WalaHaja #4: The Bestower
Just like you, I’m blessed with many gifts. And I think as humans we either attribute these blessings to our little egotistical selves or attribute everything to blessings from a “source” outside of us.
Attributing all beauty and gifts to the “source” removes from our shoulders the burden of having to work hard on “keeping” or “sustaining” them. Since, everything that I can use “my ” to refer to is bestowed upon me with the grace of the “source”, call it God, Allah, or whatever verbal expression you want to use to refer to the one governing source.
This also allow us to experience life from the space of #WalaHaja – the space of nothingness, lack of any desire to control any outcome, living with the flow, just like water.
“Attached to nothing … connected to everything”.
I can’t claim that I have reached that level, though, I have stumbled upon a few interesting people and a few interesting readings, stimulating my intellectual curiosity the most was author David R. Hawkins M.D., Ph.D. and honestly, I forgot to cancel my Audible subscription, so every month for almost 3 years I’m “surprised” with a $15 charge notification to my card and an Audible credit.
And nah, as we say in Arabic “رحم الله امرئ عرف قدر نفسه” which means that God’s mercy shall be granted to those who fairly know themselves. In a random population of 100 people, I would be the 17th person in caring about and prioritizing administrative/repetitive tasks, meaning that 83 people are better than me at it at doing that.
Though, on the same scale, among a population of 100 random people, I would score 1st in “openness to experience”, a scale of ingenuity and innovation, hence, I have internalized my destiny as an entrepreneur to be misunderstood and kind of lived with it with all its coping mechanisms.
So, anyways, with my new “gifted by fate” Audible credit, I pick a monthly audio book from my favorite author. A good company for long walks and vital content for “hacking” and/or “designing” the #WalaHaja algorithm.
The “Paradise” project was one of the early prototypes for the #WalaHaja Enterprises. A “placeholder” for a future “thing” that you are not yet able to “label” and the “thing” itself, does not like labels, which means #WalaHaja is a perfect name for it.
Nature-inspired Technology is the domain. Like extracting algorithms from the natural ecosystem including human interaction. My “openness to experience” allows for the largest possible dataset of “human experiences” to build the basic model.
Anyway, algorithms can’t function in a vacuum and with the lack of credible, aligned “enterprises” in hospitality, I had to build my own #WalaHaja aligned concept. Hence, turn your living space into a “Paradise” project.
In Islam, the 99 names of God are designated to be the most powerful verbal and energetic expressions in the Arabic language. Beyond expression, the words convey certain “suggestive behaviors” for individuals to embody.
The power of the word is that it’s an energetic invitation, an open invitation to certain forces to be invited. For starters there were only places for 4, each represented on a side of a wall and meaningfully translated for non-Arabic speakers to understand what’s going on.
Beside Arr-ah-man, invites the energy of Mercy and Compassion, Al-Wadood, invites affection and “love in action” or “acting lovingly”, Al-Fattah, invites opening of closed door and the fourth Al-Wahhab, opening up a stream into the unknown and the unearned and undeserved, the “outsourcing” of the “act of giving” into a higher entity that chooses to give with its own measure and also takes with its own.
Scoring only 17th in my admin tasks, I’m quite insecure about my handwriting and art skills in general, but translating this one to English was quite intense especially with someone who’s 1st in “openness to experience” and the Arabic language being such a powerful animal with massive number of options.
Following the model of “collapsing possibilities”, the most accurate expression of the meaning on the receiving end of this energy is saying: “It was “bestowed” upon me”, hence the choice of the word was made.
There are two ways to look at the world, one is that you are everything there is to be had and that you have earned it all yourself and another is that you don’t mind putting yourself in the position of being #WalaHaja and relax in confidence of having all your needs and wants “bestowed upon you”.
Even if on the earthly level, you have to work 12 hours a day for it or enter into ruthless, cut-throat conflicts with small minded people who refuse to see the big picture, according to the Sufi mystics, these are the acts of the hands, which shall be ideally separate from the acts of the hearts.
And so it goes. As much as beauty lies in the hearts, so as our diverse concepts of a “Paradise”, it also lies in our hearts. So, as the potential for people to build their own diverse concepts of what a “Paradise” would feel to them and be willing to write, share and invite people to enjoy their own version of it.
Ain’t that such a pretty decent tourism concept for Sinai?
Also published on Medium.
