LIVING SUFISM 2025
If, for some reason, you can't praise God, then praise how the early spring wakes the winter ground.
Pir Elias Amidon The Book of Flashes
Session 3 - Am I Available?
Mar 9
By opening, our relationships can go from transactional to transformational. Adab requires that we be fully available—sincerely responsive—to whatever arises in the moment. Opening often brings relational insights which allow new understandings, and responses to emerge.
Session 3 - Recording
Apologies: The recording is only in gallery view.
The Seats of Presence
I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. It's easy.
I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. It's easy.
I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. It's easy.
Open Flow
A friend recently told me of a question used by a Zen teacher as he guides his students in meditation. The question is deceptively simple: how is it to be what’s happening?
You might imagine hearing it yourself as you sit quietly, your body still, peacefully breathing. The teacher asks this question — how is it to be what’s happening? — and you realize you’ve been following some stray thoughts even though you’re sitting there calmly. Instead of feeling uncomfortable with that stream of thoughts, you just accept that thinking is happening, peaceful breathing is happening, and your quiet body with its array of background sensations is happening. You might then ask, is it true that I am these happenings? What is he asking? Each of these happenings has already changed, they’re already gone, and everything that’s happening now keeps changing just as instantly, so how can I be them?
It's a pointed and disorienting inquiry. It has the power to loosen our identification with being located — located as a witness, located as a specific subjectivity who’s aware of the world out there. To be what’s happening is to be the very evanescence of the moment and its happenings. How is it to be that? It might be helpful to pause for a moment as you read this and run through this inquiry in real time — your direct experience will tell you much more than my words can. You can probably do it in less than a minute. Simply ask yourself, how is it to be what’s happening? For me, the subtlety of the question has the effect of both uniting me with what’s happening and freeing me from it at the same time. I am what’s happening, and I am its vanishing. When I can simply relax in this nondual paradox, I experience being present in a new way. Presence is how it is to be what’s happening — not fixed-in-place presence, but being the current of presence, being the river of it. If you’ve followed me this far, you may recognize that what I’m calling “presence” here is indistinguishable from awareness. Our sense of presence, of being present with, and in the flow of, what’s happening, is our intimate awareness of it in the moment. So how is it to be awareness? If we try to answer that question we end up with words like those I’ve used in other contexts: it’s open, and empty, and clear, and transparent, and awake. But these words only go so far, and the beauty of awareness trying to grok itself like this is that it drops the bottom out — awareness can only know itself by being itself — it can’t be a witness of itself. Awareness answers the question of what it is all at once — and it’s this simultaneity of question (how is it to be awareness?) and answer (this!) that for many of us is our first doorway of awakening or realization. I am this that is aware, and as such I have no boundary, no separate place where I am a “me.” I imagine many of you reading this have welcomed this realization in your lives and have let it ease this not-always-easy experience of being human that we share, and you know it’s a blessing. My intention here is to suggest what to me is another dimension of our primary question — how is it to be what’s happening? So far we’ve responded to that question — how is it? — with the reply: it’s aware, it’s present, that’s how it is. Is there anything else we can report about it, anything else we can intuit as we question this most intimate dimension of our being? My sense is there is “something else,” but since it’s inseparable from awareness itself, it’s equally resistant to description.
Loving Awareness
Fron Notes from the Open Path by Pir Elias Amidon - December 2024
THE CURRENT GLOBAL ZEITGEIST: TRANSFORMATION VS TRANSACTION
If you ask any of the current Artificial Intelligence agents in the electronic relational field we call the Internet to talk about transformational relationships you might get something like the text below. Since AI is, in a sense, a synthetic summation of currently available knowledge these two paragraphs give us a glimpse of what we might call a baseline of understanding. Our work in Living Sufism is to go beyond this level of realization to uncover and bring to life aspects of transformation which can take us beyond this common understanding.
Transactional relationships...
are fundamentally based on exchange and mutual benefit, where each party is primarily focused on what they can get from the interaction. In these relationships, people tend to keep score and expect immediate reciprocity. The interactions are often time-bound and specific to particular needs or goals. People in transactional relationships typically maintain clear boundaries and emotional distance, engaging with each other mainly when they need something. These relationships may be perfectly cordial, but they lack deep emotional investment and personal vulnerability. Think of most business relationships, casual acquaintances, or certain professional networking connections.
Transformational relationships...
in contrast, are characterized by mutual growth and development. These relationships involve deep emotional investment, vulnerability, and genuine care for the other person's wellbeing beyond what they can provide. People in transformational relationships focus on long-term development and often challenge each other to grow and improve. They share openly, provide honest feedback, and support each other through difficulties without expecting immediate returns. There's a strong emphasis on trust, authenticity, and emotional intimacy. These relationships often lead to personal transformation for both parties involved, as they influence each other's values, perspectives, and behaviors over time.
As for the question of how this method of alchemy is practiced, the whole process was explained by the alchemists in a symbolic way. They said gold is made out of mercury. The nature of mercury is to be ever-moving, but by a certain process the mercury is first stilled, and once stilled it becomes silver; then the silver has to be melted, and the juice of a herb is poured on to the molten silver which is thereby turned into gold. This of course gives only an outline, but one can find detailed explanations of the whole process. Many childlike souls have tried to make gold by stilling mercury and melting silver, and they have tried to find the herb; but they were deluded, and they had better have worked and earned money.
The Alchemy of Happiness
The real interpretation of this process is that mercury represents the nature of the ever-restless mind. Especially when he tries to concentrate does a person realize that the mind is ever restless. The mind is like a restive horse: when it is ridden it is more restive than when it is in the stable. Such is the nature of mind: it becomes more restless when one desires to control it; it is like mercury, constantly moving. When by a method of concentration one has mastered the mind, one has taken the first step in the accomplishment of a sacred task. Prayer is concentration, reading is concentration, sitting and relaxing and thinking on one subject are all concentration. All artists, thinkers, and inventors have practiced concentration in some form. They have given their minds to one thing, and by focusing on one object have developed the faculty of concentration. But for stilling the mind a special method is necessary which is taught by the mystic, just as a singer is taught by the teacher of voice-production. The secret of this is to be learnt in the science of breath. Breath is the essence of life, the center of life, and the mind may be controlled by a knowledge of the proper method of breathing. For this, instruction from a teacher is a necessity. For since the mystical cult of the East has become known in the West, books have been published, and teaching which had been kept as sacred as religion has been discussed in words. But these can never truly explain the mystery of that which is the center of man's very being. People read these books and begin to play with breath, and often instead of benefiting they injure both mind and body. There are also those who make a business of teaching breathing exercises for money, thus degrading a sacred thing. The science of breath is the greatest mystery there is, and for thousands of years it has been kept as a sacred trust in the schools of the mystics. When the mind is under perfect control and no longer restless, one can hold a thought at will as long as one wishes. This is the beginning of phenomena. Some abuse these privileges and by dissipating the power thus obtained they destroy the silver before turning it into gold. The silver must be heated before it can melt, and with what? With that warmth which is the divine essence in the heart of man, which comes forth as love, tolerance, sympathy, service, humility, unselfishness, in a stream which rises and falls in a thousand drops, each drop of which could be called a virtue, all coming from that one stream hidden in the heart of man: the love element. And when it glows in the heart, then the actions, the movements, the tone of the voice, the expression, all show that the heart is warm. The moment this happens a man really lives. He has unsealed the spring of happiness which overcomes all that is jarring and inharmonious, and the spring has established itself as a divine stream. After the heart is warmed by the divine element which is love, the next stage is the herb, which is the love of God. But the love of God alone is not sufficient; knowledge of God is also necessary. It is the absence of the knowledge of God which makes a man leave his religion, for there is a limit to man's patience. Knowledge of God strengthens man's belief in God, throws light on the individual and on life. Things become clear; every leaf on a tree becomes as a page of a holy book to one whose eyes are open to the knowledge of God. When the juice of the herb of divine love is poured on the heart, warmed by the love of his fellow men, then that heart becomes the heart of gold, the heart that expresses what God would express. Man has not seen God, but man has then seen God in man, and when this happens, then verily everything that comes from such a man comes from God Himself.
One of the ways Hazrat Inayat Khan characterizes the possibility of transformation is as alchemy. The passage below goes into detail about this. From The Sufi Message VOLUME VI - 1
PRACTICE LAB
As an option for those who wish to work more intensively, we will be hosting a "lab" for the development of practice methods and techniques. These sessions are open to all registrants. The dates for the Practice Lab:
Mar 30 - Apr 27 - May 25 - Jun 29
On Zoom Noon EDT - 5PM UK - 6 PM EU