Prayer of the Heart in Christian & Sufi Mysticism guides the reader through the stages of mystical prayer. Mystical prayer is a way to create a living relationship with the Divine within the heart. Drawing on Christian and Sufi sources such as St. Teresa of Avila, Attar, St. John of the Cross, and Rumi, as well as from his own experience, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee describes how prayer is first born of need, but then takes one deep within the heart, into the stages of Union and Ecstasy. Through mystical prayer, one is drawn beyond any words into the interior silence of real communion with God. Here, in the silence within the heart, a meeting and merging takes place that carries us beyond our self into the mystery of divine presence, into the secret nature of love’s oneness.
Prayer of the Heart in Christian and Sufi Mysticism explores the inner listening of the heart, and the secret of ‘pray without ceasing’ in which we discover how prayer becomes alive within the heart. Finally there is a chapter on the need at this time to pray for the Earth. How can we pray for the well-being of the Earth? How can we include the Earth in our prayers and our heart?
This little book is an offering of the heart that brings together the Christian and Sufi mystical traditions in the oneness of love to which they belong. It will benefit any practitioner of prayer, anyone who is drawn to discover a relationship with God within their heart.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault
Introduction
1. Prayer and Listening
2. Stages of Prayer
3. The Jesus Prayer and the Dhikr
4. The Circle of Love
5. The Heart Prays
6. Prayer for the Earth
7. Personal Prayer
“In our prayers and devotions, we need to reconnect with the sacred substance in creation. We need to place the earth within our hearts, and nourish it with our love, and offer it in remembrance of God.”
Excerpts from chapter 6 in “Prayer of the Heart in Christian & Sufi Mysticism”, a new book by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee.
We are living in a time of ecological devastation, the catastrophic effect of our materialistic culture on the ecosystem. Our rivers are toxic, the rainforests slashed and burned, vast tracts of land made a wasteland due to our insatiable desires for oil, gas, and minerals. We have raped and pillaged and polluted the earth, pushing it into the dangerous state of imbalance we call climate change. Creation itself is now calling to us, sending us signs of its imbalance, and the soul of the world, the anima mundi, which the ancients understood as the spiritual presence of the earth, is crying out. We can see these signs in all the recent floods and droughts, feel it in the poisoning of the land from pesticides and other contaminants. Those whose hearts are open may hear it too, in the cry of the world soul, of the spiritual being of our mother the earth. It is a cry of need and despair: human beings, who were supposed to be the guardians of the planet, who long ago were taught the sacred names of creation,(95)have forgotten their responsibility and instead have systematically and heedlessly desecrated and destroyed the earth on a global scale.
The Sufi Perspective on the use of dreams following a psycho-spiritual transformation process
Nigel Hamilton is the director of the Centre for Counselling and Psychotherapy Education, a Transpersonal Psychotherapy Training Centre and Clinic in London, where he lectures and practices as a Psychotherapist; UK representative for the Sufi Order International: originally trained as a Physicist, working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the use of light in Energy Storage Research.
Abstract
The use of dreams as a tool for motivating the process of a person’s psycho-spiritual transformation is discussed. Traditional descriptions of such a process in Sufism have been poetic (Faraddin Attar) or esoteric (Ib’n Arabi). This paper looks at the dreams recorded during a profound psycho-spiritual transformation process from a Sufi perspective, using a phenomenological method to describe the “leaps in consciousness” that the Sufis refer to in their literature.
The results of a quantitative analysis of the frequency of occurrence of colours and light in this person’s dreams are also presented, compared and contrasted with the descriptions of the process found in the Sufi literature and the phenomenological analysis. The use of such research methods shows that dreams do indeed reflect the profound changes in consciousness, and that these changes take place in a “step-wise” manner.
This paper is a fresh look at a phenomenon that, if taken seriously, could have important consequences for our assumptions about the potential and limits of rational thinking. For example, there may be other realms of human experience, universes or planes of consciousness, which our modern civilisation has yet to explore and harness
As human beings we stand on the threshold between two realities: the world of material existence and the world of spiritual Being. The “knowing heart” is the sacred place where these two dimensions meet and are integrated.
In Sufi teaching the human heart is not a fanciful metaphor but an objective organ of intuition and perception. It is able to perceive all that is beautiful, lovely, and meaningful in life—and to reflect these spiritual qualities in the world, for the benefit of others. Every human heart has the capacity and the destiny to bring that world of divine reality into this world of appearances.
The Sufis, mystics of Islam, have been educators of the heart for some fourteen centuries. Their teachings and methods are designed to help us awaken and purify the heart, to learn to listen to our deepest knowing. In The Knowing Heart, Kabir Helminski presents the Sufi way as a practical spirituality suitable for all cultures and times—and offers insights that are especially valuable for our life in today’s world. In cultivating a knowing heart, we learn to experience a new sense of self, transform our relationships, and enhance our creative capacities. Most important, we learn how to meet the spiritual challenge of our time: to realize our sacred humanness.
Kabir Helminski is the author of Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness and the Essential Self, as well as the translator of numerous books of Sufi literature and especially Rumi. He is the codirector, with his wife, Camille Helminski, of the Threshold Society, a nonprofit organization dedicated to sharing the knowledge and practice of Sufism. As the publisher of Threshold Books for some twenty years, he was largely responsible for making Rumi the most widely read poet of our time. As a producer and writer of Sufi music, he has gained recognition for numerous recordings, including his own Garden within the Flames. He is a representative of the Mevlevi tradition founded by Jelaluddin Rumi.
Excerpt from the Interview with Kabir Helminski, Science and Nonduality Anthology
What is mysticism? How is it different to spirituality? And why is mysticism important at this moment in time?
The spiritual journey can be most simply described as a way to access the light of our soul — the beautiful light with which we came into the world. On this journey we make an inner relationship with this light of our divine nature — the spirit that is within each of us. Through this relationship we come to know our true self and be nourished by the deeper meaning of our soul.
Spiritual paths and teachings give us access to the tools and guidance to do this inner work. For example, the practice of meditation can help to still the mind so that we are no longer distracted by its continual chatter. Psychological inner work can free us from the traumas, anger, anxiety and other feelings that may cover our light. Gradually we come to know more of our true nature, learn to live in the light of our real self. It is said that the goal of every spiritual path is to live a guided life, guided by that within us which is eternal.
The mystical journey may begin with making a relationship with one’s inner light, but the mystic is drawn on a deeper journey toward love’s greatest secret: that within the heart we are one with the divine. The fire of mystical love is a burning which destroys all sense of a separate self, until nothing is left but love Itself. While the spiritual seeker is drawn to the light of this fire, the mystic is the moth consumed by it’s flames. Rumi, love’s greatest mystical poet, summed up his whole life in two lines:
And the result is not more than these three words:
I burnt, and burnt, and burnt.
The mystical path takes us into the center of the heart where this mystery of love takes place. Initially this love is often experienced as longing, a deep desire for God, the Beloved, Divine Truth, or simply an unexplained ache in the heart. Mystics are lovers who are drawn toward a love in which there is no you or me, but only the oneness of love Itself. And they are prepared to pay the ultimate price to realize this truth: the price of themselves. In the words of the 13th century Christian mystic Hadewych of Antwerp:
Those who were two, at first,
are made one by the pain of love.
Gradually we discover that this love and longing slowly and often painfully destroy all our outer and inner attachments, all the images we may have of our self. The Sufis call this process being taken into the tavern of ruin, through which we are eventually made empty of all except divine love, divine presence.
This is an ancient journey in which the heart is awakened to the wonder and beauty, as well as the terror, of divine love. It is celebrated in the Bible in the Song of Songs: “He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.” And over the centuries mystics of all faiths have written their love stories. Some mystics have been persecuted, like the Sufi al-Hallaj who was crucified for publically proclaiming the secret of divine oneness, “I am the Truth.” Known as the prince of lovers, he expressed the mystical reality: “I am He whom I love, He whom I love is me.”
Mystics may be drawn inward, but the oneness of the divine also embraces the outer world. When the eye of the heart is open all of creation reveals its divine nature; everything is seen as an expression, a manifestation of the One Being. Mystics are also involved in the demands of everyday life. One of Christianity’s most loved mystics, St. Teresa of Avila, worked tirelessly founding nunneries and looking after her nuns, while at the same time mystical prayer took her into ever deepening states of inner absorption, oneness and ecstasy. Mysticism does not mean to retire from life, but to live the unitive life. “God,” St. Teresa would say, “lives also among the pots and pans.”
The truth of mystical love is one of humanity’s great heritages. It should not be confused with its cousin, spiritual life. The spiritual journey is a wonderful way to come closer to what is sacred. It a way to live in the light of our divine nature, to be nourished by the mystery and meaning of the soul. It opens the door to what really belongs to us as sacred beings. But mysticism is quite different. The moth who feels the warmth of the fire is on a very different journey to the moth drawn into the flames themselves. This is the ancient journey from separation back to union, from our own self back to a state of oneness with God. Step by step we walk along the path of love until finally we are taken by love into love; we are taken by God to God, and there is no going back, only a deepening and deepening of this love affair of the soul.
Even if we are not all drawn to tread the path of the mystic, we need to be reminded that this note of divine love belongs to all of us. In a time of so much division in the world, it is important to reclaim this primal truth that belongs to our heritage: this great song of the soul that celebrates the oneness that is within the heart of each of us and underlies all of creation. This has particular relevance when we confront our present ecological crisis. We can no longer afford to think of the environment as something separate, outside of us. We need an awareness of the “oneness of being” of which we are all a part, and actions that come from this awareness. This awareness of unity is one of the most important contributions of the mystic at this moment in time.
Within the heart of each of us, within the heart of humanity, is this song of mystical love. It has been present for millennia celebrating the divine unity that is our real nature, and the deepest secret of our relationship with God. Hearing the many voices that today so easily consume our attention, it is easy for us to forget this quiet voice of divine love. And yet it is one of the great secrets of humanity, passed down from lover to lover, needing to be embraced, to be known, to be lived.
Prayer is a way to be with the divine — from the prayer born from need, where we use words to express our needs, to the deeper prayer that takes us beyond any words into the oneness and silence within the heart. This video is about the simplicity of the “Prayer of the Heart”:
PRAYER – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Prayer is the simplest and most natural way to communicate with the divine. Prayer is the heart speaking. There are the prescribed prayers, the rituals of inner communion. But there are also our personal prayers, our way of being with the sacred that is our deepest nature and that of the world around us. In whatever way we are drawn to pray, there is a pressing need at this time to include the earth in our prayers.
We are living in a time of ecological devastation, in which our materialistic culture has had a catastrophic effect on the ecosystem. Our rivers are toxic, the rainforests slashed and burned, vast tracts of land made a wasteland due to our insatiable desires for oil, gas and minerals. We have raped and pillaged and polluted the earth until it is in a dangerous state of imbalance we call climate change. If we dare to listen, creation itself is now calling to us, sending us signs of its imbalance.
We can see these signs in the increasing floods and droughts, feel it in a land that has been poisoned with pesticides, and those whose hearts are open may hear the cry of the world soul, of the spiritual being of our mother the earth. It is a cry of need and despair, that humanity who was supposed to be the guardian of the planet has forgotten its responsibility and instead desecrates and destroys the earth on a global scale.
The earth needs our prayers more than we know. It needs us to acknowledge its sacred nature, that it is not just something to use and dispose. Many of us know the effectiveness of prayers for others, how healing and help is given, even in the most unexpected ways. There are many ways to pray for the earth.
It can be helpful first to acknowledge that it is not “unfeeling matter” but a living being that has given us life. And then we can sense its suffering: the physical suffering we see in the dying species and polluted waters, the deeper suffering of our collective disregard for its sacred nature. Would we like to be treated just as a physical object to be used and abused? Would we like our sacred nature, our soul, to be denied?
For centuries it was understood that the world was a living being with a soul, and that we are a part of this being. Once we remember this in our minds and in our hearts, once we hear the cry of our suffering, dying world, our prayers will flow more easily and naturally. We will be drawn to pray in our own way. There is the simple prayer of placing the world as a living being within our hearts when we inwardly offer our self to the divine.
We remember the sorrow and suffering of the world in our hearts and ask that the world be remembered, that divine love and mercy flow where it is needed. That even though we continue to treat the world so badly, divine grace will help us and help the world — help to bring the earth back into balance. We need to remember that the power of the divine is more than that of all the global corporations that continue to make the world a wasteland, even more than the global forces of consumerism that demand the life-blood of the planet. We pray that the divine of which we are all a part can redeem and heal this beautiful and suffering world.
Sometimes it is easier to pray when we feel the earth in our hands, when we work in the garden tending our flowers or vegetables. Or when we cook, preparing the vegetables that the earth has given us, mixing in the herbs and spices that give us pleasure. Or making love, as we share our body and bliss with our lover, we may feel the tenderness and power of creation, how a single spark can give birth. Then our lovemaking can be an offering to life itself, a fully-felt remembrance of the ecstasy of creation.
The divine oneness of life is within and all around us. Sometimes walking alone in nature we can feel its heartbeat and its wonder, and our steps become steps of remembrance. The simple practice of “walking in a sacred manner,” in which with every step we take we feel the connection with the sacred earth, is one way to reconnect with the living spirit of the earth.
There are so many ways to pray for and with creation, to listen within and include the earth in our spiritual practice. Watching the simple wonder of a dawn can be a prayer in itself. Or when we hear the chorus of birds in the morning we may sense that deeper joy of life and awake to its divine nature. At night the stars can remind us of what is infinite and eternal within us and within the world. Whatever way we are drawn to wonder or pray, what matters is always the attitude we bring to this intimate exchange, whether our prayers are heartfelt rather than just a mental repetition.
It is always through the heart that our prayers are heard, even if we first make the connection in our feet or hands. Do we really feel the suffering of the earth, sense its need? Do we feel this connection with creation, how we are a part of this beautiful and suffering being? Then our prayers are alive, a living stream that flows from our heart. Then every step, every touch, will be a prayer for the earth, a remembrance of what is sacred. We are a part of the earth calling to its creator, crying in its time of need.
The video is an extract from a set of talks on prayer, given by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee June 2011, Omega Institute.
The mystical path is the most intoxicating and paradoxical, difficult, and even dangerous journey one can ever take. Fragments of a Love Story is a series of personal writings describing the passionate love, heartache, and confusion that belong to this journey. In particular Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee explores what for him is a central paradox: what belongs to the individual, the “I” who makes the journey, and what belongs to God. Whose journey really is it?
He discusses this primary mystical question from his own experiences of 40 years travelling the mystical path within the context of the Sufi tradition. Some of these passages are very personal, heartfelt, full of contradictions and difficulties he has experienced. Other passages are more objective, more detached, placing his experiences and questions clearly within this ancient mystical tradition. In this way he shows how the Sufi path is lived today by a contemporary mystic.
Fragments of a Love Story takes the reader beneath the surface into the heart of the mystical relationship with the Divine, which for the Sufi is the relationship of lover and Beloved. He describes how this secret love affair is within the heart of each of us, waiting to come alive, unique to each of us, and yet how confusing it can be, especially for our rational Western consciousness.This book is about the story of the soul and the passion that exists within the core of our being, and how demanding and difficult it is to live this love affair. But it also describes the beauty, wonder, and power of the divine love that awakens within the heart — a love that is within each of us.
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee is a Sufi teacher and author, and these writings come from his own experience of the Sufi path.
Taking Spiritual Responsibility for the Planet
If we take spiritual responsibility for what is happening to the world, we incarnate the Divine into ourselves and into the world. It is not just physical responsibility, it is also spiritual. We bring the light of divine consciousness—which as human beings we carry—into ourselves and into creation.
This week on “Super Soul Sunday,” watch Oprah’s riveting conversation with Sufi mystic Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee. The ancient tradition of Sufism could change your view on spirituality forever. Then, don’t miss the U.S. television premiere of Love Hate Love. Executive produced by Sean Penn, this documentary tells the story of three families forever changed by acts of terrorism—and why they choose a path to hope.
In the depth of my soul there is
A wordless song – a song that lives
In the seed of my heart.
It refuses to melt with ink on
Parchment; it engulfs my affection
In a transparent cloak and flows,
But not upon my lips.
How can I sigh it? I fear it may
Mingle with earthly ether;
To whom shall I sing it? It dwells
In the house of my soul, in fear of
Harsh ears.
When I look into my inner eyes
I see the shadow of its shadow;
When I touch my fingertips
I feel its vibrations.
The deeds of my hands heed its
Presence as a lake must reflect
The glittering stars;
My tears reveal it, as bright drops of dew
Reveal the secret of a withering rose.
It is a song composed by contemplation,
And published by silence,
And shunned by clamor,
And folded by truth,
And repeated by dreams,
And understood by love,
And hidden by awakening,
And sung by the soul.
It is the song of love;
What Cain or Esau could sing it?
It is more fragrant than jasmine;
What voice could enslave it?
It is heartbound, as a virgin’s secret;
What string could quiver it?
Who dares unite the roar of the sea
And the singing of the nightingale?
Who dares compare the shrieking tempest
To the sigh of an infant?
Who dares speak aloud the words
Intended for the heart to speak?
What human dares sing in voice
The song of God?
Deepak Chopra & Madonna – My Burning Heart – Bittersweet from the ”Love Poems of Rûmi” My Burning Heart
My heart is burning with love
All can see this flame
My heart is pulsing with passion
like waves on an ocean
my friends have become strangers
and I’m surrounded by enemies
But I’m free as the wind
no longer hurt by those who reproach me
I’m at home wherever I am
And in the room of lovers
I can see with closed eyes
the beauty that dances
Behind the veils
intoxicated with love
I too dance the rhythm
of this moving world
I have lost my senses
in my world of lovers
Bittersweet
written by Rumi, edited by Deepak Chopra, reading by Madonna
———-
In my hallucination
I saw my beloved’s flower garden
In my vertigo, in my dizziness
In my drunken haze
Whirling and dancing like a spinning wheel
I saw myself as the source of existence
I was there in the beginning
And I was the spirit of love
Now I am sober
There is only the hangover
And the memory of love
And only the sorrow
I yearn for happiness
I ask for help
I want mercy
And my love says:
Look at me and hear me
Because I am here
Just for that
I am your moon and your moonlight too
I am your flower garden and your water too
I have come all this way, eager for you
Without shoes or shawl
I want you to laugh
To kill all your worries
To love you
To nourish you
Oh sweet bitterness
I will soothe you and heal you
I will bring you roses
I, too, have been covered with thorns
Intoxicated by Love
Because of your love
I have lost my sobriety
I am intoxicated
By the madness of love
In this fog
I have become a stranger to myself
I’m so drunk
I’ve lost the way to my house
In the garden
I see only your face
From trees and blossoms
I inhale only your fragrance
Drunk with the ecstasy of love
I can no longer tell the difference
Between drunkard and drink
Between Lover and Beloved
Is there an innate spiritual impulse independent of the fear of death and of religion itself? I have never been able to espouse any religion, even as I have been attracted to various elements in all of them. I am often moved by religious art and architecture in all its forms, for example; and by Sufi poetry or Gregorian chant, both of which raise the pitch of my heart and mind beyond their usual octave.
Yet there is also an echo of something in all religions that goes deeper for me than art appreciation. I have always had the intuition, felt in the marrow and not just in the mind, (a feature of my temperament, shared by many) that we live on the edge of a fullness of life that, while constantly available, seems all too often to be just out of reach. A lack, or sense of incompleteness, that gives rise to a longing for something beyond the known, and that cannot be spoken. No wonder the Jews leave out the vowels in YHVH.
Sometimes, whether through meditation, a walk in the woods, or being in love, or any number of catalysts, the incompleteness, the separateness, falls away and we feel less ourselves than part of everything; joined to a life both larger and more knowing than ourselves alone. More knowing, because in those moments we are a speck in the endless web of life, and yet joined even to the intelligence of the wheeling stars; a web that has no need of a computer terminal. Indra’s net, the Hindus call it.
A life more knowing, and yet ever a mystery to our ordinary mind; a mystery with horizons that stretch away the more we gaze into it. An anonymous English writer in the 14th century called it The Cloud of Unknowing. Rumi and Hafiz, the two great Persian poets of Sufism, couched the experience in the language of lover and beloved. So too did Christian writers like Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, Hindus like Ramakrishna and Tagore, and countless others.
This flow of longing into an awareness of belonging and back into longing again is, I suggest, the original and naked religious impulse. It is common to human beings everywhere throughout time; and it is this that has been concretized and systematized into different belief systems around the world. It itself, however, is prior to belief of any kind.
The poet Rilke urged us to live the question rather than settle for easy answers. To live the question in this regard surely means being willing to feel and explore that eternal itch — to experience its poignancy, its pleasure and pain — and then the awe, the wonder, the beauty, the deep peace and fullness that may come as the wave hits the shore — without either dismissing or explaining away any part of the cycle.
The fullness I refer to has nothing to do with thinking or believing. It is a spontaneous emergence of clarity, peace, aliveness, connectedness — truth and beauty if you will — and all for no reason. We might justly call it an authentic expression of the human spirit; and as such it is the source of spirituality, unbound by any religion of any kind.
The intuition of a larger life which embraces everything that lives and breathes is a felt sense rather than a thought or a concept. Reason, after all, is just one kind of knowing; felt sense, another. The one, more objective, gives rise to secular humanism, while the other, more subjective, can give rise to a personal and secular form of spirituality. Both can arise independently of external beliefs, and both are the fruit of a questioning mind.
Both are concerned with compassionate action in this world and not with rewards in some hypothetical afterlife. The abolition of slavery, the right to vote for all colors and both sexes; human rights, animal rights, environmental protections – all these extraordinary accomplishments of the human spirit surely add up to more lasting good done in the service of humanity than all the religions of the world together.
You may say that these extensions of the circle of life to include the previously disenfranchised are simply a reflection, not only of an age of enlightenment but also of the mirror neurons that we now know make us empathic creatures who can identify with a We as well as an I. But do mirror neurons account for the ecstatic love poetry of Rumi?
I wonder whether this We also reflects something of a larger reality still, beyond the neurons firing in our brain; whether it is a felt awareness of a dimension beyond the separate sense of self, one in which we are one body, one mind, with everything that lives and breathes. Not only that, but that there is an inscrutable wisdom in the way it all works. Not the wisdom of some Creator looking on bemusedly at his creation, but a wisdom and intelligence inherent in all creation itself.
Do I know this to be true? I can only say I recognize it to be true — I remember it to be true — in a region not accessible by my reasoning mind. In his book The Ego Tunnel, the German philosopher and radical materialist, Thomas Metzinger, argues persuasively that absolutely everything we experience, however cosmic it may seem, happens only within the confines of our own brain. He may be right; though we have no way of knowing. In the meantime, I will take that tremor of recognition until my experience tells me otherwise.
A secular spirituality, far from being an oxymoron, brings heaven down to earth, and encourages everyone to be their own priest. It bows in recognition of the extraordinary mystery that we are living in this very moment, without packaging it up in a neat bow of explanation. Bowing in a gesture of wonder and awe, not to any god or deity, but, as W.S. Merwin says in his poem,
For The Anniversary of My Death,
bowing not knowing to what.
Saved by Beauty by Roger Housden – Book Trailer
Forty years ago, Roger Housden discovered the poetry of Rumi and Hafez, read tales of exotic Sufis, and was carried away by the music and wisdom of a culture that reached back over three thousand years, ac culture that gave us our word for paradise.
Longing to see is the Iran of his imagination continued to exist, or whether it had been lost forever in the revolutionary zeal of the last thirty years, Housden sets off on a journey to discover a country filled with remarkable contradictions. “This books is a pilgrimage, a prayer, a heartfelt reminder, a poet-traveler’s window into the eternal soul of Iran.” –Jack Kornfield
Poetry to change your life
Poetry to change your life, featuring Roger Housden
Prayer of the Heart in Christian & Sufi Mysticism guides the reader through the stages of mystical prayer. Mystical prayer is a way to create a living relationship with the Divine within the heart. Drawing on Christian and Sufi sources such as St. Teresa of Avila, Attar, St. John of the Cross, and Rumi, as well as from his own experience, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee describes how prayer is first born of need, but then takes one deep within the heart, into the stages of Union and Ecstasy. Through mystical prayer, one is drawn beyond any words into the interior silence of real communion with God. Here, in the silence within the heart, a meeting and merging takes place that carries us beyond our self into the mystery of divine presence, into the secret nature of love’s oneness.
