Madison Sufis

Neil and Tasnim gather again in Madison after a gap of three years. Taking into consideration the challenges, personal and worldwide, that we have all been through, they will share practices, meditations, teachings, walking meditations, and Dances of Universal Peace, updating the familiar ones with pointers towards what is most pressing now. 

 

As usual, they will draw from a wide variety of the world’s spiritual traditions, especially the unitive, non-sectarian Sufi lineages of Ibn Arabi, Shahabuddin Suhrawardi Maqtul, and Jelaluddin Rumi, also expressed through the living transmission of Hazrat Inayat Khan, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, Murshid Samuel L. Lewis, and Murshid Moineddin Jablonski. Other influences they tap into are Zen Buddhism, Jewish mysticism, mystical Christianity, and the Aramaic Jesus tradition.

 

In a practical sense, the way these teachers talk about light, the nur al Haqq, allows us to discern and know what is actually true in our lives. By using the talisman of the soul, it then becomes possible to distinguish truth from falsehood, even in our day-to-day reality.

 

“Light upon light, back and back we trace it to its Source....” Sura 24:35

 

“We take refuge in the break of dawn, the dawn of awareness....” Sura 113:1

 

“The light shines in and together with the darkness, and one does not understand the other.... This light of right direction, the heart’s GPS, shines within every person who comes into the world” John 1:5, 9 (meditation on the Aramaic text).