On Traveling

"Traveling is sacred; mankind has traveled ever since the dawn of time, in search of hunting and grazing ground, or milder climates. Very few men manage to understand the world without leaving their home towns. When you travel - and I am not speaking of tourism, but of the solitary experience of a journey - four important things occur in your life:

a] one is in a different place, so the protective barriers no longer exist. To begin with this can be alarming, but soon one gets used to it and starts understanding how many interesting things there are beyond the walls of one's garden.

b] since solitude can be great and oppressive, one is more open to people one would not normally exchange a single word with, back home - waiters, other travelers, hotel staff, the passenger in the next seat in the bus.

c] one starts depending on others for everything: finding a hotel, buying something, knowing how to catch the next train. One begins to realize that there is nothing wrong with depending on others - on the contrary, it is a blessing.

d] one speaks in a language one doesn't understand, uses money whose worth one does not know, and wanders down streets for the very first time. One knows the old I, with all it learned, is completely useless in the face of these new challenges - and begins discovering that, buried deep down in one's unconscious, there is something far more interesting, adventurous, open to the world and to new experiences.

"To travel is the experience of ceasing to be the person you are trying to be, and becoming the person you really are."

- Paulo Coelho, Warrior of the Light

The Quality of Mercy

"I pray you, think you question with the Jew?
You may as well go stand upon the beach
And bid the main flood bate his usual height.
You may as well use question with the wolf
Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb.
You may as well forbid the mountain pines
To wag their high tops and to make no noise
When they are fretten with the gusts of heaven.
You may as well do anything most hard,
As seek to soften that—than which what's harder?—
His Jewish heart."

Paraphrase

"Please don't bother arguing with the Jew. You might as well go stand on the beach and ask the ocean to get smaller. You might as well ask a wolf why he killed the lamb and made its mother cry. You might as well tell the pine trees on the mountain to stop waving their treetops when the storms blow through them. You might as well do the impossible rather than try to soften his Jewish heart. It's the hardest thing imaginable."


This is a part of a speech given by a Antonio, a character in Shakespeare's The Mechant of Venice. Antonio borrowed some money from a Jew Merchant and in return the Jew wanted no money but ONE POUND OF FLESH. Just wanted to point out that their brutality is not a new thing. People who lived ages ago are acquainted with it.

The Nature of a Lie

"And, after all,what is a lie?

'Tis but the truth in masquerade."

Lord Byron, Don Juan

You Will Be Heard

“If you think back on your life you will find that every phase was needed to reach a certain outcome, since as early as when you were a crawling baby and your quest was to figure out how to walk.

There’s always a quest at every stage of our lives. There’s always a question that wants to be answered. And every one of these different desires and questions and outcomes is part of a grander desire and question and outcome: Your Life.

Ask the universe for help. Ask Being- God, if you will – for guidance. Place your current life inquiry clearly in the foreground of your consciousness… and listen.

Listen with your heart for you are sure to receive your answers.

When you wake up in the morning, before you get out of bed, when you are most sensitive and connected, talk to God. Ask where you should go and what you should do.

I guarantee you this, the responses will come and you will get your guiding answers. Just be certain that you will be heard.

Know that you will.
Know it, without fail.”

This is part of a novel entitled Velo by Amr Khaled, not the Islamic Scholar!