Inflame thyself in prayer

wil said:
bismi-llāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīm

I so enjoy his Sufi order, and the dances for Universal peace
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Hazrat Inayat Khan is special, imo. I do like the Sufis
 
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I like the Mullah Nasruddin Sufi stories too. He is very zen. Here's one:

Nasruddin was walking in the bazaar with a large group of followers. Whatever Nasruddin did, his followers immediately copied.

Every few steps Nasruddin would stop and shake his hands in the air, touch his feet and jump up yelling "Hu Hu Hu!"

So his followers would also stop and do exactly the same thing.

One of the merchants, who knew Nasruddin, quietly asked him: "What are you doing my old friend? Why are these people imitating you?"

"I have become a Sufi Sheik," replied Nasruddin. "These are my Murids [spiritual seekers] I am helping them reach enlightenment!"

"How do you know when they reach enlightenment?"

"Every morning I count them. The ones who have left have reached enlightenment."
 
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wil said:
Have you danced?
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I've just read (parts of) his book 'Gayan Vadan Nirtan: The Dance of the Soul'

https://g.co/kgs/X6PDLf

content

Hazrat Inayat Khan
Suluk Press, Omega Publications, 20 Jul 2015 - 199 pages

"Gayan Vadan Nirtan is not an ordinary book. Hazrat Inayat Khan once said, "What is spoken from the heart reaches the heart." The saying, poems and prayers in Gayan Vadan Nirtan have come directly from the kindled heart and soul of Hazrat Inayat Khan. Contain the essence of Inayat Khan's teachings, they are addressed to the deepest organs of feeling and knowing within us. Newly compiled from the most authentic available sources."
 
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The dances are repetitive movements typically in circle formation while chanting/singing.various prayers from world religions...

It is one of the most interfaith thing I've done
 
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"Prayers are tools. Not for doing, or getting, but for being and becoming."
Eugene Peterson.
 
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Having said that, I've just read a couple of Peterson's translations on his 'Message' bible.

I'm sure his heart's in the right place, but the translations are trite and, IMHO, they're absolutely awful, dumbing down for the masses ...

Hey-ho...
 
HakimPtsid said:
He's not really a "Sufi" though, he's just a universalist Mystic taking on a few little vague nods. Not that there's anything wrong with him though.
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Interesting. Thank you.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufism


"... Neo-Sufism," "pseudo-Sufism," and "universal Sufism" are terms used to denote modern, Western forms or appropriations of Sufism that do not require adherence to shariah, or the Muslim faith.[110][111] The terms are not always accepted by those it is applied to. For example, the Afghan-Scottish teacher Idries Shah has been described as a neo-Sufi by the Gurdjieffian James Moore.[112]The Sufi Order in the West was founded by Inayat Khan, teaching the essential unity of all faiths, and accepting members of all creeds. Sufism Reoriented is an offshoot of it charted by the syncretistic teacher Meher Baba. The Golden Sufi Center exists in England, Switzerland and the United States. It was founded by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee to continue the work of his teacher Irina Tweedie, herself a practitioner of both Hinduism and neo-Sufism. Other Western Sufi organisations include the Sufi Foundation of America and the International Association of Sufism ..."
 
For me it (Sufi order of.the west) goes along with Jewish renewal, nondenominational Buddhism, New Thought Christianity, these various groups many look at as the loosy goosey side of religions are the interfaith intersections of all where we find those that are more accepting of many in other faiths and some if the beliefs of other faiths than they are of the beliefs of fundies of their own... It is the place I find myself at home.
 
Universalism is fine, the thing is that Sufism is not a brand....and not an "ism". There is mysticism, which is a broad catagory that applies to both individual paths and traditions within every religion, and there is the non-religious kind of mysticism too.
A Sufi is a mystic within Islam - it is a path, not a sect (although there are traditions.) It is someone that truly takes to the core doctrines of Islam and the Ahl Bayt (including Sunni Sufi's too.)

A general mystic doesn't have to believe or hold to any of that.

In tourism and such, "Sufism" has been associated a certain brand (like Mevlevi Dervishes) which attracts people.

I'm a perennialist Shi'i, I understand and take to heart the notion of a central, universal point to which all religions align and fall into place to an extent.

The thing here is distinguishing between Sufi's and Mystics inspired by Sufi-tropes/styles. The notion of "western Sufism" is a brand.
 
wil said:
... Jewish renewal, nondenominational Buddhism, New Thought Christianity ...
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For me, in line with HakimPtsid, these are so often brands, they're traditional doctrines cherry-picked and repacked for a certain market, and that market is inevitably the US.

wil said:
... these various groups many look at as the loosy goosey side of religions ...
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Well, from the other side of the fence the give-away is the lack of doctrine and dogma, that fundamentally everything is relative and you can believe pretty much what you like, pick and choose what suits you. That gives it such a broad appeal. Again we trads can only see it as unalloyed marketing, it offers the most while demanding the least ...

wil said:
... are the interfaith intersections of all where we find those that are more accepting of many in other faiths ...
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I could argue that's because the beliefs of such groups are largely anodyne. It's this liberalism accepting that liberalism. But I think you'll find (it's been my experience) that these faiths are quite quite critical of faiths that don't fall within their liberal remit. So actually they're only accepting of faiths that think/believe pretty much the same as them, but just use terms picked up from different traditions.

It's not truly universal in that sense.

One thing to beware of ... it's risky to assume 'they have fundies, but we don't' — there are fundies within all ideologies, including yours. There are fundies of the left as well as those of the right.
 
wil said:
Lol, I am in the US market.
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I know ;)

I'm not having a go at you, generally I admire your stand on sociology, I just disagree with your idea that the physical is all there is.

But if we're going to speak in stereotypes, then I'll respond in kind, my words stand generally, but there are exceptions.

The 'new faiths', that David Bentley Hart called 'boutique religions', work in almost the opposite way religion does: Religion sets a standard, they put 'It' at the centre/apex and call everyone to that, whereas the new religions put the self in the centre/apex.

What strikes me is the number of American denominations, from New Thought to Jehovah's Witnesses, which began as commercial enterprises.

TV evangelists are the same process through modern media.

This process started with what William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience called:
... for the sake of having a brief designation, I will give the title of the "Mind-cure movement." There are various sects of this "New Thought," to use another of the names by which it calls itself; but their agreements are so profound that their differences may be neglected for my present purpose, and I will treat the movement, without apology, as if it were a simple thing.

It is an optimistic scheme of life, with both a speculative and a practical side. In its gradual development during the last quarter of a century, it has taken up into itself a number of contributory elements, and it must now be reckoned with as a genuine religious power. It has reached the stage, for example, when the demand for its literature is great enough for insincere stuff, mechanically produced for the market, to be to a certain extent supplied by publishers – a phenomenon never observed, I imagine, until a religion has got well past its earliest insecure beginnings.
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This current in the US was founded in European romanticism and biblical criticism, the philosophies of Berkeley and Hume on the one hand, on spiritism and mesmerism on the other. It flowed through New England Transcendentalism (RW Emerson, HD Thoreau, etc.) and scientific optimism, on and on...

The most American feature of the various movements is a belief in the power of healthy-minded attitudes as a cure for all ills. This began as the idea that right thought cured illness (many significant figures in these movements considered themselves healed by this process). Right thought, shaped through local ideologies gave rise to the Prosperity Gospel (even though contrary to fundamental religious teachings across the mainstream religions) and the contemporary notion that "I am spiritual but not religious".

As we've discussed before, the emergence of the Jesus Seminar, the popularity of Bishop Spong, of Centering Prayer, etc., are just further examples along this arc of development, too often simply the desire to fabricate a Jesus that reflected the contemporary sociopolitical ideology, and consequently, as short-lived as trends and fashions tend to be.
 
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