To say ‘I love you’, is inadequate

Take away I, take away You

Until only Love remains

There is no You nor I here

Only love seeking itself

In this party there are no beggars

No end to this abundant chalice

I grew up in a world where women were asexual and men were sexual. Women were like flowers, they even dress like it. It would have been hilariously funny if it weren’t for my personal experience of marriage. It was hell, because I had no knowledge, no education, advice or support about the emotional or sexual or financial aspects of being in a marriage. None.

The only advice was from the very traditional set up, where the man is considered superior to the woman and the woman has to please the man in all ways.

I was too liberal to look up a treatise called, ‘Bahishti Zavar’ or eternal jewels –a book written a gazillion years ago to teach women to be obedient wives. There was no way I could be an obedient wife to the person I married in any case. I had married him because I wanted to rescue him. There were a lot of differences in our backgrounds. I felt sorry for him, he was incredibly smart, but hadn’t had a lot of chances in life.

Women, when they marry have no access to professional sexual or emotional counselling, other than through the social friend network and family. I went into a marriage with absolutely no knowledge, because knowledge was so frightening to my mother. I totally trusted my husband to take care of that end of things–being a man and all that. My parents were the quintessential good people for whom the thought of violence, domination or abuse in intimacy or anything perverted was just not in the radar.

I was brought up on lots of love, stories and crafts. I was truly Victorian. I hadn’t even flirted with anyone before I met my husband at 19 and we fell in love, because he used to read books and tell me stories. For me, he was the companion I didn’t have, and so very innocently, with absolutely no idea that this man had so much inner darkness, I married him. And that too, pretty much against my family’s wishes, who actually wanted me to go abroad and study some more and have more freedom before settling down. My husband was very persistent, and since they saw that I liked him, they agreed to getting us married.

My marriage was a rape of a soul, a body and a heart. Violated, empty and broken, I felt like Gollum in The Lord of The Rings who was stuck and obsessed with Precious even though it took all his light. I was stuck in darkness and addicted to it. But, thankfully, a miracle took me back into the light. And slowly, like an addict who vaguely remembers who he was, in flashes and moments of connection, I traced my steps back home. This healing was through meditation and the help of likely the best of the best therapists for depression in Vancouver. I think that God stepped in and the grace of the divine made me alive again. Every time I would give up, a miracle would save me. This kept happening until I got it, I am not Saima anymore and God has a purpose for what is remaining.

Over the next several years I became whole and strong and realized the reasons why this marriage affected me to the degree it did. I believe God personally intervened in my case and I believe I am divinely guided to do the work that I do now. Therefore I am not afraid. There is a higher power behind me.

The truth of this is known to a few people who stood by me through thick and thin over the last 30 years. People who loved me despite me unable to even look at myself, let alone love myself.

As I healed over the last 20 years, there were days when I remember the past, and I feel so angry about that Victorian society, where women are shackled, stifled and chained from inside to not only accept all kinds of emotional and physical abuse, but also to live in a state of body dysphoria–a disconnection from their body.

Women do not resist very often. Instead, they accept it.

One of my client’s stories, who asked me to write about her to share her story with the Muslim diaspora, affected me greatly. It isn’t that I haven’t heard about abuse. It is that this story hit me. A Chinese Malaysian, this woman married a much older Muslim malaysian and had two sons by him–as a second wife. He is a bit of a sexual obsessive, so he’d play with his son’s penis and encourage him to masturbate. He’d accuse his young second wife of flirting with her newborn son and he continued to accuse her of it to control her. Eventually the woman ran away and took refuge in Canada with her children and she lives in constant terror that this man will take her children. She does not want her sons to grow up becoming sexual perverts. She had been converted to Islam earlier, but she took up meditation and started to stand up to the man. Because of the problems in the marriage, they went to a religious marriage counsellor. But the husband told the counsellor that she is a pervert who meditates in the Hindu way, instead of her issue that he goes to prostitutes despite two wives and how his first wife treated her.

She reaches out to me for help, because she worries that Canadians will force her to give up her children to this man–she is a refugee. To me she is a classic case of an abused wife. She copes mainly through meditation.

There are many other examples of muslim women who are suffering greatly because of sexual abuse in their marriages. Men, often themselves perverted because of the way they are taught about sex, use the religious pretext to dominate and oppress women in loveless marriages. Hitting–a slap here and there is normal, some forced anal sex is endemic, and every now and then denial of spending money is also normal. Men often have Internet sex, watch porn and discuss other women as sexual objects. Sexist jokes aka wife jokes are very very common. It is in fact the culture to put women down and to talk about them as sexual objects. Men sexualize women. Women sexualize women also.

In feel blessed to be able to offer emotional support and meditation to countless women and men through all the tools I have from tarot cards to meditation to yoga to Reiki to clinical hypnotherapy. I had no idea what would happen when I actually started to connect back to the Muslim community both abroad or here. I was thrilled to realize that many were completely open to learn, but surprised to see that some people whom I thought were pretty open minded weren’t. Others came in their place.

For me, to work for the cause of healing the divine feminine and masculine, so that the two genders can live in peace in harmony and to write against abuse, oppression and injustice is service to god. I am serving Islam too. My work is Jehad and I am a warrior of the light. I have no shame in talking about this at all. Shame in speaking the truth is a false shame.

Why aren’t the religious ashamed when poor children are left on roadsides to fend for themselves? why is it not a shame when women beg on streets for 2 square meals?

I honestly believe that teaching men and women about sexuality–the science, the emotions and the mental concepts that will liberate them from seeing sex as a somewhat shameful biological instinct and realize that it is a mental and emotional connection as well, will heal society at a deep level. Knowledge about sexuality is about the health of humanity.

Allright allright, I admit it, everybody knows it anyway, I am that monster called a bleeding heart. If it were up to me people would work at exactly what they like doing every day. Food, shelter and education would be free. There would be oodles of affection, honesty and kindness shown. In fact the only law that would govern us would be, ‘was this kind?’

I know. I live in the world of kindergarten story books also known as LA LA Land. It is a world of creative and limitless possibility.

That is why I am a spiritual creative entrepreneur, whose business is all about making the world a better place. I offer a bunch of skills that I picked up over the years to strengthen, support and help people to be their joyful selves in a pretty crappy world. Perhaps needless to mention, I absolutely love my work. My life is an adventure in kindness.

So, what am I doing reconnecting with my professional friends who are mostly employed in business all over the world? People upto the neck with task lists and to dos and family?

And, what am I doing with all these writers, thinkers, activists, fellow therapists on my page?

Business in the Internet age is not about industries anymore. Business happens anywhere and everywhere. We create business. Business isn’t already there.
Being a creative entrepreneur means embracing the opportunity to create amazing change wherever one goes.

It is like living in a fairytale and being Alice in Wonderland, while teaching, educating and constantly learning new skills myself.

To embrace this lifestyle, I live a minimalist life. My life can be packed and moved in a few days to anywhere I choose to be for a workshop, for a visit, for a series of talks etc. One yoga mat, a computer, one small suitcase, with a few basic changes of clothes. I hate suits and artificial materials. So, my professional attire is unconventional. I look like a gypsy, talk like a spiritualist, and connect like a therapist with people who want to move beyond limits and embrace their full potential.

My greatest tool for connection and sharing is the Internet. Applications like Whatsapp, Viber, Link, Facebook and other Internet tools are very useful to me.

I feel excited to work in the uber connected, minimalist, environmentally conscious, new age world 🙂

One of the core benefits of religion is to create faithful wives. Conditioned that they are less than men, need men, must marry to survive and cannot survive without the protection of a man, muslim women are taught how to be wives.
As wives they put the family first. As wives, they put the husband first. Sexually, they accept being used as objects for the man’s pleasure. They take almost 0 responsibility for their own sexual satisfaction or happiness or even financial empowerment. Their role is to be pretty, available, submissive and sweet.

The man has to do it all. In return he has a faithful wife who won’t stray even if she is beautiful.

I realized while studying Arabic literature–that one of the basic psychological fears in that culture is a woman who could betray the man–especially if she is beautiful and sexy. Therefore, ideally women must cover themselves from top to toe to satisfy the man’s craving to be a man.

Women become objects to help men feel more masculine. Men need to feel masculine to go fight the world and bring home the bread.

In this severe dichotomy between masculine and feminine, there is little creative possibility of a different kind of relationship. Marriage is between a man and a woman. Somebody has to be the man, and somebody has to be a woman. Even the liberal Muslims have quite a bit of this in their sub-conscious–these are the unwritten rules of marriage.

But marriage as an institution has already failed. Its kind of over, don’t you think?

You can’t stuff these issues back in the bottle and hope that things go back to the way we were when we were children. Men were men and women were women. It isn’t that simple anymore. The mask of hypocrisy doesn’t fit anymore.

So, what’s the alternative? True Love.? 🙂 yes I mean it.

The only workable alternative is spiritual development–not religious conformity but spiritual self-examination and healing. This is the only way to create a balance between the divine feminine and divine masculine.

Creating balance requires shifting the way we look at the issue of relationships between men and women. The only way to have real love, is to be empowered to be a whole person. We must be complete on our own–as individuals to be able to share a beautiful bond of love with another person. It is all about inner peace, self-love and contentment within the solitude of being an individual.

To have connection, me must embrace the disconnection that is part of all relationships. To have love from another, we must love ourselves deeply as we are. To have intimacy, we must understand that intimacy with another is possible only when we have that internal capacity ourselves. We must have a way to feel how it feels to be who we are, before we can share it with another.

Otherwise we repeat the same karmic lesson over and over again. Abandonment. Betrayal. Heartache. Mistrust. We pass it on to future generations. Our children live our pain body without even realizing that they are living our experience in their lives.

To heal to heal to heal is our only purpose on this planet. Soul healing can end our pain. As for how long it can take, maybe lifetimes, maybe years, maybe months, but this is the only way.

After my marriage ended, I was left with a persistent question. The question was ‘abuse’. what is it? when does it happen? why did it happen? and what the heck do I do to stop feeling raped?

Feeling raped, violated and not myself. Where does it come from? Is this something that my husband gave me? or was it just how it was, waiting for the right trigger to set it in motion?

Abuse is not just between individuals, but it has a strong contextual side. In my case it was contextual to a morality that does not empower women’s sexuality. Therefore what women feel during sex, before sex or after sex is not as important or relevant as what men feel. Men’s needs are more important than women’s needs.

Pakistan is a religious country. Sex is a sin and can only be allowed within a marriage. Men are sexist and macho. Life actually revolves around sex. Women are kept in euphemistic cages for their protection and men are like hunters on a hunt. Women look for the richest bidder, men look for the sexiest bride. This is the crux of life. There is no sex education.

It would shock people to know that no classes  are offered in school, medical hospitals, doctors offices about the birds and the bees.  Even in Canada, many religious parents actually take children out of sex education classes. Because of fear that knowing about sex will make them have it. It is ridiculous, because sex is a biological need, not a social sin.

In Pakistan, there is no information given to people about how to have sex. The only education people have is via porn. Porn is extremely popular in Pakistan. Since Porn is written with men in mind, there is absolutely no information about female sexuality.

So, sexual abuse is normal. Talking about sex is abnormal. Women will NOT ever ever risk talking about sex.

When my husband abused me, I ran into the washroom and cried. I couldn’t talk to him about my body. With great difficulty I was able to say it hurts. I was 22 years old, with the mind and heart of a 10 year old. I was married to a man who was either completely unaware or completely inconsiderate of my pain or what I actually think, liked to see me in pain.

It wasn’t that this person had no sex education. It was that this person thought that’s ok. Sadists delight in giving pain to others. However, there was nothing I  could do to solve the problem. In the world I lived, discussing sex was a taboo. I didn’t frankly even know what happens other than something weird happens. That’s a common motif. This is how it is for a lot of women in that society.

The society creates broken women, who need others to protect them.

Women need husbands and protectors. Women are often schooled from an early age that sex is bad, and many many marriages are very unhappy with the sex side of things.

One of the core issues that happens when a woman feels violated is the breaking of the self. The self is the sense of ego or identity. Being violated breaks that concept. Instead of a cohesive singular self, the self is now terrified of being itself. It knows it failed to protect itself. The ego loses confidence. Therefore all sexually abused women have a common characteristic. Their confidence and self-esteem is extremely vulnerable. They lose confidence in themselves. They stop liking themselves. They often struggle with depression. Needless to mention perhaps, they really resist sex with their husbands.

So, then what is the solution? Couples with this issue can be greatly helped when they are taught that sex is a mental and psychological thing, not a physical act. A woman with body dysphoria, because of the religious conditioning from childhood will feel violated during sex subconsciously.

When pleasure is made into sin, a lot of suffering happens at a deep psychological level.

25 years ago, this day I made the biggest mistake of my life. I married a man I loved–or at least I thought I loved him. 5 years into the marriage I was suffering from severe depression. We ended the marriage and I had a young son and baggage the size of a truck to take care of. Life as Ajahn Brahm put it, life had delivered a gigantic load of shit on my doorstep. I had a choice : The choice was to use the shit as manure to plant my garden or to throw it at other people for them to deal with it.

I chose the first.

In the ensuing 25 years I left my home country, raised a son and lived a very different life as compared to my family.  My family decided that a second marriage was out of the question, given my state. They kindly didn’t say that I looked like a dead body, but I think anyone who stood within a 3 foot aura could tell that I was nearly dead. Nearly, not quite.

Pakistan is the kind of place that if you happen to be a divorcee at 27, your value is now way lower than an unmarried woman. You can now be married off to a man 15-20-30 years older. Wait I had a son too! and I was slightly overweight, instead of the tiny body I used to have. This meant total disaster. I happened to be a very shy and sensitive soul. The experience of being hit on by older men wanting an affair made me feel like I was a slut or a whore and that too fat!.

My ex-husband on the other hand, left me and son and moved to a different country to start his life over, leaving the entire baggage from the failed marriage on my hands.

Canada was my refuge, my biggest challenge, my greatest agony, and ultimately my home.

Here, I found myself. I found the person I was meant to be before I was made into someone. I kept my ties to my family alive though I retreated from the social circles and the extended world of the Pakistani community. I didn’t want to be my brother’s divorced sister, who was now his headache. I felt like the worst possible person in the world for screwing up my life.

Once you know who you are, the fear goes.

Yes, I still wasn’t happy. I was in hell, actually. The thing is that once you live in hell for a while you realize that heaven or hell after death don’t actually matter.  I tried to find happiness in material success, but it just wasn’t doing it for me. Me looking good just didn’t make me happy. Me owning stuff didn’t make me happy. I had a hole in my soul as big as the ozone hole.

There were days when I had to force myself to get up. Actually there were many years like that. Of course I never ever talked about it. Emotions, I had learnt early on when the divorce happened, were not acceptable. Every time I’d try to talk about how I feel, my family would shush me.’You are well rid of him.’ I don’t think anyone understood or had any idea what I went through. It was the British influence. ‘Business as usual.’  The scale of the injustice felt huge. Just one mistake can make a person into nothing. I knew I was nothing.  Family had no idea how to help. When life deals a blow–families often don’t know what to do. They can’t actually help.

That journey through depression was the most difficult thing I have ever faced in my life. People don’t understand what depression is. Just get up, my family would say. Just do it. I couldn’t. I had no control over what I was feeling. The most painful words I heard were, ‘we don’t get depression.’

It took me 10 or more years of struggle on my own before I actually made it to a healer’s office. She wasn’t a traditional therapist, but she understood depression. She didn’t give me advice, she actually listened. Her empathy meant that something in me came alive. I couldn’t believe the first time I actually smiled from the heart. Like you know, felt it?

I learnt to meditate. I loved meditation. In this place there was no more pain. Meditation saved me.

One day a miracle happened. I had an extreme spiritual experience. I am not sure why it happened to me–maybe because I expected nothing. I didn’t even believe in God. But I knew I was nothing. This experience transformed my entire experience of life. I discovered who I was. It changed everything. I learnt to find things that made me happy. Slowly, happiness stacked up like rice grains…bit by bit by bit.

Since that day I have taught meditation. To teach, I had to continue to heal my heart.  The issues that had made me ill weren’t people–it wasn’t my family or even my ex-husband, it was misogyny, sexual abuse and injustice that were ingrained and accepted in our society.

These issues weren’t just because of one man who was bad to me, but they lived like demons in the larger mosaic of my life–they in fact came from the suppression and oppression of the powerful.

They were part of my experience as a woman. But to fight against them, I had to let go of even an iota of resentment or regret about the man I married, and the place where I was born. I had to heal my heart of all complaint against the construction of the masculine in my culture, against religion and against the people who could not obtain justice for me. Not only could they not get justice for me, they didn’t even think I needed justice.

I had to forgive him, my country, my family, and ultimately myself. I had to take a leaf from Gandhi’s book.

I had to find the real God and learn from source itself, the meaning of life, because my tribe, my people, my world had failed completely.

I believe that the greatest spiritual act is to struggle against evil. This is the meaning of the Arabic word, ‘jehad’, my sadness and grief in the face of evil was my struggle, it was my jihad.

25 years today, I have won the inner jehad, but my jehad against oppression, injustice and misogyny will continue to my dying day. I will write, speak and raise awareness. I am not afraid.

Life is not lived in fear. It is lived in grace.

After what I went through, there is no more fear.

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light….  Dylan Thomas

There is no skin. There is no sin. Everything is love. Empaths get that. Yet, the illusion is so wonderful, that despite knowing it is an illusion, the pain hits one like a sledgehammer.

Recently my bleeding heart had been doing better. “Reality” also known as plain unconsciousness didn’t affect me as much. I had connected with a group of like hearted and when life was emotionally tough—as it often is for people who feel, I had the luxury of owning up to feeling stupid and vulnerable and being received with empathy, rather than, ‘you should’.

It isn’t that life isn’t equally tough for people who portray indifference. Empaths have no energy to wear masks and they don’t bother with the effort required to not feel. An empath will be gentle when he or she says, ‘I feel awful (but its not your fault)’ and this creates a space of connection that’s profound and life changing. It’s a kind of bravery. Or cowardice. Depends on whether you find emotions yukky or beautiful or scary.

I’d been seeing the warning signs. Someone’s going to pass, the cards told me. Who? Fortunately, they don’t tell me that, because I really don’t want to know. I’d much rather inhabit unconsciousness, but isn’t possible. Yesterday, in the kitchen, my heart went into a deep and long palpitation. This was a clear sign, something is going to happen to someone I love. I said ‘dear god, help!.’

Sure enough, the next day the information was on facebook. Raw. Clear. Like a knife through the heart. The soul that passed was my friend’s younger sister. I remember her in pig tails with a perpetual curious smile that would light up even more to see her big sister’s friend. She was on facebook with me and I’d see her stuff with a grin of pure delight. This girl had turned out be a really smart person, she had became a banker and a hiker and a supporter of children’s education. Dear heart. No. I can never forget the white school uniform. That mischievous twinkle. My awe that my friend has younger sisters. She’d do this big sister thing and it was so cool.

Tears wouldn’t come. I’d sob but the sob is like a dry twig that’s trying to light up. I said ok, I can’t carry on as normal with this one. This one’s hit like a sword straight through the heart.

I ask myself, why did it hit me like this? Why am I grieving? I can’t even imagine what its like for this girls family. No I can. And my heart just hurts so bad that I can’t do a single thing about it. I can only love them. The pain was that I was helpless. We were all helpless. We, big sisters were helpless. One of us was far away and suffering and we could do nothing. Facebook makes one feel we are all together, all safe, all ok. She’ll post something soon. But it isn’t true.
When I post a sad post, my friends reach out. I didn’t always realize that my sadness affects someone. But it did—but that’s how human relationships are—we can’t be islands, we have to reach out. We have to share how bloody awful or how bloody good it is.

I just want to say to all living beings. I love you. When I see you sad, I am sad. When you are happy, I am happy. You matter. Don’t ever think you are alone. That’s the biggest illusion. And life makes one feel very helpless at moments like death.

I know it will take time to accept it. The memory of those pig tails and that white uniform makes me cry. The disconnection and distance from each other- classmates, schoolmates, friends who now live all over the world feels horrible.