Divergent Sufi orders are but branches of a single tree of loving kindness . Sufism is a school of applied ethics which attempts to unite all human hearts in loving kindness. The demonstration of the Love of God is Love of His creatures. Thus the Sufi should love everyone regardless of religion nationality, behaving affectionately towards all active servant of all humanity.
- Dr Javad Nurbakhsh
It is always a beautiful thing for me to find people from all walks of life dedicated to making God a reality and not a concept or a catch phrase. One this blog I have always endeavored to look at the Unity of all paths and anything from which I have smelled the fragrance of Truth I have tried to present here on the blog.
I have been very fortunate to have come across many works that have helped me become more sincere with myself and god willing loosened some of the veils that obscure the reality of whats going. Towards the end of 2010 I intuited a need to present more of the many different Sufi activities going on in our present day and today I would like to start by talking about the Golden Sufi Center and the Working with Oneness Initiative.
The Golden Sufi Center
Give me freedom to fly without a shadow,
Give me freedom to sing without an echo,
and to love without leaving traces.
The Golden Sufi Center is the vehicle for the work of the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya Order of Sufism. Each Sufi order is a branch on the Tree of Loving Kindness and as such has a particular way they approach the Mystery. The Naqshbandis are historically known as the Silent Sufis as they practice a silent Zikr or meditation and also a silent meditation of the heart. For them God is the silent emptiness and is therefore most easily reached in silence. They also attach great importance to dreams, which they consider to be a form of guidance along the Path. The Golden Sufi center has published many books and made available a lot of important knowledge for our times on topics such as dream-work, working with life’s energies, the return of the Feminine and the World Soul. These books have really been particularly useful to me on my way, and I have referred to them a lot on the blog. I hope in the future to post some reviews here on the blog.
Working With Oneness
Oneness is very simple: everything is included and allowed to live according to its true nature. This is the secret that is being revealed, the opportunity that is offered. How we make use of this opportunity depends upon the degree of our participation, how much we are prepared to give ourselves to the work that needs to be done, to the freedom that needs to be lived.
I feel that part of the job of the the mystic especially in our time is the be a living exponent of this reality that all life is one, that there is a the Unity of Being , Wahdat a Wujud as the Sufi’s call it. Oneness as described above by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee to me is a recapitulation of this great tenet for our unique time. With that said I would like to introduce to you all to Working With Oneness. I feel that working with Oneness is an spiritual Initiative which aims to bring together many teachings, spiritual groups and people from all walks of life to make the best use of the opportunity presented to us in this time of transition where the past visions of the world and our place and role in it, is slowly being supplanted by a new more encompassing vision and energy for the coming era of Global interconnectedness and consciousness.
I love that one line from the Masnavi where Rumi tells the story of Moses and the shepard: I have given each being a separate and unique way of seeing and knowing that Knowledge. To the mystic everything created has a unique way of expressing its relationship to the Origin and when everything is allowed to live according to its own design it allows for a greater manifestation of the One Reality in all departments of our life.
The Sufi Maghribi has said it quite beautifully:
No one by Himself can find a way towards Him
Whoever goes to his quarter walks on His Feet.
One the spiritual path, our own effort will not even as Rumi says take us to the first station on the way. It is only when God manifests in our lives and carries us, and we walk with HIS feet an we reach our goal. As Hafiz says “Union with the Beloved Union cannot be got by one effort, it is only given. Nevertheless Strive strive strive O Heart”
You imagined you would accomplish this task through your own strength, activity and effort. This is the wont that I have established: expend everything you have in Our Way. Then Our bounty will come to you. In this endless road We command you to travel with your own feeble hands feet. We know that you cannot traverse this way with feet feeble. Indeed, in a hundred thousand years you will not arrive at the first way station. However, when you travel this road until your legs are exhausted and you fall down flat, until you have no more strength to move forward. Then God’s grace will take you in its arms. -Rumi
Such can be said for the current state of affairs of the world, where we are so far along, and destroyed so much, and alienated ourselves from our own true nature that we can no longer by ourselves fix the many ills we suffer from today. By recognizing Oneness, and allowing everything to live to its own design we prepare ourselves as a whole global culture to Walk on his Feet and in doing so heal the world and all of us in it from many of the abuses of the last few centuries and maybe even millennia.
With that said, I leave you with the words from Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee’s book Working with Oness. Also please check out the following sites, that explain much better than I have done here.
- The Golden Sufi Center
- WorkingWithOneness.org
- The Return of the Feminine and World Soul
- Working with Oneness
- Catching the Thread Sufism Dreamwork and Jungian Philosophy
The future is here and waiting to be lived, and it carries the stamp of divine oneness. The energy that is needed to change everything has arrived, and although it has not yet come into manifestation, we can work with it. The energy of divine oneness is not separate from us, and individual consciousness has the capacity to become directly attuned to it. Through conscious attention we can work with this energy as it comes into manifestation. One of its qualities is that it carries within it the knowledge that is needed in order to work with it. This knowledge is also fluid, organic, relating directly to “the need of the time and the place and the people.” This is why the first task of the future is to learn how to be attentive and responsive. The knowledge of the future is too dynamic and too responsive to the changing conditions of the moment to be fixed. It is given freely, and only requires that we give it our undivided attention, that we say “yes” to the now. Through our conscious participation this knowledge is revealed to us; it comes alive through us. We are needed to help this energy come into being, to bring it alive in our world. Without our conscious cooperation the future will not be born in its full potential. We are the book in which the knowledge of oneness is being written.
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee take from the first chapter of the book Working with Oneness
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