My Caravan of Dream » Sufism

Master of the Nimatullahi Sufi Order will be visiting the NY Sufi Center

seeker2008 — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 00:17:57 +0000

NY Nimatullahi Sufi Center News The Master of the Nimatullahi Sufi Order, Dr. Alireza Nurbakhsh, will visit the New York Sufi Center from December 24 through December 27. Anyone who is interested in the Sufi path and who wishes to meet with him is invited to call 1-(212)-924 7739. To learn more about Sufism and the Nimatullahi Sufi Order please visit our website at www.nimatullahi. org.

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The Balance & Daily Living Series with Dr Stewart Bitkoff and Michael Greenstein

seeker2008 — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 22:08:24 +0000

What is balanced living? From the point of a spiritual search, why is balance important? by Dr. Stewart Bitkoff To a person who is “balanced” this is not a question at all. We do not question the air we breathe, the food we eat, the way we go about our daily lives until something stops us in our track. Dysfunction makes time stand still for an instant. We become aware of our distress, whether it is a tickle in our throat, the cravings for munchies when we have none or something more serious. There are times in all our lives when all is right with the world. Many people feel a spiritual feeling or closeness to the divine mystery in nature. If we could just bottle up these feelings and have them with us for a rainy day! Then there are days when you get up from bed in the morning and instantly know something is not right: an aching knee, a sore back, or an uneasy foreboding feeling that you just can’t put your finger on. I believe that most of us have very good barometers of ourselves. We pretty much know when we are out of sorts, though [...]

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The Upcoming Balance & Daily Living Series with Dr Stewart Bitkoff and Michael Greenstein on the CaravanofDreams Blog

seeker2008 — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 18:36:46 +0000

The marketplace always stuck out to me as a very important image in both Sufi oral histories as well as writing. It symbolized for me all the complexities of daily life. There are goods to be bought and sold and a myriad of transactions going on at every moment. In many ways the marketplace symbolizes for me the place where the spiritual aspirant is tried. The daunting task in this case is maintaining an attentiveness to and awareness of the Presence of God, while being fully engaged in one’s day to day affairs. It is an intricately difficult act to balance both responsibilities. On this famous Sufi murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan had the following words to say: Balance Balance must be maintained between what is physical and what is eternal by being conscious of both. One must not dive so deep into eternity that one does not know what time it is, nor so immersed in the physical that one is unaware of immortality. As there is night and day, so there is the change of consciousness from the physical to the spiritual, and from the spiritual to the physical. By keeping a balance between these two conditions a person [...]

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Sufi Talks: Teachings of an American Sufi Sheikh by Roger Frager Book Review

seeker2008 — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 06:14:35 +0000

Sheikh Roger Frager’s latest book Sufi Talks: Teaching of an American Sufi Sheikh is a beautifully woven tapestry that illustrates how the threads of both the spiritual aspects of life and the practical reality of our day-to-day struggles can intricately come together in a living spiritual tradition. This book is a collection of formal talks given to Sheikh Frager’s dervishes. Each of the diverse topics broached in Frager’s book offers a glimpse into the relationship between sheikh and dervish central to Sufism. As a result, the language used in the book is always clear and accessible. There is a definite order prevalent in the book which I wasn’t able to appreciate on my first read-through. The book can be divided into three main parts. The first part (chapters 1 -7) focuses on the problems and obstacles to those who aspire to tread the spiritual path to seek God. The second part (chapters 8-14) focuses on the the basic practices of the Sufi path. The last part (chapters 14 – 21) expands upon Part 2 in that we see the application of the afore-mentioned Sufi practices in everyday settings. Frager’s style is as rich as his topics. He draws from the [...]

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Yannis Toussulis author of Sufism & the Way of Blame sits for an Interview (3)

seeker2008 — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 18:08:59 +0000

Talk with Dr. Yannis Toussulis Author of Sufism and the Way of Blame: Hidden Sources of a Sacred Psychology. By David Paquiot & Dr. Yannis Toussulis (Read Part 1& Part 2) _________ Murshid Mehmet Selim Bey says in your interview with him that “It is imperative that mystics of the world’s religion come together in dialogue in order to share the particular gifts given to their respective traditions.” Through what means can mystics of all traditions come together? Yannis Toussulis: What Mehmet Selim Bey and I agree on is that there are “core” phenomenological experiences that can be discovered in various forms of mysticism and these experiential structures can be contrasted and compared. Certainly all religious traditions are equally concerned with finding “God” or the source of “Being,” and they are all part of our global heritage as human beings. Mystics who are less parochial can – and have – studied other traditions, but this requires a new form of ecumenical or interreligious dialogue that is less politicized. The mystics of each tradition can still stand as “witnesses” for the efficacy of their own paths without, however, trying to privilege their own ways as the only – or even best – [...]

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Yannis Toussulis PhD Author of Sufism & the Way of Blame sits down for an Interview Part 2

seeker2008 — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 02:54:15 +0000

Talk with Dr. Yannis Toussulis Author of Sufism and the Way of Blame: Hidden Sources of a Sacred Psychology. By David Paquiot & Dr. Yannis Toussulis (Read Part 1) _____________________ Dr. Toussulis, You said “During the Rumi craze the premises of Sufism were almost completely reversed in the interest of spiritual consumerism.” What is spiritual consumerism? Where do we see it at work today? What can be done to change one’s understanding of the basic premises of Sufism? Yannis Toussulis: As long as I have an untamed form of egotism, I will seek to consume. Feeling that my sense of ego is ultimately empty, I will seek to fill it up. Finding that I cannot fill it up sufficiently to ease my sense of ultimate emptiness, I will seek to replace one object with another. It doesn’t matter what form such an object may take, whether spiritual or material. My desire will be to shore-up my sense of a substantive ego no matter what it takes. One of the fundamental premises that we find in classical Sufism is that only God (or Being) truly exists. One must place a wager or gamble with ones life to find out if this is [...]

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Yannis Toussulis PhD Author of Sufism and the Way of Blame sits down for an Interview Part 1

seeker2008 — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 20:19:40 +0000

Dr. Yannis Toussulis and I ‘sat down’ Spring 2011 for this following interview. I would like to take a moment to thank him firstly for taking time from his daily affairs to do this, and more importantly for the painstaking effort he has taken to write Sufism and the Way of Blame. I’m not alone in my appreciation of this book. I am happy to announce to my readers that Sufism and the Way of Blame has won two book awards in the United States: the Benjamin Franklin Book Award and the Independent Book Publisher’s Book Award in Relgion for 2012. In the latter instance, the book won the highest category, “Gold”. ____________________ Talk with Dr. Yannis Toussulis Author of Sufism and the Way of Blame: Hidden sources of a Sacred Psychology. By David Paquiot Both the suicide bombing that killed forty-one people earlier this year in Pakistan, and the dervish killed in the Iranian government‘s ongoing crackdown against the Sufis was a sobering reminder about how the cultural, political and social climates, to borrow a phrase from Dr. Toussulis, ‘change the articulations of sacred traditions.’ I was fortunate to have been able to further discuss some interesting points in his [...]

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Book Review: ABU AL-HASAN AL-SHUSTARI: SONGS OF LOVE AND DEVOTION

seeker2008 — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 05:36:13 +0000

ABU AL-HASAN AL-SHUSTARI: SONGS OF LOVE AND DEVOTION translated and introduced by Lourdes Maria Alvarez. New York: Paulist Press, 2009. This book review originally appeared in a modified form in Issue 81 – Summer 2011 of Sufi Magazine. There are many more great reviews and articles that appear in that issue Sufi Magazine Sufi is a semi-annual journal for those seeking to understand the key messages of Sufism and devoted to the study of mysticism in all its aspects. The journal presents articles about literature, history, poetry, philosophy and practice – irrespective of religious denomination. Sufi examines closely the spiritual, social, and ethical principles by which sufis teach harmony and humanitarian values. Sufi also addresses the subtleties of psychological and heart-related issues by presenting mystical poetry and prose that help the student of spirituality seek out, confirm, and perceive unity in all creation. Sufi provides both a unique forum for those engaged in spiritual practices as well as a vehicle for scholars of religious and esoteric studies interested in furthering the understanding of Sufism and its relationship to other great spiritual traditions. Book Review Abu al-Hasan al-Shustari (1212 -1265) was an influential Sufi mystical poet who lived in Islamic Spain during the 13th century. As Michael [...]

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On Spiritual Ecology Article by Llewellyn Vaughan Lee (2)

seeker2008 — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 06:18:27 +0000

This article was Written by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee PhD is a Sufi teacher who has written many books, His latest work focuses on mysticism & spiritual responsibility in the context of ecological crisis & cultural transition. It originally appeared here ________________ On Spiritual Ecology Part 2 A Midsummer Night’s Dream: a lament for the loss of a whole inner world. EB: Thomas Berry made the point that established religions have failed us, because they haven’t been able to identify the toxicity of consumerism, which has itself become a kind of global religion. LV-L: In my understanding it goes back further. The early Christian Church in Rome banished Earth-based spirituality. That was compounded by their decision to pursue political rather than spiritual power. They persecuted the Gnostics and mystics, and became an institution of worldly power. The Eastern Orthodox Church did keep a mystical understanding and tradition, but Western Europe lost touch with the sacred. It took a long time for this to permeate all aspects of the culture. Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is like a lament for the loss of the world of the faeries, of magic—a whole inner world on the point of disappearing. This is why I stress the need to return to the sacred and to reclaim [...]

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On Spiritual Ecology Article by Llewellyn Vaughan Lee (1)

seeker2008 — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 08:12:57 +0000

This article was Written by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee PhD is a Sufi teacher who has written many books, His latest work focuses on mysticism & spiritual responsibility in the context of ecological crisis & cultural transition. It originally appeared here ________________ Part 1 Ecobuddhism: ’Spiritual Ecology’ is a concept you have put forward that we also find very relevant. Could you please expand on what you have written about ‘loss of soul’ in the context of the global ecological crisis: The inner wasteland is as barren as the Tar Sands in Alberta and Like climate change and the extinction of species, the inner wasteland is growing faster than we realize. Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee: I think the real difficulty is that we have developed a culture that only sees the outer world. It has become so intrinsic to our consciousness that the general culture has no understanding of the inner worlds, nor any framework to explore them. There has been a resurgence of Shamanism in the past few decades, but for the collective culture the inner worlds don’t exist. People see only the outer physical world. When they are confronted by ecological problems, they see only the outer physical manifestation. We are an unusual culture from this point of view. In most [...]

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