him, though being difficult, proved to not only help my patience when someone is rude and disrespectful, but, also helped me to learn to respect peoples' opinions; especially, when they go against my own.

Last semester, the Muslim Student Association became inactive and almost lost our prayer room. In order to save the MSA, a group of Muslim students got together and made themselves in charge of the group, appointing a Shia as the president. Often times, as can be seen in what happened in Iraq after Saddam Hussein lost power, the Shia and Sunni Muslims do not get along with each other due to differences in beliefs. Luckily, in America, we usually do not have this problem. So it was a shock when i was tested in my objectivity after an experience with him.

One of my friend's dad is a religious scholar in Saudi Arabia, so, he sent 100 Qurans and a bunch of other islamic books to the Muslim Student Association as donations. One day, a friend and I were in the prayer room and the president was looking through the books that were just donated. I saw he was reading a very good book so i said, "Oh that book is really good. Do you like it?" His response was, "I am not reading them. I am just making sure there is nothing Wahabbi in them all." This was an insult. Wahabbi is a derrogatory term that the Shia Muslims made about Sunni Muslims and for him to say it to our faces was very insulting to my friend who was there with me and myself. Instantly we were filled with the feeling of fury.

It would have been so easy to attack him verbally or physically right then and there. Thank Allah, my friend and I both put our patience into practice and just walked away. Walking away is not really being objective though; or at least not completing the objectivity. So, a few days later, we both took turns talking to him one on one, afterwhich, he actually apologized and admitted being wrong. He later made the same mistakes with others and ended up quitting, but not because of this or my friend and I complaining.

Even when i was angry, I realized he is the president of the Muslims at school and he is my Muslim brother. My initial reaction was to walk away and I wanted so bad to tell everyone about what he had said about the gracious donation which was given to us. I spent the whole night reading about how I should react and deal with the situation. After reading many different Ayat and Hadith, I realized being patient, giving consultation, and hiding his flaw from others would be the best and most objective thing to do. The hadith i read that caused me to make this decision was the hadith reported in Sahih Bukhari, narrated by Abdullah Ibn Abbas that the Prophet (pbuh) said,

"A Muslim is the brother of another Muslim, so he should not oppress him nor should he hand him over to an oppressor. Whoever fulfills the need of his brother, Allah will fulfill his needs; whoever brings his brother out of discomfort, Allah will bring him out of the discomforts of the Day of Ressurection, and whoever veils the defects of a Muslim, Allah will screen his defects on the Day of Resurrection."

This experience helped me to learn how to be objective by being patient and kind in dealing with people when they insult me or say something harmful. By learning from this experience, I am able to have a better relationship with my family as well. I find myself being more forgiving and kind when dealing with them as well as listening to them even when I don’t agree with what I am saying. So all in all, Fromm is right when he talks about having patience and self-discipline by having rational faith using reason. For me, I used reason and logic when I turned to the Quran and Sunnah for guidance on how to deal with this experience of conflict and it worked, not only with this experience, but also, with many interactions with other people close to me, or people I don’t have a close relationship with.

Tala Al Badru Alayna

There is one song in the world I can bear to listen to and that song is “Tala al-badru alayna”. This song is around 1430 old and is still very popular among all Muslims. It is not so much a song as it is a poem. Nevertheless, it was first sung with great cheerfulness and meaning. This song is very important to me because it signifies the victory and reinforcement of my Islamic faith.

This song was sung by the children of the city of Madinah as the Prophet (peace and blessings upon him) made his entrance to the city after successfully winning the battle of Tabuk and escaping assassins on the return. Tabuk was the last battle that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) went to. On the way back some assassins from the Muslims tried to kill him, but his companion saved him. Upon seeing the Muslim army returning to madinah, the children and women ran out to meet them singing this poem they had prepared for the arrival. There hearts were so full of joy upon seeing the victory Islam had on that day. I feel the same joy every time I think about the victory Islam won over my heart. My favorite part of the song is the two lines “And we owe it to show gratefulness/When the call to Allah is called”. Whenever I learn Islam or am in prayer is when I am at my happiest and it is the time of my greatest humility. With the humility I have when I attend lessons, Quran readings, and prayer leads to overwhelming gratefulness that seems too little for Allah guiding me to his religion. Even the Prophet (peace and blessings upon him) was grateful at the time of the singing of this song as reported in many Hadiths in which it was narrated,

When the mountain of uhud came in the sight of Allah's Apostle he said, "This is a mountain that loves us and is loved by us. O Allah! Abraham made Mecca a sanctuary, and I make in between these two mountains a sanctuary.”

This was his gratefulness to Allah by asking Allah to send his goodness upon the area of Madinah in the same way Abraham asked Allah to bless the area of Mecca. This goodness is a blessing upon all the inhabitants of the city of Madinah to be righteous and to make them of the best to worship Allah. Allah’s Messenger (peace be upon him) was the first and best one to call people to Allah as the song says and so just saying these lines brings a smile to my face and a teardrop to my heart.

When I listen to the song, I feel as if I am one of the kids singing it and feeling so happy that the Muslim army returned victorious, leaving no other threat of hostility around the Muslims for the first time in years. Now, once again, the Muslims have threats from all over. The Muslim countries of Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan have been invaded and here in the United States and Europe there has been rises in hate crimes and unfair laws against Muslims. Listening and singing this song lets me imagine the feeling of security the Muslims felt after this splendid view of the Muslim army appearing next to mount Ehud in the valley of Wada’. I hope that, soon, the wars will stop, people will stop committing hate crimes and governments will stop legislating against Muslims just like when this song was sang. All the Muslim children in the world are taught this song and I hope we can repeat the joyous singing of it together one day.

Tala' al-badru alayna

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There is one song in the world I can bear to listen to and that song is “Tala al-badru alayna”. This song is around 1430 old and is still very popular among all Muslims. It is not so much a song as it is a poem. Nevertheless, it was first sung with great cheerfulness and meaning. This song is very important to me because it signifies the victory and reinforcement of my Islamic faith.

This song was sung by the children of the city of Madinah as the Prophet (peace and blessings upon him) made his entrance to the city after successfully winning the battle of Tabuk and escaping assassins on the return. Tabuk was the last battle that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) went to. On the way back some assassins from the Muslims tried to kill him, but his companion saved him. Upon seeing the Muslim army returning to madinah, the children and women ran out to meet them singing this poem they had prepared for the arrival. There hearts were so full of joy upon seeing the victory Islam had on that day. I feel the same joy every time I think about the victory Islam won over my heart. My favorite part of the song is the two lines “And we owe it to show gratefulness/When the call to Allah is called”. Whenever I learn Islam or am in prayer is when I am at my happiest and it is the time of my greatest humility. With the humility I have when I attend lessons, Quran readings, and prayer leads to overwhelming gratefulness that seems too little for Allah guiding me to his religion. Even the Prophet (peace and blessings upon him) was grateful at the time of the singing of this song as reported in many Hadiths in which it was narrated,

When the mountain of uhud came in the sight of Allah's Apostle he said, "This is a mountain that loves us and is loved by us. O Allah! Abraham made Mecca a sanctuary, and I make in between these two mountains a sanctuary.”

This was his gratefulness to Allah by asking Allah to send his goodness upon the area of Madinah in the same way Abraham asked Allah to bless the area of Mecca. This goodness is a blessing upon all the inhabitants of the city of Madinah to be righteous and to make them of the best to worship Allah. Allah’s Messenger (peace be upon him) was the first and best one to call people to Allah as the song says and so just saying these lines brings a smile to my face and a teardrop to my heart.

When I listen to the song, I feel as if I am one of the kids singing it and feeling so happy that the Muslim army returned victorious, leaving no other threat of hostility around the Muslims for the first time in years. Now, once again, the Muslims have threats from all over. The Muslim countries of Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan have been invaded and here in the United States and Europe there has been rises in hate crimes and unfair laws against Muslims. Listening and singing this song lets me imagine the feeling of security the Muslims felt after this splendid view of the Muslim army appearing next to mount Ehud in the valley of Wada’. I hope that, soon, the wars will stop, people will stop committing hate crimes and governments will stop legislating against Muslims just like when this song was sang. All the Muslim children in the world are taught this song and I hope we can repeat the joyous singing of it together one day.

stem/long stem or chaos/peace/chaos

The silence in the song “Stem/Long Stem” really drew me in and attracted me. I am not a fan of music and do not listen to it accept when forced to like when I am at work. Music really makes me uncomfortable. In the beginning of the song my heart felt extremely uneasy because of the beat. The silence that came in the middle and toward the end of the song provided a much-needed break from all the disturbances and distractions which music brings with it. This relates to life in many ways, which may be why I felt so strongly to write about this song. In life, especially working students’ lives, there is so much going on all the time, whether it’s homework or tests or work when involved with a student organization on campus. So this break of silence in the song represents the breaks that the busy person should take from the chaos happening in the world around them. This can come in many shapes and forms according to each person’s aspect of truth, culture, or religion.

The spoken word segment was also important to me because of my life experiences with the law and people in authority. I have suspended license because of a ticket I received for not having registration on my car a year ago. Actually I have accrued approximately 8 traffic tickets in the past 5 years, none of which were for moving violations. They were all for having no registration or no license. It is so frustrating that you get tickets for not having enough money to pay previous tickets. So, that is why I could totally relate to the guy speaking about waiting for trial because he had unpaid traffic tickets. I could also relate to him because I, too, waited in the holding cell behind the courtroom, waiting to go before the judge.

            

After explaining about waiting for the court in the holding cell, the spoken word becomes drowned in the return of the beat. That means he becomes drowned in the chaos again. It seems he is somewhat saved from the chaos while he is to himself in the courtroom holding cell. Maybe his name was called and this represents the chaos once he enters the courtroom, knowing he looks guilty wearing prison clothes.

            

Overall, this song really brings on the feeling of chaos followed by a time of peace, and then returns to chaos. The chaos is not overwhelming due to the break in the middle of it. To me, the song makes the point that we should take a break from all the chaos in our daily lives so that it does not become overwhelming and unbearable. Each person may have a different way to divert his or her lives from the chaos for a moment. Mine is prayer.

groundhog day's life lessons

Groundhog Day is a great movie which I have seen many times. It has a lot of very interesting messages/ideas/concepts within it. It is very interesting to see the character transformation of Phil. I believe he reflects how many people act when something happens that is not in there comfort zone.

When he first began to experience being stuck in the same day, he was frantically trying to find new ways to escape it. After realizing that he was stuck and even death wouldn’t allow him to escape the situation, he began to cause mischief and harm his surroundings while benefitting his own self. Finally, he figures out to help himself and others as well as being a benefiter.

This reminds me, generally, of how people react to situations in life that don’t quite fit into our own preconceptions of how things are supposed to be. As a Muslim, I see this happening a lot now that Islam is at the forefront of news headlines and people are reacting to it. Before, the 9/11 attacks, nobody really even thought of Islam. Then the attacks happened and the initial reaction was to fight against Islam (although it had nothing to do with the attacks). So, we had the creation of the Patriot Act, the imprisonment and expulsion of thousands of Muslims from the US, and many Muslims’ assets within the US were frozen. Then, we felt like we had to cause mischief by invading two Muslim countries. Now, we are at a point where Americans are realizing that doing good and helping Muslims, just like other people, is actually more productive and a better policy for our country’s security and authority. The same thing happened with so many groups of people throughout history and is still happening with even the most common occurances in everyday life on the individual level.

Lastly, relating back to the cave, the man was released from his bindings but it was an unknown that set him free. In the movie, I felt like this unknown was Rita. Phil wasn’t expecting Rita to help him, but, it was her that really influenced him, not only to change, but to take advantage of his time by helping everyone and thing, not benefitting himself with self-satisfying pleasures. In the end, helping and befriending everyone was better and solved his problem more than being disdainful towards everything and fighting against it. I think we can all learn from Phil’s transformation.

the cave in my eyes

Plato’s Cave is always very interesting to read and think about. I do think there is a path to guidance, but it varies, slightly, from the allegory and class discussion.  Mainly, there are two parts I would like to address and relate to my life.

In class we started with the assumption that he had always been locked up in the cave. This can be taken that, naturally, since birth, we are already bound in our minds from finding the truth until we are set free. On the contrary, I believe that a man, in his natural state without any influence from outside entities, is born as a Muslim. Then, his parents or some entity converts them to believe something else. When I say he is born a Muslim, I do not mean “Muslim” as in he knows the Quran and Prophets (peace be upon them) or Sharia or any of that. Rather, I mean “Muslim” as that person will have a natural inclination to worship Allah alone without any partners. So I believe that I was born in a natural state of Islam, then my parents locked me in the cave or, in other words, converted me to Christianity, then I was set free.  This is supported by the hadith in which the Prophet (peace and blessings upon him) said, “Every child is born with a true faith of Islam (i.e. to worship none but Allah Alone) but his parents convert him to Judaism, Christianity or Magainism, as an animal delivers a perfect baby animal. Do you find it mutilated?" Then Abu Huraira recited the holy verses: "The pure Allah's Islamic nature with which He has created human beings. No change let there be in the religion of Allah. That is the straight religion but most of men know, not."

In the Cave, the chains, which bound the man, are, suddenly, set loose, releasing the man to be able to search and find freedom and truth. This part is interesting because Plato doesn’t tell how the man was released, he just was. I attribute this releasing to three things. The three things I attribute the releasing to are reason, guidance, and the qadr. I attribute being able to be released to reason because without reason, the man would not know he was chained in the first place, nor would he come to the conclusion that there is such thing as being free.  Secondly, I attribute being released as guidance, because I am a Muslim, I believe Allah is the only one who guided me to accept Islam as my religion. Thirdly, I attribute it to the Qadr. Qadr may be a term incomprehensible to a non-Muslim. Qadr means the divine decree of Allah. I believe that everything that Allah has already willed to happen will happen and what he has not willed to happen will never happen. So I believe I was released from ignorance due to my reasoning and the guidance of Allah, which were only allowed to come to me because of the Qadr. This is supported by the famous hadith reported on the authority of Abdullah bin Masud, who said: the messenger of Allah, and he is the truthful, the believed narrated to us:

"Verily the creation of each one of you is brought together in his mother's belly for forty days in the form of seed, then he is a clot of blood for a like period, then a morsel of flesh for a like period, then there is sent to him the angel who blows the breath of life into him and who is commanded about four matters: to write down his means of livelihood, his life span, his actions, and whether happy or unhappy. By Allah, other than Whom there is no god, verily one of you behaves like the people of Paradise until there is but an arm's length between him and it, and that which has been written over takes him and so he behaves like the people of Hell-fire and thus he enters it; and one of you behaves like the people of Hell-fire until there is but an arm's length between him and it, and that which has been written over takes him and so he behaves like the people of Paradise and thus he enters it."

truth quotes and me

As a Muslim, finding even just one quote from the list of truth quotes provided on ilearn which I agree with and can relate to my life experience was extremely difficult, requiring an tremendous amount of thought. After hours of contemplation, I was only left with one quote, which was really relatable to me. The quote, “Beware of the half truth. You may have gotten hold of the wrong half’ by an unknown source was just extremely undoubtful and I felt I had become a victim to this. My whole life, until about two years ago, I had been a Christian, basing my whole life and opinions on the bible, mainly the new Testament. Even now, I love Allah with all my heart and believe fully that the truth is from Him. However, I believe that I was given the wrong half of the truth before I was guided with the Quran. I learned that although Christianity, although teaching some good truth, conceals and modifies some of the truth about Allah and his religion.

I pray five times a day and multiple times of each prayer (actually 17 times a day) I ask Allah to guide me on the straight path like those who he favored and not of those whom he is angry at or have gone astray. Muslims believe those who have gone astray are the Christians because the gospel has been changed so much that it is only half the truth. Also, everyday, I pass a palm reader on the way to work. And the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) is also reported to have answered a question regarding fortune tellers by stating that what they say “is a truth which the jinn have stolen a hearing from heaven, then added no less than 100 lies to” before informing the fortune teller. So this quote is the only one I could really connect to my life, it is rather unfortunate that it is from an unknown source. One quote I could never relate with is “It is man that makes truth great, not truth that makes man great” by Confucius. I believe that the truth is from Allah, and only He raises men who he wills to hire levels than others.


To part, I will close with the hadith Narrated Ibn 'Abbas: Whenever the Prophet offered his Tahajjud prayer, he would say, "O Allah, our Lord! All the praises are for You; You are the Keeper of the Heavens and the Earth. All the Praises are for You; You are the Light of the Heavens and the Earth and whatever is therein. You are the truth, and Your saying is the truth, and Your promise is the truth, and the meeting with You is the truth, and Paradise is the truth, and the Fire is the truth. O Allah! I surrender myself to You, and believe in You, and I put my trust in You. And to You I complain of my opponents and with Your Evidence I argue. So please forgive the sins which I have done in the past or I will do in the future, and also those which I did in secret or in public, and that which You know better than I. None has the right to be worshipped but You."