The journey of each talk covers many topics and weaves a tapestry of interwoven ideas, concepts, and explanations to reflect on, and inspire us to become more. Each talk is approximately 30 minutes long.
At the core of Islam, and at the core of Sufism, Tasawwuf, is the idea of unity. On the one hand we have illusion and on the other hand we have haqq. Now, illusion is incapable of being unified because it’s illusory and it’s duplicitous. Satan is the hallmark of duplicity. Satan does his work […]
When a diamond is pulled from the ground it doesn’t look like what you see in engagement rings, it’s a diamond in the rough. It’s sort of a cloudy look, and then it’s taken and processed. First they put it in a tumbler which kind of smooths it out a little bit, and then they
To come into the presence of a true gnāna, of a true kamil sheikh, of a true enlightened being, is a great blessing. And if you have had that experience, you have to thank God on a regular basis for allowing that experience to occur to you. And you have to be thankful to the
In this world most countries that have a functioning government have developed laws and these laws are codified, they’re put into books, and they’re available to everyone to look at, and they’re used to keep order. Places where there are dictators they try to have less rules because they want to make them up as
Imagine along the coastline, like we have on the east coast of the US, and imagine many different harbors, and many different boats. Now, just because they come from different harbors, does not indicate where they’re going, it just indicates where they’re starting. The ocean has to be crossed, and it doesn’t matter which harbor
Man is a fragile creature and susceptible to many different influences and diseases; diseases of the body and diseases of the mind. And all of these can incapacitate him to the point of his being totally unable to function within the world. Now, functioning means more than one thing. For instance, when a psychiatrist labels
Perception is a big part of our existence. We perceive and we draw conclusions, and the conclusions that we draw have impact on us. Not everybody draws the same conclusions from the same set of circumstances; not everybody sees things the same way. There’s an app now called Fandango, which has to do with movies,
After Medina and Mecca became adversaries, while the Prophet was living in Medina, and Mecca kept attacking Medina, an Arab came to the Prophet and said to him, “Place a curse on the Arabs in Mecca.” And the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, responded, “I did not come into this world as a
There was a sheikh in Baghdad who had fifty disciples, and one morning he gave them each a chicken and said, “Go kill the chicken where nobody will see and bring it back to me.” And a couple hours later they all came back, and there was one particularly slow disciple, whose name was Ahmed,
We are in a dilemma. Why? Because we don’t know that much, we think we know a lot, but we really don’t know that much. The prophet, sallā llāhu ʿalay-hi wa-sallam, at one time stopped getting revelation, and he said, “What will become of me?” Imagine, the prophet said, “What will become of me?” So,
