A Spiritual Journey

Finally, it's confirmed.

I will finally get to do umrah with my mom and family. This is our mother's day present for her and she is happy as a lark :) She's been hinting about doing umrah with us for the longest time. Last time she went for hajj was back in the late 80s. Now that everything are settled, you can almost hear her moving about with a renewed energy, sprightly as a teenager :)

My last spiritual journey was when I was in college, one Ramadhan in the dead of winter, going thru Rumi and Al-Ghazzali and finding my coordinates in the Universe. It was a revelation at that particular moment feeling the ceiling of the sky is almost within my touch and the crab apple trees in the dead of winter were all at rukuk facing the kiblat.

Since those wide-eyed truth-seeking phase college days, my spiritual journey has been going up and down, well mostly down since I came back to Malaysia. Somehow, being in the midst of mostly muslims, eroded the sharpness of striving towards refining my spiritual progress and makes me take my faith for granted again. Perhaps I find some muslims tendency to be over-critical and petty with the branches as a turn-off or perhaps I have simply eroded my discipline. I find myself a more observant muslim when I was in the US.

Side-tracking a bit, I've been extremely frustrated with the way Malaysia is being mismanaged and rammed into the ground by the ppl in power and all its cash-riched assets sold off like scrap-metals to the highest bidder, crushing the mandate and hopes of the rakyat. Semoga Allah merahmati bumi bertuah ini dan menjauhkannya dari pemimpin2 dan "fly-by-nites" politicians yang tidak ikhlas, tidak matang, tamak haloba dan mengikut telunjuk musuh Islam. Amin.

As usual, I have not packed my bags nor do my laundries yet! nor have I finished studying and learning what I need to know already. May Allah guide me thruout the journey in Makkah and Madinah! :) InsyaAllah.

Wish that our umrah be mabrur.

Wassalaam,
ZaiZ
Kuala Lumpur
16 May, 2006