August 2022 Message

Beloved Family,

Heartfelt greetings to our beautiful family near and far. It is always so moving to feel our hands being held from so many places on our spinning blue-green planet!

Southern New Mexico, which is where our Southwest Sufi Community is, has been blessed with an overabundance of monsoon rains, swelling creeks and making roads muddy. So muddy that we had to cancel the SSC Summer Retreat which was scheduled for last week! I was sad to not be with many of you who had committed to travel to be together and enjoy all the new improvements on the land, including the new Dance Pavilion Temple.

Now my sights are set on three weeks in Turkey, where East meets West, starting September 10! We will Caravan through sacred places and with people in Turkey, have a Dance Leader Training, especially for the many people attending from countries where the dances have yet to go, and lastly, participate in the festival/retreat Conference of the Birds!

On or home front, at the direction of our local fire department, we sadly cut down 5 Cypress trees that we had planted 25 years ago which were at least 35 feet tall, because they are such a dramatic fire hazard. Also removed several Juniper trees, all with our tears flowing feeling it was the right thing to do. Now we are in the planting phase, putting in another avocado tree and other plantings.

Knowing the lifelong assignment of "laying our burdens down", of being able to forgive ourselves and others, I invite us once again to practice YA GHAFFAR ~ YA GHAFUR.

Related, here are two Tibetan prayers that help me in my own process of forgiveness:

This is a Drikung Kagyu prayer

All mother sentient beings

Especially those enemies who hate me, obstructors who harm me and those who create obstacles on my path to liberation and enlightenment

May they experience happiness and be liberated from suffering

And I aspire to quickly establish them in a state of complete and precious Buddhahood

Lojong sayings

Be grateful to everyone

Drive all blames into one

Taking the obstacles as the path

Much love,

Shabda

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Wazifa Practice

Recite 101x

YA GHAFFAR ~ YA GHAFUR

14. Ya Ghaffar (yaa g̣ḥ̣af-FAAR)

Al-Ghaffar is inexhaustible forgiveness. It is repetitive. Even though you may repeat the same error over and over again, you never come to the end of God's forgiveness, which is inexhaustible. A form of the root of al-Ghaffar means a substance bees make that the Arabs used to fill in the cracks of a dried out, old leather water skin, so that it no longer leaks. Divine forgiveness repairs human dryness and brittleness in a similar way.

Invocation of Ya Ghaffar offers a healing salve that is an antidote for self-loathing, guilt, and blame. It is especially useful to bring this emanation of divine forgiveness into the places where you have been marked by impressions of self-deficiency that have been reinforced time and again. Al-Ghaffar brings moisture back into the system. An even more complete realization of the nature of divine forgiveness may occur when this Name is paired in repetition with Ya Ghafur (34), which shares the same root. We recommend prayerful recitation of Ya Ghaffar, Ya Ghafur. See also Ya Tawwab (79), Ya 'Afuw (81), and Chapter 8, Divine Forgiveness.

34. Ya Ghafur (yaa ɡ ̣ ḥa-FOOR)

Al-Ghafur is the essence of forgiveness, because it reveals the depth of the divine heart. Al-Ghafur means to forgive all the way into the deepest possible place, all the way to the ground floor. It is the divine forgiveness that penetrates into the most repressed secrets in our hearts. Its presence allows us to accept that there is forgiveness even for the worst crime we have ever committed in our life, or the worst crime ever done to us.

Al-Ghafur is a healing salve for human beings' deep sense of being wounded that is due to self-identifying with shame and unworthiness. It shares the same root as al-Ghaffar (14). A physical-plane meaning from the same root tells us it is like the substance bees make to repair their hives, which then is rubbed into the dried-out, cracked leather water skin so that it no longer leaks. See Ya Ghaffar (14), with which it is paired in repetition. See also Ya Tawwab (79) and Ya 'Afuw (81), as well as Chapter 8, Divine Forgiveness.

To hear the pronunciation: Ya Ghaffar ~ Ya Ghafur

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Text and Commentary to Study

This month we finish reading Githas, Series III, by Pir-o-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan. Even though you may have studied this before you can read with fresh eyes.

Read and contemplate pages 31- 47 on Insight, Spirit Phenomena, and Healing.

Click here to download the document Githas, Series III

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Upcoming Events and Teachings

2022 DUP Turkish Caravan September 12 - 24

Conference of Birds-Turkey September 26 – October 2

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PHOTOS

Our tall Cypress trees