Author Archives: DHO-Admin 1

Workshop: Nourishing Our Health

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Nourishing Our Health

A Workshop with Murad Malvin Finkelstein
Saturday, January 19, 2008
1:00 pm – 4:30 pm
Held in Portland

According to the teachings of mystic and spiritual traditions from around the world, the health of our body is inextricably linked to the health of our minds, emotions and our spiritual bodies.

In this class, we will utilize teachings and practices (sound, breath, visualization, meditation, qigong) from Sufi and Qigong/Chinese Medicine traditions to:

» find and maintain balance in the midst of the chaos of everyday life;
» listen to our bodies’ messages to allow healing in our bodies and in our lives;
» find the balance between doing and being;
» nurture ourselves.

This workshop is designed to accommodate questions of the participants and allow for an active dialogue and tailoring of the presentation to participants’ interests and needs.

Murad brings stories and teachings from the Universal Sufi tradition, Sufi Healing and Chinese Medicine. He is a senior teacher in the Sufi Ruhaniat International and the Dervish Healing Order. Murad is an acupuncturist/OMD in Eugene and the former president of the National Qigong Association. He has 25-30 years of experience as a teacher of Sufism, qigong and Oriental medicine. In his teaching, he combines the wisdom of Sufism and Taoism/Oriental Medicine.

Suggested donation: $35. Sliding scale also available.
To register, contact Frank O.

Drop-ins are welcome, but space is limited – please call prior to the workshop.

Report: DHO 2007 updates

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Dear family,

We got the financial figures in from the ‘walk around’ and Jennifer will be delivering a check for $1,733.12 to Khankah S.A.M. for renovation and repair of the hot tub.

Rug sales generated $380.00, and I shall purchase a great rug for Wali Ali & Sabura to welcome them into their new home.

Positive ripples are still going out from our “city experience,” and once again I am so proud and pleased with our family. Not only did we do it, we did it with fabulous style and with great verve. Yeah us!

A Heads-Up on Lama Upcoming:

Dates: June 23rd (Monday) – June 29th (Sunday) – 2008
Theme: Oracles and the Oracular Function (Tuning into the Spirit of Guidance)
Place: Lama Foundation, above Taos, New Mexico
Cost: To be a benefit for the Lama Foundation…more details on costs soon
(Please note – all monies collected will go to Lama)
Registration: We are still uncertain if Lama or us will do the registration – more soon.

I am hopeful we can gather together some of the pieces of the oracular puzzle, and with Murshids assistance, put them to work for us in our personal and professional lives.

Looking forwards to being on the Mountain together again.

I send all my love and many blessings,

sauluddin
October 25, 2007
Charlottesville, VA

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Dear family,

One of the “positive ripples” mentioned in Saul’s email was our re-connection with Joe Miller’s family at the Theosophical Society.

Richard Power of the SF Theosophical Society sends us this update:

The Lodge web site has now posted —

  • Almost three hundred digitized photos from the Walk, the Lodge, etc.
  • All of Joe and Guin’s sheet music w/ the lyrics
  • Eight more hours of Joe’s raps (these are from circa late 1970s, few have ever heard them)

As well as a whole lot more …

We offer it to all for free and forever (or at least as long as the Net exists) and hope these resources are used and shared by all.

Please spread the word far and wide.

For a directory of what is available — go to the Miller Archive section of the SFTS Lodge site — here is the URL —

http://sftslodge.org/category/miller-archive

Love,
Murad of Eugene

 

Frida Waterhouse: question & reply

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Dear Friends,

In our Gathekas Class we have been including a study of some of the history of the lineage of the Sufi Ruhaniat International by, in part, reading biographies of our spiritual God Parents, including Frida Waterhouse.

The (auto) biography of Frida in the Mureeds Manual says nothing of what her relationship was to Murshid Samuel Lewis or Hazrat Inayat Khan and I would like to get a better understanding of this.  I do have two books that she published, Why Me? and Tomorrow Never Comes but her books do not have references to Murshid SAM or Hazrat Inayat Khan.

Can anyone help fill in this history, all types of information about her would be welcome, including personal stories of your experiences with her if you are willing to share them (Saul?).

Love and Thanks,
Basira
Maui

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Dear Basira,

Thank you for asking the question.  And, I am so pleased that your class is taking up the historical roots and transmission of our order.

Murshid felt that it was important that his mureeds have a “past-life” reading -so that we should all be more aware of the unseen worlds, and our interactions with them.

When I was a new mureed, Murshid sent me (and Mary Sultana) to see Lois Robinson (his psychic of choice) for our readings.

Later, one of the mureeds from a Marin commune (I think it was Sara Morgan?), introduced Murshid to Frida Waterhouse, and she became his psychic of choice.

I have no idea what ever became of Lois Robinson.  She just dropped off our radar screen, and Frida took over that work.  Frida became one of Murshids ‘older’ friends and collegues (like Joe & Guin, Gene Wagner, Voica Fisk and Teddy Reich).

Frida took over the psychic portion of our training after Murshid passed, and held classes and did individual sessions with mureeds, as well as starting to train others to do similar work.

When I was doing the Rainbow Bridge, I helped publish and distribute her books.

Moineddin made her an ‘honorary’ Murshid in the Ruhaniat — as he did with Joe & Guin (amongst others).

It was from her work with us that the present incarnation, called ‘soul work,’ was developed.

Actually, I also feel that our training and attunement to the ‘unseen worlds’ has been less actively persued in more recent times.

As a partial correction to this historical process, our (2008 June) DHO gathering at Lama will have the theme of “Oracles and the Oracular Function.”

Hope this helps.  any questions?

all blessings
hakim saul

 

Report: DHO San Francisco Walk Around

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Dear family.

It was last year at Lama that this one was given the inspiration to literally follow in Murshid Sam’s footsteps, and visit the places in the Bay Area where he walked, taught and lived.

Alhamdullilah! It was a wonderful and very fulfilling experience.

This was our first “City” or Urban Retreat. Since our first Retreat in 1972 in Marin County, we have always opted to make this yearly event a ‘vacation’ and a rest for our family (many of whom are over worked and stressed in their daily jobs).

There was some trepidation as to whether we would be able to hold the energy together as we moved between meetings, eating and sleeping spaces.

I must start by saying how impressed I am by the maturity and stability of our group. We not only did it, but we did it very well, and with style.

Some highlights:

Pir Shabda helped start our gathering with a beautiful talk on the spiritual nature of health and healing, and then led us in practice.

Rabbi Pamela (Parvati) led us in a celebration of the Shabbos (Friday evening) and then we all jumped on a city bus and went – singing and laughing and doing zikr – to the Theosophical Lodge, where we celebrated Joe & Guin Miller’s (our God parents) lives and teachings, and watched as Mary Kamalduski danced, recited and sang. Truly an experience we’ll talk about for years to come.

Saturday was our “Walk Around,” and 43 of us took a chartered bus together: first we drove to Ocean Beach, singing zikr all the way, where we tuned into Murshid Sam – tuning into Nyogen Senzaki. Wonderful energy. It was great walking on the beach and calling on them both to walk through us.

Then, we all drove (with Ram Nam and more zikr) to the Palace of Fine Arts, and did zikr under the Dome. WOW! Talk about acoustics! We were as close as we could get to where Hazrat Inayat Khan posed for his picture.

Then we drove on – eating our box lunch in the bus – to the Novato Khanka – the Garden of Inayat – where Hassan and Jayanara Hertz, most graciously received us. What a wonderful place they have created and nurtured. We all gathered together, and they answered questions about what it was like living there with Murshid, and what the times then were like for us. They also brought out an old photo album, so folks could see our very old photographs, while we sipped green tea.

The next stop was a book signing in Marin for Mansur’s new book Murshid. It was at the Open Secret Bookshop, was well received, and well attended (including Pir Shabda). Very sweet, and a beautiful space.

Finally, in the spirit of Murshid SAM and Joe Miller, I led the group to a Baskin-Robbins and bought everyone an ice cream cone.

We returned via our chartered bus to the Mentorgarden in full spirits. What a joyful, and uplifting day..

The next day was our open Sufi Healing Class – and about 20 newcomers showed up.

Our family offered an enticing and illuminating presentation: Sauluddin opened with a very concise view of “Sufi Healing”; Michael Endlich presented “Jewels and Amulets”; Nasruddin Eddie Greenberg presented “Humor and Healing”; Azima Lila Forrest presented an excerpt from her “Dreaming” workshop, Abdul Shaffee Howard Ballinger presented “Healing Presence”; Murad Malvin Finkelstein presented “Listening to our Body’s messages, energy cord cutting and a general overview of Sufi Qi Gong”; Aslan Scott Sattler led us in “A General Presentation on “the Integration of Tools of Spiritual Healing in Medical Practice”; Sarfaraz Kathy Knight presented “Transitions and a Discussion of the Dying Process”; a great event led by fabulous, highly talented and creative people!

We also did the Walks of the Prophets; with Parvati and myself doing the walks of Deborah (me) and Moses (her), and then switching walks and finally putting them together as a single walk. A new and inspired experience. We also did the walk of Mary Magdalene forthe first time, and of course all the other walks of the Masters, Saints and Prophets – which are such a key note in Murshids transmission.

Plus: Parvati led us in a Hebrew Zikr, and Azima Lila Forest presented an astrological forecast for the ‘coming times.’The lesson is to keep loose, be prepared and keep the family strong, interdependent and interactive.

Finally, Laura Meltsner led us up to Precita Hill, where Murshid SAM did the Call to Prayer in Sun Seed. We did Zikr Allah, and the Maha Mudra there, and sent Love and Peace and Joy to all the lands around us. We then met in Precita Park, when Aslan led us in Murshid Sam’s original dances. What a Flash Back! And how well received by the neighbor kids – they loved it! Riding their bikes around singing Ram! Ram! Ram!

Our last day was the presentation of the DHO Fortune Cookies (with a Sifat-i-Allah inside).

All this, plus a bed time story, great food, and fabulous company.

And, now the homework for the year: Hazrat Inayat Khan brought through the Healing Prayer, Nayaz. In which he says “heal our bodies, hearts and souls.”

The “koan” for the year is: How can the soul, which is perfect, need healing?

Special thanks to Rabia Hunter for being omnipresent, and so supportive behind the scenes. To Jennifer for the registration and financial organization; and to Heather Hoppe and Abdul Shaffee who manifested beautiful invitations to our Open Sufi Healing Class and to the entire event. To Fatima who served us all yummy and delicious food. To our family who sheltered us (thanks Fadhilla and Michael), organized the wildly successful and successfully wild bus zikr adventure (Murad and Michael), the trip to the Theosophical Society (Murad) and the Siffat Fortune Cookies (Fadhilla). Plus, found and secured the dorms for us to sleep in (Jennifer and Jude). Thanks to Shakki for being our travel guide to the Theosophical Society and for being our recorder and to Jude for the beautiful name tags and open Sufi Healing Class program. Special thanks to Murad for keeping me on time and in tune – Yeah! acupuncture.

We also announced our next DHO Gathering – Lama 2008 – dates: June 23 to 29 (Monday to Sunday) – Theme: Oracles and the Oracular Function.

And finally, as this was a benefit for the Mentorgarden we raised between $1,500 and $2,000 for the Mentorgarten – (the final figures are not yet in). Alhamdulliah!

So much happened, and so much energy flowed through us – if I have forgotten or missed someones presentation or support, please forgive me – I tend to see it all as a whole event, and sometimes miss the details.

Am off this Thursday to Germany for the Ruhaniat Summer School, and then on to Estonia for a teaching weekend.

Sending all love and blessings and again, so many blessings to all those who made our “Walk Around happen.

Yours in Service to the Real,

hakim sauluddin
Charlottesville, Virginia – June 27, 2007

P.S. we also are planning a return to the Bay Area in March 2008 – to do a Rug Benefit for Planet Drum Foundation. More on this, plus what open event we’ll do a bit later.

Summer Solstice Walk on the Beach, Thursday 11am

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Toward the most beloved one,

Meet at the bottom of Judah St. at the Coffee Shop.

This is NOT Joe Millers walk although he started it….and will certainly be walking with us in spirit along with Gwen, Achim and beloved others.

Gather at 10:45 am or so for a 11am launch of our Solstice walk, bring a sandwich.

Rain or shine we walk!

Longtime Bay Area Sufi community member and San Franciscan  Hayat and Friends directs these weekly walks .

Murshida Vera Corda pbuh on more than one occasion after Joe and Gwen passed said this weekly community walk should comntinue for the good of all and al Hamdulilah it does!

This particular thursday walk space will be held for Achim (His first Urs) in two days. and of course Summer Solstice…

Bring a sandwich, poetry, open heart and mind….

toward the fun,
Rainbowheart Francis O’Hara

 

2007 DHO Meeting: June 14th-19th

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Come join us for the 2007 DHO Meeting
June 14th-19th, in San Francisco
“Walking in the Footsteps of the Teacher”

We will follow in Murshid SAM’s, Joe & Gwin Miller’s and Frida Waterhouse’s energy flow, as we visit their “favorite” places. Our base will be the Mentorgarten, with visits to as many places as we can still find open and operating. On Sunday we will all host the larger community in an “Open Sufi Healing Class” as a benefit for Mentorgarten.

Please see the attached flyer for full information,
and bottom of this email for two optional activities.

The cost for the gathering is $225/person.
This includes the following:
Lunch & dinner at Mentorgarten ($170 — no karma yoga required);
Walk-about day bus rental ($30);
A donation to Mentorgarten ($25).

We are also securing dorm space at San Francisco State College,
where we can have a whole floor to ourselves.
These are double occupancy rooms with private bathrooms.
The cost for this housing is $225/person, and includes breakfast.
(You are welcome to make your own housing arrangements.)

Contact information: for registration (both event and dorm housing): Jennifer Avian

As usual, please remember to make your checks payable to Jennifer.
[The total costs of attendance + dorm housing = $450.00]

For those of you who would like, there are two optional activities which you might want to consider when making your travel arrangements. (Our meeting begins with dinner on Thursday, and ends after the morning session on Tuesday.) For both of these activities, we will try and find out to whom you might need to RSVP.

1) The 11 A.M. Thursday Walk in the Golden Gate Park, started by Joe and Guin Miller, still happens every week. Tradition is to meet just outside the main entrance of the Arboretum — on Ninth Avenue at Lincoln Way.

San Francisco Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum: Begun in 1937 with WPA funds and charitable donations, this 70-acre horticultural extravaganza entices the senses with more than 6,000 plant species. The garden of fragrance — with signs in Braille — brings flowers alive with scent alone.

directions: http://www.sfbotanicalgarden.org/visiting/page2.html

2) There is a potluck dinner at Khankah SAM on Tuesday evenings.

Thank you Francis Rainbowheart for bringing these to our attention.

Review of Mansur’s Book: Murshid

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Cries for Attention: Nuggets of wisdom are buried in this difficult tome about American Sufi Samuel L. Lewis 
By PAUL WINE

Sufism is the mystical heart of Islam. As with most forms of mysticism, the basic goals of Sufism are to free the mind from its conditioning and attachments, dissolve the ego and awaken the soul to spiritual reality.There are numerous books about Sufi beliefs and practices–many by Sufis themselves–but any book on this topic is a bit paradoxical because, as most Sufis will tell you, the written word is quite limited in its ability to convey spiritual ideas. Deep mystical understanding, they insist, can be grasped only through communion with a spiritual teacher or murshid.A new book by Tucsonan Mansur Johnson details his three-year association with Sufi teacher Samuel L. Lewis in the San Francisco Bay area during the late 1960s. Murshid: A Personal Memoir of Life With American Sufi Samuel L. Lewis, Johnson’s seriously underedited journal of the time, examines the final years of a complex mystical guide, as well as the peaks and valleys of Johnson’s spiritual odyssey.

In the midst of California’s eclectic spiritual counterculture, Lewis was a leader of some prominence (he was profiled in a 1969 Playboy article on California’s religious cults), and his story is indeed interesting.

Lewis came from a well-to-do family (his father was an executive with the Levi Strauss and Co., his mother a Rothschild), and, from a young age, he appeared spiritually precocious. As he grew older, he demonstrated little material ambition and, consequently, became estranged from his family. He spent his life reading voraciously, writing, traveling, studying a broad range of religions with a number of teachers–including Hazrat Inayat Khan, a guiding force in the Western migration of Sufism–and working a variety of jobs from military intelligence to highway landscaping. In 1967, three years before his death, he had a vision in which he said God anointed him “spiritual leader of the hippies” and soon began teaching Sufi dances, breath work and philosophy to a growing number of young disciples.

Johnson learned about Lewis while teaching at a Michigan university and seems to have experienced an immediate calling. He soon moved his family to California, becoming one of the murshid’s most devoted disciples.

Living and traveling with Lewis, Johnson became his “esoteric secretary,” often transcribing the murshid’s enormous output of letters. A good third of the book is composed of Lewis’ correspondence, and these letters provide our clearest view of the murshid.

Lewis was a driven communicator, writing to anyone–politicians, academics, journalists, religious leaders and numerous others–who would listen (and some who didn’t want to), descanting on topics ranging from arcane mystical concepts, to the Vietnam War, DDT, the Black Panthers and Joe Namath. Lewis’ assertions are generally lucid, but sometimes–he says that the rhythm of a Tennyson poem helps him foretell the future–we need a mystical Rosetta stone to understand him.

However, Lewis’ constant theme was his anger and frustration over not being universally hailed as a spiritual teacher. He complains to everyone about being rejected and ignored, shouting to the rooftops about his spiritual eminence, often sending carbon copies to the offending parties. This overarching bombast raises a question that the book never satisfactorily answers: What exactly was Lewis’ allure?

Johnson writes that, in his case, he wanted to find out what was behind the murshid’s braggadocio, and that he also had an almost childlike need for guidance. Johnson tells of his wholehearted quest for enlightenment, complicated by the painful breakup of his marriage after his wife’s affair with another murshid. Johnson gives glimmers of Lewis’ empathy and insight, and of some kind of mental attunement between them, but we’re hard pressed to pinpoint how the murshid actually helped him.

What we get more than a glimmer of, though, is a kitchen midden of utterly useless minutiae, including shopping expeditions, house and auto repairs, meals, weather reports, trip routes, the murshid’s day-by-day itineraries and his endless pontifications.

“My practice,” Johnson writes, “is … remembering what I do and recording it … to make it more real.”

This material is all very real, but it would be far more accessible and compelling if Johnson’s journal had been turned into a tightly focused narrative with more about his inner struggles before meeting Lewis, the spiritual ramifications of his divorce and his reflections since the murshid’s death.

Still, this is a worthwhile read for those willing to sift through the clutter for the occasional nuggets of wisdom and a taste of an authentic spiritual journey.

Buy this book from Amazon.com!

Murshid: A Personal Memoir of Life With American Sufi Samuel L. Lewis
Mansur Johnson
Peaceworks Publications
ISBN: 0915424169
$25

 

 

Original URL: http://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/Books/Content?oid=oid:93957

enjoy!
~heather

Ritual in India

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Hi Saul,

I hope all is well with you. We’re back, and there really IS no place like home

Besides me being a pilgrim on this voyage, and being with our Sangha (there were 74 of us plus) it fell to me to be Musician, Physician and Technician — and I tried to see these roles in that order.

And in addition it seems to be one of my roles to make sure the Healing Ray is not absent from our gatherings. So during the Urs celebration — on the 6th, which was the final day of public Urs events at the Dargah, I scheduled and conducted the ritual, with the support of the other DHO folks present. Neshamah assisted and Rajaji (Roger) sat to my left. Right in his burial chamber.

I had great joy in doing this, and also in the thought that we were bringing it back home to Papa (along with the Dances, the Zikrs, the UW, and the Ruhaniat’s special energy).

I made a variation on the script, which was only for that exceptional day, and I announced that I was doing so.

As I say, I’ve done this before, introduced the Healing Ritual into a large gathering; and it hasn’t felt right to me to limit ourselves to ten names on the list and exclude everyone else’s names. So as I sat at the Dargah it came up within me to do a slight variation. Before the actual service, while we were chanting “Allah Shaffee, Allah Kaffee” I brought the voices down soft and then invited the forty-odd participants (many brown faces as well as white) to call out the name of anyone who wants healing, to put all those names into the energized space.

Then during the ritual itself, instead of ten names I had my assistant name ten CONDITIONS which I had written down, and we had the usual silence for each.

I’m going to write them down here …

  1. All those afflicted with the pain and suffering of illness, injury and aging
  2. All those afflicted with the pain and suffering of stress and disease of the mind.
  3. All those afflicted with the pain and suffering of anger and hatred.
  4. All those afflicted with the pain and suffering of poverty gone wrong.
  5. All those afflicted with the pain and suffering of wealth gone wrong.
  6. All those afflicted with the pain and suffering of violence and the threat of violence.
  7. All those afflicted with the pain and suffering of social upheaval and displacement.
  8. All those afflicted with the pain and suffering of abusing or of being abused in any form.
  9. All those afflicted with the pain and suffering of attachment to who we think we are, and of trying to defend the ego above all.
  10. All those afflicted with the pain and suffering of separation from the Truth.

It was a most fulfilling day for this one, and I believe an excellent manifestation of the initiation with which I have been entrusted.

All love and light to you — Abdul Shaffee