May 2018 Message

Beloved Family,

What an adventure this life is! Hoping Spring is unfolding her arms to you.

I was beautifully hosted in Portland for the Jamiat Aam. Sheikha Arifa Byron and I were the lead teachers along with many jewels from the Portland community including Sara Pelfrey, Bryn Morgan and Evan Muid Bushnell. On the Sunday afternoon of the Jamait Aam I had the privilege of sharing a Raga Concert, accompanied by Michael Sterling, a wonderful Raga singer who is also a disciple of my music Guru, Pandit Pran Nath. We were joined by his daughter Lucy Sterling on tamboura, Joss Jaffe on tabla and our own Ariel Bushnell on Swarmandal. It was recorded and filmed, and if they turn out well I will post them. You can view my Raga Offering at this years Hazrat Inayat Khan's URS Celebration in Delhi <https://youtu.be/HMFJAQCqHfg>

Spent an overnight at Collins Lake in Northern California and was delighted to see a fledgling Osprey.

Tuesday I leave for France to offer a 5 day retreat in Southern France and then off to the Annual Federation of the Sufi Message Gathering at Fazal Manzil, Hazrat Inayat Khan's family home in Suresnes, a suburb of Paris.

The following month is our Peace Pledge Pilgrimage to Greenland and Assisi. Here is what I wrote about the Peace Pledge Pilgrimage family:

"I'd like to go to a Peace demonstration where the demonstrators demonstrate Peace!" Sufi Master- Murshid Samuel Lewis, 1969

Our Peace Pledge Pilgrimage family is composed of spiritual leaders, religious leaders, educators, earth stewards, business, science and engineering leaders and political leaders.

As a Peace Pledge Pilgrimage family, we want to declare to the world that Loving Kindness and Compassion at the root of all action can serve as the remedy for all suffering.

We want to broadcast far and wide our common experience of the Unity of Religious Ideals, really, the Unity of Human Ideals which can serve as a solution to the marginalization of human beings for their religious, national, racial and gender preferences.

Recognizing the precarious condition of our home, Planet Earth, due to unskillful human activity especially in the past few centuries, we further appeal to all human beings to join together in becoming Earth Stewards, in the same way we would act with loving kindness and compassion for a close family member or friend.

When we become disturbed with the world through negative emotions we lose our strength and our peace. Our ability to overcome adversity, personal to global becomes so much more powerful when we can act from Loving Kindness and Compassion, instead of anger and disdain. It is not that we condone unskillful behavior, but that we recognize our greatest strength to manifest change and relieve suffering comes from our ability to be at Peace.

Please join the Peace Pledge Pilgrimage family in becoming Heart Stewards and Earth Stewards with the root our actions being Loving Kindness and Compassion.

Pir Shabda Kahn May 7, 2018

After the Pilgrimage I will travel to Germany for the weeklong Annual Ruhaniat Summer School. Returning home for less than a week I will be with many of you at the Mendocino Sufi Camp. August will take me to Santa Cruz and September to Ecuador and Asheville, NC.

Dear travelers of the heart ~ we are so happy to gather once again Oct 5-8, 2018 at the beautiful Marin Headlands (just north of the Golden Gate Bridge) for a Mureeds retreat - last one happened in 2010!

Please register <http://goldengatesufi.org/shabdamureedsretreat/ > early to reserve your spot as we anticipate a full house! Questions, write to Rachel Maize <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>.

In-between traveling and working at the computer, I enjoy getting my hands dirty in our garden!

For this month's text let's study one of my favorite poems of Murshid Samuel Lewis, CRESCENT AND HEART, written in the voice of Khwaja Moineddin Chishti, the 13th Century founder of our lineage.

Much love,

Shabda

Wazifa Practice - Recite 101x YA QUDDUS ~ YA JAMI

Ya Quddus (yaa ḳud-DOOS)

Al-Quddus is the ever-purifying one. It requires us to take leave of what we cling to in order to experience intimate union. Al-Quddus allows the spiritual traveler to transcend the lower self and keep going toward the one. Al-Quddus is a force that constantly cleanses us from the conceptual mind and its differentiations. It is continuously purifying our experience of the world through inward intimacy and union with the absolute.

A variation of the root of this name means to return home to one's village. Al-Quddus is always purifying and always distancing, in the sense of leaving behind the ephemeral to go fully into the eternal. What is constantly moving toward Allah is al-Quddus. The union given by al-Quddus is one of continually becoming the eternal reality. See Ya Jami, which is its opposite name, especially when viewed in the context of divine ecstasy.

Al Quddus suggests the process of the goldsmith purifying the dross to have only gold remain.

Al-Jami has the quality of gathering everything together into a whole, and al-Quddus has the quality of leaving behind everything but the essence. They appear as opposites. Sobriety enters after ecstasy is experienced.

Ya Jami (yaa JAA-mi)

Al-Jami is the gatherer. It means to come back together, to bring all the parts into a whole. Al-Jami is to return home, to return to the real self. It is a constant process of becoming reconnected with wholeness. It is sometimes called the grand synthesis, the joining of all joinings. Al-Quddus is an opposite of al-Jami, especially when viewed in the context of divine ecstasy. Through al-Quddus you are continuously purifying yourself of remnants of the nafs.

The two pathways of realization complement each other. Al-Quddus offers purification of nafs, while al-Jami' offers integration of the various aspects of nafs. Classically these paths would be called the via negativa and the via positiva. When all the aspects of the nafs begin to gather together, through the action of al-Jami, a quality of ecstasy enters.

As this continues, the nafs begins to merge with the ruh, or soul. It is an ecstatic union. Then, varying aspects of the higher self or soul manifest into the lower self, or nafs, and reintegrate. With al-Quddus, sobriety enters after the ecstasy of union. To receive great benefit from these names, we recommend invoking Ya Quddus and Ya Jami together.

To hear the pronunciation: Ya Quddus ~ Ya Jami

TEXT and COMMENTARY to STUDY

This month we will study the poem CRESCENT AND HEART, written by Murshid Samuel Lewis in the voice of Khwaja Moineddin Chishti, the 13th Century founder of our lineage. Click here to download the document.

1SelfieArifa Selfie with Sheikha Arifa Byron