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…
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…
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…
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…
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?…
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…
