January 2019 Message

Beloved Family,

Abundant Blessings for the New Year! I honestly and profoundly feel so much hope for each of us and for the world and all sentient beings!

We began the New Year with many of you from many different places and countries with the Sufi Sesshin, especially enjoying the precious time friends and mureeds and with my fellow guides of the retreat, Murshid Wali Ali, Murshids Abraham and Halima, Sheikh Rahmat, and Sheikh Gayan.

We celebrated Murshid Sam's URS in the middle of a powerful rain storm in San Francisco this year. The decorations crew delightfully placed a picture Hazrat Inayat Khan in meditation on the rim of the basketball hoop!

Once again, I travel to Mother India - mid February - this year for our Peace Pledge Pilgrimage Project. We will travel to the Kumbha Mela in Allahabad, be in Delhi at Hazrat Inayat Khan's Dargah and meet with political leaders of India and then to Dharamsala to be at the Monastery of the 12th Tai Situ Rinpoche, called Sherab Ling Palpung Monastery. What a joy and privilege for me that my Tibetan teacher of nearly 40 years is now a principal part of our Peace Pledge Pilgrimage group!

Upcoming public events begin with a Sufi Retreat in Boulder in March 15-17. Worth planning ahead for are:

Annual Federation of the Sufi Message Harmony Gathering May 2-5, in Charlottesvile, VA

Kauai Sufi Retreat May 17-19

Annual Jamiat Ahm Gathering this year at Murshid Sam's Dargah at Lama Foundation, May 30-June 2, 2019.

You all likely know I am the Spiritual Director of the 45th Annual Mendocino Camp and the flyer and registration page are all ready for you.

For our next wazifa lets recite what Murshid Sam used in his daily practice 101x YA HAYOO, YA QAYOOM -- O Infinite which is Livingness in all, in and beyond the cycle of life and death; O Eternal/Eternity which is the Source of All and dependent on no-thing. As fikr, breathe in YA HAYOO breathe out YA QAYOOM. When I recite it I like to practice Tassawuri (attunement), tuning to Murshid Sam.

Much love,

Shabda

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Wazifa Practice

Recite 101x YA HAYOO ~ YA QAYOOM

62. Ya Hayy (yaa ḤAIYY)

Al-Hayy is the perfection of everlasting life, and the only one who truly lives. It is the one source of all life and the very life of everything that lives. It is the life principle that never dies, and it is inside every being. This divine Name is also the living presence of everything, whether it is dead, alive, animate, inanimate, material, spiritual, or anything in-between. No distinction is made among these states because al-Hayy lives in everything. Because of this infinitude, it is truly a transcendent Name, beyond the apparent relativity of al-Mumit (61) and al-Muhyi (60).

Al-Hayy is filled with vitality; it is the inner life of the heart. Repetition of Ya Hayy arouses a kind of life energy and freedom that is an antidote to the deadened condition of the heart that is often the result of grief and sorrow. See Ya Qayyum (63) and Ya Haqq (51), two similarly transcendent Names with which Ya Hayy is often paired in recitation.

63. Ya Qayyum (yaa ḳaiy-YOOM)
Al-Qayyum is the only one who remains through all the permutations of time and space. It is an existence beyond being or appearance, form, or continuance of form. Al-Qayyum manifests in everything, down to the very heart of every being. It is eternal time and omnipresence. Al-Qayyum is a continuous unending activity that bestows existence, or kun, to everything else.

The very fact that anything exists, including the very existence of being itself, is because of the nature of al-Qayyum, which transcends the passage of time. A variation of the root, qaama, means to stand. Things come and things go. Al-Qayyum stands. Due to the reality of al-Qayyum’s nature, all things continually exist, even after death, as living entities in the mind of God. It is recommended to pair Ya Qayyum with Ya Hayy (62), in chanting. Both have the same root H-Y-Y, the life principle inside each one that never dies.

To hear the pronunciation: Ya Hayy ~ Ya Qayyum

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TEXT and COMMENTARY to STUDY

This month we begin working with the Githa Ryazat Series II with Commentary by Murshid Samuel L. Lewis (Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti). Read and reflect on the topic of Fikr, Numbers 1-2, pages 1-9. Click here to download the document.

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1MurshidaHalima Murshida Halima offering teachings at the California Sufi Sesshin