The Cave

I’ve been quiet. Here’s why.

I’ve been quiet. Eerily quiet, some might say.

Almost three months of silence. That’s probably the longest I’ve gone since starting this Substack.

Some of you noticed. A few of you reached out. Thank you for checking in.

Before normal service is resumed, I want to tell you where I’ve been.

The honest answer is, I’ve been in a cave.

Let me explain.

I came back from Malaysia in July energised. But also conflicted.

A trip like that gives you distance. Fresh eyes. And fresh eyes don’t always show you what you want to see.

I started asking myself hard questions.

Had I been playing too small?
What am I actually building here?
Am I doing justice to the mission?

A lot of rhetorical questions, until I landed on an answer.

A resounding no.

I didn’t know what the solution was yet. But I knew something had to change. You can’t do the same thing and expect a different result - that’s the definition of madness as they say.

So I asked myself one more question:

If I could come out of this year with only one thing - what would it be?

I also realised something about my creative energy.

I have a lot of it. But if I keep spending it on the micro - posts, articles, comments, keeping the algorithm fed - I never have enough left for the macro.

Something had to give.

So I withdrew. Not from the mission. From the noise.

The answer then came immediately.

A book.

My book.

It’s been a goal since childhood. Something I always kept putting off. “One day.” “When I have time.” “When I’m ready.”

I was never going to be ready.

And there was something else.

My clients were getting great results. Transformations. Breakthroughs. Flow. All because they were finally stepping into alignment with what Allah created them for.

But me?

I wasn’t in full alignment myself, ironically. I was helping others climb the mountain while avoiding my own ascent. Coaching and consulting is great, I enjoy it, develop great relationships, learn a lot and of course, it pays the bills. But it’s not 100% what I’m encoded for.

That had to end. Temporarily, at least.

So I committed.

I’m going to sit and write and finish something. No matter what it costs. Now or never.

The first few days were slow. A lot of ring rust. A lot of procrastination. Staring at blank pages. Writing sentences and deleting them.

But then something clicked.

You know how athletes say that when you’ve done enough training, the actual game on the pitch feels easy?

That’s sort of what happened.

250+ essays. Years of writing articles on here. Frameworks tested, stories told, ideas refined in public.

I didn’t realise it at the time, but every essay was preparation. Training. Reps.

The book wasn’t starting from zero. It was the harvest of everything I’d already planted.

Once I saw that, it flowed.

And then it didn’t stop.

I realise now, it also opened the floodgates.

There’s a lot more in me. More books. More frameworks. More that needs to come out.

This isn’t the end of something. It’s the beginning.

There’s a moment in Surah Al-Kahf where the young men flee the corruption of their society and take refuge in a cave.

They don’t know how long they’ll be there. They don’t know what will happen next. They just know they can’t stay where they were.

That’s a good description of my last few months.

The Cave.

Not running from anything dramatic. But something in me knew: the next thing I needed to write couldn’t be written in public. It needed silence. It needed depth. It needed me to disappear for a while.

So I did.

It all came together.

And now it’s a book. And a whole lot more.

The Khalyfa Manifesto.

It’s currently with my editor. I’m terrified and excited in equal measure.

The book is simple but deep. Reader-friendly but profound. It reads like a wise conversation - but the kind that changes how you see everything.

I’m not ready to share all of it yet.

But let me give you one taste. The insight that unlocked the whole thing:

In Arabic, Urdu and even Punjabi - my mother tongue - the word for empty is khaly.

خالی

I’ve heard it my whole life. Khaly plate. A khaly room.

And then one day, it hit me.

Khaly.

Khalyfa.

Look at those two words.

The first means empty. Hollow. Void.

The second is one of the most powerful words in the Quran - the word Allah uses when He tells the angels He’s placing a representative on earth. A steward. A human being entrusted with divine purpose.

Two letters apart.

But absolute worlds apart in how life feels.

That’s what the book maps.

The journey from khaly to khalyfa.

From empty to aligned. From hollow to whole. From surviving to becoming what you were actually made for.

I’m emerging from the cave now.

There’s more to share. More insights. More of the journey.

And as it happens, way more came out of me in that cave than just the book.

But for today, I just wanted to say:

I’m back. And I’m ready to share.

If you want to be first to know when the book launches - please join the waitlist below:

👉 Join the Khalyfa Waiting List

Lots more coming soon insha’allah.

It’s good to be back in service.

Faisal