"Mujahida is the process of overcoming all the deluding emotions—and similarly disarming all your outer judgments about them—by rooting out the seeds in yourself and becoming empty." — Murshid Wali Ali Meyer
Prerequisites
Course 2: Mujahida requires completion of Course 1 (or the previoius 21-month version of God is Breath).
Building on participants' prior experience with the practices, teachings, and perspectives from Course 1, this course introduces the next stage of intentionally Watching the Breath with gentle Loving Awareness, in a more active way with the Mujahida Concentration, plus the beginning stages of the Shaghal breath practice, and a few other supplemental practices.
Course Description - What is Mujahida?
By dictionary definition jihad means struggle, effort, or striving, and a mujahid is one who performs jihad. Mujahida is then the performance of jihad. But struggling, efforting, or striving with what or with whom?
Following the guidance of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), the Sufi approach to jihad is internal, the personal striving with one's own nafs; with the complex of one's own ego-centric perspectives, preconceived ideas, rigid self-serving beliefs and concepts, biases, prejudicies and projections; concerns about the perceived distinctions and differences that one wrongly decides separate oneself from others; impressions of one's own separation and disconnection from God-Goddess-Source; absolute judgments and fixed conclusions about right and wrong, good and bad, of self and other. All of these impressions of duality cover the Heart, and prevent one from experiecing the Unity and Oneness of one's own True Nature which isn't separated from God-Goddess-Source nor from other human beings.
The Mujahida Concentration is one way of combining Breath and intentional Loving Awaness to "take on one's self", to identify the ego/nafs rooted impressions, and to neutralize and clear them from the sphere of the Heart.
In the opening poem of his Masnavi, Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi compares these ego-rooted impressions to rust. He says: "Go clear the rust from the mirror of your heart, and make the Light manifest. When the mirror is free from rust, the face of the Beloved shines within it." In Buddhist terminology this work is the struggle to overcome the deluding emotions. In Christian terminolgy, this is the process of removing the log from one's own eye, before doing anything about a perceived the speck in a neighbor's eye. In Alchemical terminology this is the Magnum Opus, the Great Work, of transmuting the lead of the ego personality into the Gold of Spirit. And as Imam Bilal Hyde (a long term friend of the Ruhaniat, and co-author of Physicians of the Heart), often quips about this work of honestly and unflinchingly confronting one's own nafs "This is Sufism for grown ups, folks".
And finally, in Course 2, Wali Ali tells a Murshid SAM story: "I remember during the the Vietnam War, when someone said to Murshid SAM, 'What do we have to do to stop this?' And Murshid said, 'Stop pulling your triggers.'" The Mujahida Concentration is one way of identifying our own triggers, which engage our reactivities, and refraining from pulling them as we work to neutralize and remove them.
Course 2: Links for Participants
Links for registered participants will open when Course 2 registration is completed
Lesson 1 | Lesson 2 | Lesson 3 | Final Recap
Course Tuition
The suggested tuition for Course 2 is $500 USD for 9-months of instruction, guidance, and support from the Wheel Mentor, plus the co-creative of a supportive Sangha of fellow Wheel-member practioners.
Tuition adjustments are available. Money should not be an obstacle to your participation. For those living on fixed incomes, or in other situations where the suggested tuition puts the course out of reach for you, or where currency exchange rates are too unfavorable for you, you may adjust the suggested tuition.
Please consult your own heart and Guidance to decide on a tuition adjustment that will work for you and your situation, without compromising your basic needs. There is a "sweet" amount between too much and too little, that will respect your own financial and economic realities, while also honoring the great value and benefit this course offers, and completing the cycle of Spiritual Reciprocity.
Registration
We anticipate opening registration for Course 2 in mid-June 2024. Join our email list.
For More Information
Muiz Brinkerhoff, Program Director: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.