My Inclinations from my childhood till now: Religiosity, Spirituality & Rationality

Let's dig out the inclinations from my childhood till now.

I can divide my main inclination into 3 periods:

1. NOSTALGIC ABOUT CHILDHOOD IN VILLAGE AND A SUFI:

I was very nostalgic about my childhood in the village a couple of years ago. This state started from 2012 and 2013  when I was in Ireland to 2016. I was comparing  Waterford land areas to my village. Though it was different in terms of cleanliness and greenishness, there were still areas I could think of the same as in my village. I admire too much the things we had in our village. The freedom I had to go anywhere with my dog, picking berries, kandi, toot etc., swimming in ponds. We have a big 'kot' or a house which has many amenities (I will write in my diary) including many semi-machines. We had many types of pets and animals; rabbits, swans, hens, pigeons, goats, buffaloes, cows and a parrot also  . We have lands to cultivate not only wheat and rice but watermelons, barley, googro, tomato, chilis and other vegetables.   so this all taken-back me, how great it was.  For many years, amazed by movies and technologies, I was hoping for a long time that one day I would be able to  see my past days in the village.

Turning to my interests, when we moved to Karachi, initially I was amazed by the story books and magazines.  ‘Ankh macholi’(hide and seek), ‘Nonihal’(childhood), ‘Taleemo Tarbiyat’(Education and training) and many others were my favorites. I was reading religious books a lot. Read the Quran with translation, and many other books on Islamic read ‘kashful mehjoob’ on Sufism and many other books.  I have written a collection of ‘ayats’ on many topics. I made a file in which I was sticking ‘our heroes’ pics and posts about Pakistan, patriotism, Islam etc. I was listening to Friday Sermons and Tuesday and Thursday sermons and speeches by religious preachers. 

I was watching state television PTV a lot. I have made a schedule of all programs aired from starting at 5pm to 9 or 10 pm. Very later I had 2 channels to see PTV and STN or NTM.

When visiting my village every year during vacations for some months, I listen to radio stations for Sindhi and Urdu songs. Indian songs and classical ‘Ragas’ at night and BBCs news at 8pm regularly. Later when FM stations started, i was listening to those whole nights.

A monthly ‘Roohani digest’ (spiritual digest) was my favorite for many years. I was also reading books from my father's bookshelf. Those were hard to understand but I was feeling something great when reading. I was reading newspapers, Sunday magazines, and later books on nationalism, history, personalities, literature. 

Later the time of PTV and other channels increased from 5 to 9 to 24 hours.  More tv channels opened in 2008. Initially whatever programs were aired, I watched them all, later I had to make a choice. Including PTV’s long plays which were a trip to heaven for me, and Pakistani  movies on PTV, STN and Indian movies  on VCR in the shape of cassettes. Initially I hated Indian songs and movies . I have written a list of movies and songs copied by India. but with time, I got out of the state propaganda against India.  I was fond of  comedy  programs and cartoons. Very later I started reading books often and obliged myself to purchase some books every month. I started watching talk shows.  In newspapers, we were getting ‘jang’(war) newspapers. Later my father started ‘Dawn’. I started reading columns in addition to news.  My favorite columnists were Nadeem Farooq Paracha, Abbas Nasir, Babar Sattar, Hassan Nisar and many others. I was spending too much time playing games on my pc and Sony PlayStation brought by a relative from Saudi. I became addicted to such programs on politics, history and current affairs that in Ireland during studies, I started watching those again secretly in rooms of the college. The Pakistanis living with me s were of opposite camp who are alluded and brainwashed by ARY news and likewise fake news tv channels. Unfortunately majority of Pakistanis are brainwashed by the state and compelled mentally to buy the arguments done on these tv channels, despite these channels lost their case in UK and other European countries.:

2. HUMANIST TO EXTREMIST RELIGIOUS

In our village we have a mosque and practice Islam but it has nothing to do with extremism or blind following of orders for hating people from other sects or religion. There were many Hindus living in the city near us. They include very good doctors, shopkeepers, and teachers. There were ‘OAD’ who construct buildings with mud called ‘od’ in Sindhi living near our village. It was humanism, equality between all the peoples living there. Later in the 90s suddenly we see many preachers come from Punjab, they make more mosques, more offices, preach Talibanism, eventually the small libraries and places where we read books, perform cultural events vanishing. In our village mosque also an imam was appointed for prayers despite we had our own. Gradually people are brainwashed to hate others more than Muslims even other sects than Wahabis. I was not so much engaged in these activities. One reason we moved to Karachi and visited my village and city on vacations but in Karachi also there was strong propaganda everywhere which made me religious and nationalist. More than nationalism and patriotism, I was fanatically religious, practicing every prayer, taraweeh, fast in the month of Ramadan ,have a beard and was against my father’s opinion about equality. I will write in detail about this later but it influenced me a lot.    

3. RELIGIOSITY TO SPIRITUALITY AND SUFISM

Later gradually my thinking, belief system and opinion changed from extreme religious and nationalist to Sufism and socialism. I was influenced by the left, the books of Sabte Hasan made me a supporter of socialism but more than that I believed in the Sufism philosophy of equality, minimalism and simplicity. The age in which I should have been motivated or energized to work hard for making money and fame, I wanted a life of ‘a darvesh’ or ‘a faqeer’. That influence made me so lazy, lethargic and lacked the fire to ‘do something’. I was interested in study arts, literature but instead of fine arts, my father and people around me suggested strongly to pursue education in science which lead to engineering than I caught in this rope till masters, never finding any way to pursue the field i was interested from childhood. Therefore in the university of engineering and technology, I loved to create items to present as one man show in University events and was going to the library of arts university to read books and had friends there.

 In addition to this, as I was reading books on Sindhi nationalism and later learned of the true history of Pakistan, I became a proponent of human rights and a staunch supporter of secularism. I was interested in attending literature festivals, music festivals. All the way till I went to Ireland and returned to Pakistan in 2015 and till 2018 when I went to Sweden, humanism, secularism and human rights was my thing. From the end of 2018  when I became busy in delivery jobs for 2,3 years, I started listening to self help books. Watching programs about it, reading and listening to these types of books, I was addicted to this field until the start of  2022 when I stopped listening to them (It is a big story in my life and i will write on it how it brainwashed me and i hardly managed to get rid of this addiction). Now I have a hard choice to make in life whether to read and write blogs related to politics, history and social affairs  in which  

I Have keen interest and will read books (not got time from last many years and coming many years until I got visa and survival fixed) or write on spiritualism and philosophy  which is again my field of interest but loosely. The strange thing is I have an inclination to this discipline but did not save books on it except poetry by some sufi poets and a study on Hinduism, Buddhism, Zen on the internet. It will depend more on my experience of life about the second field. But I cannot diminish my interest to read books on History, Politics, Social and current affairs etc. 

There is a lot to write on this subject but I am avoiding it due to too much length of blog. Please comment, suggest and share. I will be obliged for your valuable comments. So do not hesitate to write anything you feel after reading this blog.

Thankyou for reading.

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Suggestions, Recommendations and Engagements are highly appreciated. 

Thankyou

Munawar Ali

Life and Figuring out meaning of Happiness

I wonder what is this life about; living for eating, drinking, walking, traveling, visiting places, serving already made relationships (parents, uncles, aunties, cousins), making relationships (friendships, marriages etc.), making a living in case if we have to, listening, reading, watching and a lot of verbs of you think of it. and then making memories of those experiences. For some we have pictures and for many we do not have like in my case due to non-availability of the camera or even non-availability of the intention to record or preserve it. Sometimes I feel so inspired, shocked and amazed how great it was. 

Like it's a natural tendency with everybody on this earth that whenever he/she thinks about his/her past he finds it better than present only except the time period of past where he/she passed through painful physical or mental suffering. But that negativity of perception also can be changed to positive thinking that it happened, but it is not happening now. Feeling it in any way you can choose. Sometimes, we are surprised by thinking about the past like 'Oh this happened to me?: "How lucky/unlucky I was", "Was it really happened or just a hallucination" and if this is concerned with another human, the percentage of believing in hallucination reduced. 

We always regard our past as a golden age. It may be due to the reason: We were children who had no responsibilities, and had to just play. In this sentence the word "have to" can have different impacts on our mind. We can think about it in many ways. One is in a pleasurable way, for example: "I have to taste that delicious pastry which I want to". The other is "I have to taste that pastry which I know may be tasty, maybe bad but presented to me by someone who I cannot refuse ". But for that age of children I think they do not "have to do" but "allowed to do" whatever they want. But later when they grew up they moved from "allowed to" to "have to". Not everybody's destined to agree with this but mostly it is the case. And later in life people are compelled by their "freeSelf" to say that " they can sacrifice all the money, fame and possession just to get that past, that golden age back". It may be like a sentence said in the movie Joker or a song sung by Jagjeet Singh and others that "get from me all my wealth and fame and give me back or return my child age". 

And remembering the past is so fascinating that it takes you out from where you are, turns your mind to shooting, relaxing and dragging you to experience a dream-like state. So when I remember my past it leaves me with surprise, astonishment and amazed at how great it was.

If I share the utopia or dream I have is that I should be at a place where I have no responsibilities towards any or if there is I do it not in compulsion but doing it happily. The place where I read books, write what I want , sip the type of liquid I want , eat the food I love, go with people I want and visit places I am fond of ,know places and theories I want to explore etc. 

Many say happiness is in giving to others like I saw a movie called ‘Sab se bara Sukh’ meaning the biggest Happiness/  . In that movie 2 friends got wealthy and started their journey to find happiness. They did everything that a human can think of getting joy, pleasure, happiness, laugh, whatever you name it but after experiencing with so many various doings, getting's and experiencing they found happiness in helping others. 

If it's helping others, is it impossible for one to make someone happy or solve his or her problem if he or she is deprived of basic needs. According to Maslow's law of hierarchy of needs, the basic needs to be fulfilled first for satisfaction and go forward with mental needs and wants. Acquiring even basic needs does not mean he or she will be happy for a long time . After accomplishment he or she could have some moments or days of happiness but again he or she is bound to feel void. And according to my experience, helping others can make you feel happy about the solution of the problem but it raises more problems when you feel 'this is the tiniest problem i have solved. if i talk about myself i was not in a good position to help others but i needed help more than that. Even if I solve someone's problem and I expect happiness in return, it is superficial. and without expectation it feels like mere work of daily monotonous routine. 

I have watched a drama in my childhood. Actually, I want to talk about it here. One was ``sukhan ji wasti' the valley of happiness or satisfaction or whatever you name it. in which a family was traveling from town to town in search of 'sukh' but they never found anywhere and the writer concluded the drama with this phrase 'there is no place in the world, where you get happiness'.

Likewise another drama in which there were 4,5 brothers. One of them was very straightforward. He lived a simple life. He was minimalist. but he got depressed and was admitted to Mental Asylum, a place for mental illness. After some months he became alright and they brought him home. He experienced that his brothers are fighting on property with each other all the time. and it makes the environment so cruel and unable to live for him like he was living peacefully in a mental asylum where he sees nothing of such type . such wars of egos. such trauma out of stress or manmade deprivation. so he decided to become mental again and this was his intention to become like that to go there. Therefore, he feels happy when he leaves his house and starts living in a mental asylum. I often resemble my personality with him. and i remember when my father did the second marriage and after my step sister, he had my step brother . after that I felt so much to ask them this 'i was the only son between 7 daughters so now you got another. please let me go . let me leave your house. it was very strange . I don't know why I am feeling this way. where I will go if I think about practical real meaning. 'So what is happiness? Of course material gain is the must for not only need but it can fulfill your wants. I was deprived and still deprived of money most of the time to even fulfill my needs but I don't know why I am not struggling so hard for that. What is that satisfaction that doesn't incite me to work hard consistently . I cannot assess how I should go for it, which is my need and want also. and can it be called satisfaction that i cannot work on it consistently or its called lethargy or laziness. or I am not finding the perfect way for it. Is there any perfect way?. also as i listen to a phrase in movie 'waking life' what is most influential character of humanity .is it Laziness or Greed but this is the main thing.  

But on some criteria, I will oppose it. In our type of society where it is stressed on family system one is obliged to do what the family wants or he is compelled psychologically to person such works or even have to think on the ‘lines  provided by his elders. In this way he is helping what his/her family wants and they become happy but he is not. He is trying to escape that mess, that prison, that obligation.  If this example is wrong, let me tell you another one. If you help someone without expectation though its hard and many cannot do it until their personality is changed after consumption of Buddhist or Christianity's example of ‘getting slap on other part of face’ )to find it.  So I do not think it's helping someone. May it work for someone but not all. 

The third and very important dimension is doing what you are supposed to do and this is the hardest thing I ever experienced but just in thinking not in action. It's because i could not due to family responsibilities etc. but i can feel that that is the real hope for getting true happiness. Let me explain it in the next blog. 

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