My name is Ramla. I am a writer. Sometimes, I teach. I learn all the time.
Somehow, I just have a lot to say, think, do, and write. In 2008, after much fear, tear, and deliberation, I had decided to go against the grain of the world that attempted to force me into being everthing that I am essentially not, and do every and anything I do not like. I don't know the source of this struggle and violence, some of which, it seems, originates from within myself as I subject myself to one horror after another.
I really am tired of covering that all up.
In 2008, I met a writer & editor, who soon became my love. He was a man. He took interest in me and took me to be a human, not a doll. He gave voice to my feelings for me.
Suddenly, I erupted in glorious rupture. I had never before seen a human being behave so well to me, and be so kind. This man was not out to hurt, kill or acquire. He wanted to give his everything to me, to my existence, my continuation, my survival.
He did not have to do much--initially. All I needed was his loving presence in my life, and note how kind he had been to others throughout his life, a fact that I discovered by googling and reading what he had written.
He did the same: he googled, he read my words, he understood me in many ways that I did not even understand myself.
We were in love.
We wanted to do some good in the world. I was extremely tremulous and fragile, fighting for my very existence as I underwent long-needed physical therapy while fighting a variety of ailments that erupted in that period.
I suddenly turned very lovely and beautiful. I wanted to love and to care and to nurture and give birth to life. I wanted to write, I wanted to care, I wanted to love. Together, we brought our first tiny baby to this world: we wrote an article together. In the cosmic scheme of all written things, it wasn't even a speck. It perhaps went unnoticed by the world. But we noticed. Two people who began to love and appreciate each other for the beauty we each secreted within; for the good that we had been planting silently in the world.
Sigh.
I can't seem to go on, but I must.
Somehow, within the next few years, I committed suicide.
I simply killed myself. I put myself to fire.
And then I woke up, and I was still alive. Either I was wrecking horror upon me, or horror was wrecking it upon myself. But I was alive, and I was rapidly dying--screaming and crying, being dragged into some sort of nether-world. I saw dreams of such utter horror and pain that I don't recall being watched by any human, elsewhere. At least, none that I know of.
It had somehow started, it seems, through persecution by some close friends, at least one of whem went out of her way to ensure that nothing was left of my existence and reputation and life. If I found love, she was after it. If I found hope and shelter, she wanted to take it down. If I began speaking my heart up, she set up a censuring circle, telling everyone who cared to know that I "spoke too much". Her presence in my life has opened the door to such evil that I cannot close it anymore--at least not without bearing witness a hundred thousand times to the pain that was inflicted upon my self. I subjected myself to great acts of violence... of committing suicide while I was still alive... that one may not be able to withstand an account of them. My soul was free, joyful and trusting. She told me to hate the world, to hate myself, and to throw myself in front of lions--nay, hyenas.
If ever she found out that I had found out an opening towards joy, love, happiness, freedom, she rushed to close the door. She wanted freedom for herself.
I was able to wrench myself away from her, but found another like her... and that was my end.
My dear Love, meanwhile, stood by and shouted himself hoarse to wrench myself free of this terror. I was, for an extended moment, so happy and joyful with him! So beautiful! So radiant! So full of joy and laughter!
And I wanted to leave this hell-hole of pain and excruciation behind that had become my life.
But I did not know how.
I ran, I got trapped, and I fell. I heard a shudder and cry so loud from earth that I could not bear its sound. Few physical signs of it became apparent, but the terror that I felt tore at my real flesh--it tore through my heart, my neck, my womb, my spine. Faraway in another city, a blood relative of mine got shaken in his sleep and fell of his bed, to the concern of his wife. He wrote to me in panic: "What happened? What happened!?"
I said, a star has annihilated and fallen to her death. Sh has gone out in a burst of light, in a bright spark that erupted in pain in a silent, dark, unwitnessed corner of the universe.
Somehow, he seemed to understand, but he could barely help.
Things around me caught fire, such was the rage of existence at my death. I saw rains pound and dust-storms come as my heart burst again and again in the final throes of its death. I was not alive, and yet I was alive to witness this horror.
I was in another world. I was in a world of love and light and sound and beautiful joy and birdsong and roses and golden light and beautiful company and color. It all want black, upside-down, twisted. I heard Allah cry; Mother Existence tear at Her hair. The light of the world ran away from my side. "Surely this is a despair worth the work of Azazil! Surely, God cannot love and help a wretch as myself! For Allah loved me, and He sent me an angel upon an angel and asked me to leave the damned and damning who were making my life hell. Scripture cried in my hand, and His angels spoke from beyind the veil, asking me to leave it all and fled into His arms, leave this dimension behind once and for all for I did not belong here anymore. I had subjected myself to a year of torture and silence as a penitence for sins that I had not committed, to satisfy the wicked urges of a few schizophrenic minds who saw black where there was white, and who whispered evil suggestions to me, disguised as close friends. But I did not pay heed. I did not grant justice and love and mercy and healing to myself, and I set up God against God! Therefore this is, this is it. This is my existence, this is hell. This is the outcome of not listening to those who cared for me and loved me, and instead throwing myself in the arms of hell and despair. This is it! This is my hell! This is my earning! This is my reward!"
And my heart wept even more bitterly and soundlessly. "Dear Child! Who has taught you this lie? Who has taught you such utter and bleak despair? I have loved you, and I always will. And none of your disbelief and your suicidal acts and your thoughts and fear and love and terror and horror turned upon your self can extinguish the flame of love and life from within my Self! You will not die a death of horror, hatred, loathing, and despair--this is my promise to you, and this is your promise to yourself. You will abide by your word, you will, you will come across all distance for me as I will for you for nothing is beyond my power, and nothing but nothing is beyond my repair. What is hell? Are you fearful of your depth, your life, your despair? Are you afraid of the vastness of space and time, the inability to stand upon your feet when the earth has been wrapped and pulled from under your feet? Are you afraid of falling down, and falling apart? Are you afraid of falling in, and falling into My Arms?
Relax, and love, and let go of your grip on this life for I am the Master of All Illusion. I am the Master of All Love and All Space and Time, and I am the Master of Mercy and Love, and Creator of Despair. There is none but I Who can save you, and none but I Who can restore your sense of self on which you so depend in this illusory world. I am the Shoulder upon which you ride, and I uphold you, and blow life into and out of you, and I sustain your every fiber, your being and your self and all that you know, and all that you do not know, and all that you understand or dont understand. I love you, and I will always will, and when it is time ripe for you, I will take you by way of death. But be not the cause of my hurt and shame, and create not such smoke of despair in the world lest the people of this world shall doubt My Love and My Mercy and My Existence. I put a cover on you and cloak you, and you must have shame and cloak yourself, and maintain the secret of my ever-enduring fire of Love.
Child, gain and loss are true to you in your illusory existence, but they are nothing to MySelf, My Power. Be calm, and love me with your whole heart--yes, with even what's left of it, its tatters and shatters. And I will love you, and I will protect you, and I will withhold all harm that can descend upon you when if ever you attempt to detach yourself from my love and power. Healing and restoration is but no matter to Me. I say, "Let My Will be done!", and it's done. I say, "Be!", and it becomes. And no matter the depth of your excruciation and power of your death and despair, nothing is beyond Me and My Love and My Power! Peace be upon you, my child, and wholesomeness! Amen--so it be!"
And this is all. As I, Ramla, am writing this note, someone has walked into my room and struck up a discussion about antique artefacts and business proposals. I must attend to this person, for God loves him, and he has been sent to me so I may lend him my ear. ... Ah, it:s been a while since I turned to him, and we have discussed some business and now he has left.
I am alive, despite all the wreckage, all the pain, all the fright, all the horror.
My writer-editor love is alive, too, and by my side. Out of affection and love for him, and for all the support that he has given to me through a terrible illness, and the reign of horror, terror, depression and pain that descended on me later, right in the middle of great blooms of late joy and happiness, I have taken his name for mine. I have called myself not just Ramla Akhtar, which is my given name, but Ramla Akhtar-Neuhaus, the name I would have had I married his in the ordinary realm, or in one of the many fantastic love-filled realms in which we have met. I have achieved annihilation in him, and he in my self, and for a great period of brief extended time and in space of no dimension, we have experienced the kind of love few humans, I know, have experienced within this life.
Out of love and respect for him, his love, his effort and sacrifice, I have remained alive despite the efforts of some fearful part of my own self to tear apart my own existence. Neuhaus says I must write; and he once said that at least once I must go to a place where I can scream and cry and holler to my content. I cannot. I hear her voice, the voice of my own tormentor, and she says with a cold sneer: "You speak too much!" Yes I do, for I have also witnessed much more than ten thousand persons of ordinary perception will do in an ordinary lifetime. I am here to witness and to bear testimony and you, Aya*, cannot stop me from that.
That, my dear, is somehow the purpose and the beginning and the anchor of this blog. I am dying--I am going to die one way or the other. But I shall allow the witness within my to witness, and the testifier to bear testimony upon this world; upon the realms ordinary and extraordinary that I have dwelled in, that I dwell in, and in which I shall abide here and after.
Amen, Lord, and bear testimony that I have become Your witness. Amen.
Ramla Akhtar-Neuhaus
22:44 pm
09 December 2013
In the dimly-lit kitchen of
Karimabad-Inn, Hunza Valley, Hunza.
* An alias, of course, out of respect for her and her children and family and her life. May Allah protect her from the likes of her. Amen.
Somehow, I just have a lot to say, think, do, and write. In 2008, after much fear, tear, and deliberation, I had decided to go against the grain of the world that attempted to force me into being everthing that I am essentially not, and do every and anything I do not like. I don't know the source of this struggle and violence, some of which, it seems, originates from within myself as I subject myself to one horror after another.
I really am tired of covering that all up.
In 2008, I met a writer & editor, who soon became my love. He was a man. He took interest in me and took me to be a human, not a doll. He gave voice to my feelings for me.
Suddenly, I erupted in glorious rupture. I had never before seen a human being behave so well to me, and be so kind. This man was not out to hurt, kill or acquire. He wanted to give his everything to me, to my existence, my continuation, my survival.
He did not have to do much--initially. All I needed was his loving presence in my life, and note how kind he had been to others throughout his life, a fact that I discovered by googling and reading what he had written.
He did the same: he googled, he read my words, he understood me in many ways that I did not even understand myself.
We were in love.
We wanted to do some good in the world. I was extremely tremulous and fragile, fighting for my very existence as I underwent long-needed physical therapy while fighting a variety of ailments that erupted in that period.
I suddenly turned very lovely and beautiful. I wanted to love and to care and to nurture and give birth to life. I wanted to write, I wanted to care, I wanted to love. Together, we brought our first tiny baby to this world: we wrote an article together. In the cosmic scheme of all written things, it wasn't even a speck. It perhaps went unnoticed by the world. But we noticed. Two people who began to love and appreciate each other for the beauty we each secreted within; for the good that we had been planting silently in the world.
Sigh.
I can't seem to go on, but I must.
Somehow, within the next few years, I committed suicide.
I simply killed myself. I put myself to fire.
And then I woke up, and I was still alive. Either I was wrecking horror upon me, or horror was wrecking it upon myself. But I was alive, and I was rapidly dying--screaming and crying, being dragged into some sort of nether-world. I saw dreams of such utter horror and pain that I don't recall being watched by any human, elsewhere. At least, none that I know of.
It had somehow started, it seems, through persecution by some close friends, at least one of whem went out of her way to ensure that nothing was left of my existence and reputation and life. If I found love, she was after it. If I found hope and shelter, she wanted to take it down. If I began speaking my heart up, she set up a censuring circle, telling everyone who cared to know that I "spoke too much". Her presence in my life has opened the door to such evil that I cannot close it anymore--at least not without bearing witness a hundred thousand times to the pain that was inflicted upon my self. I subjected myself to great acts of violence... of committing suicide while I was still alive... that one may not be able to withstand an account of them. My soul was free, joyful and trusting. She told me to hate the world, to hate myself, and to throw myself in front of lions--nay, hyenas.
If ever she found out that I had found out an opening towards joy, love, happiness, freedom, she rushed to close the door. She wanted freedom for herself.
I was able to wrench myself away from her, but found another like her... and that was my end.
My dear Love, meanwhile, stood by and shouted himself hoarse to wrench myself free of this terror. I was, for an extended moment, so happy and joyful with him! So beautiful! So radiant! So full of joy and laughter!
And I wanted to leave this hell-hole of pain and excruciation behind that had become my life.
But I did not know how.
I ran, I got trapped, and I fell. I heard a shudder and cry so loud from earth that I could not bear its sound. Few physical signs of it became apparent, but the terror that I felt tore at my real flesh--it tore through my heart, my neck, my womb, my spine. Faraway in another city, a blood relative of mine got shaken in his sleep and fell of his bed, to the concern of his wife. He wrote to me in panic: "What happened? What happened!?"
I said, a star has annihilated and fallen to her death. Sh has gone out in a burst of light, in a bright spark that erupted in pain in a silent, dark, unwitnessed corner of the universe.
Somehow, he seemed to understand, but he could barely help.
Things around me caught fire, such was the rage of existence at my death. I saw rains pound and dust-storms come as my heart burst again and again in the final throes of its death. I was not alive, and yet I was alive to witness this horror.
I was in another world. I was in a world of love and light and sound and beautiful joy and birdsong and roses and golden light and beautiful company and color. It all want black, upside-down, twisted. I heard Allah cry; Mother Existence tear at Her hair. The light of the world ran away from my side. "Surely this is a despair worth the work of Azazil! Surely, God cannot love and help a wretch as myself! For Allah loved me, and He sent me an angel upon an angel and asked me to leave the damned and damning who were making my life hell. Scripture cried in my hand, and His angels spoke from beyind the veil, asking me to leave it all and fled into His arms, leave this dimension behind once and for all for I did not belong here anymore. I had subjected myself to a year of torture and silence as a penitence for sins that I had not committed, to satisfy the wicked urges of a few schizophrenic minds who saw black where there was white, and who whispered evil suggestions to me, disguised as close friends. But I did not pay heed. I did not grant justice and love and mercy and healing to myself, and I set up God against God! Therefore this is, this is it. This is my existence, this is hell. This is the outcome of not listening to those who cared for me and loved me, and instead throwing myself in the arms of hell and despair. This is it! This is my hell! This is my earning! This is my reward!"
And my heart wept even more bitterly and soundlessly. "Dear Child! Who has taught you this lie? Who has taught you such utter and bleak despair? I have loved you, and I always will. And none of your disbelief and your suicidal acts and your thoughts and fear and love and terror and horror turned upon your self can extinguish the flame of love and life from within my Self! You will not die a death of horror, hatred, loathing, and despair--this is my promise to you, and this is your promise to yourself. You will abide by your word, you will, you will come across all distance for me as I will for you for nothing is beyond my power, and nothing but nothing is beyond my repair. What is hell? Are you fearful of your depth, your life, your despair? Are you afraid of the vastness of space and time, the inability to stand upon your feet when the earth has been wrapped and pulled from under your feet? Are you afraid of falling down, and falling apart? Are you afraid of falling in, and falling into My Arms?
Relax, and love, and let go of your grip on this life for I am the Master of All Illusion. I am the Master of All Love and All Space and Time, and I am the Master of Mercy and Love, and Creator of Despair. There is none but I Who can save you, and none but I Who can restore your sense of self on which you so depend in this illusory world. I am the Shoulder upon which you ride, and I uphold you, and blow life into and out of you, and I sustain your every fiber, your being and your self and all that you know, and all that you do not know, and all that you understand or dont understand. I love you, and I will always will, and when it is time ripe for you, I will take you by way of death. But be not the cause of my hurt and shame, and create not such smoke of despair in the world lest the people of this world shall doubt My Love and My Mercy and My Existence. I put a cover on you and cloak you, and you must have shame and cloak yourself, and maintain the secret of my ever-enduring fire of Love.
Child, gain and loss are true to you in your illusory existence, but they are nothing to MySelf, My Power. Be calm, and love me with your whole heart--yes, with even what's left of it, its tatters and shatters. And I will love you, and I will protect you, and I will withhold all harm that can descend upon you when if ever you attempt to detach yourself from my love and power. Healing and restoration is but no matter to Me. I say, "Let My Will be done!", and it's done. I say, "Be!", and it becomes. And no matter the depth of your excruciation and power of your death and despair, nothing is beyond Me and My Love and My Power! Peace be upon you, my child, and wholesomeness! Amen--so it be!"
And this is all. As I, Ramla, am writing this note, someone has walked into my room and struck up a discussion about antique artefacts and business proposals. I must attend to this person, for God loves him, and he has been sent to me so I may lend him my ear. ... Ah, it:s been a while since I turned to him, and we have discussed some business and now he has left.
I am alive, despite all the wreckage, all the pain, all the fright, all the horror.
My writer-editor love is alive, too, and by my side. Out of affection and love for him, and for all the support that he has given to me through a terrible illness, and the reign of horror, terror, depression and pain that descended on me later, right in the middle of great blooms of late joy and happiness, I have taken his name for mine. I have called myself not just Ramla Akhtar, which is my given name, but Ramla Akhtar-Neuhaus, the name I would have had I married his in the ordinary realm, or in one of the many fantastic love-filled realms in which we have met. I have achieved annihilation in him, and he in my self, and for a great period of brief extended time and in space of no dimension, we have experienced the kind of love few humans, I know, have experienced within this life.
Out of love and respect for him, his love, his effort and sacrifice, I have remained alive despite the efforts of some fearful part of my own self to tear apart my own existence. Neuhaus says I must write; and he once said that at least once I must go to a place where I can scream and cry and holler to my content. I cannot. I hear her voice, the voice of my own tormentor, and she says with a cold sneer: "You speak too much!" Yes I do, for I have also witnessed much more than ten thousand persons of ordinary perception will do in an ordinary lifetime. I am here to witness and to bear testimony and you, Aya*, cannot stop me from that.
That, my dear, is somehow the purpose and the beginning and the anchor of this blog. I am dying--I am going to die one way or the other. But I shall allow the witness within my to witness, and the testifier to bear testimony upon this world; upon the realms ordinary and extraordinary that I have dwelled in, that I dwell in, and in which I shall abide here and after.
Amen, Lord, and bear testimony that I have become Your witness. Amen.
Ramla Akhtar-Neuhaus
22:44 pm
09 December 2013
In the dimly-lit kitchen of
Karimabad-Inn, Hunza Valley, Hunza.
* An alias, of course, out of respect for her and her children and family and her life. May Allah protect her from the likes of her. Amen.
