The Non-prophet 404d4z

THE NON-PROPHET

BY

Arena Jabbar

Copyright © 2014 Arena Jabbar.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Archway Publishing 1663 Liberty Drive Bloomington, IN 47403 www.archwaypublishing.com 1-(888)-242-5904

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only. Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-1002-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-1003-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014913745

Archway Publishing rev. date: 8/22/2014

Contents

The End of Banishment

On Love

On Marriage

On Children

On Truth

On Time

On Happiness

On Tolerance

On Responsibility

On Guilt

On Crime and Punishment

On Death

On Tang

On Maturity

On War and Peace

On Honesty

On Enlightenment

On Forgiveness

On Gender

On Freedom

On Forgiveness again

On Humor

The Directions

FORWARD

Having known the author throughout most of her most recent incarnation, I feel somehow adequate to comment upon, and to introduce the dear reader to, this extraordinary piece of insightful literary redundancy. Seldom do we see such a prolific preponderance of prose from a here-to-fore unknown, unsung, uninitiated, unschooled, unapologetic, unconstrained and unnoticed underling of the prospectively possibly-publishable persuasion. The author’s interesting use of Random Capitalization, surprisingly strong understanding of unusual and obtuse indentation applications; and, over-use, and,; Yes!….generous, albeit mysterious “peppering” of every ‘imaginable’ (and unimaginable) punctuation!!!!!, is critical to her overall writing style and sets her very far apart from actual writers who are experiencing any form of actual success. I trust that, as you have gotten this far into my comments, you will take my advice and, before going any further, will pick up your dusty copy of Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet” that’s been sitting on your book shelf for the last thirty years, and refresh your memory by either reading it cover to cover, or at the very least, to look at the nudie pictures and read, maybe one or two pages so that you’ll what you used to think was so cool and deep and sadly tragic about its message. I’ll meet you at the Gate.

Barbara Jean

THE NON-PROPHET

The four illustrations in this volume are reproduced from original drawings by Lucinda Strickland Rowlands

The years of pain and seeking and yearning to know, had come to an end for Almostutuf (almost too tough). The banishment from her early years of Childhood Bliss into the evil and sorrowful no-man’s land of Never-Sure-What’s-Important, was far, far behind her now, but came surging back into the forefront of her mind.

She was ready to return to the Land of Bliss, saying good-bye to the selfinflicted exile she had so willingly sought into the dark and joyless pit of TooMuch-Analysis.

As Almostutuf began her departure from the City of Seekers, she noticed that a crowd had gathered at the dock - a crying out of farewell from the Lost Harvesters of the Fields of Futility to the Whining Dramatist who worships Hardship with Flowery Prose.

His ship was coming in. Time for him to leave this land too, but it was a heavy burden for him.

He loved his aloneness and suffering, and had unwittingly encouraged those around him to hold their despair close, so as not to let the fresh breezes of happiness blow it away from their bosoms.

Almostutuf had listened to the dramatist in her early days of hermitage; The days preceding her self-immersion into the aliveness of togetherness The days before her rebirth;

A rebirth that harkened the coming of true healing, Of peace, Of happiness, Of endlessness, Of Oneness.

With all the townspeople gathered below at the feet of the soon-to-depart dramatist, Almostutuf had only herself to question herself, there upon the mountaintop.

Almostutuf thought to herself of Love:

Love is the never-ending source of life. It flows without coercion, without reason. It lifts you out of purposelessness to the Place where All Things Have Beauty.

Love is always accompanied by Joy. If joy is gone, so, too, is Love. The eye may shed a tear, but the heart bursts with the Joy of Having Loved and Loving. It is never otherwise.

Love is the gentle breeze in summer that no one can escape unless he hides himself in a hole deep as an open grave.

Love is free. It has no price, no sacrifice. Love always pays the highest dividend of any investment.

When there is Love in your heart, every word your heart speaks is worth listening to.

Always.

Just as the throng begged to hear, Almostutuf thought to herself of marriage.

Marriage that celebrates Love is friendship and ion given form; the gentle forth and back of ideas and styles, coming together on a canvas of mutual agreement.

As all men and women are artists, so will some artistic styles never blend will with certain others. The shortcoming lies in the match and not in marriage.

Just as a man may be a builder of sand castles, so may a woman’s tide destroy his creation. Better that the castle builder choose a partner who uses the heat of the sun to bake his castles indestructible, than a woman who paints the shore with waves.

The woman who sings life’s joys for her expression, is keenly appreciative of a partner who strums a harp or beats a drum for his pleasure.

The artists who marry and sit side by side at different easels, they too, have found a good match: creation without destruction, caring without crushing. This is a good marriage.

The restless pounding surf will do well to find a collector of shells for companionship.

Noticing the woman in the crowd cradling a baby, Almostutuf thought to herself of children:

We are never so close to fulfilling our purpose as when we are children. A childhood of rules and roles and “love” with strings attached, diverts us from our way and oft times we live out our lives, lost. We search for something to fill the awful emptiness we are earthly heirs to.

As we all share our earthly journey, you may keep your children close or let them wander as they must. But either way, let us love our children unconditionally, without reserve or pretext, so that they will keep the love of themselves as God’s Best Expression in this world, fresh and alive.

Let each of their days be filled with the fullness of Being here only to celebrate the Wonder of Creation as a Spiritual creature in it; Not limited by or to society’s agenda nor victimized by the fears of the faithless.

Let us be in love with ourselves once again, as we were when we were still innocent children. We begin as children, and, if we are lucky, we shall grow up to be as children once again.

As the crowd at the shore listened intently to the poetic speaker below, Almostutuf thought to herself of Truth:

Finding Truth is only accomplished with an inward gaze.

The truth is that Life IS.

What we are is unfathomable to our individual minds. There is no such thing as an individual Mind.

He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword. Nothing Real can be threatened. The best things in life aren’t things. God helps those who help themselves. There are no coincidences. What goes around, comes around.

Truth is unchanging and unchangeable.

Only Truth is True.

This is Truth.

Almostutuf listened intently for a while - the words of the dramatist floating upward to her perch above the city.

She was happy to hear his words that exalted the task undertaken with Love. He seemed to understand keenly the worthiness of clothing one’s Soul with the artistic wares created by Musicians and Dancers.

And she acknowledged that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Almostutuf thought for a moment of Time:

Time is neither friend nor foe, if seen aright.

Time is only an illusion; an Idea of limitation made to keep reality from happening all at once, in mankind’s fractured, particle-based awareness. For only with an idea of past and future can we effectively insulate ourselves from the Present Moment; the Moment that would result in our instantly becoming One with All That Is forever and forever.

Time is not the Great Equalizer. It is the Great Disseminator.

It scatters us as a farmer scatters seed. We are still the self-same seed, but our plots and our beds seem as varied as the stars. Each has a solitary and independent view of the rest of the garden. Just as time will produce the potential for growth, time will also provide the potential for blight. The seed that can make Time its imaginary Friend will surely out-flourish the seed to whom Time seems a real enemy.

Almostutuf thought to herself of Happiness:

A quiet moment of baby’s napping breath, A day with nothing planned to do, A week of patient acceptance, A lifetime of smiles without tears.

The earth’s silent inner pulsing, like a roaring fire on a winter’s night, Speaks to the Heart of the Happy Man and warms his toes and his Soul, Though the howling winds of discontent whip and whirl outside the threshold of his home.

Happiness is not a blinding insulator, but a crackling hearth beckoning us to be warmed at the first sign of winter’s chill.

She thought to herself of Tolerance:

To tolerate another’s beliefs, no matter how different from one’s own, is the foundation for respect and Harmony.

Tolerance is the caring for another as you care for yourself. Tolerance is the Gentle Understanding displayed by the loving mother for her child, as he smears his first self-fed meal into his ears and up his nose in a joyous moment of Independent Rapture.

Tolerance allows for all, including intolerance. Tolerance is the precious barometer measuring the Fortitude of one’s beliefs. The greater the Tolerance, the closer to Truth is one’s belief.

Tolerance brings peace. Only from doubt and fear, springs intolerance.

Turn away from doubt, face one’s fear, and tolerance results.

Almostut uf thought to herself of Responsibility:

Does the blossom consider its Responsibility when it dazzles the ing bee with its color and form? Are not the Being and the Responsibility intertwined beyond dissection?

As the parent nurtures the child, so the child nurtures the parent and in the process do not both Responsibility and Being become fulfilled and fulfilling?

Embrace your Responsibility as the flower embraces its BeingWith joy and purposeWith solemnity and purposelessness. The flower cannot Be without doing what it must do. Neither should a man live one moment in denial of his Responsibility. To care for his child with respect and restraint, to do the same for himself and his neighbor.

The ability to Respond IS the Being within each of us and within All of us Together - the reason for Being and its true reward.

Almostutuf sat upon the distant knoll, ever mindful of the meaningful and heady oratory presented by the prophet on the shore below.

The truths he spoke were filled with the truths he had seen. The analyses he offered to the villagers who harbored uncertainty and selfmistrust in their hearts, were well-meaning.

But, alas, these were adults - keepers of the city, parents of the children, and they were still seeking from strangers what they could find within their own hearts and minds if they were only to look inward without fear or guilt.

Almostutuf thought to herself of guilt:

Guilt is a forty ton weight around your neck which you pretend is a small religious pendant worn with pride and humility. Guilt stands at the top of the list of the “evils” borne from lack of Self-love.

GUILT. It is the reason we strike out at others. The reason we attack what we care about most. The reason we resent our parents. The reason we resent our children. The reason we don’t take care of ourselves or make sure that we have a nice day every day.

The only antidote for guilt is Forgiveness. And Forgiveness is the fruit produced in the branches of the Tree of Love.

And what of Crime and Punishment?

You have heard it said that no man can sink lower than any man could sink. And yet, do not many stand on the Solid Ground of rightfulness and Caring?

Lest we site that old adage to excuse our sloth or sleaze, let us measure ourselves, alone, by that Grandest of Scales…the Hopes and Dreams of our innocent Child-self; The shimmering life of gold and light we beheld in our Mind’s Eye, that flickered intangibly in that moment just before sleep.

The embodiment of all Great Doings and Beings; the same dreams we hold now, Though wide awake, for our children and for all children:

A life of Challenge and Safety. A life of Sentiment and Strength. A life of ion and Reason. A life of Fulfillment and Yearning.

To want less is Crime. To have less is Punishment.

Almostutuf thought of death:

Death ought not have a name unto itself.

It is not a Shape in the dark or a Wind in the tree. Rather, death is just another flight within an earthbound plan; marking the ing of another Chance to have used our gift of choice to choose Life instead of death.

Therefore, be ever mindful of each day’s wealth of Choice and Choosing, For Winning or Losing is only as we take it.

Only Life can set man’s soul Free, as only in Life can the True Meaning of Life be revealed.

He who looks to death for the Meaning of Life is like a baker who samples the dishwater to see how his muffins will taste.

Almostutuf thought to herself of Tang:

Does anybody know if this stuff is even made anymore?

And if so, does anybody actually still drink it?

The ocean breeze blew more strongly for a moment or two. She glanced below at the children as they splashed care-lessly in the heightened waves.

She thought of her own Child-self and her mature self.

What of maturity, she wondered?

Maturity need not be the condition that erases our childlikeness. Indeed, for maturity to ripen within us, we must first preserve a Sacred Place in our Soul for our inner Child.

The man without true maturity sees life and says, “Behold, man’s futile struggle is his greatest reward! I, therefore, give up everything toward the experiencing of this noble defeat!”

But the truly mature person knows that the sweetness of Living comes when struggles are laid by; not with a sense of defeat, but with a sigh of relief.

The Pathetic, Suffering Bohemian Artiste who credits the Beauty he creates to his misery and shame, Rather than to His Maker’s Generosity, Neither furthers his appreciation of Beauty nor hastens the ending of his misery.

The mature spirit rejoices in a magical moment of intimate sharing, And can then keep silent in consideration of another’s need for Silence.

The mature soul knows that all the wisdoms of all the ages that are able to be spoken, are inconsequential compared to the un-utterable wisdom each already has Within.

Almostutuf thought to herself of War and Peace:

The wars of nations give testimony to the war within the individual.

A nation of individuals at peace within themselves would not seek war with others. At birth each of us has a place in the Cosmos, a Grand Role in the Scheme of Things.

A man at Peace, though he may still be unsure of his role, is the man who humbly stays alert to all his Possibilities, seeking in each day, in each moment, to find his Worth, to learn his Lesson, to do his Part and to reap his Reward.

Such is the drive in life. Man eats and multiplies to this end - to continue this Great Quest. Only the man who rebels against life itself finds himself in wars he cannot justify and will not win. The most valiant among us, our children, are at peace with such a monumental taskTo live EACH moment as though it were the ONLY moment.

The thought occurred to Almostutuf that, had anyone been eavesdropping on her thoughts, the only one who would truly understand her words would be the ones who already knew all these things.

She continued thinking anyway, as was her predisposition, And besides, Sharing things we already know with each other and ourselves, Is in the True nature of human Connection, Without which there would only have been a need for one human being to have ever lived.

(“Sometimes I think there HAS ever only been one human being… me…” She thought, and laughed right out loud at the complete ridiculousness and the complete accurateness of such an idea.)

Almostutuf thought to herself of Honesty:

Can a man be honest, yet not tell all?

Can a man be dishonest, yet speak only the truth?

Honesty is for each to know in his own heart, alone. To find the greatest Truth in a matter and present all else to that end; This is Honesty.

Does an artist, who paints all and only EXACTLY what the eye sees, express more Honesty than another, Who sees the scene as a statement of its larger Reality and paints to capture the Spirit of the moment which he sees only with his Heart?

Only in each man’s soul does he know the degree of his Honesty.

Two friends, in caring for a third, can take opposite paths, yet both be honest and nurturing toward their friend.

Only in his Innermost Self does each friend find the basic Honesty or deception that stands as Foundation for all else.

Once a man embraces Honesty as his Way, He will find power in Truthfulness and impotence in Denial.

Almostutuf sat quietly for a time upon the sun-warmed rocks of the hillside. The throng below stood spellbound, still, attentive to the man whose words flowed as though lush nourishment from a mother’s breast.

The ocean breeze lifted a word here and there, high into the sky above, soaring with the gulls, turning, lofting, dropping, winding down, bouncing off the jagged rocks of the cliffs.

The sounds, as the meanings, riding high one moment, being tossed and turned the next, crashing to earth at the end, and another lifting without delay to take its place in the heavens, on the wings of the Never-Ending human Prayer, “Show me, oh Lord, the Meaning of my life!”

Almostutuf realized that it had not been so long ago that she, too, had sought meaning from an outside source.

As the days of her youth had come and gone, so had much of her Uncertainty.

Almostutuf ed how many times she had sought for Wisdom and Salvation in the words of others; In the ancient texts of Sacred Stones, In the thriving doctrines of contemporary dogma, In the masked wisdoms of a Peanuts comic strip. Each teaching, taken to heart, having its day, surrendering to its night of discontent, Of un-understandable shortcomings, The silencing of that Bell that rings, “TRUE!”

Oh! to hear that Bell for all Eternity; ringing, ringing, “TRUE!” That silent tolling inside one’s heart, A Sound that cannot be expressed, That no wave can carry through the air. Yet a Sound Within that leaves no room for doubt.

Within. Yes, within. Almostutuf laughed as she thought, “I shall truly go Within, or I shall truly go without!”

Almostutuf thought to herself of Enlightenment:

Enlightenment is not the light at the end of the tunnel. It is the unwavering Sureness that ALL tunnels are filled with Universal Light.

As the archaeologist trusts that the ancient scripts will reveal their messages through Patience and Perseverance, So the enlightened traveler trusts that life’s darkest tunnels do glow from within.

Enlightenment is the realization that getting there is not half the fun; the fun is that there is No Where to get. Enlightenment allows each moment to stand alone; The caress of a loved-one’s hand, The play-doh creature proudly displayed by a child, The Joy of the Achievement or of Resting, The Joy of journeying, or of Staying Put.

Like a lake in its last moments of the freeze Desolate, beckoning, cold, warming, on the verge of movement, yet still; Liquid, solid, vast, finite. All things at once. Devoid of all things at once. That fine line between All and Nothing. Purposefulness and Purposelessness. Between Being and not being.

Enlightenment carries with it Absolute Desperation and Total Empowerment in the self-same blink of an “I”.

So much like Forgiveness, Almostutuf thought:

No other single act can liberate the human Spirit so profoundly as the act of Forgiveness.

This same forgiveness of which we speak concerning others, begins most importantly with oneself and opens the floodgates for Joy and Sharing in this life.

In the Flash of a Moment, I hold myself able for an unloving thought or deed, I feel remorse, I resolve to grow, I forgive myself, I move on.

No man can truly forgive another, lest he has forgiven himself first, with a Forgiveness that completely Overlooks the act as though it Never Happened. No power can be so mighty as this Power of Forgiveness in such a world as ours, amidst so much Blame and Denial.

Forgiveness is the Great Liberator, liberating he Who does the Forgiving, without which all is for naught.

Almostutuf realized that she, as others, thought of herself, philosophically, in of “Man”, never as “Woman”.

“What of gender?”, she thought.

Few of her thoughts this day had felt so elementally profound or so frivolous. For what was so important about a few body parts and a handful of hormones in the scope of Universal Reality? Wasn’t the biological difference between men and women only there for the proliferation of the species? And who, in their right Mind, would care about that, one way or the other?

That gender had become the cruelest jest of all, keeping “all men” imprisoned, was obvious to her. We must learn to be free, and, by example, our children, also, shall learn to be free.

Almostutuf thought to herself of Freedom:

Freedom is not a place or a thing. It is the pathway of Thought.

As Music lives only in its ing, so does the Free Spirit exist only in its Being. The loftiest goals become one’s daily bread on Freedom’s journey. It can be only so. For to put Freedom aside, even for a moment and be slave to another, or worse yet, to one’s imagined individual self, is to betray Freedom’s only trust.

The moon trusts that the day will , as the sun, the night. So, too, Freedom trusts that we will from parent to child, from friend to friend, from teacher to student, the Torch of Freedom.

Behold! the torch of Freedom is not an object held high in one’s hand. It IS one’s hand and one’s heart, united in thought and deed, in Freedom’s name, on Freedom’s road.

Freedom’s Road: The rocky road that takes us through that most beautiful countryside….

Keep a clear head and a keen eye. The View will be worth the blisters.

Almostutuf thought once again of Forgiveness:

To forgive one’s parents for a childhood lost, broken or “normal”, To forgive the world for not offering a comfortable ride, To forgive all men for thinking they are only men, To forgive all women for thinking they are only women, To forgive myself for all my past immobilities, To forgive all else that has gone unforgiven.

In Forgiveness shall I find Power to begin anew, To greet each new day with fortitude and Humor.

Almostutuf thought to herself of Humor:

Humor sustains the human Spirit through life’s journey.

As gravy rescues the diner whose turkey is too tough to chew and too dry to swallow, Humor transforms the experience without altering the content.

All this thinking in of tunnels and bells and torches and searching, had created in Almostutuf, a mighty Thirst.

And in her need for refreshment, she headed quietly toward the shore of the sea, Into the crowd gathered for the prophet’s farewell from the Land of his Exile.

Her lips had become parched in the hot desert air. The warm ocean breeze brought salt to her skin, increasing the thirst in her throat and widening the smile on her face; The joy of living and doing in the Apparent World of Everyday Existence.

Almostutuf, now finding herself amidst the crowd, front and center of the speaker, stepped forward and said,

“Speak to me of the nearest drinking fountain.”

And the prophet replied, “Two blocks west, just past the Exxon station.”

For all the context and content of what he had spoken aloud that day, this was, indeed, the Answer that best quenched any questioner’s thirst for knowing.

As Almostutuf made her way to the water fountain, she thought to herself of many things.

And she listened.

(the end, sort of)