Who am I ?

Dear Friends

I am the exquisite product of an Eastern tradition (my forefathers were Ksatriya Hindu’s converted by Chistiyah Sufi saints) and the post modern West (British born and blessed with a Liberal Arts education).

For a long time I cursed my identity – Who am I?

Pakistani?

British Pakistani?

British Muslim?

European Muslim?

Muslim

British Sufi?

Sufi?

Sufi Muslim?

Etctctctctctctctct.......

I will never forget the day I met a Pakistani atheist in Islamabad in 2002 – it blew my mind...I thought I had left that stuff behind!!!!

Hahahahahahaha...Now I appreciate with the benefit of hindsight my extensive travel and spiritual / worldly experiences to date are in a reality a search for identity.

The painful truth is that we are all mongrels!

Now I wholeheartedly embrace my past, future and now...

I am an urban and thoroughly post modern salik where stress, depression, meaninglessness, consumerism and the bizarre fuel my imagination and inner journey...Yaa Haq!

As Rumi reminds us:

What is to be done, O Moslems? For I do not recognize myself.
I am neither Christian, nor Jew, nor Gabr, nor Moslem.

I am not of the East, nor of the West, nor of the land, nor of the sea;
I am not of Nature’s mint, nor of the circling heavens.

I am not of earth, nor of water, nor of air, nor of fire;
I am not of the empyrean, nor of the dust, nor of existence, nor of entity.

I am not of India, nor of China, nor of Bulgaria, nor of Saqsín;
I am not of the kingdom of Irãqain, nor of the country of Khorãsãn.

I am not of this world, nor of the next, nor of Paradise, nor of Hell;
I am not of Adam, nor of Eve, nor of Eden and Rizwãn.

My place is the Placeless, my trace is the Traceless;
‘Tis neither body nor soul, for I belong to the soul of the Beloved.

I have put duality away, I have seen that the two worlds are one;
One I seek, One I know, One I see, One I call.

He is the first, He is the last, He is the outward, He is the inward;
I know none other except ‘Yã Hú’ and ‘Yã man Hú.’

I am intoxicated with Love’s cup, the two worlds have passed out of my ken;
I have no business save carouse and revelry.

If once in my life I spent a moment without thee,
From that time and from that hour I repent of my life.

If once in this world I win a moment with thee,
I will trample on both worlds, I will dance in triumph for ever.

O Shamsi Tabríz, I am so drunken in this world,
That except of drunkenness and revelry I have no tale to tell