“[Being a progressive Muslim] is a linking of love and justice. If you love people, you are compassionately concerned about their well-being, and you are concerned about how the most marginalized of people are faring at the moment. The same practice of mindfulness—of striving for a tranquil heart—compels me, and so many others, to speak out and organize and mobilize: We are concerned about our fellow brothers and sisters and creatures and about the planet. There is a tendency to see meditativeness and mindfulness as a very individual and private practice, but I have never accepted this idea that love is something private. Love is public. It is something that you do.
“Love is something that you do.”
–Omid Safi, Director of Islamic Studies in Durham, NC (Mindful magazine). Omid Safi (born 1970) is an American Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University, where he is the Director of Duke Islamic Studies Center, and a columnist for On Being. Wikipedia
“Stop thinking this is all there is. . . . Realize that for every ongoing war and religious outrage and environmental devastation and bogus Iraqi attack plan, there are a thousand counter-balancing acts of staggering generosity and humanity and art and beauty happening all over the world, right now, on a breathtaking scale, from flower box to cathedral. . . . Resist the temptation to drown in fatalism, to shake your head and sigh and just throw in the karmic towel. . . . Realize that this is the perfect moment to change the energy of the world, to step right up and crank your personal volume; right when it all seems dark and bitter and offensive and acrimonious and conflicted and bilious . . . there’s your opening. Remember magic. And, finally, believe you are part of a groundswell, a resistance, a seemingly small but actually very, very large impending karmic overhaul, a great shift, the beginning of something important and potent and unstoppable.”
—Mark Morford is a columnist and culture critic for the San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate.com. His opinion column is called Notes & Errata and is published weekly. His topics vary from sex and deviance to popular culture, technology, spirituality, music and politics. from Wikipedia
–Albert Camus (November 7, 1913 – January 4, 1960) was a French philosopher, author, and journalist. His views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism. Wikipedia
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) was a German philosopher, cultural critic, poet, philologist, and Latin and Greek scholar whose work has exerted a profound influence on Western philosophy and modern intellectual history.Wikipedia
To quote Heather Williams, H.W., M., “Translation is the creative process of re-engineering the outdated software of your mind.” Translation is a 5-step process using syllogistic reasoning to transform apparent man and the universe back into its essential whole, complete and perfect nature. Through the process of Translation, reality is uncovered and thus revealed. Through word tracking, getting to the essence of the words we use to express our current view of reality, we are uncovering the underlying timeless reality of the Universe.
Sense testimony:
Living alone means certain big, scary, pimples are out of reach, out of sight, exacerbating our imagination.
Conclusions
The heritage of Truth is wholeness, approved-ness, alone in being, the image of health.
All one, I AM I awareness is conscious intelligent, working with infinite system in the universe perfect harmony order of formless force.
Truth I We Thou is Reaching Swelling Causing Permitting Standing Abundant Sound Harmonious Gust and Zest besides which there is none else.
To come.
[The Sunday Night Translation Group meets at 7pm Pacific time via Skype. There is also a Sunday morning Translation group which meets at 7am Pacific time via GoToMeeting.com. See Upcoming Events on the BB to join, or start a group of your own.]
This Full Moon Lunar Eclipse is a prelude to the Total Solar Eclipse on August 21st. The partial Lunar Eclipsewill be visible in Australia, Antarctica, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, eastern South America the Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean and south Atlantic Ocean. The Total Solar Eclipse on the 21st will be visible throughout most of the United States. These are powerful times indeed. It often takes a few months for the energy of the eclipse to fully manifest (dependant on the length of the eclipse).
These Eclipses affect your individual chart as well as the global chart. But it is thought that wherever the eclipse is visible receives the most energetic realignment. So this is a very powerful 2 week period where your intentions will be extra affective. Work consciously to stay in a positive mental and emotional space. Your thoughts and emotions are very strong attractors.
Aquarius is a an air sign (Gemini,Libra, Aquarius). The element of Air is about thinking or our mental processes which carries the ability to see both sides of things and has more rational discernment capabilities.This is an important characteristic of air energy and is greatly needed now in our topsy-turvy world where it is difficult to ascertain what is truth. Depending on where Aquarian energy resides in your chart, you could be feeling the need for more freedom and also more interaction with like minded individuals.
The Leo-Aquarius axis accentuates the relationship between the individual and the collective. We are struggling with the evolution of humanity and with what our individual contribution may be. Where can you shine a light of awakening in your circle of influence?
Aquarian shadows could be revealed at the time of this eclipse: detachment from life or others, a disconnect from issues of the heart, an obsession with an idealized plan or perspective, and an avoidance of taking risks to put plans in motion. This eclipse serves as an opening to break free from old ideas and patterns of thinking, which have inhibited your forward momentum, and move toward being more comfortable taking your brilliance into the light.
Written by Wendy Cicchetti
A Full Moon symbolizes the fulfillment of the seeds planted at a previous New Moon or some earlier cycle. Each Full Moon reminds us of the seeds that may be coming to maturity, to their fullness, to fruition, to the place where the fruits or gifts are received. It may seem that fulfillment of our goals takes a long time. Some intentions may manifest within the two week phase prior to the next New or Full Moon. Some however, depending on their complexity, may take a much longer time. Just remember that our thoughts and emotions set Universal Action in motion and much work takes place behind the scenes as everything is orchestrated for fulfillment. Keep visualizing your goals as though you have already attained them and they will eventually manifest. Do not concern yourself with current conditions or worry about controlling it. The universe takes care of those details. Just keep seeing what you want, and move in that direction with your actions, and give no energy to what you don’t want. Patience is required.
André Rieu & His Johann Strauss Orchestra performing “And The Waltz Goes On” in Maastricht. A Waltz composed by Sir Anthony Hopkins. Taken from “André Rieu – Under the Stars. Live in Maastricht 5.”
Daly Hassan is a make-up artist in Egypt, and until a month ago, was totally unknown. It only took a bizarre music video published on Facebook on July 11 to turn her into a media sensation. The video – deemed “strange”, “disturbing”, “vulgar”, and above all “terrible quality” – has been ridiculed on Egyptian social media.
The video, clearly filmed with very little budget, already has more than 5 million views on YouTube. The story in the song is simple: a young man is trying to woo a woman that he says he has loved “for 100 years”. But when he tries to get close to her, he’s beaten by the woman’s mother. He meets the young woman later on in a fairground, where she tells him that she dreams of him putting her “on a swing” (a thinly veiled euphemism for sex). After threatening to kill him (with help from a seemingly random, bald, muscly man with a huge moustache), the woman’s family finally allows the two lovers to meet and get engaged.
The male singer, Ahmed Abu Chama, was also an unknown prior to this video coming out, but it’s Daly Hassan who has stolen the limelight because of her strange choice of make-up and the sexual lyrics that she sings. The song is called “Rakbini Al Mourguiha”, which could be translated as “Put me on the swing”. Hassan sings this phrase throughout the song, adding, “It’s nice, it’s comfortable”.
“There’s an innuendo with the to-and-fro movement [of the swing]”, explains Adel Iskandar, a lecturer in communication and a specialist of Egypt at the Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada.
The sexual lyrics and the way in which they’re sung has struck a nerve in Egypt’s conservative society. But it’s not the only part of the video that has baffled Egyptians.
Lots of viewers have commented on the unusual, thick make-up that Hassan wears in the clip. One YouTuber says that she’s got the trick down: all she has to do is to make herself up like Hassan does in the video and she, too, can become a celebrity. In a mocking video, she pastes on thick white foundation, red blusher, mascara, and coloured contact lenses.
On social media, the video drew a lot of comments. Some YouTubers posted video responses, analysing its success. In one video, a YouTuber takes the video apart sequence by sequence, criticising the actors’ performances and remarking, in a faux-offended voice, on their “horrible” voices.
In another video viewed more than 380,000 times, a YouTuber decides to comment on the poor quality filming and direction of the video, highlighting continuity errors and inconsistencies. One of the things he notices is that the mother of the woman threatens the star-struck lover – but for some reason this scene appears after she has already hit him and thrown him out of her house.
Despite the general consensus that the video is terrible, it has made a real splash in the country.
“A market for ridiculous content is developing in Egypt”
The success of this video is part of a surprising wave. There’s now a developing market for ridiculous content like this in Egypt. This video defies classification. Is it deliberately trying to mock big-budget videos? Or is it just trying to imitate them but on a much smaller budget? Are the actors playing roles, or are they like this in everyday life?
Daly Hassan did a few interviews, which have been viewed almost 800,000 times, and they can go some way to answering these questions. She says that she always dreamed of being famous in the Arab world.
Daly Hassan says that she is having “the time of her life”.
It’s her nasal singing voice, her heavily made-up face, the hypersexual lyrics, the way she dances, and her tight clothing that are the subject of most comments. But viewers have also commented on the fact that she is from a lower-class background, as the clip shows: the fairground where they filmed certain parts of the video is usually a destination for working-class people. Commentators love mocking her strangeness, and it’s this that can turn her into a celebrity, but there’s a risk it won’t last long: people get easily bored of strangeness.
The comments are often sexist and discriminatory towards her social background. Most of the comments are from people in a higher social class than her. This young woman is judged and ridiculed because she tries to copy, badly, social codes from a milieu that isn’t her own. She wants to belong to a different social class, and can’t.
Daly Hassan used to wear a headscarf but decided not to anymore and to dress in a more flaunting, daring way to dress more like people in higher social classes would dress. But she doesn’t get it right, imitates them awkwardly, and so is the butt of lots of jokes. For example, it’s impossible to speak so openly about sexual things, even for someone from a higher social background.
It’s possible that the producer for the video [a small production house called “Rahil intaj cinema’i”] realised the potential of exploiting poor people’s desire to cross class boundaries – even though it would humiliate and ridicule them.
Daly Hassan winning the highest prize at the Egypt Oscars. From Daly Hassan’s Facebook page.
Although judged “decadent” and “vulgar” by many Egyptians, Daly Hassan still won the prize for the best video at the Egyptian Oscars, an awards ceremony that doesn’t actually have much prestige in the Egyptian cultural scene, despite its name. The singer is, nevertheless, thrilled.
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