What Does Your Spirituality Mean To You? A Sufi Perspective
Introduction by Cole Goodwin
Welcome to the first installment of The Spiritual Roundtable, an interfaith roundtable featuring a diverse range of spiritual belief systems in the Gorge Community.
Each week, spiritual leaders and learners will share their take on some of humanity's biggest questions, starting with: What does your spirituality mean to you? And ramping up into discussions about the nature of existence, the soul, the divine, and of course…a question as old as time itself: why are we here?
Roundtable writings will be published each Saturday and Sunday morning of the month.
Now take a deep breath… Meditate for a moment…And when you’re ready…keep reading to explore one of the many diverse faiths, belief systems, and philosophies that exist in our communities.
This Month's Question: What does your spirituality mean to you?
Why this question was chosen: This question asks us to examine what purpose and function our (faith, practice, belief system, philosophy) can serve in our lives. As well as how spirituality can guide our actions and way of walking in the world.
About Bobbie Harlow Combe
This past March, I moved with my husband from Tygh Valley, OR to take up residence in Prineville, OR. Most of my 72 years I’ve been on a spiritual journey beginning as a child, attending churches throughout my youth and adult life, that eventually led to the Shadhiliyya Sufi path in 2001. What is Sufism? Sufism is a spiritual teaching that leads to Oneness or Unity with God’s Presence. The meaning of the word Sufism is “to purify one’s heart”.
A Sufi Perspective
by Bobbie Harlow Combe
bismi’llah ir-rahman ir-rahim
I Begin in the Name of The One, the Merciful, the Compassionate
How do I sum up in a few words what my spirituality means to me, and how it serves me and guides my actions in life? My hope is to give you a “taste.”
Over my 20 years on the Sufi path and the paths that came before, my spirituality has merged with my life—I experience life as spiritual. My overriding intention is to move into closer proximity with the Divine, to know myself as my essence, and to live from this place. “To know yourself is to know your Lord” as my Sufi guide Sidi would say. (Sidi is an affectionate name for my Sufi Guide in the Shadhaliyya Way, Shaykh Muhammad Sa’id al-Jamal ar-Rif’a ash-Shadhuli.)
La ilaha illa’llah: There is nothing, no one but The One. It is one thing for me to truly believe every person and thing is from the Divine Essence of The One All-Encompassing Love, a drop in the Ocean--everything sacred, holy, and connected. Yet it is entirely something else to live it. That is the journey many Sufi’s refer to as “my walking”.
A significant part of “my walking” involves uncovering and embodying the Divine Qualities, or Names, that exist within the depths of my being, within my “spiritual heart”. Rosina-Fawzia Al-Rawi, author of the book Divine Names The 99 Healing Names of the One Love, writes “The divine signs have been engraved in our heart in the form of the Divine Names, since time began, . . .”
Divine Qualities, such as Love, Mercy, Peace, as well as Constriction, Expansion, Aliveness, Death, reside in the drop of essence within. Each Quality recited in a sacred language contains a sound code, a specific vibration and quality of light that awakens the Quality within my deep heart. My practice involves repeating (out loud or silently) Divine Names while focusing on my heart. It is recorded that a Prophet conveyed the Divine Message, “Neither My heavens nor My earth contain Me, but the heart of My faithful believer contains Me.”
In addition to Divine Qualities, my path provides practices, sacred text, ageless writings of mystics, clearly written guidelines as well as guidance from my guide, and the guides before him. I seek to approach all this with sincerity, commitment, trust, and surrender.
I live in gratitude for a life of meaning and purpose, knowing as a human being I will make mistakes, and with each mistake comes an opportunity to come closer to Truth, to my Trusted Friend, my Beloved. My dearest gift is being able to return my heart to The Beloved when I make mistakes, become distracted, or simply forget, over and over again.
Below is a brief description of my key spiritual practices, and an example of how I put them into practice.
Remembrance & Divine Qualities:
Remembrance is experiencing the Presence of The One through recitation of the sacred Divine One’s Name into my heart.
Recitation of Divine Qualities is “spiritual medicine” for whatever I need, whether it be physical, emotional, intellectual, or spiritual.
Walking:
When something shows up in my world that requires my attention, such as pain, sadness, joy, confusion, I get in touch with that feeling and experience it within myself with self-compassion and love. I then allow the Divine Lights that accompany the Qualities to change, or transform the experience. Often gifts of insight and wisdom are received.
My Example:
Since my divorce in 1986, I’ve not had much ‘Christmas spirit” during the holidays. Later I remarried a wonderful man, and this year we intended to experience the spirit of Christmas. And it was going pretty well until . . .
In the afternoon of Christmas day I was unexpectedly overcome with a deep, debilitating sadness that I had not experienced in many years. With the support of a friend, I allowed myself to drop inside to my deep heart to discover the source of this sadness that seemed to be triggered by my son not contacting me directly at Christmas time. I discovered deep within myself a trace of “I’m not good enough” that I suspect my son carries as well. I knew from experience this was a gift, a possibility for transformation, for change.
Upon going within, there was a strong impulse to recite the Divine Qualities that help me to turn away from the thoughts and concerns that accompanied my sadness, and put my trust in the Divine One. Once returning to the Presence of the One, I began reciting the sacred Name and the Divine Quality that means “The Glorious, the Majestic, the Magnificent” into the tender place in my heart and the area of my throat where I was feeling constriction.
Within half an hour the heaviness in my heart began to lighten, replaced by a sensation of light and expansion. The experience of sadness slowly began to change into a sense of well-being and certainty that my true self, my essence, is Glorious and Magnificent. As this occurred, my heart turned to my son with immense love and I realized that he too, in his essence, is Glorious and Magnificent. Suddenly I knew that all I need to do is be in touch with the Truth of who my son is, and know him as Gloriously Magnificent whether on the phone, in person, or in thought. I continue to work with the Qualities that support me in doing this.
My son and I have since spoken and it was a wonderful and loving exchange, reaffirming my belief that a shift in my inner experience often results in a shift in the outer.
I am immensely grateful to have found this Sufi path and the journey it takes me on. And, as Rumi, a Sufi poet, said, “There are as many paths to God as there are souls on the Earth.”
“And when the journey to God comes to an end, comes the beginning of the infinite journey in God.” -Igbal
Want to contribute to the Spiritual Roundtable? Read this first.
The Roundtable Mission and Vision
The goal of these roundtable writings is to:
Bring the spiritual community together.
Share ideas that elevate the human spirit.
Elevate the conversation around the spirit.
Embrace what is universal to all, while honoring what is special about each spirituality.
Center inclusivity and equity.
Promote our collective enlightenment.
Nurture civility and friendship between those with diverse belief systems in the Gorge.
Engage readers and spiritual seekers.
The Spiritual Roundtable IS NOT…
This is not a place for arguing about dogma.
This is not a place for ‘hating on’ or putting other belief systems down.
This is not a place for excluding, discriminating, or promoting fear or violence towards other people based on their race, color, ethnicity, beliefs, faith, gender, sexuality, ability.
This is not a place for hatred.
This is not a place for fear.
The Spiritual Roundtable IS..
This IS a place for hope.
This IS a place for joy.
This IS a place for comfort.
This IS a place for big questions.
This IS a place for learning.
This IS a place for sharing.
This IS a place for caring.
This IS a place for sharing what is special about your beliefs.
CCC News reserves the right to not publish any content that breaks with our mission, vision and values.
If you are interested in being included in the roundtable please email cole@columbiacommunityconnection.com
