If there is any word for what comes up for me in your writing it’s courage. Not to say you feel this, but it makes me feel it. It makes me feel strong enough to confront some greater existential questions which I shy away from due to my own lacking and attachments. Not to the dog space but to the blinded path. Sometimes the path is clear and it tells me something and I just want the horse to sit next to me and look at it instead of walk down it. Sometimes I just want to rest with the horse on my back and to pet the dog as I stare into the darkness because I’m afraid of the light. It’s not a fear in the mental sense. It is in the body. In the stagnation of blood from the positions of torture… to walk the path is to release that and it feels like shattering an ice wall inside of me.
A ramble… sorry. I do have a question. I understand the 3 you showed but is there a name for the reflection? At minimum, the human and the dog need water to survive. The horse carries them. Surely they seem themselves in the reflection.
Part of me gets too scared to look and would forgo the water, not as selfishness or selflessness, not because there may be something scary in the water but because the confrontation with the image physically hurts…
Not sure if this makes any sense. It’s question I remember asking in different ways my entire life… If it does to anyone, I feel like it would be you.
Whoa, this question is ultimately really scary. Confronting the reflection, that moment when the water shows you not just your face, but your condition. It takes courage to see, and even more to correct. It’s not easy. It’s not comfortable. And it’s certainly not pretty. But it is essential. Maybe more than the water itself.
“As for the one who feared standing before his Lord, and restrained the soul from its desires, then surely Paradise will be his home.” [Surah An-Nazi‘at 79:40-41]
One day I’ll have to stand. One day I’ll have to see all of this, not just what I did, but who I let myself become. Better to confront it now while the water is still clear, while I still have time to drink from it. The dog inside me still pulls, still wants to leap first. But I can’t let him drag me.
If I ever learn how to kneel beside that reflection without turning away, maybe that’s the day I’ll begin to live.
It is strange for me, truly, to have met someone who can relate to so many things and not just relate, but reflect them back in a way that feels eerily familiar. Like you’ve been walking a path beside mine, a few trees apart. And yet, the ways we interpret what we meet along that path are different. Familiar in the ache, different in the language.
I think part of the reason is this: the initial wounds and questions we carry are the same. But somewhere along the way, the Qur’an distilled me. It didn’t answer everything at once. It emptied me first. Then, slowly, it started showing me how to carry the weight, how to read myself with a different alphabet.
I believe the more you begin to turn to the Qur’an not just as a book, but as a mirror, the more the reflection will become easier to confront. Not painless, but clearer. It doesn’t erase the dog. It names him. And it tells you how to pull the reins.
If there is any word for what comes up for me in your writing it’s courage. Not to say you feel this, but it makes me feel it. It makes me feel strong enough to confront some greater existential questions which I shy away from due to my own lacking and attachments. Not to the dog space but to the blinded path. Sometimes the path is clear and it tells me something and I just want the horse to sit next to me and look at it instead of walk down it. Sometimes I just want to rest with the horse on my back and to pet the dog as I stare into the darkness because I’m afraid of the light. It’s not a fear in the mental sense. It is in the body. In the stagnation of blood from the positions of torture… to walk the path is to release that and it feels like shattering an ice wall inside of me.
A ramble… sorry. I do have a question. I understand the 3 you showed but is there a name for the reflection? At minimum, the human and the dog need water to survive. The horse carries them. Surely they seem themselves in the reflection.
Part of me gets too scared to look and would forgo the water, not as selfishness or selflessness, not because there may be something scary in the water but because the confrontation with the image physically hurts…
Not sure if this makes any sense. It’s question I remember asking in different ways my entire life… If it does to anyone, I feel like it would be you.
Thanks for your guidance.
As-salamu alaykum
Whoa, this question is ultimately really scary. Confronting the reflection, that moment when the water shows you not just your face, but your condition. It takes courage to see, and even more to correct. It’s not easy. It’s not comfortable. And it’s certainly not pretty. But it is essential. Maybe more than the water itself.
And I still want to run away I still hesitate.
But this verse forces me:
وَأَمَّا مَنْ خَافَ مَقَامَ رَبِّهِ وَنَهَى ٱلنَّفْسَ عَنِ ٱلْهَوَىٰ، فَإِنَّ ٱلْجَنَّةَ هِيَ ٱلْمَأْوَىٰ
“As for the one who feared standing before his Lord, and restrained the soul from its desires, then surely Paradise will be his home.” [Surah An-Nazi‘at 79:40-41]
One day I’ll have to stand. One day I’ll have to see all of this, not just what I did, but who I let myself become. Better to confront it now while the water is still clear, while I still have time to drink from it. The dog inside me still pulls, still wants to leap first. But I can’t let him drag me.
If I ever learn how to kneel beside that reflection without turning away, maybe that’s the day I’ll begin to live.
It is strange for me, truly, to have met someone who can relate to so many things and not just relate, but reflect them back in a way that feels eerily familiar. Like you’ve been walking a path beside mine, a few trees apart. And yet, the ways we interpret what we meet along that path are different. Familiar in the ache, different in the language.
I think part of the reason is this: the initial wounds and questions we carry are the same. But somewhere along the way, the Qur’an distilled me. It didn’t answer everything at once. It emptied me first. Then, slowly, it started showing me how to carry the weight, how to read myself with a different alphabet.
I believe the more you begin to turn to the Qur’an not just as a book, but as a mirror, the more the reflection will become easier to confront. Not painless, but clearer. It doesn’t erase the dog. It names him. And it tells you how to pull the reins.
🙌🏼
The dog in me, smiles.