October 2023 Message

Beloved Family,

Our hearts and eyes are crying at the state of the world, how we as humans behave to other humans. It certainly feels so much more immediate and important to intensify our efforts for cleaning our own hearts, practicing loving kindness and compassion and awakening to our True Nature.

Many of you know that my elder sister, two of her three children and 8 grandchildren all live in Israel, and many of you have been writing me to ask if they are OK. They are! They are all shaken up, especially the kids, with school closed and air raid sirens and bombs exploding every day all around them.

Murshid Sam wrote this in a letter to me: “A Sufi is one who sees from the point of view of another as well as of themself.” My practice is to attune to everyone in the terrible conflict, to be the Israeli, and the Hamas fighter, to be the bomber, to be the bombed, to be the kidnapper and be the kidnapped, the rapist and the victim. May we all find our way to true inner and outer Active Peace and learn to live in harmony.

For our local family, I am on a flight to Madison when our October 19 Thursday evening San Rafael Zikr Circle happens, so the class will be lead by our dear Bhavani, Sadaya and Fazl. November 16th, which is the next date on the old Zikr flyer, I am also in flight. I am rescheduling the San Rafael Zikr Circle to November 9th! Please mark your calendars and here's a link to the New Flyer

Join me in Madison WI. Oct 20-22. November 17- 19 takes me to Seattle and to Maui, Dec 1-3. After the devastating fires in Maui, the locals are calling for us tourists to come back to help revivify the economy!

Our Pilgrimage to Hazrat Inayat Khan’s URS in Mother India Feb1-10, 2024 is filling up, if you are intending to join us, please register soon.

"Save the date” for the 2024 Sufi Sesshin which will take place March 3-8 at the Bishops Ranch.

Save the date. We will celebrate Murshid Wali Ali’s URS through ZOOM on the Saturday after Thanksgiving Nov 25th, 10am PT.

For our next wazifa practice let’s combine three phrases for Protection: Ya Mu’min, Ya Muhaimin, Ya Hafiz.

With the Murshid Sam Biography, “Sunrise in the West, the Life of American Mystic Samuel L. Lewis” arriving soon, we hope many of you will practice generosity and purchase the Special Hardcover Edition for $101 plus shipping and handling to support all the funds that were spent to make the project happen.

Much love,

Shabda

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Wazifa Practice

Recite 101x

YA MU'MIN ~ YA MUHAIMIN ~ YA HAFIZ

6. Ya Mu'min (yaa MU'-min)

Al-Mu'min is the one who offers to us a real faith and a trust that is free of all fear, craft, and deceit. From its root we learn that al-Mu'min is a divine gift that allows us to feel safety, confidence, and security in our hearts. It allows human beings to have trust in God alone and not to be taken in by secondary causes, or what appear on the surface to be the causes of conditions.

Invocation of Ya Mu'min is an antidote for hypocrisy. It is a remedy for those who only give lip service to their faith or who trust in Allah but lack fullness of heart. And it is also an antidote for fanaticism or what is sometimes called blind faith. It shares the same root as al-Muhaimin (7) and may be combined with it in recitation.

7. Ya Muhaimin (yaa mu-HAI-min)

Al-Muhaimin is the divine quality that preserves the essence of a thing from corruption through all the vicissitudes of time. The eternal in the thing, the purity of what it is in reality, is protected from being harmed by any temporal cause. It is an attribute used to describe the Qur'an. Al-Muhaimin affirms that translation and addendum will not diminish the Qur'an’s essence. In a more general sense, what is transient passes away and therefore never truly had existence. Baqa, the eternal, is, always was, and always will be.

Thus al-Muhaimin is linked with al-Baqi (96), the eternal essence that remains. The essence of each thing, the malakut, is held in the hands of God. Al-Muhaimin describes the immutable quality by which all the 99 Names of God work in the world.

38. Ya Hafiz (yaa ḥa-FEEḌḤ)

Al-Hafiz means that everything in the heavens and earth, down to the smallest particle, is within the protection of Allah. For human beings, it involves becoming mindful, considerate, respectful, and cherishing deeply in your heart. This makes it exactly parallel with dhikr (zikr), which means “to remember.”

It is in this sense that God says in the Qur'an, “Remember me, and I will remember you.”

Al-Hafiz is protecting and remembering everyone. To realize al-Hafiz is to be conscious of the greatest of secrets, to know the secret, and to keep it. The order, sequence, and timing of the universe are preserved through this quality.

Invocation of Ya Hafiz is useful for all who need protection from fear, despair, and hopelessness. Al- Hafiz is a matrix for the whole family of the divine Names of protection because it contains within itself all the specific qualities they each evoke.

To hear the pronunciation: Ya Mu'min ~ Ya Muhaimin ~ Ya Hafiz

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Text and Commentary to Study

This month we finish reading Hazrat Inayat Khan's Gatheka on Mental Purification with commentaries by Murshid Samuel Lewis and Murshid Moineddin Jablonski

Read and contemplate Chapter 10, The Will, pages 141-157

Click here to download the document

Mental Purification Commentary

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Upcoming Events and Teachings

Madison, WI Sufi Retreat October 20-22

Seattle Sufi Retreat November 17-19

Maui Sufi Retreat December 1-3

Mother India Pilgrimage February 1-10, 2024

Save the date

Sufi Sesshin at the Bishops Ranch, CA March 3-8, 2024

Ongoing Local Monthly Gathering