Muhasabah: Retrospection
© Latifa Spiker There are times in life when we are moving forward fulfilling our vision, and then there are other times when we take an account of where we are. We reach a [...]
اسلام اور انسانی اقدار
تاریخ کے اس نازک موڑ پر ازحد ضروری ہے کہ ہم ایک حقیقی گفت وشنید نہ صرف بحثیت ایک مسلم امریکن بلکہ بحثیت ایک امریکن دیگر امریکنوں سے کریں۔ ہم سمجھتے ہیں کہ اسلام کی حقیقی تعلیمات کو صحیح طور پر سمجھانہیں گیا اور اکثر اوقات اُن کو توڑ مڑور کر پیش کیا گیا ہے۔ آ اگر لفظ اسلام خوفزدگی اور بداعتمادی پیدا کرنے کی علامت سمجھا جاتا ہے تو امریکن مسلمانوں پر نہایت اہم فریضہ عائدہوتا ہے کہ ہم اِن خد شات کو دُور کرنے کی کوشش کریں اوراُجاگر کریں کہ اسلام کیسی اقدار کی تعلیم دیتا ہےتاکہ اُس خیال کو کہ مغربی تہذیب کی بہتریں اوراسلام کی اہم اقدار میں ایک بنیادی تضاد ہےزائل کیا جاسکے۔ ہم یہ ثابت کرنے کی اُمید رکھتے ہیں کہ “تہذیبوں کے ٹکراؤ” کے نظریہ کی تائید اسلام سے کسی بنیادی کشیدگی یا تصادم کی بنیاد پر نہیں کی جاسکتی۔ اسلامی تہذیب جو ساتویں صدی عیسوی میں وحی الٰہی کے ذریعے قرآن کے نزول کے نتیجہ میں پروان چڑھی اپنے سے قبل کی تمام وحی الٰہی کی مُکمل تصدیق کرتی ہے اور کثرتِ وجود ادیان، معاشرتی تضادات اور بنیادی انسانی حقوق اور عقل اور فرد کی آزادئ ضمیر کو تسلیم کرتی ہے
Making the New Human
From our very first days on the Sufi path, what intrigued us was the quality of human beings we met — their humanity, their capacity for friendship, service and love. Sufism is not about aiming [...]
A Conversation with Mevlevi Teacher, Nur Artiran
In October 2011, the following conversation took place between Shaikh Kabir and Nur Artiran, Sefik Can Efendi's successor, and one of Turkey's most beloved teachers.
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2 Poems by Hussein Ibn Mansur Al Hallaj
“The expressions of his intimate moments with the Beloved are like a powerful thunderstorm that sweeps the heart with terrifying power and yet brings serenity, life-giving water, freshness, and renewal to the heart, and occasionally [...]
Embody Patience
To embody patience is, at the least, to show no haste in matters that require time. This requires a presence that is fully in the moment and, simultaneously, outside of time. Only in this way can we give each thing its proper time. But the mental awareness alone is not sufficient to induce a holy patience. Something else is required—a sense of the Divine Presence.
The Ecstasy of Recognition, Day of Arafat
Imagine yourself standing with millions of other human beings at Arafat, stripped-down to bare essentials, wearing a simple sheet of white cloth, all distinctions of wealth, position, and national identity erased. All you have is the sum of your life's thoughts, feelings, and deeds, the net result of your relationships, your loves and hates—all these things that have shaped your soul, what you are. The people on Hajj are experiencing that today. We all will experience it one day, on the day of conscious recognition.
Claim Nothing, Let the Divine Do
This theme is an advanced teaching. It presumes that we have to some extent developed a healthy capacity for will. By will we mean the capacity to choose consciously; and will power is the capacity to follow through on what we have consciously chosen. Only then can we glimpse the meaning of “Claim nothing, let the Divine do.” A healthy will is a will that more often than not chooses what is good for the soul and is independent of the whims and desires of the lower self. It is at this stage that this theme becomes applicable.
The Invisible Rain of Ramadan
Ramadan has so many dimensions: purification, sacrifice, community, the still and subtle emptiness of the heart. It reorients us in so many ways. Ramadan is less something that we do—instead it is a force field we enter and are transformed by. But it does take intention and effort on our part. If we can, we participate in the fast. Perhaps we also find other intentions, new aspects of awareness that become part of this sacred time. I’d like to share something I’ve learned.
How Experience Imbues our Essence
Every human soul is in the process of acquiring experience. Does it matter that we acquire experience? Does it serve any purpose? Yes, the Divine has sent souls into the world in order to share in its ecstasy and love. If we go through life relatively unconscious, numb, unappreciative, ungrateful, and absorbed with our petty desires, we are forfeiting our chance to share in God’s ecstasy and love.
Reflections on Snowmass
In mid-June of 2011, I was a guest of Camille at the Snowmass Inter-Spiritual Dialog, held in the lovely setting of St. Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado. The Dialog is an on-going process with more than a 25 year history in seeking to promote communication and exchange among many of the world’s spiritual or contemplative traditions and to identify “points of agreement” among them. Each of the core members or “mentors” of the group, of which Camille is the current Islamic/Sufi representative, invited several guests.
Being a Person of Paradise
We are living in the midst of very challenging times. Shams and Mevlana also lived in the midst of very challenging times, yet what a possibility opened with the example of being they unveiled. They invite us into the garden of seeing God’s beauty and abundance in the midst of everything, seeing the Unity, and encouraging souls to be people of Paradise now, here.