User:Qutub-e Irshad

 We are all a part of the One God behind the many manifestations seeking the good, the true, and the beautiful, and expressing and manifesting the love of God through love of fellow creatures and, as Indian Spiritual Master Meher Baba described true worship and devotion, "to harm no oone in thought word or deed." 

We are also beings suspended between interesting dualities in the material. social, and cultural dimensions. As Martin Buber pointed out we navigate between genuinely connecting and relating (which he called the "I-and-Thou" relationship) and manipulation and objectification which he called the "I-It" modality (which is an inauthentic avoidance of and absence of true relationship.) 

We are also beings who, as Ernest Becker explains have an animal body (fated to die) and a symbolic self (thinking in terms of the exercise of free will, and denying death). Accoring to Ernest Becker, human beings deny death in two senses. (1) First we ignore it as the greatest repression. (2) Second we seek to overcome and transcend death by creating cultural artifacts that last beyond generations and centuries. Becker asserts that these cultural artifacts provide "symbolic immortality," and consist of "immortality projects." We are motivated by our fear of death to conquer it symbolically. The cultures in which we participate provide models of heroism, both the "cultural heroism," of everyday virtuous living, and the "cosmic heroism" of the ultimate quest to relate to the sacred, eternal, or divine reality or Personal Being. Kierkegaard's desciption of Abraham as the "Knight of Faith" is a classic example. 

The Sufis represent the dimension of spirituality and mysticism within -- and sometimes even beyond -- Islam. The Sufis disclose the tendency, as do Christians, of recognizing that all of creation is alive as a part of God and that we are all relating to and returning to God as the Divine Beloved who loves "you more than you can ever love yourself." (Meher Baba). A central message of the Sufis involves the practice of what Becker called "cultural heroism," the practice of manners, morals, hospitality, and caring for and respecting people, an art called ''adab. Adab ''comes from a root that means to hold a feast and give hospitality. The Sufis think of humanity as a caravan of the beautiful stoppiing at waystations and caravanserais where we share the wine of love and participate in a conversation of communion called  sohbet  -- a word that means both companionship and teaching. The Sahib is the master of such conversations of communion. Some  <span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;border:1ptnonewindowtext;padding:0in;">Sahibs <span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;border:1ptnonewindowtext;padding:0in;">are Shaykh as-Suhba (Masters who spiritually train students in spirituality through relationship, communion, and action). These are the <span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;border:1ptnonewindowtext;padding:0in;">Murshids, <span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;border:1ptnonewindowtext;padding:0in;">the guides. Then there is also the Sahib at-ta'lim (Masters of knowledge) who teaches the body of knowledge (corpus/corpa) of the intellectually inscribed texts of Sufi cosmology, psycholgy, poetry, and even music. <span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;">

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<p style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;line-height:15pt;"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;border:1ptnonewindowtext;padding:0in;">Music is a major part of the Sufi tradition which highlights the spiritual practice of "listening" (sema/sama') to music as a means of meditation. The Sufis have three major practices: <span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;">

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<p style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;line-height:15pt;"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;border:1ptnonewindowtext;padding:0in;">(1) <span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;border:1ptnonewindowtext;padding:0in;">Zikr -- <span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;">Remembering God -- a meditation, a consious awareness of always remembering God and knowing that one is always in the presence of God, often through chanting names of God and sac red phrases aloud.

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<p style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;line-height:15pt;"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;border:1ptnonewindowtext;padding:0in;">(2) Muhasaba -- Self analysis, monitoring of one's actions, or moral inventory, i.e., confession of sins, shotcomings, and character defects, and <span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;">

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<p style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;line-height:15pt;"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;border:1ptnonewindowtext;padding:0in;">(3) Sohbet -- the association and fellowship among students and especially with the teacher of Sufi master, who may sometimes give formal teachings, or may convey teaching through presence and conact, rather than through words. <span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;">

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<p style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;line-height:15pt;"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;border:1ptnonewindowtext;padding:0in;">As Shakespeare said, "If music be the food of love, play on." This is what Mevlana Jalauddin Rum (1207-1273), the great Sufi saint and poet realized, cultivated, attained, and disseminated. Music gives us access to each others' hearts -- and the "Book of the heart...[as Meher Baba said] holds the keys to the mysteries of life," leading to "a happy blending of the head and the heart." <span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;">(Meher Baba, <span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;border:1ptnonewindowtext;padding:0in;">God Speaks <span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif;">, p. xxxvi.)