The Book of Life

Dear Daughter,

You’re a thousand miles away in Sydney kicking in the safety of your mother’s womb as I sit here writing this, it’s raining tonight in Melbourne, fairly large drops of rain making a hypnotic noise in harmony with this room’s silence - the window slightly ajar bringing the cold Melbourne winter into my hotel room.

I don’t claim to have all the answers - or any for that matter - I just want to share with you how I live (lived) my life. I don’t know when (and if) you will read this but if you do I hope you will see glimpses of me - your father, what I stand for, and what I will die fighting for.

What you’ll read here is my “book of life”, my subjective opinion, soon you’ll have your own, which will be infinitely better than mine - I hope; when you do, remember to always be true yourself for when one is true with one’s self only then they can be true to others.

Much love, your dad,

Sohail Joseph Dahdal.

9:45pm, 1st of July, 2007

When I was fourteen I could hardly walk, your grandfather took me to many doctors with not much success, some said it’s my liver, others said it’s hormones, but no magic cure was presented and so it was apparent to me that I had to find help within. I promised myself to walk to the Al Madena - we lived in Amman then, Al Madena was about 30k from where we lived! I started walking bit by bit, everyday I walked longer, my first walk lasted all of five minutes before I got tired. It took me four months but I did it. I willed my body to go on, and so I did!

Most people see themselves in one dimension, they are what they see in the mirror, they think this is just flesh, bond and blood, they think it’s vanity to take care of the body, they think our body is only a place holder for the mind. Wrong. Our body is much more than that, it’s a simple smile that will capture someone’s heart, it’s the blood that goes to our brain and makes us think a poem, it’s the vocal cords of an angelic voice that charms millions.

“The body is a sacred temple - it’s our way to communicate with the world, treated like so”

My father, your grandfather was a very smart man - too smart even - but he always took the world too seriously, worried too much. I can still clearly picture him pacing back and forth on the balcony; When the Berlin wall went down, I think it was 1989, I remember him saying that while he agrees that walls are bad, he was worried that the Soviet Union would collapse shortly after and that the world would be in the hands of USA. Your grandfather never lived to see that day, but it did happened and every time the USA does a crazy thing I can still imagine him pacing back and forth worried, carrying the whole world in his shoulders, in his mind.

I worry less than my father and therefor I’m more of a master on my mind than he was, still I’m an idealist, and that means that I’m a slave for concepts that are made by humans.  To be even freer one needs to let go of all, for me I’m cursed with this irrational love to a homeland I’ve never had, to Palestine. This I can’t let go of, it will always be my true goal, my true love, and my true failing. I will always fight for it till the day I die. Funny how trivial we are when we live and breath an idealist notion.

Our mind gives us a chance to communicate with others, the world, and more important with our soul through the subconscious, the super natural, and dreams. The mind could be a bless or a curse. It is up to us how we exercise our mind - emphasis on the word exercise.

“Free your mind from complexities true greatness comes through simplicity”

I was once in Bolivia on a lake called Lake Titicaca, one of the highest lakes in the world and a must see, I hope you will make it there one day. We were on a boat with an old man with a face that tells a thousand stories, I estimated he was over seventy years old, and yet in his eyes you could see a youthful smile. I didn’t need to speak to him to know that he was young at heart.

When you look into the eyes of a new born, you see something that will stay with this new born till the die they die. That something, intangible as is it, is so defined and so unchangeable that we can see it clearly and feel it deeply… that something is the soul, and the eyes are a window to that soul. We all are part of a oneness, a mesh that has many little imprints, each is a living soul, all together are connected and are the soul of the universe.

“The soul of the universe, is what some call God - others call the ether. Never forget you and the stars share the one soul”

There was once a homeless man named Hermano. Hermano lived on the streets of Sacramento (California) and that’s where I met him, outside a house down town Sacramento. I’d been invited to this random party and I’d just got out for fresh air, Hermano asked me to get him a beer from inside, he said “it’s a lovely night and a beer would make it even lovelier”. I fetched two beers and we sat down on the steps - houses in America have steps that go all the way to the street. “Thank you, I’ll give you something back”, he paused, waiting for my reaction, I smiled, he took another gulp of his beer, now nearly empty, then he said “you ain’t missing anything if you ain’t being there”.

Hermano was giving me a “beer” advice about life. Live for the now. Live for the here. Perhaps he was drunk, perhaps we both were, but his advice really carried with me to this day - as a proof I’m writing it here.

Life is amazing. Life is the human body and mind working together to make an imprint on the soul of the universe. The concept of the universe can only be explained with one word “The now”. When we are alive we are always interacting with the soul of the universe. We can only truly understand the magnitude of such a word if we live in the now, for nor the past can explain it’s ethereal value, and nor the future can convey it’s eternal vastness. Only the rhythm of the now can really connect us with the oneness of the universe.

“Live in the now and you can become an extension of something bigger, stronger, at piece with both the noises within and the silence outside”

There was a movie in the seventies about aliens watching earth from the sky, they finally draw the conclusions that earth is run by cars, and that each car has a slave or two that drive it around, clean it, fix it, and feed it when hungry. We are always too preoccupied with “the Self” to really understand who we are. Our mind does not allow us to see beyond it’s comprehension. That is why it’s always easier to give advice to others than to help ourselves.

We are always forgetting that our soul is our clear link to a higher concept of the “us” instead of the “self”… and so the “self” needs to understand that it is part of a more important entity that is the “us” - or the soul of the universe - only then will people start evolving to a new level of harmony. And only then will we evolve to a new quantum leap. To be selfless is not to forget about ones desire and aspiration but to pursue them in unity with others and earth.

“possessions posses us, cleanse your mind - get read of unnecessary junk”

It was 4 am, I had worked 21 hours non-stop and was on my way home, I was too tired to sleep any time soon so I made a detour and went to Bondi beach. No one was there, just me, the waves and a half moon reflecting on the vastness of the pacific ocean. In that moment everything seemed so clear, I was experiencing oneness with the ocean, it was just my thoughts and ocean’s vastness. I went home in high spirit, the next day I quit my job, few weeks later I was backpacking around the world.

The spirit is a combination of our location on that mesh that is the soul of the universe and the imprint we leave on it using our mind. Being spirited is using the power of your mind to follow your heart (soul). When a baby is born, we can see their soul but then as they grow up, their mind develops and only then we see their spirit.

“Restless hearts are spirited people that always seek more from the soul of the universe”

There is a very large tree in Glebe, in Sydney that I love and always go to when feeling sad. We have a connection. Now I’m not a tree huger, nor do I take drugs and see trees talking but when I sit on the root of that tree - the tree has many big roots sticking in and out of ground like an octopus - and look up and see no sky but only the branches of my humongous friend, I truly feel the language of nature. I feel safe and in touch with something bigger – not just the tree but even something bigger that is alive, living, and breathing.

The universe is part material part ether, and our body is part of the material of nature, while our soul is part of ether. Nature is what we are and where we belong - our mind is merely a subset, a communication tool, with it we try to understand the wonders of nature.

“If you listen hard enough you can hear the silence - that is the soul of the universe talking”