answer

Problems

All my problems seem so solid, only solutions flow. I seem solid, although quantum physics tells me that all matter is made up of mainly empty space. The forces of attraction and repulsion seem solid, as matter is pressed against me or as I press upon some matter’s place.

Existential matters seem heavy as though they weigh unkind upon my mind.

Financial matters seem like actual things that knot together and insist upon a form, upon formal meetings with a choreographed manner of processing what’s due where, to whom, when and what for, in a matter of due diligence, contracted service, work, payment and statements as receipts.

All breath flows, in and out. My blood flows across expansion and contraction, my food digests within a peristalsis of squeeze and release. Everything that is living flows, conversation flows, air, water and electricity flows, love flows.

It doesn’t seem to me, at times that my life is flowing, that it is within necessary boundaries, pressured and purposeful, pumping it’s energy toward a goal; that it’s much fun.

God calls me to return to Love’s flow, in the here and now. Who is the miser of my misery? Not He who makes all, but the he or she who would try make small the beauty of Her face.

I’ve written and written blog entries, social media posts and tweets. It seems a …. long drawn out debt …. man of words, a merely sent invoice for my time’s blood, seeping from a gash of an amateur’s concern for a professional game never really played. It seems that my past life has been nothing but a secret, leaked.

So for now farewell, my android’s metaphoric pen must cap: my leaky way become more light, more robust if I’m to survive, escape and pay down my debt to those who would prefer to see me dead, like them.

Only solutions flow.

“Say Allah then leave them to plunge in vain discourse and trifling” ….

(No just estimate of Allah do they make when they say: “Nothing doth Allah send down to man (by way of revelation)” Say: “Who then sent down the Book which Moses brought? – a light and guidance to man: But ye make it into (separate) sheets for show, while ye conceal much (of its contents): therein were ye taught that which ye knew not – neither ye nor your fathers.” Say: “(Allah) (sent it down)”: Then leave them to plunge in vain discourse and trifling. – Al Qur’an 6:91 (Y. Ali) )

The Question

At this time of historic Parliamentary chaos for the UK, this quote from Jung is the only “in/out” vote that the UK faces, the vote that #Brexit mimics. This question reflects the power at the very core of the 12 Step Programme.

This is the affirmative message of Diction Resolution Therapy (DRT) the very reason for my work as ‘Abd al-Mu’min al-Jāmi’ ibn Hulli, the only reason that you are reading this now.

“The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not? That is the telling question of his life. Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interests upon futilities, and upon all kinds of goals which are not of real importance. Thus we demand that the world grant us recognition for qualities which we regard as personal possessions: our talent or our beauty. The more a man lays stress on false possessions, and the less sensitivity he has for what is essential, the less satisfying is his life. He feels limited because he has limited aims, and the result is envy and jealousy. If we understand and feel that here in this life we already have a link with the infinite, desires and attitudes change.”

— “Memories, Dreams, Reflections” (CG Jung)

From the text of the book Alcoholics Anonymous, the book that published the 12 Step Programme in the 1930s, comes this posing of the question ….

“Our friend was a minister’s son. He attended church school, where he became rebellious at what he thought an overdose of religious education. For years thereafter he was dogged by trouble and frustration.

Business failure, insanity, fatal illness, suicide —these calamities in his immediate family embittered and depressed him. Post-war disillusionment, ever more serious alcoholism, impending mental and physical collapse, brought him to the point to self-destruction.

One night, when confined in a hospital, he was approached by an alcoholic who had known a spiritual experience. Our friend’s gorge rose as he bitterly cried out: “If there is a God, He certainly hasn’t done anything for me!”

But later, alone in his room, he asked himself this question: “Is it possible that all the religious people I have known are wrong?”

While pondering the answer he felt as though he lived in hell. Then, like a thunderbolt, a great thought came. It crowded out all else:

“Who are you to say there is no God?”

This man recounts that he tumbled out of bed to his knees. In a few seconds he was overwhelmed by a conviction of the Presence of God. It poured over and through him with the certainty and majesty of a great tide at flood. The barriers he had built through the years were swept away.

He stood in the Presence of Infinite Power and Love. He had stepped from bridge to shore. For the first time, he lived in conscious companionship with his Creator. Thus was our friend’s cornerstone fixed in place. No later vicissitude has shaken it. His alcoholic problem was taken away. That very night, years ago, it disappeared.

Save for a few brief moments of temptation the thought of drink has never returned; and at such times a great revulsion has risen up in him. Seemingly he could not drink even if he would. God had restored his sanity.

What is this but a miracle of healing? Yet its elements are simple. Circumstances made him willing to believe. He humbly offered himself to his Maker —then he knew.

Even so has God restored us all to our right minds. To this man, the revelation was sudden. Some of us grow into it more slowly. But He has come to all who have honestly sought Him.

When we drew near to Him He disclosed Himself to us!”

___

So then, it seems that an overwhelming urgency, a preparation of the personal place, unique conditions that are often painful through disease, abuse, war, sudden realisation of a true situation as against illusion (as in the case of The Buddha walking away from a rich privileged life), collective adversity as can be seen in the microcosms of both Moses and Muhammad (pbuh), all of this and more has prompted people in the past to ask Jung’s question …. “Is he related to something infinite or not?”

So the conditions cited in the opening of this post are contextualised.

Queues and queues of questions

The cue for a question can be small, large, subtle or brash. The attention grab that causes the start, the shock to a long-held presumption, the apparent opening of a door suddenly found to have been always open, when presumed locked.

What is your question …. right now, in this moment of our meeting?

That’s a very good question. It requires a very good answer. Your question suggests that you are looking for some words to deliver you some further information that might render your question completely destroyed.

If a question is answerable, then it is destroyable. This destruction of question as a definition of a question capable of removing ignorance is sometimes temporary, sometimes permanent. So, the question, “what time is it”, though destructible of itself in a moment, can be used over and over again.

This is why some questions seem impossible to truly ask with a hundred percent, whole-hearted commitment and total connection, unless the true impermanence of attributing oneself as a purely material entity is accepted – even theoretically.

“What is two plus two”, as a question, is utterly rendered as obsolete by its nemesis, the number four. This question only remains then for the petitioner as a teaching aid, or as a premise for further questions.

“Who am I”, as a question, is therefore asked, when at all, from a place of not wanting an unequivocal answer from an exterior source, as this destructive power in the answer may seem existentially threatening.

Yet, in a type of illness, a person will unwittingly answer themselves with a view of self as if this question “who am I” has been asked, answered and therefore destroyed, never to be asked again.

Do you really want that question utterly destroying, so that it can never be asked again by you in the same way that you formulate it right in this moment? If so, it will require some forensic work to clear this question from all previous subliminal usage that has been the cause of an inner imprisonment with a locked cell and the lost key that is the question, “who am I?”

Only by finding this question “who am I”, consciously, by asking it consciously, by thus destroying it consciously, can a person really feel that their inner prison is no more.

Then the question becomes one of, is the answer to “who am I”, giving an answer as certain as 2+2=4, in which case the question, the questioner and that which is questioned as the answerer become One, permanently and the relative place of questioning may disappear completely … RIP.

Or is the question answered, destroyed and resurrected to enable the questioner to remember consciously the answer whilst remaining “in time”, with an “I” no longer the same as the one prior to an answer of its own self-destruction, yet with a presence now able to assist others with the salvaging of this simple question, “who am I” for themselves.

There are more answers than questions

Answers are everywhere
Look, look at the miracle
Invited into your life by you
Listen to the sound of breathing
Last breath and first breath
Repeating, repeating
Heading you into the weather
Steering you into desires
Feeding your appetite
Assuaging your hunters
Yet, you never question
You never ask
So the answers cannot intrude
They’re not allowed to force an entry
That’s against the law.
You’re swimming in a sea of solutions
Floating in an ocean of resolution
Yet you think that you’re drowning
It feels like you’re sinking
Because you can’t see the difference
Between vassal and vessel
Between sale and sail.
The answers are yearning for your question.

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