How to be

I go to a Chinese Medicine Doctor to get acupuncture and to treat various ailments.

They are seemingly unrelated, the ailments, but when I did my intake session, he nodded sagely as I listed off my symptoms. I have an imbalance between my yin and my yang, my passive and my active, my be and my do states.

My yang is essentially in overdrive. I’m always doing doing doing. I have to-do lists for my rest and relaxation, for my meditation, for my creativity. I go and I do and I produce and I release and at the end of it all, I crash.

In the evening, sitting on the couch, my head nods, eyes heavy with sleep. The words of my children blur into a half-experienced dream just below the surface of my consciousness. But if I go to bed the sleep evades me. It slips out the door just as I enter my room, and I lie restless, suddenly aware of the smallest sensations. A tremor in my index finger. An itch at the base of my skull. Blankets must be arranged and rearranged. Limbs must be covered and uncovered in turns.

The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, gave us hundreds of remembrances to utter, words to settle our souls. Subhan Allah, Alhamdulillah, Allahu Akbar, La illaha illa Allah. Glory be to God, Praise be to God, God is the Greatest, There is only one God. They are to be said repeatedly, a mantra, until they fill your chest, until they slow down the doing and fill you with being. God tells us in the Quran, Verily, with the remembrance of God do hearts find rest (Q 13:28).

For years, I’ve been given to dread and foreboding. Climate change. Hyper-capitalism. Police brutality. Refugee crises. Mass extinction of biodiversity. I doomscroll along on Twitter and shake my head in horror at all the bad in the world, and then I wonder why I’m anxious, why my heart never slows to less than 80 beats a minute, why my breath is shallow. I feel a responsibility to witness every crisis, and then find myself depleted by the witnessing, unable to do anything to help.

A few months back, I disconnected. No more twitter. Facebook only for the local Buy Nothing group. I gave myself a daily reading quota from books and articles. Got conscious about my information diet. And the buzzing in my head lessened briefly. But it was a temporary reprieve. Once the noise of the world’s atrocities was gone, I replaced it with worries of aging, report cards, poor meal planning. I started to notice frown lines and dark spots, or my clothes didn’t fit like they used to, or i wondered if we were saving enough for the kids’ college fund.

Worrying is a hard habit to break. There is always something more to want, something more to achieve. And yet, I struggle to find the balance of the striving and the wanting. How do you strive for more without wanting it, without overlooking the immense blessings you already have? How do you motivate yourself to work out without guilting yourself about your weight gain? How do you motivate yourself to save without guilting yourself about your wastefulness?

The Prophet pbuh told us that whoever wakes up secure in his home, healthy in his body, with his food for the day has everything he needs in the entire world. And yet I find myself wanting. Lacking and wanting. And the problem, the real problem, isn’t the things I don’t have but the wanting that won’t be soothed. The rest my heart can’t find. The stillness my soul can’t achieve.

And there are the remembrances again. To be repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated. Until I remember. Truly remember. Words to tame the wounded animal inside me. And words are energy, words are frequency, are truth.

In our tradition, there are 99 names we know of for God. Each name is a whole world, a whole universe. As-Salaam - The Source of Peace. Al-Haqq - The Truth. Al-Waduud - The Loving. Remembrance can be calling God by the name you need. When my heart can’t rest, I repeat Ya Salaam Ya Salaam Ya Salaam. A mantra. When I’m sad or lonely, Ya Waduud.

My anxiety often presents as physical agitation. I can’t sit still. When I’m driving for long distances, I need to shift my hands to different points on the steering wheel, shift myself in the chair, reach behind my ear on a straight stretch of road to itch a scratch. Acupuncture is challenging, because once the needles are in, I have to be still. And in moments of stillness, my worries emerge, raising their heads like rabbits from their warrens, searching for sustenance. The pins in my arms, at the base of my neck and along my skull, in the curve of my ears. The pins in the backs of my toes. They send the nervousness and the energy dancing through me, and I can’t shake them off because I have to be still. Be. Still.

And so I whisper in my mind Ya Salaam Ya Salaam Ya Salaam. In my mind until the whisper reaches my heart and fills me with being. I’m still learning How to Be. I expect I’ll continue to learn for as long as I live.