rainfall

Rainfall, cool skies;
A bird dances in the air,
Welcoming the shower.
Subhanallah walhamdulillah.

- madame blossom -

Losing your religion?

Religion : a particular system of faith and worship.

The choice to be a Muslim or a Christian or a follower of any other faith - is not about subscribing to the most popular group or the simplest ritual group or the richest group etc.

It's about you. You and God. You and your destiny in the Afterlife.

It's about your belief in God, the concept of God and what God wants for us.
For most of us, there is no doubt that there IS a God.
However the different religions manifest the worship of God in different ways - some by assigning partners or helpers to God.

But which is the way that God wants us to perceive Him and to worship Him?
As one with partners? with helpers? with a bodily form? with children?
Or as God the One and Only?

A reminder for what one already knows

Excerpt from 'Moonwalking with Einstein - Joshua Foer' (MasyaAllah, I remembered his name without having to refer to the book again!. Ok, insyaAllah the book may shed some light on the art of remembering.)

"If men learn this (writing), it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is not a recipe for memory, but for reminding. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them anything, you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they will know nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellow-men."

Must start remembering.

Most importantly, the Qur'an.

Afterlife : The Strange Science of Decay

I'd call it "the amazing science of decay."

This video is awe-inspiring. It let's us see the natural process of decay.
The agents of decay - the mould, the flies, the beetles, and then still even more tinier organisms are involved in the decay process.

Among the things that truly amazes me are..

-about a kind of fungus. How they are able to grow in an ant's brain. Then it produces chemicals that controls the ant's behaviour(!) forcing it to crawl up to the top of a plant. Then the killer fungus burst out of the ant's head (!) growing a bit higher, allowing it's spores to spread.
Doesn't it sound like something coming out of a science fiction horror story??

- lignin makes wood tough, it's brownish and it makes the weight. Without lignin, woods are not heavy. Fungus feed on lignin - where the nutrients are. It's an important process of decomposition of wood. Without it doing that, the earth would be a different earth and I don't think we'll survive.

- Now, this is so amazing to me. Slime mould is a primitive life-form, the largest single cell organism on earth. Slime moulds are found to be an intelligent life form. It has no brains or no nervous system, but it can somehow work out solutions. E.g. it can find the shortest route in a maze, to get to a food source. In fact, it can design a remarkably good network in just a few hours. So good that it's even better compared to a network designed by group of brilliant engineers for the Tokyo train networks. And mind you, Tokyo has one of the most efficient and well organized network in the world, So now they are using slime moulds to design road and train networks in some western countries. And then, even computer scientists are studying the slime mould for it's radical method of processing information. Subhanallah!! this single cell organism!
(And Who you think could have taught this slime mould how to do what it does? Allahu Akbar!)
They are 'shy'- not easy to find in it's natural environment.. :p
This has got to be my favorite slime.

Without further ado, here's the video to go watch for yourself :



The conclusion in the video was that from the complex system that those living things (including us) are, when living things die, they decompose back into the very basic building blocks of life. And then, another life comes out of that building blocks. This is the process of renewal that we are all a part of.

So it makes me ponder over some verses I've read in the Qur'an:

"It is Allah Who cause the seed grain and the date stone to split and sprout. He cause the living to issue from the dead, and He is the One to cause the dead to issue from the living. That is Allah; then how are ye deluded away from the truth?"
(An'am 6:95)

"Thou causest the night to gain on the day, and thou causest the day to gain on the night; Thou bringest the Living out of the dead, and Thou bringest the dead out of the Living; and Thou givest sustenance to whom Thou pleasest, without measure."
(Ali Imran 3:27)

"And they used to say, "What! when we die and become dust and bones, shall we then indeed be raised up again?"
(Al Waqi'ah 56:47)

"Our Lord! not for naught Hast Thou created (all) this! Glory to Thee! Give us salvation from the penalty of the Fire."
(from Ali Imran 3:191)

translations by Yusuf Ali.

Déjà vu

Déjà vu (French pronunciation: [deʒa vy], literally "already seen") is the feeling of certainty that one has already witnessed or experienced a current situation, even though the exact circumstances of the prior encounter are unclear and were perhaps imagined.
- Wiki -

Just now, as I was sitting on my side of the bed, using the laptop, my hubby on his side, asked me to show him how to navigate to a command that he wanted. As I showed him and looked at his laptop screen, I suddenly felt and realised so vividly that I have been in this EXACT situation before - and even with that exact webpage on his laptop. Come to think of it, it could not have happened before, because he just got his laptop yesterday. This is so mind-blowing.

And then he related to me that the same thing happened to him when he was in KL. While in a car, he saw a man walked pass, and another man calling out to that man - and suddenly he felt that he had seen this scene before, from that same spot in his car. The thing is he had not seen or met the two men before that incident.

I am intrigued. He said, maybe we could have dreamt it before.

Whether we dreamt about it, or the scene was just sitting somewhere at the back of our minds and recognised when it happens - may probably have a scientific explanation. You see, scientist have studied about space and time, and they think that space and time - is like a block of ice. Basically everything is set already, and we're just going down the passage of time. If this is so, any events happening to us, are all pre-determined already (of course as Muslims we MUST believe this, as Allah SWT always tells us - e.g. in Al-A'raf 7:37 "...Whatever has been decreed to be their lot [in life] will be theirs..."). Like a printed film being played - we're just going through each scene, according to our time.

From this, I'm thinking that perhaps some of those times when we are struck by 'deja vu' - it was probably a future scene, that was played in our mind before, either in our dreams or perhaps retrieved from some part of the mind that is actually holding our total life events.

Isn't it mind-blowing??


And it's not such an impossible idea, since scientists have actually proven through tests that life is pre-determined.


I'd like to continue on, to explain how scientists have actually proven through tests, that our life, in fact the future events of everything on earth and in the known universe is pre-determined. But it's kind of complicated and I'd like to confirm my memory before blabbering away. But I'm kind of tired right now, so insyaAllah, I MAY, if I get the mood to, talk about that in future (if that's Written :p) insyaAllah.

Meantime, for those who can't wait - go read 'Fabric of the Cosmos - Briane Greene'. It's explained in much detail there.

Good night and salam.

Tortoise

At times, I want to be like the tortoise.
Going about life at a very slow pace,
To the urgencies it's oblivious.
Savouring time to absorb
Nature and ideas, to ponder.
And when the world gets too crazy
Retreat into the shell.
- madame blossom -

Stories from Makkah & Madinah - The crying children.

(Actually there are not too many stories to tell.)

When I first went to pray in Masjid Nabawi, I experienced something new.

The prayer hall, was always full. Before prayer, you hear a constant hum - a combination of these hundreds of people reciting the Quran or talking to one another within the prayer hall. As soon as prayer starts, the hall is silent from voices but now the sounds of crying children/babies would fill the hall, as their mothers started to pray and leave the babies by their side or in front of them. Some of these cries continued to the end of solat. I was thinking, if this happens in Singapore, the mosque will probably get a few letters banning children and babies from the mosque so as not to disturb the jemaah. :-\ But here.. you fight for your own khushyu' Live with it.

After one of the prayers, on the way to Masjid Nabawi exit, and there are a lot of people sitting around the exterior part of Masjid Nabawi.

I noticed a mother seated on the floor with a, probably, 2 yr old child. The child was crying on her lap quite loudly and the mother was trying to calm the child down. As I was still looking at them, walking, suddenly I saw something small and hard being threwn at the mother and child. I was surprised and looked around, trying to locate the person who threw it at them. How can they just throw things at people because the child is crying?? Could it have been a mischievous boy?

The mother was also of course surprised and felt around her trying to locate the thrown thing. She picked it up in her hands and she saw that it's a sweet. She looked around and so did I. Then we noticed this old woman who is also seated on the floor 3-4 meters away from them, smiling and gesturing to her to let the child have the sweet, go on, let the child have the sweet. Apparently she was the one who threw the sweet at them. :D

The mother thanked the old lady and gave the child that sweet. In the midst of surprise and getting the sweet, the child had stopped crying.

And I was thinking.. astaghfirullah, how easy to think bad thoughts first - and it turned out to be a sincere, concerned act.

I must practise my husnozon (to think of the possible good intention) in any event.