My Caravan of Dream

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 2

seeker2008 — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 17:30:59 +0000

What is balanced living? From the point of a spiritual search, why is balance important? by Michael Greenstein Much spiritual practice can be defined as an attempt to reach and maintain balance, on a worldly level, so that the spiritual consciousness might awaken and come forward. One of the characteristics of our physical body is the continual effort to maintain a state of homeostasis and relative quiet. From a spiritual perspective this quiet or balance is necessary so that that the traveler may go beyond the surface level and experience what is far below, in the quiet depths, ultimately using this awareness consciously in daily life. In every day life what is required, is a balance between our mental, physical, emotional and spiritual needs; to fully engage in the world, each bodily system necessary to express the many parts of our self. It is the said, the entire system must be operating and in balance- in order to achieve full active living and a state of optimal health. In fact, this is one of the requirements of the Teaching; that the spiritual traveler by an ordinary, well balanced member of their community. To achieve this ordinary equilibrium, what are required are correct amounts of work, play, leisure and social engagement. We are multi-level [...]

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Tuesday Reflections 1

seeker2008 — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 17:19:01 +0000

There is a quote by J Krishnamurthi that has been coming to my mind frequently. He says something to the effect that it is no sign of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society. I wont go so far as to say that our society is sick on a whole as I am not a doctor of societies. However I will say that for me and what I know of myself I find many aspects of society to be the source of a lot of conflict. It is my feeling that our current society as the philosopher Karl Jaspers warned against, sees and uses people as a instrument for ideological gains, and in light of the current political climate as we approach the new presidential election it is easy to see this illustrated. To continue with this theme from Jaspers , I wrote recently a reflection on a quote of his: Elections give the illusion of freedom but are in fact a game among the powers that be. This is why we talk of “formal democracy”: instead of drawing forth the best energies of a people, this legal institution hands actual control to very different forces, turning [...]

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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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Ramadan Kareem to Everyone

seeker2008 — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 04:54:33 +0000

Ramadan kareem! This is always a special time during the year a time to abstract ourselves from our daily routine and remember our Sustainer. I personally have always taken this time to reflect and spend some time alone in meditation. I wish all of you who undertake the fast of Ramadan well. May the secret prayers of your heart be answered. Dave There’s hidden sweetness in the stomach’s emptiness. We are lutes, no more, no less. If the soundboxes stuffed full of anything, no music. If the brain and belly are burning clean with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire. The fog clears, and new energy makes you run up the steps in front of you. Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry. Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen. When you’re full of food and drink, Satan sits where your spirit should, an ugly metal statue in place of the Kaaba. When you fast, good habits gather like friends who want to help. Fasting is Solomon’s ring. Don’t give into some illusion and lose your power, but even if you have, if you’ve lost all will and control, they come back when [...]

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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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Molla Nasreddin & THE MAGAZINE THAT ALMOST CHANGED THE WORLD

seeker2008 — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 20:39:04 +0000

This was published originally by The New Yorker Magazine May 2011 by Elizabeth Minkel When the book was handed to me, I didn’t know where to begin. Its two hundred oversized, glossy pages were filled with beautiful but impossibly foreign illustrations, men and women from a time and place I couldn’t really pinpoint. It cast a powerful spell: everyone who came to my house noticed the bright orange cover, picked up the book, and disappeared for twenty minutes or so. “Can I borrow this?” they’d ask me without looking up. When it came time for my own disappearing act, it was the first few sentences that pulled me in: We first came across Molla Nasreddin several years ago on a cold winter day in a second-hand bookstore near Maiden Tower in Baku. It was bibliophilia at first sight. Its size and weight, not to mention print quality and bright colour, stood out suspiciously amongst the more meek and dusty variations of Soviet brown in old man Elman’s place. We stared at Molla Nasreddin and it, like an improbable beauty, winked back at us. The book is “Molla Nasreddin: The Magazine that Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve,”and its subject is the aforementioned Molla Nasreddin, [...]

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