UMRAH.......on to the next level

ru, joe, nina , shasha and yazman,


ok guys, you have all completed 5 makkan days following tabung haji's directives from their small booklet to the T.
now papa want you guys to move to the next level. let us all leave the  ground level piazza and move on  to the next level, to the upper level floor.

join me here for tawaf sunat minimum twice a day for more 'exercise'! it is 0.9 to 1 km in circumference and the whole exercise will take us about 2 hours if we walk daintily and slowly.
with the hard marbled floor and just your stockinged feet,  papa would advice that you guys do just that: walk slowly and daintily. or else you will get plantar faciitis in no time , and our spiritual and physical experiment in the masjidil haram will fail right after the 1st attempt!

papa do not want that to happen because papa want to share with you some of the secrets that the haram has to offer, if just its millions and millions of  adherrents care to consider.

let us leave the 'too noisy indonesians , malaysians, turks and bangla with their cacaphony of group zikr and oftentimes 'irritating and noisy' and distracting group chanting on the ground floor of the 'mataaf', the pearl white marbled floor of the piazza surrounding the kaabah..

let us also leave those people who are too busy clicking their way in tawaf doing 'selfies' and answering calls on their handphones, to themselves. too many of these nowadays!

come children! join me on the 1st floor.
papa has not entirely abandoned the piazza yet, but when the crowds get busy and noisy, papa go to the relative peace of the upper levels.

over here let us throw away all pre-prepared long doa's and standard chantings.
it is a silent world up on the upper level.....we do zikrullah silently up here,
zikr of the heart rather than the lisan, the mouth.

we have the Qur'an, the 99 names of the asma ul husna and the tasbih, tahmid and tahlil to choose from.
any one of them in xcombination. 
the permutations and combinations are endless!

on the upper level papa has even done away with 'la illa haillallah' .
and why not!?

right here, around the kaaabah, 'la illa haillallah' seems superflous.
if you have so far reached the haram, it is a given thing already!
HE is the one. the only substantive one. the rest, including all of us, living and non living, are non entities!

papa's favourite for the 1st round is 'ya allah'
it encompasses all the 99 names.
it is indefinable.

the 2nd is 'ya rahman'.

Allah's mercy does not differentiate whether you are buddhists, christians, jews, muslims or downright secular. HE is mercy to everyone, including the stones and birds....

then we move on to 'ya rahim'.
while 'ya rahman' is for everyone, 'ya rahim' is extra special. 'ya rahim' is only for the people who submit.

by the beginning of the 4th circumbulation, you guys must have covered some three plus kilometres.
tired feet and sore muscles.....but 'ya hayyu ya quyyum', the ever living and the eternal, will soldier you on.

then on to 'ya rabb ya zaljalaliwal ikram'.
you guys will be energized and motivated by now.

if by the beginning of the sixth circumbulation, 'ya fattah ya razak ya wahab ya ghoniy ya mughni' fail to excite you, papa will be utterly disappointed. these most beautiful names are about power, richness, generousity and benevolence.
some shyakhs and tok gurus even dare to suggest that if one make this 'mantra' a daily occurrence, one's life will be 'rich'. 
papa is not into this

finally we finish our tawaf with 'ya khadeem,ya daim, ya ahad ya wahid ya samad'.
the one who has no beginning, no ending, no equal , the one and only and the eternal.

you guys have four more makkan days to elevate yourselves beyond the din and commonness of everyday life.
after that we leave for kuala lumpur, back to our ordinariness and oftentimes daily chores and rigours.

when we circumbulate the kaabah, our hearts and mind are focussing on the Owner of the kaabah, the 'ya fattah, ya razak, ya wahab, ya ghoniy ya mughni, ya khadeem, ya daim, ya ahad, ya wahid, ya samad, ya rahman, ya rahim , ya hayyu, ya qayyum, ya rabb, ya zaljala liwalikram'.....in all HIS indefinable majesty, splendour and power.

the trick really is to bring back some hidden secret of the 'baitullah' into one's mundane ordinary day to day life and work,
how can one do this, you may ask?

as papa have told you in our previous communication,umrah is a great open university of life.
it is back to zikrullah during your tawaf......bring it to your work place.

for shasha, do it at the operation table and your er.
yes! even when you are faced with death ond the dying throes of an eight year old down with haemorrhagic dengue.

for ru, do it while you are managing those American visitors in kuala lumpur  from remote year.
it seemed incongrous, since they are mainly 'godless and secular' to you.
but you can take it from papa that this is where 'ugama' is needed most.

for yazman, the national oil company and its strategic planning unit would benefit if you can bring back some semblance of ugama into klcc. you guys deal with billion rm projects. a wee bit of 'ugama' may help here.

and for joe, papa know on a scale of things at star cruise, you are still  'gurkha' doing the number crunching and prenegotiations for their tender committee. if you do move on later to managing the nation's ' durian and musang king' plantations, and i hope you will move on subsequently to things more 'halal', since you have the talent, don't ever leat the chinaman's disease of 'that 2.5 per cent' ever percolate into your life.

we already have too much of this lately in putrajaya.
ringgit malaysia has upped the ante and refined it to an art-form.

for you my dear nina, insyaalah, your exam next week will just be a breeze!
insyaallah.


with lots of love and fatherly tenderness,
papa