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M Syafik M Isa
Camera oscura; in the dark room
Camera oscura; in the dark room
If a picture paints a thousand words,
then a thousand words spake a myriad colours,
If a million colours can be spoken out,
how do you hear a colour yet see a sound?
This is the power of the light of all the worlds,
and to see this light requires one to be, yet without,
With his eyes opened to the wonders abound,
that is the photographer's essence, capturing light.
Jack of Many, Master of Nothing
5 min read
5 min read
From playing music for 15 years of his youth since childhood to studying biomedical science out of curiosity and a desire to discover his limits, Syafik took a daring plunge into science, a field that his teachers considered his forte, but he himself did not truly believe to be. People often said if one was good at science, it meant you would naturally be good with numbers at math too. So he wondered why he was never particularly good at math, but it took him 7 years after O levels to discover why it did not come to him as easily as did other fields of study. It was due to the way he was taught the subject that he kept on failing and failing, only to forcefully swallow the rules and formulae to scrape a either a close shave with failure or a decent pass out of unintended spite for his naysayers and doubters. At 23 years old, a friend who can be considered a type of genius in mathematics told him why certain math existed in one way or another, by pointing out dimensionality exists as well in measurements and calculations.
That granted him some clarity into understanding his strengths were not in the Sciences per se, but it was in a deep grasp of understanding the language it was taught with, confirming his idea that something had yet to be discovered within him. Granted the foray into science did not turn out such a good idea, it did give him a balanced perspective on life in both the arts and the sciences. The wholistic nature of knowledge that cannot be dichotomised but must be comprehended as two sides of the same reality opened his eyes and ignited a curiosity to venture further into philosophy and psychology, and then the economical and political.
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Dimensionality gives us a foundation, a structure of thinking of sorts, with which to understand that there will always be more that we do not yet know, compared to what we know, through which our venture from the known into the unknown - which is the very growth curve of knowledge itself - is unlocked through the blessings (read barakah) in practice ('amal). Little did he know, all these secrets of knowledge were encoded in the Book he had never studied before. He saw the Signs but never really knew them for what they were.
Before he could name and recognise them, he realised there was no one to rely on, he was alone. The only thing he recognised was that he didn't really know anything at all. He was merely remembering experience and lessons as they unfold. And so he unsubscribed from modern definitions of "knowledge" and the "myth of common sense", disconnecting from "doubt" and "fear", the only two things he recognised in himself that remained when all else fell away. He gave up "knowledge", tried gnosis.
Little did he know instead that gnosis would be trying him.
Journey of Self-re-discovery
Journey of Self-re-discovery
So he recalled the only one Name that was always spoken to him but never truly taught or introduced in his life the way he wished like some others knew. Or rather, he was called by that one and only Name which was the Source of ninety-nine others known, and also the myriad others that we don't necessarily know immediately, for He took pity on the lost and confounded Syafik who no longer knew heads or tails of anything, something He would repeatedly do for Syafik's path down the years later on.
Thus falling in love with this newfound seed of faith, but never quite knowing who or what he truly was, with one side of his kin better at thinking and the other better at feeling, but never quite reconciling between the two dimensions of the same world of being, he started back from zero. Never quite having defined thus limiting himself, he dared himself to push aside and wipe clean all that he thought he or everyone else knew, to unlearn all that he thought he or everyone had learnt, and proceed down a path of self-discovery. To heal the fragmented psyche, his entire youth was spent experimenting and re-learning, things he considered he should have always known. He had to discard everything, and regained back even more than even he dared to admit or recognise. This gave him an unrelenting faith that no matter how dark and broken things would get, He who Names Himself will never forsake Syafik's destiny.
A sinner has a future while a saint has a past. (this is the complete, more formal version of the informal colloquialism "too haram for the halal, too halal for the haram" 🥲😅) We are all sinners and we don't need to judge others for sinning differently, and there are those who lose sight of Him at the height of blessings, and those who find Him at the depths of sin. Humility is not just an attitude, but a state of being and presence. But to each their own, according to their capacity to understand, or reject. Without knowledge, humility turns into humiliation, whether one holds it or turns away from it.
At various lengths and breadths, Syafik has never tried to be safe from repeating lessons or re-creating mistakes, largely due to his own journey reconciling between the apparent conflicts between thoughts and feelings, logic and emotion. His feelings burn passionate and hot while his logic cuts calm and cold, and he has always tried to accommodate others sometimes to the cost of his own comfort and well-being, owing to old misled teachings of misguided sacrifice (really, self-abandonment from the ego, not of the ego). But his teachers and lessons have tried to teach him through various means that the value in his journey cannot be held by anyone else who will not have his capacity, the vessel "器", that can contain the weight of all that he could carry or give. The fundamentals of his lifelong re-discovery of himself, his primordial true self, did not move through unguided, neither was it explicitly informed either, but gradually revealed, and he continues his lessons and studying even in this present moment with the reader.
Here I write for the present so that in future I am reminded that my only reliance is His Mercy, and so I may spend my entire life repaying my indebtedness owing my existence to His Grace, every day spent in return and repentance (inabah & tawbah), gratitude and perseverance (shukr & sabr), dependent on His Grace.
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