I explore the Islamic concept of Tawheed, the action of surrender, and my return to 12-step practice:

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I was asked to speak at a Clubhouse event on Unity Consciousness and the Islamic principle of Tawheed.

My original plan was to show up with nothing prepared and speak from the heart. Instead, about three hours before the event, I started researching Tawheed.

I learned the concept, a complete willingness to surrender and submit to an omnipresent, all-knowing God who holds your destiny, and I watched what my mind was doing: writing and connecting experiential understanding with concepts.

When the meeting started, everybody introduced themselves and shared their opening statements. When it got to me, I started reading my essay.

It fell completely flat.

The room was doing something completely different than what I was doing. They were just showing up and talking.

By the end of the event, I was watching a series of personalities attempting to explain what they knew about the nature of reality and it all felt meaningless.

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There’s nowhere to go with thought.

There’s nowhere to go with concepts or logic when attempting to explain the inexplicable.

There’s no person at the center of experience. There’s just experience appearing as actions, verbs, and expressions.

And yet, there’s a body here.

There’s a partner upstairs, a son I brought to camp this morning, and a job I’m leaving for in thirty minutes.

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There seems to be a balance between the truth that nobody is doing anything, and the responsibility of moving and acting as an agent in your own life. Holding both of these views seems to be the tuggle.

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I went to a 12-step meeting for the first time in a long time and it was completely unremarkable. I just sat in a chair and listened.

The next morning, I woke up and a sense of personal management for my own life had dissolved. I found myself texting friends Happy Father’s Day…something that a week earlier would have been impossible.

A tension had been relieved. An awareness of the limits of my body/mind to manufacture its own peace had been realized. Which, as it turns out, is what Tawheed seems to be pointing at.

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The best moment of the three-hour Clubhouse event came from one dude.

When they handed him the mic to speak, he said: “Well, since I have 5 minutes to talk, I’m gonna take some time to just breathe.”

And he did, in silence, for ten seconds or so.

It was the best part of the night.

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Our discord is available if you’re interested in listening, or sharing, audio reflections throughout the day: https://discord.gg/uZ4Jx9mddy

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