14 December 2012

Meditate & Destroy....

Whassup peoples?

Okay so, you all know (well perhaps not all of you) that from 1982 to ~1990 I was in High School & College (don't be countin on yo fingers how old I am, maybe I was one of those smart kids. Not!).

In those times, the average American WASP kid was searching for an identity and at this time the Punk Rock scene had crossed the pond from the UK to the Americas. And we are talking about none other than Sid Vicious and the Sex Pistols, GBH, Toy Dolls came a little later on. But this was the scene "I" grasped.

It was raw, violent, ethanol & drug induced AND very political. Although at the time I was not mature enough to fully grasp the politics going on then, but I received my political science education in the lyrics, in the long talks with kids my age who did know politics.

If you saw us sitting in Cantor's at 1 am drinking coffee, with our brightly colored Mohawks, leather studded jackets with political paintings on them; you would have ran! But if you could have heard the words being said (sans every other word being Fuck or Fuckin) you would have wanted to jump into the conversation as we sounded much like hippy Professors straight outta Berkley. We weren't dumb kids, we did dumb things under the influence though.

Anyway, a friend introduced me to a meditation organization here in LA that was started by such a punk as described above. And while I personally do my meditation 5 times a day in the form of Salat (prayer) to my Lord. I ordered a documentary on this guy for one of my sons to view. And it is entitled, Meditate and Destroy. It is very good.

As you know, I take Khundalini Yoga and have been working on figuring out a way to start my own practice utilizing different Surah's that have been proven scientifically to calm our heart rate and slow our breathing. Insha Allah one day!

But one parallel I found in this film is that this group does not fall into your typical Buddhist meditation. Noah Levine has found a way of bringing a 12 step program and Buddhist meditation together that is very successful.

And I wonder do we, as converts/reverts to Islam, need to do something like this also? I know we have our awesome Scholars (Al Maghrib, Bayyinnah, Suhaib) Webb) to teach and guide us. But what can we do to take it a step further? Lets face it, the older generation will run our Masajids and although I love and respect them, they will not budge in taking the culture out of Islam.

Just a thought!

For now, Punk Rock will never die!

Salaams

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