Santa Cruz Sufi Center

"The ultimate sense of love is not particular thoughts, or feelings, or emotions. Ultimate Love is the absence of any disturbances or hate; which is the nature ...of the truth, which is the nature of the true self, absence of all hate. And that true self is love. That is why we say the true self is spacious and luminous." Read more from DREAM YOGA interview with Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche https://www.sufijournal.org ARTWORK Cameron Gray #sufijournal #spirituality #mindfulness #mysticism #sufism"

How can You ever leave my sight when You are the light of my eyes And have come to rest in the midst of my heart and soul?... I have been freed from self, with just one glance You bought my existence and I became your slave. You are the king of beauty and all hearts are Your captives. You alone have heard this well-known secret. Your love always rends the veils. Yet You have split open my heart with the arrow of Your eyelash. O Bird of Truth Still flying from district to district Tell me: have you ever flown to any district but His? Ask the false claimant if with his heart's hand He has ever picked a blossom from the garden of love? Silence, Nurbakhsh, for in the faith of the people of heart, You have chosen a good direction to pray: towards the Beloved. - Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh www.sufijournal.org

...According to al-Ghazl, the heart is responsible for a special kind of inner perception of religious value, and is a container of knowledge of the good th...ings of religion. He writes beautifully of the heart as a kind of mirror for spiritual reality, and often speaks in metaphors of knowledge as a light being cast into the heart. Speaking of our understanding of God’s attributes, for instance, he writes that the heart is like a mirror through which one can see clearly everything that falls on it if it is cleared of all impurities therein, and, speaking more generally of religious knowledgesays that it is not acquired through much learning, [but] is a light cast in heart. Excerpt from the article: Heart or Rational Soul? Al-Ghazl’s Early Insights into the Reasons of the Heart, by M. Coetsee. SUFI Issue 92 - (NEW!) - Available in print and digital! www.sufijournal.org Artist credit: Marilyn Marriottson

If we think of Absolute Being as a boundless sea, all creatures are like waves of this sea. The wave forms make them appear distinct from the sea. When the wav...e forms, which consist of the ego and its thoughts, disapear, only the water and the sea remains. The wave-form is dependent and transitory, while the sea is ever the sea. From God's Rememberance, by Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh SUFI Issue 61 Artist credit : Nasrollah Afjei To access current and past issues of SUFI, go to www.sufijournal.org

Sufis have always warned against becoming bewitched by the intellect on the path towards the truth. Religious discourses and moral principles are often presente...d in absolute terms. Those who approach spirituality by way of rationality will have the illusion of understanding divine words in absolute terms and judge others accordingly. This is the crux of the Sufi critique of the rational approach to spirituality. It gives one the appearance of understanding the words of God, thereby creating a deluded feeling of superiority over others. Here the intellect only feeds the ego in its enterprise. Moreover, this false sense of understanding prevents one from applying spiritual principles in one’s daily life due to self-satisfaction. A yet more dangerous aspect of a so-called rational approach to religion is the insistence that one’s own spiritual tradition is the only path towards the truth. This, of course, is the main cause of religious fanaticism and dogmatism. Such fanaticism stems from accepting religious principles literally as absolute and the words of God. The rational conclusion from this premise then is to think that others who do not adhere to such principles are lost and damned for eternity. For the Sufis spiritual truth is the realization that we are an insignificant part of the Whole from which we have been separated. Our purpose in life is to return to the Whole and to become once again unified with It. Such realization is only possible through love, purification of the self, and years of struggle with the ego. To give up intellect and rationality in Sufism means to practice love first and foremost. Practicing love means to love indiscriminately. Love, unlike reason, is blind. It does not ask questions; it does not listen to pros and cons. The path of love is inclusive. It is not concerned with gender, sexual orientation, color or race. Nor is it concerned with self-preservation. The right instrument on the path of love is the heart. The heart, unlike the intellect, is an instrument of intuitive and direct knowledge of the divine. While the intellect has its seat in one’s brain, the heart cannot be localized. It consists of the entire being of a human being. Just as the physical heart keeps us physically alive, the spiritual heart keeps us alive spiritually. It guides us through our struggles with the ego, the practice of loving and ultimately the return to the Source. It goes without saying that not every religious or spiritual practice can free us from the bond of the intellect and the ego. For this reason we need some degree of rationality to discern what is true and plausible. To use a metaphor borrowed from Wittgenstein, the power of our intellect and reasoning is like a ladder we should use to find the right spiritual path, but once we climb the ladder we will have to discard it. Excerpt from: The Limit of Reason and The Practice of Sufism By Dr. Alireza Nurbakhsh SUFI Issue 91 - NEW! Artist Credit: Walter Kitundu

Be content with what is given And loosen your knotted brow For the door of choice Has not been opened for you and me.... Hafez SUFI Issue 72

"Blind me, beautiful sun Fill my eyes until I may see nothing but light. Burn me, beautiful sun Make my flesh as nothing... bow my head in the dust of myself. By the great solar winds of your burning Fling me into the arms of my Beloved." -Patricia Sweeney Sufi Journal, Issue 82 Artist credit: Vladimir Kush

Devotional practice has nothing to do with rosary, prayer-rug, or robes; The true practice of devotion is but serving others.... Excerpt from 'The Message of Sufism', discourse by Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh SUFI Issue 57

Game of Hearts this game of Hearts we play for you... wild wagers cheating drinking just gambits to win our share while you cheer our schemes stroke our lust ignore our greed trump us all with one winning smile shuffling then reshuffling Reality we bluff you raise the stakes fatally draw us in sweep the table of Existence clean leave us broke and push away laughing because that final winning trick is always yours indeed the very face on that card is your face! by Roger Loff SUFI Issue 90 - NEW! Image credit: Cliff Spohn

O heart spend time with one who knows the heart, And sit only under the tree that displays beautiful flowers. In this perfume market do not wander like an idle ...person, Go to the shop of the merchant who sells real ambrosia. Do not put forth your begging bowl every time you see a boiling pot, For not all dishes can satisfy your hunger. Not all canes contain sugar, not all mundane things posses the sacred, Not every eye can cast the divine glance, and not every sea produces pearls. The awakened heart is like a lamp which illuminates one's path, Leave behind your imaginations and enter the turbulent world of divine fervor. Rumi SUFI Issue 55