Beloved Family,
So happy to be back home after nearly a week at the Parliament of the World's Religions. Since I was made a "Major Speaker" my entire event was live-streamed and now is available for viewing and download!
Originally I intended to dance for half an hour and then speak for an hour, but I was given a room where we were not allowed to move the chairs, so instead we formed a little Sufi band and sang our Dances. The sound in the room was excellent, but hearing the video, the sound quality is much worse and not really representative of what was heard live.
We also had many sessions of the Dances of Universal Peace, all very wonderful and well attended. Every day at the Parliament the Sikh community served Langar ~ free food ~ for any of the nearly 10,000 attendees, with so much love and generosity that it always brought tears of gratitude.
Progress on Murshid Sam's Dargah is going beautifully. In a few weeks the work for this year will be complete.
This Saturday-Sunday I am very please to be offering a retreat in my hometown along with one of my favorite woman Sufi teachers, Taj Inayat. You can still register online or just show up!
Next month is our annual Murshid Circle Retreat, followed by the Jamiat Khas leaders Retreat and our annual in face Ruhaniat Board of Trustees meeting.
In December, the 4th - 6th, I have the privilege of leading a retreat in Maui and January is our annual Sufi Sesshin.
And lastly, there is a wonderful opportunity to attend a Sufi Festival I am leading with Kabir Helminski in New Delhi India, Feb 9-14, 2016, right after Hazrat Inayat Khan's URS, Feb 4-6, which is residential and very reasonably priced.
Much love,
Shabda
Wazifa Practice
Recite 101x
YA BAQI ~ YA MALIK ~ YA MUHAIMIN
96. Ya Baqi (yaa baa-ḲEE)
Al-Baqi is what eternally remains. It is the everlasting, continuous, abiding duration of the real. It is revealed in the process of fana and baqa, dissolving the false self and realizing the true self. According to Sufi teachings, fana is what never was. What never was can be said to die since its existence is derivative and passes away.
Baqa is what always was, always is, and ever shall be. Thus, al-Baqi includes pre-eternity and post- eternity. There is a physical-plane root meaning of al-Baqi, "to stay in a place." It is firmly established without change in space and time. Its nature returns you to the eternal and to love. As seen with al-Azaliyy and al-Abadiyy, time is continuous, without beginning or end, and cannot be divided into specific segments.
We recommend the invocation Ya Azaliyy, Ya Abadiyy as an antidote for those who are stuck in their lives by the pressures of time and space. Ya Baqi can then be added to this pair, for completion, as the integrative, transcendental Name. See Chapter 13, The Arc of Ascent and Descent, and Chapter 15, Names of Time and Eternity. For further summary information on Ya Azaliyy and Ya Abadiyy, see the section at the end of this chapter, "More than 99 Names of Allah.
3. Ya Malik (yaa MA-lik)
The quality of al-Malik is to hold everything in the universe in the hands of the one and only being. It is an all-inclusive and majestic embrace. The word for angel, malak, is closely related to this name. Angels are made of light and are held in the hands of Allah. The light of al-Malik holds the inner essence of each and every thing. Each thing's essence never leaves this majestic embrace and never returns to it because it is permanently rooted in it. Ya Malik, thus experienced as holding everything's essence in the inner world, is naturally paired in repetition with Ya Malikal-Mulk (83), the majestic force that holds all outer forms.
By combining the two Names in repetition, you are brought to a balanced confidence in heaven and earth. Invocation of Ya Malik, Ya Malikal-Mulk is an antidote for all who feel abandoned and don't believe they belong anywhere. A person in this condition is constantly negating the reality of inner majesty or denying the reality of outer majesty. The recitation of these two related Names as a pair is also useful for those who do not feel entitled to possess things and who are afraid of the grossness of the material realm. See Ya Malikal-Mulk (83). See also Chapter 7, Allah's Opposite Qualities.
7. Ya Muhaimin (yaa mu-HAI-min)
Al-Muhaimin is the divine quality that preserves the essence of a thing from corruption through all the vicissitudes of time. The eternal in the thing, the purity of what it is in reality, is protected from being harmed by any temporal cause. It is an attribute used to describe the Qur'an.5 Al-Muhaimin affirms that translation and addendum will not diminish the Qur'an's essence. In a more general sense, what is transient passes away and therefore never truly had existence. Baqa, the eternal, is, always was, and always will be.
Thus al-Muhaimin is linked with al-Baqi (96), the eternal essence that remains. The essence of each thing, the malakut, is held in the hands of God. Al-Muhaimin describes the immutable quality by which all the 99 Names of God work in the world. A full way to invoke the protection of this sacred quality would be to recite Ya Baqi, Ya Malik, Ya Muhaimin. See Ya Baqi (96) and Ya Malik (3). See also Ya Hafiz (38), Ya Muqit (39), Ya Wakil (52), Ya Wali (76), and Ya Mani' (89), and Chapter 11, Divine Protection.
TEXT and COMMENTARY to STUDY
This month we continue reading "The Bestowal of Blessing" by Murshid Samuel Lewis, also known as Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti (One Who is Drawn to God by Grace). Read Chapters 4-6, pages 17-24.
Click here to download the document.
