Summer Solstice Walk on the Beach, Thursday 11am

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Toward the most beloved one,

Meet at the bottom of Judah St. at the Coffee Shop.

This is NOT Joe Millers walk although he started it….and will certainly be walking with us in spirit along with Gwen, Achim and beloved others.

Gather at 10:45 am or so for a 11am launch of our Solstice walk, bring a sandwich.

Rain or shine we walk!

Longtime Bay Area Sufi community member and San Franciscan  Hayat and Friends directs these weekly walks .

Murshida Vera Corda pbuh on more than one occasion after Joe and Gwen passed said this weekly community walk should comntinue for the good of all and al Hamdulilah it does!

This particular thursday walk space will be held for Achim (His first Urs) in two days. and of course Summer Solstice…

Bring a sandwich, poetry, open heart and mind….

toward the fun,
Rainbowheart Francis O’Hara

 

2007 DHO Meeting: June 14th-19th

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Come join us for the 2007 DHO Meeting
June 14th-19th, in San Francisco
“Walking in the Footsteps of the Teacher”

We will follow in Murshid SAM’s, Joe & Gwin Miller’s and Frida Waterhouse’s energy flow, as we visit their “favorite” places. Our base will be the Mentorgarten, with visits to as many places as we can still find open and operating. On Sunday we will all host the larger community in an “Open Sufi Healing Class” as a benefit for Mentorgarten.

Please see the attached flyer for full information,
and bottom of this email for two optional activities.

The cost for the gathering is $225/person.
This includes the following:
Lunch & dinner at Mentorgarten ($170 — no karma yoga required);
Walk-about day bus rental ($30);
A donation to Mentorgarten ($25).

We are also securing dorm space at San Francisco State College,
where we can have a whole floor to ourselves.
These are double occupancy rooms with private bathrooms.
The cost for this housing is $225/person, and includes breakfast.
(You are welcome to make your own housing arrangements.)

Contact information: for registration (both event and dorm housing): Jennifer Avian

As usual, please remember to make your checks payable to Jennifer.
[The total costs of attendance + dorm housing = $450.00]

For those of you who would like, there are two optional activities which you might want to consider when making your travel arrangements. (Our meeting begins with dinner on Thursday, and ends after the morning session on Tuesday.) For both of these activities, we will try and find out to whom you might need to RSVP.

1) The 11 A.M. Thursday Walk in the Golden Gate Park, started by Joe and Guin Miller, still happens every week. Tradition is to meet just outside the main entrance of the Arboretum — on Ninth Avenue at Lincoln Way.

San Francisco Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum: Begun in 1937 with WPA funds and charitable donations, this 70-acre horticultural extravaganza entices the senses with more than 6,000 plant species. The garden of fragrance — with signs in Braille — brings flowers alive with scent alone.

directions: http://www.sfbotanicalgarden.org/visiting/page2.html

2) There is a potluck dinner at Khankah SAM on Tuesday evenings.

Thank you Francis Rainbowheart for bringing these to our attention.

Review of Mansur’s Book: Murshid

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Cries for Attention: Nuggets of wisdom are buried in this difficult tome about American Sufi Samuel L. Lewis 
By PAUL WINE

Sufism is the mystical heart of Islam. As with most forms of mysticism, the basic goals of Sufism are to free the mind from its conditioning and attachments, dissolve the ego and awaken the soul to spiritual reality.There are numerous books about Sufi beliefs and practices–many by Sufis themselves–but any book on this topic is a bit paradoxical because, as most Sufis will tell you, the written word is quite limited in its ability to convey spiritual ideas. Deep mystical understanding, they insist, can be grasped only through communion with a spiritual teacher or murshid.A new book by Tucsonan Mansur Johnson details his three-year association with Sufi teacher Samuel L. Lewis in the San Francisco Bay area during the late 1960s. Murshid: A Personal Memoir of Life With American Sufi Samuel L. Lewis, Johnson’s seriously underedited journal of the time, examines the final years of a complex mystical guide, as well as the peaks and valleys of Johnson’s spiritual odyssey.

In the midst of California’s eclectic spiritual counterculture, Lewis was a leader of some prominence (he was profiled in a 1969 Playboy article on California’s religious cults), and his story is indeed interesting.

Lewis came from a well-to-do family (his father was an executive with the Levi Strauss and Co., his mother a Rothschild), and, from a young age, he appeared spiritually precocious. As he grew older, he demonstrated little material ambition and, consequently, became estranged from his family. He spent his life reading voraciously, writing, traveling, studying a broad range of religions with a number of teachers–including Hazrat Inayat Khan, a guiding force in the Western migration of Sufism–and working a variety of jobs from military intelligence to highway landscaping. In 1967, three years before his death, he had a vision in which he said God anointed him “spiritual leader of the hippies” and soon began teaching Sufi dances, breath work and philosophy to a growing number of young disciples.

Johnson learned about Lewis while teaching at a Michigan university and seems to have experienced an immediate calling. He soon moved his family to California, becoming one of the murshid’s most devoted disciples.

Living and traveling with Lewis, Johnson became his “esoteric secretary,” often transcribing the murshid’s enormous output of letters. A good third of the book is composed of Lewis’ correspondence, and these letters provide our clearest view of the murshid.

Lewis was a driven communicator, writing to anyone–politicians, academics, journalists, religious leaders and numerous others–who would listen (and some who didn’t want to), descanting on topics ranging from arcane mystical concepts, to the Vietnam War, DDT, the Black Panthers and Joe Namath. Lewis’ assertions are generally lucid, but sometimes–he says that the rhythm of a Tennyson poem helps him foretell the future–we need a mystical Rosetta stone to understand him.

However, Lewis’ constant theme was his anger and frustration over not being universally hailed as a spiritual teacher. He complains to everyone about being rejected and ignored, shouting to the rooftops about his spiritual eminence, often sending carbon copies to the offending parties. This overarching bombast raises a question that the book never satisfactorily answers: What exactly was Lewis’ allure?

Johnson writes that, in his case, he wanted to find out what was behind the murshid’s braggadocio, and that he also had an almost childlike need for guidance. Johnson tells of his wholehearted quest for enlightenment, complicated by the painful breakup of his marriage after his wife’s affair with another murshid. Johnson gives glimmers of Lewis’ empathy and insight, and of some kind of mental attunement between them, but we’re hard pressed to pinpoint how the murshid actually helped him.

What we get more than a glimmer of, though, is a kitchen midden of utterly useless minutiae, including shopping expeditions, house and auto repairs, meals, weather reports, trip routes, the murshid’s day-by-day itineraries and his endless pontifications.

“My practice,” Johnson writes, “is … remembering what I do and recording it … to make it more real.”

This material is all very real, but it would be far more accessible and compelling if Johnson’s journal had been turned into a tightly focused narrative with more about his inner struggles before meeting Lewis, the spiritual ramifications of his divorce and his reflections since the murshid’s death.

Still, this is a worthwhile read for those willing to sift through the clutter for the occasional nuggets of wisdom and a taste of an authentic spiritual journey.

Buy this book from Amazon.com!

Murshid: A Personal Memoir of Life With American Sufi Samuel L. Lewis
Mansur Johnson
Peaceworks Publications
ISBN: 0915424169
$25

 

 

Original URL: http://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/Books/Content?oid=oid:93957

enjoy!
~heather

Ritual in India

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Hi Saul,

I hope all is well with you. We’re back, and there really IS no place like home

Besides me being a pilgrim on this voyage, and being with our Sangha (there were 74 of us plus) it fell to me to be Musician, Physician and Technician — and I tried to see these roles in that order.

And in addition it seems to be one of my roles to make sure the Healing Ray is not absent from our gatherings. So during the Urs celebration — on the 6th, which was the final day of public Urs events at the Dargah, I scheduled and conducted the ritual, with the support of the other DHO folks present. Neshamah assisted and Rajaji (Roger) sat to my left. Right in his burial chamber.

I had great joy in doing this, and also in the thought that we were bringing it back home to Papa (along with the Dances, the Zikrs, the UW, and the Ruhaniat’s special energy).

I made a variation on the script, which was only for that exceptional day, and I announced that I was doing so.

As I say, I’ve done this before, introduced the Healing Ritual into a large gathering; and it hasn’t felt right to me to limit ourselves to ten names on the list and exclude everyone else’s names. So as I sat at the Dargah it came up within me to do a slight variation. Before the actual service, while we were chanting “Allah Shaffee, Allah Kaffee” I brought the voices down soft and then invited the forty-odd participants (many brown faces as well as white) to call out the name of anyone who wants healing, to put all those names into the energized space.

Then during the ritual itself, instead of ten names I had my assistant name ten CONDITIONS which I had written down, and we had the usual silence for each.

I’m going to write them down here …

  1. All those afflicted with the pain and suffering of illness, injury and aging
  2. All those afflicted with the pain and suffering of stress and disease of the mind.
  3. All those afflicted with the pain and suffering of anger and hatred.
  4. All those afflicted with the pain and suffering of poverty gone wrong.
  5. All those afflicted with the pain and suffering of wealth gone wrong.
  6. All those afflicted with the pain and suffering of violence and the threat of violence.
  7. All those afflicted with the pain and suffering of social upheaval and displacement.
  8. All those afflicted with the pain and suffering of abusing or of being abused in any form.
  9. All those afflicted with the pain and suffering of attachment to who we think we are, and of trying to defend the ego above all.
  10. All those afflicted with the pain and suffering of separation from the Truth.

It was a most fulfilling day for this one, and I believe an excellent manifestation of the initiation with which I have been entrusted.

All love and light to you — Abdul Shaffee

Healing the Heart of Humanity Weedend with Devi Tide and Hakim Sauluddin

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Dear Friends,

Come to a groundbreaking, first time event sharing the synergy of the Dervish Healing Order and the Sufi Healing Order working together on March 16-18th Unity Village (Greater Kansas City Area).

Please join us in joy and peace as we share an intensive weekend “HEALING THE HEART OF HUMANITY”.

We will deepen our capacity to “heal and be healed” with the insight and delight of Devi Tide, Khafayat / Director of the Sufi Healing Order of North America and the wisdom and magnetism of Hakim Sauluddin, Khafayat / Director of the Dervish Healing Order.

Friday, March 16th 7:30pm-9:30 pm “Community Night”
Saturday, March 17th 9:30am-9:30 pm
Sunday, March 18th 9:30am-4:00 pm

$125 paid in full by January 29th
$150 paid in full by March 3rd
$175 paid in full after March 3rd

For detailed info about Registration, Accommodations & Transportation arrangements, go to the Shining Heart Community’s web site:
http://shiningheartcommunity.org/DS_Unity/DS.htm

Looking forward to Unity at Unity Village.

Sarfaraz Cathy Knight

A New Year is acoming…

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Dear family –

Happy 2007.

just a short note to pass on all my love and best wishes that Peace and Health and Joy be ours in the coming year.

A practice for the year:

Make the inner merger of Hazrat Inayat Khans depth, Murshid Sams breadth, and Kwan Yins heart our constant and loving companions.

See you in San Francisco in June (14-19), where we hope to walk the walk – not just talk the talk.

Yours in service to the real

hakim sauluddin

DHO 2007 in San Francisco

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Walking in the Footsteps of the Teacher

Our Summer Gathering is planned for June 14 to 19th, 2007 in San Francisco.

 


We will follow in Murshid SAM’s, Joe & Gwin Miller’s and Frida Waterhouse’s energy flow, as we visit their “favorite” places.

  • Our base will be the Mentorgarten, with visits to as many places as we can still find open:
  • Precita Park (to pick up glass and garbage prior to our dancing),
  • Potrero Hill (where the Call to Prayer in Sun Seed was filmed),
  • The Theosophical Society and Golden Gate Park (where Joe and Gwin taught),
  • and Inshallah! The Rock of the Prophet, The Garden of Inayat, and even more.

Our goal will be to catch any remaining energy left from our teachers’ passage. Remember

Murshid Sam’s story of catching Nyogen Sanzaki’s barakka at the beach (where Senzaki san used to walk) and finding himself in the ocean.

Our gathering will have 3 sections:

  1. Our regular gathering, centered at the Mentorgarten.
  2. An Open to the Public day on Sufi Healing, at a larger location: We shall focus our attention on Prayer, Breath, Attunement, Transmutation, Protection, Creating a Sacred Space, the Sending and Receiving of Energy, Cleansing the Auric Body, Sound, Color, Visualization, Concentration, Ritual, Clearing Past Life Impressions, Amulet Making & the Power of Jewels, plus the Astrological Walks, and the Walks of the Great Healers. Etc. {Our D.H.O. leadership group will be expected to hold this public focus}
  3. A Bus Tour to the many places our teachers walked and loved. I am personally looking forward to our hanging out in the Bus and doing zikr and wazifa together.

Housing has 3 possibilities:

  1. We are securing dorm space at San Francisco State College – clean, cheap and we can have a whole floor to ourselves.
  2. Alternative hotel or motel space – you book it yourself.
  3. Crashing with friends and family.

Please let us know if you plan on using the Dorm option, as we must let them know how many we wish to reserve very soon!

Costs will be as minimal as usual And, since our staff will receive neither reimbursements nor honorarium, we should pretty much stay within our usual budget.

Since this is a HEADS UP! Notice – more details will follow soon.
For registration: Jennifer Avian

And finally, there is some great news to report on the making of Peace.

The Sufi Order has agreed to send a full delegation to our 9th Annual meeting of the Federation of the Sufi Message, right here in Charlottesville, Virginia. April 11 -15, 2007. Inshallah! We shall have representatives of all 6 manifestations of our Inayati family present.

DHO & Ruhaniat members who wish to attend, please contact Amrita

And, following in this energy flow, Devi Tide (the Kafayat for the Sufi Order) and myself , will do a joint DHO – SHO healing weekend in Kansas City – March 16 – 18, 2007.
DHO & SRI members who wish to attend, please contact Sarfaraz.

I send all my love and deepest wishes for your well being and health in this new year.

Yours in Service to the Real,
Hakim Sauluddin

Federation of the Sufi Message – 2007

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Finding Unity within Diversity:
The annual meeting of the Federation of the Sufi Message returns to Charlottesville, Virginia.

APRIL 11 – 15, 2007 Wednesday dinner through Sunday lunch

********************

Dear fellow initiates in the lineage of Hazrat Inayat Khan,

It is with great pleasure that we invite you to the eighth annual meetings of our Inayati family.

As we enter the 21st century, we encounter many of the same problems which Hazrat Inayat Khan found when he first traveled to the West.

On the one hand: There are wars which threaten to become world wide, while religious and racial enmity threaten to engulf us in sectarian hatred and violence.

On the other hand:

We have the Sufi Message of Spiritual Liberty, and our dedication and commitment to its unfoldment in the world.

The suffering world calls for the peace and understanding which Pir O Murshid Inayat Khan brought as the Sufi Message. It is our precious opportunity to make Peace within our own extended family, so that we may offer Peace to the world at large.

We are hopeful that all 6 manifestations of our Inayati family will join together. We are all needed. Please do your part to encourage all the pieces of the tapestry to come together in prayer and mutual honor.

Please remember that each order has 30 participants. Contact your order directly to secure your place.

Saul Yale Barodofsky
Co-ordinator for the Sufi Ruhaniat International
110 South Street – Charlottesville, Virginia 22902

  • Dates: April 11 – 15, 2007. Wednesday dinner through Sunday lunch.
  • Place: Camp Holiday Trails, Charlottesville, Virginia.
  • Costs: approximately $50 per day – plus housing .
  • Housing: on site (rustic) $30. Per night. There are also various local hotels at all prices levels, and there will be some guest space with locals.
  • Transportation: Plane, train and bus – all service Charlottesville. One can also rent an auto at your arrival airport.
  • International guests: we suggest that one fly into Charlottesville, Virginia from your entrance city.
  • Pick up at the Charlottesville airport (or train and bus station) can be arranged.
  • For group registration by Order, please contact: Daisy Schrock

Report: DHO at Lama – 2006

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Beloved Family,

This years American DHO Gathering was at Lama Foundation, and I am happy to report that Murshid is alive and well, and Lama continues to lovingly care for his Maqbara. Alhamdulliah!

Our dream work (home work) reported many of his visitations and instructions. Ya Shakur.

Forty of us gathered together from all over the USA & Canada, and we raised $12,135.00 for Lama, of which $10,520, came from registration, and $1,615 was a direct donation towards the repair of their leaking community roof.

As part of our continued attempt to offer the original teachings of Murshid Sam, we felt it was important to reintroduce both the prayers, and the 10 Sufi Thoughts. The former were done before our morning meeting, and the later were used as a theme for the nights `homework.’

Mansur Johnson was our guest, and shared some more of his forthcoming book on Murshid SAM. Due in October 2006 from Peaceworks (thanks Saadi and Jelaluddin for taking this on).

New Mexico is experiencing it’s worst drought in 133 years, but the love and joy we experienced kept us all in such a heart centered place that few of us noticed it. In addition, Lama is greener than expected, and their new trees and plants are prospering with all the loving care they receive.

Very Special Thanks to:

  • Mansur Johnson for leading our procession up to the Maqubara.
  • Scott Aslan Sattler for the choir, and for leading Murshid Sam’s original dances at night.
  • Fadilla Bradley for leading us in the con-fraternity prayers each morning.
  • Siddiq & Sakina von Brissen for their Japanese tea classes, and for doing an all camp tea under the big dome – wonderful!
  • Elaine Sutton for being our Rabbi for Friday night Shabbas, and for her writing class.
  • Ananda Cronin for leading us in the Bon meditation that links us directly to a departed elder, for leading the woman’s circle, and for shlepping her harmonium through 27 airports so we could do sing zikr at the Maqbara.
  • Eddie Nasruddin Greenberg for a hilarious 30 minute stand up routine.
  • Noel Hale for manifesting the Heart of Hanuman.
  • Murad Finkestein for sharing his meditation experiences in the Taoist caves of China, and for leading Sufi Chi Gong.’
  • Asha Greer for holding the energy so well during tea, meditation, the woman’s circle, and for leading us into the Lama Meditation Chamber.
  • Jean Pierre for manifesting his practice of the 99 Names (or pathways).

And to all of our family who participated in the flowering of Love, Harmony & Beauty. Ya Shakur! Alhamdulliah!

We are also most pleased to announce that there were three initiations given at Lama:

Jean Pierre David is our latest Shafayette, and Eddie Nasruddin Greenberg, and Michael Endlick are now Initiators. May the Message of God Reach Far and Wide.

A few additional memories of the Lama Gathering:

  • The deep inner silence we all shared in the Lama meditation room (the old “Khiva”).
  • The loving and supportive Lama Beans who constantly blessed and
  • nurtured our work.
  • The kitchen crew who manifested delicious and nourishing food in cornucopious amounts.
  • Watching us all become children again and snuggling up for a bed-time story.

More News:

Next year we are talking about having our gathering at the Mentorgarten, and having an extended field trip to visit our historical elders favorite places – “Walking in the Footsteps of the Teacher.”

Plus, an additional day dedicated to a structured approach to the teaching of Sufi Healing. More on this soon.

This September I will return to Russia with Mujahid Havell – my 12th year. 2007 we are scheduled to be in Prague.

The Harmony Committee has finished its work, and the letters of support and regret are starting to circulate. Mashallah! It has been a long, painful and joyful process, but it feels worth all the effort. If there are any questions or comments on the letter, please feel free to write me.

And, Along these lines:

The 2007 Meeting of the Federation of the Sufi Message will be held in Charlottesville, Virginia.

April 11 -15. Mark your calendar, and pray that ALL the streams of the Sufi Message will be present and accounted for.

And, there will be a joint healing meeting of the Dervish Healing Order & the Sufi Healing Order in Kansas City – March 10, 11 & 12. Devi Tide and myself will be leading it. A landmark event.

I send you all my love and blessings and prayers for your continued health and inner peace.

Yours in Service to the Real,
Hakim Sauluddin
Jennifer Avian – our camp planner
Jude Sargent – our secretary
Jean Pierre David – our web master