Beloved Family,
Greetings of a warm embrace during this trying time for humanity on our precious planet!
I encourage us all to reinvigorate our daily practice to give us the stamina and stability to ride the waves of the world's difficulties and the changing emotions and experiences which are arising in our hearts.
Naturally, I have no travel schedule but have had the privilege of teaching online. I just finished a 7-week course for the Shift Network with some 350 students. The shift course as a recording will be available, likely within a week, to people who register, either paying the fees they request or through the Shift Network’s very generous scholarship program. So, if you want to follow the course and can’t afford it, just ask for a scholarship. Inshallah, I will offer another course for Shift sometime in the future.
I am also delighted with the Ruhaniat Family ZOOM Gatherings we have had and encourage you to come and build community by “Holding Hands in Virtual Space” every other Saturday. Our next gathering June 27th will feature our Next Gen Sufis offering their guidance and wisdom on "Racial Justice and Spiritual Liberty”.
Feeling how fractured the world is right now I would like to continue with YA JABBAR - the Healer of fractured existence - as our wazifa for the month. Not only sending our prayers and aspirations far and wide but also shining the light of transformation into our fractures. We can combine it with YA AZIM - bringing realization right into the bones!
Sending all love and blessings,
Shabda
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Wazifa Practice
Recite 101x
YA JABBAR ~ YA 'AZIM
9. Ya Jabbar (yaa jab-BAAR)
Al-Jabbar is an expression of divine power that allows you to accomplish things or to act in the world. It is a healing strength. It carries the root meaning of setting a broken bone to heal it. Al-Jabbar means the strength to continuously heal all things all the time, the strength to heal brokenness. It is compelling, but only in the sense of stabilizing you in a consistent direction of movement.
When recited, Ya Jabbar empowers the sincere practitioner with an enduring strength so that nothing can shake you. Through embodying this quality your existence becomes unified. It is the mender of our fractured existence.
33. Ya 'Azim (yaa 'a-ḌḤEEM)
Al-'Azim actualizes the divine presence. It involves feeling this presence in the depth of your soul, literally in your very bones. Al-'Azim comes from al-'adaam, which means to grow strong in the bones. It is the experience of the infinite in your deepest, essential self, as well as in the world outside. Al-'Azim means to embody the divine presence in a complete way, a physical way. A most difficult part of human actualization is reaching the stage of being able to bring the structure of your inner realization into balance with the structure of your outward manifestation in the world.
The invocation of Ya 'Azim is a very helpful practice for all who pay attention to realization in an abstract sort of way, but who cannot bring their realization out and function with it in daily life. It is a divine quality that is called on for the accomplishment of extraordinary aims. There is an awesome or overwhelming feeling connected with this Name. The root of 'Azim alludes to the hundredth or greatest Name of God, the unknown Name. See Chapter 10, Infinite Presence.
To hear the pronunciation: Ya Jabbar ~ Ya 'Azim
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Text and Commentary to Study
This month we continue reading and practicing the lessons on meditation from the Githa Dhyana: Meditation, by Murshid Samuel Lewis
Read Series 1: Numbers 4 - 8(A), pages 12-21
Click to download
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Juvenile Osprey
Juvenile Golden Oriole
Acorn Woodpecker
Mama feeding juvenile Scrub Jay
Juvenile Stilt
Canadian Geese Family
Juvenile Mallards
Mallard
Mockingbird in flight
White-tailed Kite carrying lunch
Band-Tailed Pigeon
Clark's Grebe