Neosomaliana: Recent Episodes
Mulki Early
I share my observations about the world, how I've metabolized the information overload, how I've navigated trauma and created frameworks of meaning where I weave together the political and metaphysical
Centering the wellbeing of my heart has shifted my life completely, both in terms of life quality as well as what I'm drawn to and value. Surrender to Allaah in tawakul is the true soft life.
As this ramadan has had me focused on healing the heart, I've pondered a lot on the tangible meaning of healing? And i share my musings on how society is set up to break down healing in order to keep you in amygdala hijack (which i explain) and survival and without agency. And how that distances you from Allaah
Taking you through my tawakul journey and how the biggest obstacle has been that the essence of tawakul is ego death and to relinquish control and futurity. Things that feel like the death of all possibility and resigning myself to despair. And what came up as I've tried to disentangle those internalized meanings
I go into breaking down verse 32 in surah al-Furqaan and how the heart is both the organ for receiving knowledge in the form of light but also responsible for inspiring the body in ways that become physical acts of worship, and retain that light through istiqama. And how this shows how the deen is deeply trauma-informed bc it is aligned with the human system. Only what is felt and digested stays, bc what is felt is what is inspired by the voice of God. Whereas the voice of your demands or inner critic only erodes and drains.
I explore the connections between pain, despair and self-hate and how the western hegemony and capitalism turns us against our bodies protests against self-exploitation. This by framing pain as an evidence of innate fault that we need to achieve to compensate for. We need achievement and the pursuit of endless possibilities to redeem our faulty humanity and strive to become gods. It's something that is socialized in almost a hypnotic way. Psychic malware is installed to alienate us from ourselves and each other. I read from an excerpt of Byul Chal-Han's The Burnout Society in a paper titled Vital Exhaustion: Late Capitalism and the Crisis of Pain published by The Courtald Institute of Art (Nov 2020)cover image: Daehyun Kim, Face the Whole Martini (2011)
I recount how a trip to Somalia as a teen was formative in my identity and my decolonization by experiencing being unmasked and being celebrated for my unmasked self. The unshaming of weirdness and anger by local Somalis radicalized me in rejecting anything that demanded the conditioning and censoring of my identity. And how decolonization is rooted in reclaiming what was robbed or suppressed in us by reclaiming our anger.
I talk about how shaytaan uses the inner critic and negative self-perception as a way to manipulate and infiltrate both our conceptualization of Allaah's power in changing our material reality as well as His goodwill for us.Attacks on self are intended to distort and shrink the inner space that anchors our connection to Him and that calls to Him. It's an attempt at distorting the imaginal capacity of the fitrah itself, and with it our ability to hold out hope.artwork: Shaun Tan, Head with cave and tree
I continue on the realization of how shaytaan uses subconscious fears to amplify a sense of depravation and lack that I have to compensate for. And that the implication is that Allaah is not going to help me. When in fact, the liberation I needed is something I cannot do for myself and is something I need to receive before I can participate. My sense of agency is weaponized to displace me from my body.
I go into a subtle activation pattern I've noticed that is behind one of the most stubborn behaviours I've been unable to shift. And I take it apart to reveal that the most stubborn complexes do not answer to force. Their root fear that they've been incited to 'protect' against need an alternative solution. It needs to be addressed so that its vulnerability is not used as a backdoor for shaytaan to clinch in order to split our psychic resources and focus.
After a long hiatus, I return to share thoughts and reflections around the nature of what I share on social media, why I share it and what my sole intention and desire is in sharing it. I hope it finds those who have the ears to listen and receive this
I reflect on the months since summer and what a reality not in communication with the body looks like. How not everything good is compatible. And how an incompatible life puts one in constant conflict between the safety of the body (the whole) and the security of the mind (the part).
When your inner resources and abilities mature, you arrive at a crossroads: to either sell your energy to the highest bidder and have the meaning of your life depend on how well you can market it, or to follow what fills your heart and which your whole being responds to in resonance. A path of creating something entirely new.
No is my energy redirecting me to where it's unfolding. I'm unlearning the fear in diverting from routines and established norms when it doesn't inspire, and the societal lie that routines give us stability and predictability. Adapting my life to the natural patterns of my energy creates a life of harmony as opposed to one of conflict, compulsion and control.
As I face new levels of relational threats bc I'm sharing more with society and in real time, I'm reflecting on how that's affecting me. That as I share what's emergent it disrupts and triggers the status quo, it sometimes backfire where I receive projections which force me into resistance. This resistance doesn't actually help me as it shuts down my heart and disconnects me from Allaah and what I receive from Him
I explore how breakdowns can also mean the end of the past and the beginning of the multiple choice point that is the future. It is a dreadful place at first, and our response to the fear creates our new direction: going deeper into the unknown or circling back to what we've already built.
I explore a meaningful insight I received about isti'aana and seeking to be regulated by Allaah that made me understand how I could match my inner resources/urges to my window of tolerance without having to rely on my mind or fall into shame for there not being enough external resources or support.
You may fight and wrestle however you can,but it's not until you release what's been digesting in you that things can land to take root, to sprout more of you. I explore the connection between rest-trust-flow and how we may release what we hold without losing what we are.
I realized that my constant search for context was my mind still hungover from trauma survival, and an implicit understanding that if I centre something other than myself, I can adapt & not disrupt. Learning to centre nothing but my engagement, experience & experiment with the present moment is so alien. I'm realizing that I can't live to predict. I have to drop that in favour of a broader understanding of safety. One that encompasses each & every moment, regardless of what is occurring.
I'm yearning to find the direction to what magnetizes my spirit. I want the world that makes it possible & safe to show up & share. I'm not settling for what version of the world is being presented for me. I need a life-affirming horizon to guide my sail. I want the horizon that's being weaved by this newfound inner sun.
I sense that humanity is entering a collective era where logic & control will dissolve bc things will be unexpected & disruptive. And what happened in my own life that made me realize that the only way forward is through surrender.
I talk about my journey to tawakul & reflect upon the lessons of prophet Musa alayhissalaam & his exodus in surah ash-Shua'araa (26) & how remaining present makes you a conduit for miracles.
I'm exploring how a sunny day lead me through a network of analogies involving the immune system, personal power, movement of energy & coordination of the body. Be warned that it's very scattered brained.
I'm exploring the impact of losing the context of a culture, shared experiences, collective meaning & being judged & demeaned for buckling under that life-distorting impact. When we understand what's behind difficulties & inability to move forward, we can have more compassion or at least hold back on the acidic shaming.
When you're in a survival mode, you're decentralized & preemptive while suppressing all other non-essential parts of you. When healed, these parts come online with their own energy & need, requiring you to become more centralized in how you interpret need & meet those needs.
Part of post-healing is to examine the images & visions that provided motivation. For me it meant that they expired bc they were part of the old conditioning of adapting to the status quo for survival bc of shame. So I'm in a liminality where creating space is very painful bc I have to connect to everything that was blocked before.
No one prepares you for what healing actually entails: disconnecting from the filters & contexts that automated living for you. You're now forced to immerse yourself in existence, & to feel the tension of that complexity. Post-healing is like the ashaabul kahf who woke up after 300+ years when their reality framework had expired.
I'm thinking about trauma as our sun dying and that death destroying how planets & life functions. And how healing is to discover an internal sun but then discovering that you can't go back to your old timeline, to society with that much energy. You have to get rid of yourself to be accepted. So now I'm in a space of being stranded. How do I form a new context for myself?
There are missing pieces connecting the mental health crisis, ecological destruction & hyperconsumerism. Any attempts at solving these problems in their vacuum only works to suppress & further fragment our collective psyche. Will we stop this runaway train in time?
I analyze the soul urge that made me pull the plug on the machine & some of the worrying patterns emerging on platforms like Twitter, changing us without our awareness.
The defining feature of this world is rupture & it's a reset that contrasts illusion &truth, what's superficial & what's enduring. Rupture signals the inherent limitations of this world. When we reject it we might start to personalize the limitations as being indications of our own insufficiencies. We try to overcompensate but we're always interrupted nevertheless
I talk about what a month of following resonance and doing things that pushed my bandwidth while trying to retain my pace entailed. Ambition aint shit. Healing is anti-urgency. Compassion is the root of healthy movement.
We agree to play the role of being a cardboard cutout for the fantasy of someone else in exchange for having a predictable and steady stream of being needed. We seek out a leverage to stave off uncertainty about our safety and we think recognition is the only form of love available to us.
Being caught up in a threatening torrent of Western onslaught on the continent has shifted the focus from the collective intelligence approach that defines African cultures, to an overstatement of materialism as the only means of surviving. Many have lost the ability to identify and extract the innate meaning in our cultures, judging the absence of hyperintellectualism and written language as an absence of intelligence.
Healing doesn't initially mean end of pain and living your best life. It's a paradigm shift in the meaning of pain and a reclaiming of the pain that caused your system to oust parts of you, resulting in fragmentation and incongruence. To gain continuity you have to witness its antithesis. Not knowing that the primary function of healing is disruption may cause despair and may make you misinterpret success as failure.
Looking at the Polyvagal Theory through an Islaamic framework to make the knowledge of Allaah accessible when things are really overwhelming or dismal
An intro to a freestyling podcast where I share how I've navigated the world as a black Muslim woman