Essence of the One
Hello Rumi Tuesday! Love is my only companion. It is my beginning, my existence, and my end. My soul calls to me from within: O negligent on the Path of Love, rescue me! ~ Jalal ad-din Rumi, Translated by Iraj Anvar & Anne Twitty. Read more
Hello Rumi Tuesday! Love is my only companion. It is my beginning, my existence, and my end. My soul calls to me from within: O negligent on the Path of Love, rescue me! ~ Jalal ad-din Rumi, Translated by Iraj Anvar & Anne Twitty. Read more
Hello and Welcome! We are hosting another LIVE Panel Discussion – right here on this page! Do you ever struggle with the question of when to accept what is happening in your life and in the crazy world we’re living in and when to step up and do something? The Serenity Prayer says, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”... Read more
Hello Rumi Tuesday! Do not worry if all the candles in the world flicker and die. We have the SPARK that starts the FIRE. ~ Jalal ad-din Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks. To witness this inner light, even to catch a quick glimpse of the eternal flame will leave you forever changed, filled with a knowing of a love so great and a passion to seek its essence, to drink its golden nectar, to bathe in its sweetness, and to serve all who bear and reflect even the most subtle reflection of this divine majesty. Read more
Hello Rumi Tuesday! Let yourself be silently DRAWN by the stronger PULL of what you really LOVE. ~ Jalal ad-din Rumi, Translated by Coleman Barks. When the earth, moon and sun all align, the pull of gravitational forces is so strong, it draws the oceans to those heavenly bodies which reflect and carry a magnificent light... Read more
The wound is the place where LIGHT enters you. ~ Jalal ad-din Rumi -Translated by Coleman Barks. Perhaps the hardest place to expose, it’s not easy to to allow it to be seen, but behind every wound is a place that was once only seeking Light, and still seeks that Light today. Within every wound is a yearning to return to consciously subsist in the Unconditional Love. Read more
Just last week, a few days prior to the Orlando shootings, I was hiking with a friend at the Grand Canyon. She asked me what I thought about gay marriage, not about the legalities that come with marriage, but about homosexual partnerships. Given the recent shootings at the gay bar in Orlando, I thought it timely to share these thoughts with you. Read more
When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy. ~ Jalal ad-din Rumi -Translated by Coleman Barks. I spent this past weekend in a writer’s retreat, answering a strong call from within to turn one of my courses into a book. On the way to the retreat, traveling with a friend in a rental car, we found a CD in the car stereo. No doubt a divinely-orchestrated message from the Universe, the CD was... Read more
The events of the recent shootings in Orlando leave many questions. Among them are the interpretations of Islamic Law. Was the shooter acting in accordance with Islamic Law? Could such an act really be condoned by the religion of Islam? Our faculty, Amany Shalaby, who holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Islamic Studies from Islamic College of Advancing Studies and a Master’s degree in Comparative Philosophy of Religions from the Islamic College of Advancing Studies at Middlesex University in London,... Read more
Why are you so enchanted by this world when a mine of gold lies within you? ~Jalal ad-din Rumi -Translated by Coleman Barks. A beautiful quote for the start of Ramadan, the holiest month in the Islamic calendar. This is a time of fasting and prayer, a time for charity, a time for introspection, a time for going within to be alone with God in your own heart, and with community in giving and sharing and loving. Read more
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers that you have built against it. ~ Jalal ad-din Rumi -Translated by Coleman Barks. I like to follow this poem with “and release those barriers to be the love within you.” It is the barriers to love that keep us constricted in the finite realities of our physical bodies and material world. Releasing... Read more
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