About Me

My name is Nakeem, and I’m a DevOps Engineer and Dharma Practitioner. This website is primarily focused on my work outside of the IT world. If you’re interested in anything IT related, please reach out to me on LinkedIn.

I found meditation practice at a point in my life where I felt like I checked all of the boxes that society wanted me to check. I graduated from college, I had a successful career, I was 25, and I was miserable. I had spent my whole life on a trajectory that had been laid out for me through my upbringing, and I was experiencing a significant loss of meaning. Every time I looked at myself in the mirror I hated the person that I saw. And very early in my meditation practice I recognized that learning how to cultivate a better relationship with myself was crucial. For me, that meant spending a signficant amount of time by myself, with myself, in silence.

It also meant going to therapy, recovery meetings, spoken word poetry nights, meditation circles, sound baths, and generally trying out anything that might help improve my relationship with myself. Many of the experiences I had in those spaces were profound to me in their own way, and for a long time I treated them as separate, distinct things. I didn't see how they were all connected. Eventually I started having unusual experiences as a result of this personal work, and I didn't know where to turn. It took several years of stumbling through the dark to find the right mentors that could give context to those experiences, point out the internal material that was getting in the way, and provide the tools and training necessary to work with what I was experiencing.

I've found that the key to being in healthy relationship with yourself, with others, with anything, is to be able to rest and listen. When you are resting and listening, you are receptive and connected to what is happening in each moment. This is the basis of all healing. It's the common thread throughout all of the work I've done, and the basis for all of my work going forward.