Howl

I am haunted by the dead still~

On this day

Seven years ago

19 magical Arabs

Hijacked 4 airplanes

Crashed 2 into

Tall WTC towers

Others, the Pentagon

And Pennsylvanian field

None were stopped

Jets didn't fly

Or flew elsewhere

The world watched

Firefighters and Policemen

Janitors Architects Chieftain,

Jews Muslims Christian

Flew unto heaven

As the politicians

Who'd planned this

Claimed that they'd

Higher moral ground

Revenge flew swiftly

Millions murdered bloodily

And parents cried

As children died

Demons

Walk

The

Earth

And Spirits fight,

As we must:

Till we die,

The Big Lie.

~ Naseer Ahmad

Journeys with Spirit

I have long wondered about the journey a spirit makes when it leaves the body and moves on to the higher realm, and other dimensions. I also ask when and how we can reach the state of grace oft promised and written about by all the religions. The Divine Light, when seen or felt, by one person, or an entire people.

Recently a friend's mother passed away. He said "no one really knows what happens to us when we die". I wished I could show him the certainty that even my children have, that spirits pass on to another life, and the journey in between lives is as fascinating, and beautiful, as the one we go through in life.

I look at you, and see three bodies. The Physical, which exists in the material world. The Soul, which is the sum total of all your experiences in this, and all previous and potential future lives, and exists in the realm of emotion. The Spirit, our inner self which exists beyond all that and yet, bound to the other bodies. I see the energies and entities that attach to those bodies and prevent us from making that spiritual journey. And the greatest longing, whether recognised or not, is the Journey to God.

So I see how you all have spirits that long to go beyond to reach the Divine Light. That the spirits of the living, and those that have passed on, and those waiting to be born, all come for Healing..

I teach this: How to heal your selves, how to heal others. The chakras are a map of our spiritual journey from Creation to our return to God. From Nothingness to Nothingness, actually. Not the White Light or Blissful Eternal Joy, but, the nothingness of the Void. In aiming for bliss, we shortchange ourselves. We aim for spiritual enlightenment without understanding karma, when really, we must all go through the process of birth and rebirth.

When we meditate, the spirit leaves the body, but not far. When we have a 'spiritual' event, that quite often is a kundalini zap masquerading as such, with all due respect to what is after all a deeply personal experience. But, an event that changes your life, which always remains with you, where for a moment you are no longer in your body but truly out of it, that is a spiritual experience. That is the starting point of the journey, and not the end. The end is when we become one with God, and that is a journey that every soul, every spirit, every body makes. In the end, we all return to God, and I would like to show you the Way.

First, we need to ask where spirits dwell. When my brother died I suppressed my grief and it was only when I learned to contact his spirit that I could finally let go. First with a Ouija board, then, realising one didn't need them: the ability exists within all of us. Some, when they realise this gift, run into the brick wall of their own fear of letting go. Some are drawn by the seduction of these powers and drift into mania. I leaped into that swift river, which takes you know not where, and knew this was home.

So, when we die we pass on into spirit, and one only needs to learn how to communicate with them. I have had many spirit friends. They exist on another plane altogether and we need to understand their experience if we are to evolve ourselves. They come to a place where they see all their past lives, the choices and karma. They choose when to be born again, and to whom. They chose the circumstances of their new lives, they are born.. and then they forget all they have learned, and start over again.

The people of Atlan had the spiritual ability to remember past lives. It was a spiritual training that began in childhood, and went on for the rest of their life. I don't tell people who they were in a previous life, but if, in the process of learning about Spirit they remembered, that would be good. The ability must be learned again, yes, but first there must be many tests before you can safely make this journey, for the journey is the exact same journey we make when we die.

So I had many spirit friends, who came for healing, but in the process they taught me much. The occultist and magician "Cheiro" suggested I study Palmistry which led to Astrology which led to Psychism. So I first had a childhood where I saw spirits, before I developed my Psychism. This is the reverse of what usually happpens, since Psychism, which is a form of emotional sensitivity, usually develops first. There was Mary, the mother of Jesus. I knew her as Aeflan, a student of mine in one life, my mother and teacher in another.. The writers George Elliot and George Sand encouraged me to write. Andron of Atlan, and many more friends from other lives came to see me...

Spirits cannot tell you the future, because that would take away your own power, and free will. We can chose whther to listen or not. Yet how many times did I hear a dear friend tell me, wait a moment, take the road less travelled, make a leap of faith. And I would do that, and learn from whatever happened, and grow.

There are many obstacles to our journeys with spirit, but when we face our fears, they are gone. There are many stages to the journey. The first step is Knowledge, where we see the choices we have made and the choices we must make. The next step is to see how much we really are loved by God, and are surrounded by that love. And the last step is to surrender, and become one with God. These are steps taken, outside of religion which only emphasises punishment, into the peace which the true understanding of God brings to you. These are stages that occur whether the spiritual journey is taken when you die, or while you are alive. These are the stages that lead to grace within our selves.

The Divine Light exists within each of you.

The Power of Poetry

We need to be reminded every once in a while, of the power of poetry to move our lives.

When I posted the poem "Palestine" on July 16 some people were kindly appreciative, and some (on another blog, were not :)

Yet few, outside the Arab World, noted the subsequent passing away on August 9, 2008, of Palestinian National Poet Mahmud Darwish, of whom it was said "In his work, Palestine became a metaphor for the loss of Eden, birth and resurrection, and the anguish of dispossession and exile. The poet Naomi Shihab Nye has commented about Darwish's work, "Darwish is the Essential Breath of the Palestinian people, the eloquent witness of exile and belonging...."

and I hope my poem in some way reflected that..

I want to let people know that without poetry ( a dance of words) or music (of sound) or art (of the senses) or healing (energy) we would not have a soul, because we could not even express, nor could we be moved to go beyond, ourselves. Each of you has a voice, and it deserves to be heard!

Many people are moved by the sonnets of Shakespeare, or the savage verse of Ezra Pound. Some have now come to appreciate the Sufi poetry of Rumi and Hafez, and I would like to encourage you to discover the Persian poetry of Indian poets Allama Iqbal and Muhammad Ghalib. Above all, read Sappho, who distills worlds of longing into just one phrase.

But this post is a continuation of the previous, "Miracle in Toronto", and here I am literally warning you about the loss of soul.

These are the first poems I wrote, The Beginning, and The Man, from my book. Written in 1974, published 1990. I look at the rough, unpolished, writings of a young man and yet, it is what it is. The remembrance of lives past, and, seeing his future laid out for him...

The Beginning

There is a planet called Atlan. Thousands of years ago, people from the planet Atlan came to Earth. The story, however, begins at the beginning, where all beings are created. I was in God, in His peace and love. Then He told me that it was time to leave, to be born in a place called Atlan. I didn't really want to go, but He said it was the destiny of all his children to be born. To live and die, and to live again. For no man really dies, He said. There is a reason for your existing, and you cannot fulfill it in a mortal lifetime. Therefore, you are Immortal. Need you then fear anything? I'm afraid of being alone, I cried. You need not be afraid, He said, in his infinite kindness. There will always be Love....

Hurtling through space infinite
Countless stars flashing by
From the farthest galaxy
Thus came the spacemen

Man, infinitely small, alone
This was his god
Hunger of the flesh
We showed a way

Gods were we, priests,
This our purpose was
To come to mankind
And touch their souls

Atlantis, cradle of science
Time, space, mortality transcended
Forces controlled for man
One day destroyed Atlantis

Mu, birthplace of religion
In simple rustic life
Calm peaceful joyous meditation
God in our selves

Ah Crete! Beautiful jewel
In emerald undulating sea
Art, beauty, music, darkness
A flame was kindled

Nineveh looked at stars
From whence came men
And deep momentous knowledge
Of events to come

I remember my Egypt
I was a god
Who flew with eagles
Worshipped by all Egypt

The people adored us
Made offerings at altars
Our godhood condemned us
To lonely loveless existence

Yet Egypt was where
Love touched a god
For one fleeting instant
Made him man again

All through these lives
Have I searched for Egypt
Now I see pyramids
Sense your presence here

Do you remember when
We soared like eagles
Mystic moments of passion
Forbidden, unforgivable tragic love?

The Man
1974 A.D.

The day I met you
Magical moment in time
I saw many many
Lives of my past

In many of them
Were worlds of loneliness
With oases of calm
That I drank from

You, love, were there
Mystic everlasting woman
With eyes that shone
With warming soft flame

So was I lost
There were no defenses
Against a love ordained
Two halves together again

Long have I searched
For your soft caress
Love in your eyes
Ecstasy in our souls

What can I give
But mind, body, soul
If such is loving
Love me in turn

Your face haunts me
Would that I could
Capture it, even fleetingly
In painting, poem, song!

Wandering as we are
Through the desert of
Time, let us give
Shelter to each other

Love comes but rarely
Soul mates just once
Let me find her,
God, here and now!

We are all vulnerable
We live and die
When we are loved
Give me love again

Let me take you
Away on my carpet
And show you gods,
Kings, beautiful, wondrous things!

I see many things
And have countless gifts
This I know not
When will she appear

Mountains are lonely places
Yet we must climb
I take your hand
Will you take mine

I felt your body
Nestling, close to mine
And as we caressed
Our fears melted away

As we made love
Ancient magic, universal rhythm
We were whole again
We died innumerable times

I have eyes that
Mirror my soul
But I must know
What you see there

He looked into the night sky, remembering. This was how it had been from that time when they flew through the stars. So many memories coming back from the darkness, now a part of him. He looked into the sky again, beyond the darkness beyond the stars. To Atlan, where his life had begun. Now the years of searching were over, for he had found the Way. And it was this, above all, that had come back to him."I love you."

And I was the Man from Atlan...

And just one more, which was the only other poem I ever wrote before "Palestine".

I Dread the Morning

I dread the morning
that comes,
uninvited,
into my room of dreams

I miss the days
of my youth
that flew on wings
of possibilities and imaginings

Yet now,
in the twilight, I say:
Grim Reaper, I have defeated you,
Weeper, I have beaten you.

Naseer Ahmad

Miracle in Toronto

For those who predicted a disaster in Toronto: I said, "not while I live here".

I'll offer this to the world; make of it what you will.

In the early morning hours this Sunday August 10th, a propane facility in Toronto blew up. The blast could be heard for miles, and the fireball lit up the city. Witnesses described it as a "nuclear blast". Miraculously, even though it was in the middle of a residential area, only two people were killed, and other damage was minimal. Still, 12,500 people in a 1.6 km radius were evacuated for safety reasons.

By an interesting coincidence, I was talking to my disciple Isis on Saturday about this very prediction I'd made more than 30 years ago. And my statement to her was that all I could ever promise was those close to me would be protected. The rest of the world would have to find its way back to God, and inner peace, on its own. This is said lovingly. There is only so much that I can do for people who knowingly go about their paths of delusion and self-destruction, and I have grown weary of warning death and destruction to people who would not listen. The blast next morning was very close to her home but she didn't have to evacuate, the perimeter was set just two streets away.

Every once in a while I hold a special meditation service with my inner group of disciples. They've been trained in the Way of Atlan and therefore have realised many of their gifts. They still need feedback, connection with the community and myself to continue learning; it's a life-long path. The last one was held on August 2, 2008 when I said: the solar eclipse of August 1, the day before, would herald great change. On August 7 Georgia attacked a breakaway province, and in response, Russia invaded it. Thousands have been killed. There may be other wars, elsewhere.. I have long said that those who make war are possessed by demons, but I really want to talk about individual people; my message today is for them.

The theme for the world is, What is our next step? You all have only one purpose in life, and that is to find God. How you do it, and how you conduct your life, is up to you, but without God, you will not know peace. We had family over recently. How could they move forward if they didn't understand or believe in God? So many of their close friends were dying of cancer, and they were asking why, but didn't like the answer. And until you find that, you will be reminded over and over again.

I also talked about the dilemma of healers. At what point do you stop trying to save a drowning person? If in doing so you will lose your own life? So, do the best you can, but if you can't help, move on.

I keep being asked, what does this or that dream mean? Well, dreams are shallow superficial things relating to some psychological itch or past life artifact.. But disasters, weather changes, earthquakes are attempts by the Universe to bring about balance, and also, to warn us: wake up!

Exactly 3 years ago, on August 2, 2005, Air France Flight 358 crashed on landing in Toronto, and burst into flames. All 309 people on board survived, without serious injury. This was the e-mail I sent then:

Miracle in Toronto

I'd mentioned to you many times before how I felt disasters happening in Toronto, and also that while I was here I would try to help prevent them, for as long as I could. I also felt that Toronto was a special place, as long as it was my home, and a lot of spiritual people have been drawn to Toronto for that very reason.
It's all about energy; when you create a space of energy then people are drawn to it, whether that is to you, or your living room, or your city. It hasn't been easy. I've struggled between the necessities of earning a living, wanting to finish my books, and helping people in need. And when you pick up on people in need, you drop everything to attend to that, which I myself have said isn't always the best thing to do.

I'll also mention my 2002 article "The end of the world" which is about not being afraid.
I'll mention how a week ago my wife Chloe found a 3 foot tall iron statue of a knight in armour in some one's recycling bin; it now sits in our back garden, and is a sign of fighting to protect the weak and defenceless.
I could mention how (my disciple) Eden and her husband Robbie left for England the day after. They could have been at the airport that day, or the crash could have taken place on Hwy 401, or a student's house, (her mother's under the flight path) but it didn't. 309 people walked out of the plane without major injury. Just as there were many close friends who escaped the London blasts this year.
A miracle happened in Toronto.
Look to the miracle in your own lives.

Naseer Ahmad 2005

So:

I knew there would be a great need for healing in the United States, with earthquakes and other disasters. I also knew things would only get worse. I still wanted to help, so I went with Chloe and Arune, for the 1993 Malibu fires, the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake, then again in 2000, 2001, and 2002. I had a vision of an earthquake in San Francisco, and went there to perform the ceremony that prevented that. Yes I have the power, don't you see? But if I use it endlessly to prevent things, you will never grow up. Still, I sent a disciple to New York six days before 9/11 to help people there.

Yes, I was in London, before the tube blasts. Yes, I was in Glasgow after a bomb attack. The weather changed when I got there, but I only helped the individuals who came to see me. And now I grow weary of that too.

Toronto has been my base for the last 38 years. While I lived here it was safe.

A plane crashed in 1978 at exactly the same location at Toronto Airport as the Air France flight. People were killed. I was living in London at the time. When I returned in 1979 a train carrying chemicals derailed just outside of Toronto and the resulting fireball was seen a hundred miles away. Again, the miracle was that no one was killed. Due to the possibility of a chlorine cloud the entire city of Mississauga, 218,000 people, were evacuated. No further mishap occurred.

Coincidentally, Eden and Robbie flew out of Toronto again, the day before the latest explosion.

I do not know if I will be staying in Toronto any longer. That depends.

This is a message to the people of this planet.

You have a choice now.

Believe in me

Help me

Follow me

I wish you peace, love, and joy.

A poem

The ney is a 4000 year old Middle Eastern musical instrument; the oldest extant.

With apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, Kubla Khan:
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Kubla_Khan.html

Palestine

In Palestine did perfidious Zion
Descry two tribes of Abraham
Where Aleph the scarlet letter ran
Through convolutions unwitnessed by man
Down to a sunless land
So, thrice thousand miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were encircled around
And there were gravestones filed in sinuous rills
Where once blossomed children in the country
Of olive trees ancient as the hills
Now enfolding dark leafless tracery

But oh! that deep chasm filled with cant
Down the barren hill with nary a flower
A savage place! as hatred was flaunted
As e’er thing under the sun was haunted
By demon helicopter which o’er field did hover!
And from this chasm, with endless murder seething
As if this torn earth were bleeding
A bomb fell amongst picnickers to burst
From whom it came are thrice accursed
Bullets fly from the encircling jail
A boy and his father torn apart by merciless hail
And ‘mid these sacred fields of forever
Flung up once again the bloody river
Five times five thousand miles meandered the clan
Then reached purgatory measured by Man
Dead floating souls in caverns endless
Overwhelm’d by hordes of infinite fiendishness
And from afar Abraham’s people heard
God’s message: Phoenix bird

The search for the eternal treasure
Stuck athwart a schoolgirl’s grave
And sighs of mingled pleasure
Emerged from sacred Bethlehem’s nave
It was a miracle that from the furnace’s fire
Could emerge such voices of freedom’s desire!

Young woman with a Ney
A vision without flaw
‘Twas a Palestinian fey
And on her fairie instrument she played
Singing of peace long delayed
Could I wish within me

With such magic she
To such heights delivered me

That with magic and song
I would deliver up the throng
To sunny throne! From caves of fire!
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
Those burning eyes, her waving hair!
Close your eyes to the dead
For on the elixir of God had he fed
And drunk the promise of Paradise.

Naseer Ahmad 2008

Morgentaler and me

In the summer of 1974 I made another of my leaps of faith: I would write "Man From Atlan" , the story of my past lives that had begun with 'Search for the Soul's Mate' http://manfromatlan.blogspot.com/2007/12/search-for-souls-mate-i-didnt-use-to.html
First, we had to find a new place, so I did, a flat on the 3rd floor of 85 Harbord Street, Toronto. The landlord, an Irish Canadian, was tickled I was writing a book there, and even threw in a chest of drawers for a bottle of Jim Beam.
So I threw myself into writing; getting up early to go jogging, then, fuelled by peanut butter and rolls from the local bakery, would write for 10-12 hours straight. The writing process is straightforward for me. Get in the space, write. Once you start, don't stop till you've finished. That took 3 months. The same happened when we moved to London, and, filled with the memories and spiritual experiences that flowed through, wrote my second book The Way of Atlan.
But for now, I'm writing about Dr. Henry Morgentaler, who's just received the Order of Canada, our highest civil honour. Dr. Morgentaler single-handedly assailed the legal system which made abortions in Canada illegal. Even though he was imprisoned in Quebec and then tried again in Ontario for performing abortions, in 1988 the Supreme Court ruled in his favour that abortions could not be denied by Canada's Health Care system. And this happened in the house where I wrote my book.
Around about the time I finished writing Man From Atlan in 1974, 85 Harbord St. was taken over by the mortgage holder, a lawyer called Morris Manning, who courteously allowed us to stay until we moved to England in 1975. He then leased the 2nd and 3rd floors to his client Dr. Morgentaler, who set up his first abortion clinic in Toronto. The previous owner, angry at this turn of events, then leased his next door property, 87 Harbord St. to a Christian Evangelist, Ken Campbell, who proceeded to harangue women coming to Morgentaler's clinic next door, which made it interesting because both properties shared the same entrance, and demonstrations and counter demonstrations roiled outside those doors for quite a while.
I believe that women have the right to have an abortion. I also know it is the killing of an unborn child, and that there is a karmic price to pay. Over and over in my healing I have seen the karmic consequences and pain carried by women and men by the decision to have a child or not, to be responsible for the love and welfare of a child or not. This is not to blame anyone, neither the woman nor the doctor who carries out the abortion. But in my long spiritual and healing practice I have seen many things concerning Birth and Abortion and have a duty to share what I learned with everyone who wants to know.
I have 5 children and from the time they were conceived, knowing their spirits, it never was an option for us to abort, even though we had to go through a lot of karma with that choice. I respect that many women make that choice out of necessity and it is never an easy one. But the fact is that they were not informed that it put at risk their chances of having subsequent children or might have problem pregnancies or children with a higher degree of cerebral palsy or other illnesses. That the hormonal disruption would increase the chances of cancer (Statisticians on both sides argue this point, but my own observations support this) And spiritually, subsequent children often turned out to have incredible karma with the mother. The karma was almost non-existent when there was a miscarriage, but extremely heavy when it was an abortion.
The Way of Atlan teaches the sacredness of birth, the life lived from the time of conception, and the karmic responsibility that entails. It also accepts that there might be a time when abortion is necessary, and that while there should not be any impediment to it, it could not be just a clinical procedure without any sense of the pain that was being caused, or felt. That I could place my hand on a woman's root chakra and ask if she had been pregnant before, or had an abortion, was a reflection of the energy loss I felt there. So, I could heal that pain, and release the woman and the spirit of the unborn child.
I could also not judge Henry Morgentaler. In an interview at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/series/morgentaler/ he revealed that his mother, who died at Auschwitz, was distant from him and he never felt that she had loved him at all or as she loved her other children. And I could only feel compassion, knowing that this is exactly the way that children of abortion feel when their spirits are torn from their bodies, and how much pain is being carried forward into the future.
I could also feel the irony; the home which was such an important part of my spiritual journey, was now an abortion clinic. The raccoon with whom I would share my peanut butter and rolls on the balcony, was probably being fed fetuses by Dr. Morgentaler, who after all said they were just 'clumps of tissue' (My savage sense of humour, sorry)
In 1984, The Toronto Women's book store was burned down. It was believed that the target was the clinic above it.
In 1992, the building was destroyed by an arsonist.
That was the year our daughter Arune was conceived, and I decided to move on to the next stage, our Spiritual Journey to the United States http://manfromatlan.blogspot.com/2007/12/spiritual-journey-to-u.html
We choose the direction of our lives, and the journey. And now, our journey moves on again.

A Canada Place to Be.

This is a love letter to Canada, and also, a note for the future.

I was finishing my studies in Pakistan. I'd not made it to flight school in the Air Force, and now University was almost over. I knew it was time to leave. Sitting on a mountain top in the foothills of the Himalayas, I meditated, and ask to know what my next step would be. Within a month, my father decided we would all move to Canada.

First he checked out the U.S. He could have been posted to the Washington Embassy earlier in 1958 but the Ambassador, a friend, just died. We applied to immigrate there, which would have required I be drafted for the Vietnam War. I didn't care one way or the other (still believed that all communists were bad) but then he called his friend in Toronto and decided to move here.

The prophecy said Maitreya would come down from the Himalayas, board a plane in Pakistan, and fly to London. I did, but went on to Toronto, because my karma was there.

First job: Street cleaner. Let go the first day, even though in typical immigrant manner, I'd knocked myself out doing a great job. Noticed the only other person let go was a black man (None of the 'pink folk' were let go :) but after that, I got great jobs, and never had to face that problem again.

That is the beauty of Canada.. It has welcomed people from a hundred different countries and become stronger as a result. People of different faiths get along. Gay people can get married if they want. Louise Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, is a national treasure. Kids for Khadr, an Ontario school group, protests the inhumane treatment given to Canadian child soldier Omar Khadr in Guantanamo Prison, while the government hides behind rhetoric.

You go to a place, and you know you've been there before.. and here I rediscovered my native, shamanistic past. Here I started meditation classes that combined Spirit and Earth energy, for Canada is strong in earth energy. Wherever the native people gather, it is strong in energy, even though the earth itself has sadly, been weakened over the years and Canada's treatment of its native peoples is a karmic shame.

Canadians see themselves as a force for good in the world. Even with the present government, there is a fundamental decency. We care and invest in social causes. Every one has health care. Education is pretty good. Yes, Canada is fighting an unjust war in Afghanistan. Yes it's got a corporate fascist government and political parties (but not as bad as the U.S. we say-they on the other hand call us 'socialists' as though that's a Bad Thing)

Why, then, do I love this country? Because it's a place of refuge. There will come a time when the world will need it, and that is why I cherish it. Its vastness. Arrive in Northern Quebec, and you see the Aurora Borealis shimmering in magical light.

Great things will happen here.