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What Are You Practicing?

A meditative guide to uncovering unconscious devotion

Before we can realign our devotion, we have to notice where it already lives.

Not where we say it lives.
Where it shows up when we’re not trying.

This isn’t about judgment.
It’s about clarity.
And clarity starts with observation.

Sit. Breathe. Notice.

Find a quiet space. Nothing fancy.
Let your attention settle.
Let the surface noise fade a little.

Then begin the questions. Not to answer, but to feel.

Part 1: The Compass Check

  • What do I think about when I’m not trying to think?
  • What do I chase without questioning why?
  • What makes me feel worthy—or unworthy?
  • What do I protect at all costs?

These questions reveal where your compass is pointed, even if you weren’t aware you were navigating.

Part 2: The Cost of Devotion

  • What am I sacrificing for this thing?
  • How much energy, time, attention, peace have I traded for it?
  • Has it ever truly satisfied me?

Devotion always has a cost. The question is whether the return is worth it.

Part 3: The Emotional Signals

  • What brings me peace, even when it’s hard?
  • What brings me anxiety, even when it seems good?
  • What do I do that makes me feel more real?
  • What do I do that makes me feel more false?

The body knows. The breath knows.
Peace and unease are compasses too.

Part 4: The Return to Clarity

Now ask gently:

  • What might I be ready to release?
  • What might I want to return to?
  • What would devotion look like if I didn’t perform it… but lived it?

You don’t have to answer with language.
Just let the questions echo.

Something deeper will answer in its own time.

Your current state is not a failure.
It’s a map.
Read it without panic.
It’s showing you where your devotion already lives—so you can decide where you want it to go.

What Are You Actually Devoted To?

Reclaiming the quiet power of conscious alignment

Devotion isn’t about what you say.
It’s not a philosophy.
It’s not a belief system.

It’s what you return to.
It’s what you defend without question.
It’s what your life quietly orbits.

Everyone is devoted to something.
Not just the spiritual. Not just the religious.

Your devotion is revealed by your patterns, not your words.

Some are devoted to control.
To keeping the variables in line.
To making sure nothing unexpected breaks the illusion of safety.

Some are devoted to validation.
To being seen. Praised. Needed.
Even if it costs them authenticity.

Some are devoted to comfort.
To never feeling too much.
To shrinking from the edge of transformation.

And some are devoted to the performance of meaning—
appearing wise, but never facing their own contradictions.

We rarely call it devotion.
But functionally, that’s what it is.

Because whatever shapes your choices, owns your life.
Whatever makes you panic, reveals your god.
Whatever you protect without reflection, reveals your altar.

Devotion doesn’t have to be spoken to be real.
It just has to be practiced.

But here’s the quiet shift:

You can reclaim your devotion.

Not by adding more tasks to your life.
Not by becoming someone “better.”

But by noticing what you’re giving yourself to—and asking:

Is this worthy of my attention?
Is this nourishing what’s real in me?
Or am I worshiping noise disguised as necessity?

True devotion—healthy, grounding, honest—pulls you inward and upward at once.

It doesn’t demand performance.
It invites alignment.

You can feel it in your body.
You breathe easier.
You become lighter.
You stop clinging so hard to outcomes.

You’re no longer devoting yourself to the maintenance of a mask.
You’re aligned with something deeper.
And that changes everything.

The Disappearing Self

When You Stop Being the Actor and Start Witnessing the Flow

There’s a shift that happens on the inner path—quiet, slow, and almost unnoticeable at first.

You begin by trying to live with more awareness.
You sit in silence.
You reflect on your choices.
You try to align your actions with something deeper than impulse.

But then something strange happens.

You stop feeling like the one who is doing everything.
You start to feel like the one watching it happen.

Not passive. Not detached.
But witnessing, rather than controlling.

It’s not that you lose your sense of self.
It’s that you stop mistaking the surface self for the whole story.

The thoughts arise.
The emotions pass.
You respond to life.
But it doesn’t feel authored in quite the same way anymore.

It feels guided. Moved. Allowed.

You begin to see your personality more like a costume—necessary, functional, but not ultimate.

There’s something beneath it.
Something quieter.
Something that has no need to be impressive.

And the more you lean into that stillness, the more you notice something else:

The most beautiful actions don’t feel like you planned them.
They arrive.
And you simply participate.

You might call it surrender.
You might call it grace.
You might call it being in flow.

But whatever name you give it, the feeling is the same:

You are no longer the actor.
You are being lived through.

And with that shift, a surprising calm begins to grow.

Not because you’ve figured life out.
But because you’ve stopped pretending to steer it.

You’re not out of the picture.

You’re just no longer at the center.

This is not a theory.
It’s not even a belief.

It’s a way of experiencing selfhood that begins to unfold when the ego steps back—and presence steps in.

And once it happens, even the fear of endings softens.

Because if “you” are not the source of your own life…
then perhaps whatever is—is still carrying you.
Even when you disappear.

The You That Came Before You

On Contemplation, Timelessness, and Remembering Who We Really Are

Sometimes, in the stillness, you can look at your own life and feel a kind of disorientation.
A gentle suspicion that the “you” you’ve been crafting—the stories of identity you’ve built up over the years—might not be the full story.

The contemplative mind seems to slip into questions that stretch both backwards and forwards in time.

Who will I be after I die?
Did I exist in some form before this life?
Is the real “me” part of something that’s outside of time altogether?

But what if we changed the questions?
What if, when we strip back our preconceptions, it starts to feel natural to consider that maybe…

You are a fragment—an embodiment—for now—of a deeper, fuller self.
That there is a part of who you are that isn’t bound by your physical birth or your biological death.

When you sit long enough…
When you look past the noise of your labels and roles and all the things the ego needs you to achieve before you die…

Sometimes you feel a sensitivity to something else.

A deeper belonging that reaches into a reality before your birth—and beyond your death.

These moments of recognition… of familiarity… of déjà vu.

They don’t feel random—they feel like echoes.

As if you’re brushing up against a different knowing.

When You Stop Trying to Be the Light

On Becoming an Observer and Letting Grace In

There is a kind of effort that tightens.
That strains. That pushes.
That tries to hold life in place with the grip of willpower.

And then there is a kind of living that opens.
That softens.
That trusts.

Most of us are raised to believe we are the source.
Of change.
Of goodness.
Of breakthrough.

We’re told that progress is proof of personal strength.
That healing means we’re doing it right.
That clarity means we finally figured it out.

But what if the truth is quieter?
What if your transformation wasn’t earned, but allowed?

What if the breakthrough came not when you fought hard enough, but when you got out of the way?

There is a subtle shift that happens when you stop trying to “become better”… and start watching.
Not judging. Not clinging.
Just… watching.

And in that watching, something else moves.
Something you didn’t schedule or script.

An insight lands in your chest with no warning.
A moment of compassion rises in the middle of your exhaustion.
A path clears—not because you forced it, but because something lifted.

And suddenly, the idea that you are the architect of every beautiful thing in your life begins to feel… heavy. And false.

Because maybe you didn’t make the light.
Maybe you just opened the window.

There’s a different way to move through the world.

Not as a performer.
Not as the one in charge.

But as a witness.

An observer.

A being who walks softly, pays attention, and lets the goodness that wants to arrive… arrive.

Without trying to own it.
Without needing applause.
Without confusing the vessel for the source.

When you stop taking credit, something remarkable happens.
Gratitude expands.
Control relaxes.
Life begins to feel like something you’re in relationship with, not something you have to conquer.

And even your so-called failures start to carry a strange kind of grace.
A lesson.
A clearing.
A mysterious realignment.

This isn’t passivity.
It’s presence.
It’s what happens when you let go of the idea that you’re in charge of the river—and remember that you are the one being carried.

You still have choices.
You still show up.
But the weight of having to be everything… starts to fall away.

And in that space, you begin to see how much was never yours to begin with.

The breath.
The clarity.
The tiny moments of tenderness that arrived before you even knew you needed them.

You didn’t invent those.
You received them.

So what happens when you stop trying to force goodness…
and start noticing how often it shows up anyway?

You become someone who lives not from pressure, but from awe.
You become someone who breathes, and watches, and whispers thank you.
You become someone who moves through life with open hands, not clenched fists.

And from there, everything starts to shift.

Not because you made it happen.

But because you let it happen.

The Sacred Work of Contemplation

How the World Reveals Itself to Those Who Slow Down

There is a kind of seeing that doesn’t come through the eyes.
It comes through stillness.

Through presence.

Through the choice to stop treating the world like a background, and start treating it like a message.

Contemplation is not passive. It’s not daydreaming. It’s not scrolling through thoughts or philosophising until something “makes sense.”

Contemplation is the quiet act of being with what is, and allowing meaning to rise on its own.

It is listening without needing to fix.
It is watching without needing to name.
It is feeling without needing to label the emotion.

In Islamic tradition, the world is not random. It is not meaningless. It is full of signs—ayaat—not just written in scripture, but etched into the very structure of existence.

The sunrise.
The wind.
The birth of a child.
The decay of a leaf.
The trembling of the earth.
The balance of ecosystems.
The breaking of something that was never meant to last.

These are not just poetic details.
They are reminders.

Reminders that you are part of a creation with rhythm.
That you are not here to dominate the world, but to witness it.
And care for it.
And learn from it.

Because we are the only creatures who can step back from instinct and ask, What does this mean?
We are the only ones who can destroy or preserve, act or reflect, create or consume.

That power is not an accident. It is a trust.
A responsibility.
A sign of our role—not as masters, but as custodians.

And that role becomes clear when we slow down long enough to notice.

Contemplation wakes you up to your place in the order of things.
It shows you that storms restore balance.
That beauty often hides in decay.
That death makes space for life.
That silence speaks.

And in that noticing, a new kind of clarity begins to unfold.
Not as a final answer.
But as a deeper presence.

Contemplation doesn’t solve the mystery.
It makes you a companion to it.

The Real Reason Meditation Works (And It’s Not What You Think)

People try meditation for a hundred different reasons.
To relax.
To focus.
To get better at something.
To stop feeling overwhelmed.

And often, it helps.
The mind quiets a little.
The breath deepens.
You feel, for a moment, a little more like yourself.

But what if that isn’t the real reason meditation works?

What if those benefits are just side effects?

What if the real transformation happens not because of what you gain, but because of what you begin to see?

Meditation is often sold as a way to do something. But over time, it reveals itself as a way to see.

It is the slow undoing of illusion.

It is the gentle confrontation of everything you thought was “you.”

It is learning to sit with the voices in your head without chasing them, without feeding them, without trying to make them nice.

And that changes everything.

Because when you stop believing every thought…
When you stop needing your inner life to be tidy or inspiring…
When you just watch, and breathe, and stay…

Something softens.

You start to notice the patterns.

The loops.

The stories you’ve been telling yourself for years.

You see how often your thoughts try to prove your worth.
How often your mind runs from silence.
How often you reach for distraction before you’ve even felt what’s here.

And then you see something else.
The awareness that’s been watching this entire time.

The breath becomes more than breath.
It becomes a thread back to something still and wordless inside you.

You stop trying to “feel spiritual.”
You just feel… present.
And sometimes, painfully human.

But that’s where the truth lives.
Not in peace you manufacture, but in the raw aliveness beneath your roles, goals, and noise.

So if you sit, and breathe, and nothing happens—good.
If it’s boring—good.
If your mind is chaotic and uncomfortable—excellent.

Because the goal isn’t to escape your mind.
It’s to realise you are not it.

And that realisation?

That’s not stress relief.
That’s awakening.

The In-Between Is Sacred

There are times when the path doesn’t make sense.

You’re not who you used to be — not in belief, behavior, or direction.
But you’re also not yet who you’re becoming.
You’ve outgrown certain ways of thinking, but haven’t found what fully fits.
The motivation has changed.
The meaning has shifted.
And for a while, you feel… suspended.

This is not failure.
This is the in-between.
And it’s sacred.

What Is the In-Between?

The in-between is a transitional state in the soul’s unfolding.

In traditional spiritual teachings, this state is sometimes known — symbolically — as a barzakh. A veil between what was and what will be. Not just metaphysical, but psychological. A space of subtle transformation.

You may find:

  • Familiar practices begin to feel dry or mechanical.
  • You’re less emotionally reactive, but more mentally uncertain.
  • The questions are louder than the answers.
  • You are detached from the past, but not rooted in the future.
  • You can’t explain what’s happening — only that it is happening.

This is not disconnection.
It is spiritual molting.
And what looks like stillness is often reassembly.

What to Do in This Space

The first instinct in these seasons is often panic.
“Why am I stuck?”
“Why can’t I feel anything?”
“Did I regress?”

But the deeper response is patience.

Here are gentle, grounded things you can do — without overwhelming yourself:

1. Continue, But Lightly

Stay with your spiritual practice — but release the pressure to feel something.
You’re not performing. You’re preserving.
Even small acts — a breath, a phrase, a journal line — keep the connection open.

2. Create a Feedback Loop With Yourself

Each day or week, ask:

  • What gave me peace this week?
  • What felt heavy?
  • What am I unconsciously resisting?

You’re not grading yourself — you’re listening to yourself.
Growth doesn’t always show up as “progress.” Sometimes it shows up as clearer discomfort.

3. Protect Silence

You don’t need to fix this state.
You need to hold space for it.
Carve out even ten minutes of no input — no scrolling, no sound, no dialogue.
Let your soul rise to the surface again. It knows what to do.

4. Resist the Urge to “Rebrand”

You’re not lost.
Don’t rush to redefine yourself.
Don’t build a new persona because the old one is crumbling.
Stay undefined a little longer. That’s how the real identity can rise.

Dealing With Ego Noise

This part is predictable.
The ego hates liminal space.

It will say:

  • “This is useless.”
  • “You’re falling behind.”
  • “You need to prove something.”
  • “Get back to what felt comfortable.”

But here’s the secret:

The ego only shouts when it’s threatened.
And right now, it knows you’re moving beyond its reach.

You can’t silence it. But you can disobey it.
Let it speak.
Let it mock.
Then return to your breath.
To your stillness.
To your intention.

You don’t need the ego’s approval to become who you are.

Remember This

  • The in-between is where most people give up.
  • But it’s also where many are being quietly refined.
  • Not for spectacle, but for sincerity.
  • Not for fame, but for fitrah — alignment with what’s real.

This space is not empty.
It’s sacred.
And when it passes — which it will — you’ll look back and realize:

The silence wasn’t absence.
It was preparation.

Signs That You’re Not Lost — Just Being Recalibrated

There are times on the path when everything that once felt alive begins to feel distant.

The words don’t land like they used to.
The practices feel routine.
The clarity turns cloudy.
The longing softens into silence.

And you wonder, Where did it go?
Did I drift too far?
Did I do something wrong?

But not every dry spell is a detour.
Not every stillness is emptiness.
Sometimes, you are not lost.
You are simply being recalibrated.

Here are a few signs that this is exactly what’s happening.

1. You’re Less Emotionally Moved, but More Internally Stable

The tears are fewer.
The highs are quieter.
But you’re less reactive.
Less desperate for signs.
Less dependent on emotional reassurance.

This isn’t spiritual regression.
It’s grounding.
The path is shifting from feeling to being.

2. You Begin to Question What Used to Inspire You

What once filled you now feels… performative.
You’re not bitter. Just clear.
The outer language no longer feeds the inner world.
That’s not cynicism — it’s growth.

You are shedding borrowed passion and beginning to seek what’s truly yours.

3. You Are Drawn to Stillness Instead of Noise

You find yourself wanting fewer words.
Fewer arguments.
Fewer external markers of “spirituality.”
You’d rather sit in silence than speak for applause.

You’re not checking out.
You’re tuning in.

4. You Feel Disconnected From the Past, But Not Anchored Yet in the Future

This is one of the clearest signs of recalibration.
The old identity doesn’t quite fit.
But the new one hasn’t revealed itself yet.

You’re in between forms.
In transit.
No longer who you were — not yet who you’re becoming.

Be patient here. This is sacred space.

5. You Are Gently Losing Interest in Performance

You no longer need to “look spiritual.”
You don’t need to be seen practicing.
You don’t need to post about your journey.

You’re less interested in curating a path and more interested in walking it.

This is purification. Quiet, but real.

6. You Are Craving Truth Over Comfort

Even when it hurts.
Even when it humbles you.
You’re no longer seeking to feel better — you want to see clearly.

That shift is not loss.
That shift is maturity.

7. You Are Still Here

Despite the doubt.
Despite the dryness.
Despite the silence.
You haven’t left.
You’re still seeking.
Still questioning.
Still trying to return.

That is the greatest sign of all.

You are not lost.
You are being stripped of illusion.
You are being readied for a deeper kind of presence.
Not the dazzling light of early wonder — but the steady warmth of belonging.

This is not your end.
This is your re-entry.

Sober vs Intoxicated: Two Ways the Soul Remembers

The path of return — of awakening, of remembrance — doesn’t unfold the same way for every traveler.

Some are drawn by longing.
Others by clarity.
Some by tears.
Others by truth.
Some are broken open.
Others sit quietly, untouched by spectacle, yet entirely transformed.

There is no single doorway to the soul. But there are two great currents that often carry the seeker forward: one is sober, the other intoxicated.

The Sober Path: The School of Clarity and Containment

In one stream, the seeker begins with structure. With inward discipline.
They learn to hold their thoughts, their speech, their habits to a higher order.
They study. They reflect. They pray without emotional spectacle. They observe the self — the real self — beneath performance and preference.

This is not coldness. It is clarity.

The sober school sees reality as it is.
It trains the heart to recognize the subtle distractions of ego dressed up as ecstasy.
It purifies through consistency, through silence, through refinement.
The sweetness is not in emotional release, but in alignment.
In being present without being loud.
In walking gently without forgetting where you are.

Practices that lead here include:

  • Silent contemplation
  • Gentle correction of the lower self
  • Holding to regular acts of devotion regardless of mood
  • Reflecting deeply on the nature of existence and responsibility
  • Serving without being seen

Here, the soul remembers through sobriety.
The clarity is a form of nearness.

The Intoxicated Path: The School of Love and Longing

In another stream, the seeker is overtaken by love.
By awe.
By tears that come without warning.
They burn, they sing, they fall apart. They write poetry they don’t understand until much later.
They see signs in everything.
They speak to the One who sees them.
They remember their origin not as a concept, but as a homesickness.

This is not indulgence. It is devotion.

The intoxicated school sees beauty in everything — even the pain.
It breaks the self wide open so that remembrance floods through every crack.
Its aim is not to escape form, but to soften the heart until the form itself becomes translucent.

Practices that lead here include:

  • Repeating sacred phrases until they melt the mind
  • Sitting in the quiet presence of the Real
  • Listening to stories of those who walked the path with longing
  • Weeping over one’s distance from the Source
  • Surrendering into music, breath, tears

Here, the soul remembers through yearning.
The longing becomes the nearness.

Two Wings, One Flight

Neither path is higher.
Each soul is drawn according to its nature.
And most will find, with time, that both are needed.

The sober school protects the seeker from self-deception.
The intoxicated school keeps the seeker from spiritual dryness.
One teaches stillness.
One teaches surrender.
One clears the vision.
One softens the heart.

Both aim at the same truth:
To return to the One who sent us.
To live in remembrance.
To serve with love.
To speak less of the self, and more through the self.

Because at the end of the path — no matter how it began — the soul learns to love without conditions, and to serve without ego.

Some remember quietly.
Some remember with longing.
But the remembering is what matters.