I wanted to share this opportunity to hear Andrew Harvey, interviewed by Stephen Dinan of the Shift Network, talk about discovering the Sufi Way of the Beloved. The live event is over but you can access the recording here over the next few days.
Sufism is the mystical path of Islam, very different from the terrorist version that we have been hearing about so much of late. If you find, as I do, that the rhetoric around Islam and Muslims is very confronting, then you might like to know more about this tradition that celebrates the passionate experience of the love of God and the sacredness of all life.
Andrew Harvey, the speaker, describes himself as a 'Sacred Activist', one who practices the awareness of the divine in everything. You may remember that Peggy, the originator of EMF Balancing, also likes to describe herself as a practical mystic, one who practices mastery through the integration of the divine and the human. In this, she stands firmly in line with Sufi thinking. As we know, she studied many different belief systems before channelling the UCL and the EMF Balancing Technique®. Although she doesn't say, perhaps Sufism was one of these traditions. Visit Peggy's website here.
Several years ago, when I was very involved in helping professionals build websites, I was very influenced by Mark Silver and his business. Mark, as it happens, is a practicing Sufi who believes with deep passion that every act of business can be an act of love.
One of the most interesting things for me in Andrew Harvey's interview with Stephen Dinan was his exploration of what he calls the shadow side of Islam. He prefaces this by pointing out that major religions - Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism - all have their shadow side and so it is no surprise that Islam does too. Just remember the horrors of the Crusades and the Inquisition, only a couple of examples from the Christian tradition.
However, central to the Sufi tradition of Islam are two ideas: that we can only come into union with the divine when we abandon ourself to love; and that it is in the world that we have the opportunity to become all that we might be. The experience of love and living a life in which we love what we do and do what we love is central to EMF Balancing. As is the idea that the divine and the human integrate when we live the experience of being a spiritual being in a human body.
