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Now let's dive into today's episode. I like to welcome
to the show, Selima Adelstein. How are you doing, Selena
sank Thank you so much for being here, My dear,
I'm I'm so excited to talk to you because I've
never had a Sufi or anyone that understands Sufism on
the show before, because it's kind of mysterious. It's even
more mysterious than then. You know, there's obviously there's Christian mystics,
there's Jewish mystics, and obviously in Buddhism and Hinduism there's
a lot of mysticism as well, yogic and all of that.
But Sufism is very interesting because I just don't know,
I literally know, other than the dancing, that's all. That's
all I really know about Sufism. I really haven't gone
too deep in it so well, First and foremost, how
did your journey begin into Sufism? What was the moment
you kind of awakened to that road? As opposed to
so many others in the world.
Speaker 2: Well, I was meditating for twenty five years, so I
really wasn't looking for Sufism or anything else. I was
perfectly content with my meditation practices. I was having beautiful experiences.
And I had just come back from India. I had
been studying with different gurus over the air and spiritual healing,
and I was teaching a workshop in New Mexico at
the time, and a friend said, Hey, there's a Sufi
master that's in town. I know you like meeting new people.
Why don't you go over and see what he has
to offer. So I was up for a good adventure,
so I went over. I like you, I didn't know
much about Sufism at the time. And I walked into
this yard and there were statues of Buddha and ganeshs
the little that I knew. It was taking me a
little bit by surprise, saying, gee, I didn't know that
Sufism had anything to do with Buddha or Ganesh or
any of these things that I'm seeing in this backyard.
And I walked into the house and this and I
mean huge, this huge man about two hundred and twenty
pounds greets me with this huge hug and he says,
my daughter, I'm so happy to see you. A life figure,
Gene nice host of this house.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Turns out that was the Sufi Master. Wow, And I
really was blown away everything that I thought I knew
about mysticism and how men treated women in a spiritual setting.
For all, I just came back from India, where everybody
politely is now mistaying, and here is just shattering in
one moment all my preconceived notions. It's like everything just
blew apart in my internal being. And then he started
to talk about the evolution of the soul and what
happens in our soul as our soul reaches enlightenment and beyond.
And he had me captivated at that point. And as
I was watching him, I was noticing this absolutely brilliant
light that was emanating from his being, and this absolutely
embracing pure life. It's like a divine love that was
just emanating from his being. I don't know if you've
ever had those moments where you say, I want what
they have, Yeah, And at that moment, that was my Aha,
I want what he has, and I got initiated into
this Sufi path in that moment, not knowing anything, and
he gives you the name Salima, and it means the
one whose heart rests in the deep peace of God. Well,
I had to laugh, Alex, because that was not the
state of my soul at that moment in time. I
was a rebel. I was an activist. If there was
a good cause, I was out on the street protesting.
Peace was the farthest thing from my being. I was
a drama queen.
Speaker 1: Fair enough, fair enough so, and he.
Speaker 2: Invited me to come and studied with him in Jerusalem.
While I was there, studying this ancient Sufi path and
learning about the soul's evolution in the human body, I
was so transformed that I found that inner piece within me.
I found all the places of separation within my own
body and within my own heart. That led me to
a unity and a wholeness and a oneness that I
never experienced before. So when I came back to the
United States, I wanted to share it with everybody. You've
got to experience this, So I set up a little
spiritual retreat in at the time, I had a little studio.
In my little studio and invited anybody who was curious
to come and learn about this, and that was the
start of what now is the university. What now is
many Sufi communities all over the United States and the world.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. That's beautiful. So for everybody who doesn't know
what Sufism is, can you tell us a little bit
about what Sufism is.
Speaker 2: Sufhism is a direct experience with the Most High with God.
So we can talk about it, we can lecture about it.
But what Sufi does is give you an actual, direct
experience of that connection with the God within you and
the God outside of you. It's a path of love
that opens up all the channels if you will within
you that don't know love to experience love. It allows
your soul to break out of what I would call
the prison of your ego and all your ego limitations
into the unlimited possibility of what the jewels and the
treasures of who you are, and how to bring that
into life here in this world. We say in Sufism,
die before you die. It's kind of a strange expression,
but what we really mean when we say that is
give yourself an experience to understand both the transcendental nature
of the universe but also the omnipresence of God in everything,
and to understand my age old questions, Who am I,
what am I doing here? What is this world all about?
And what is my purpose in it?
Speaker 1: To my understanding, Sufhism is the kind of mystic arm
of Islam. Is that correct?
Speaker 2: That is correct, but it also goes beyond Islam, right
to the beginning of creation, when God created the human being,
and when God said to all the souls, am I
not your Lord? And we answered yes, and God placed
his light inside every single human being. And that's really
the beginning of Sufism. It was brought to awakening through Islam,
but in each each era of humanity there were different messengers,
advertise prophets that came carry the same message. It was
an opportunity for the human soul to awaken to its divinity,
to its angelic soul.
Speaker 1: What I find fascinating in my work is that I
interview people from every walk of life, like yourself, and
we talk to Christians and Buddhists and Hindus and yoga
and masters and all this kind of stuff, and I
just keep realizing that everyone is going to the same place.
It's just a different it's just a different flavor of
the message. Jesus said it, Buddha said it, you know,
Mohammed said all of all, of all the one. We'll
be right back after a word from our sponsor, and
now back to the show all roads. You know, it's
just like it's the the old proverb says, we're all
seeing a different part of the of the elephant, you know,
and we're all just but we're all moving in the
same the same direction. So would this be kind of
like and I'm just trying to wrap my head and
also give examples for people to krynic grasp in the
Jewish religion, it's uh, the Kabbalah is that the mystic
aspect of Judaism. Am I wrong with that? Or am
I correct? No?
Speaker 2: That is and I am grew up in a Jewish tradition,
So this was quite a if you will, is shocked
to my family?
Speaker 1: How'd that go? How'd that conversation go?
Speaker 4: Mom?
Speaker 1: Dad? Sit down?
Speaker 2: It went better when I told it. Then when I
was a teenager and I told them that I met
Jesus on the.
Speaker 1: Beach, Well, there's that.
Speaker 2: That's I think that was a little bit more shocking
to them.
Speaker 1: They're like where are we gone wrong with this girl?
Speaker 2: What happened to our daughter? But my mother said something
very interesting. You know, they initially had a hard time
with it, but as they saw the transformation in me,
my mother said to her friends, she said, you know,
I don't understand what my daughter is doing. But all
I can tell you is she's the happiest I have
ever seen her in my life. And what more had
a daughter do for her mom?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: What more does mom want from her daughter? And when
I went to my niece's bat mitza, that transition into
adulthood when you're thirteen, there's major controversy in my family.
What role am I going to play now that I'm
in Islam and not Judaism? Right, forgetting the fact that
it's all one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's all part of the Abrahamic traditions even.
Speaker 2: And it extends beyond religion.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So the rabbi decided that, well, okay, my name means peace.
There's a prayer for peace in Judaism. I will do
the prayer for peace. My brother said to me, that's
all you can do. I don't want you up there
talking anything more. Just do the prayer. Okay, I said,
you got it, Dave, and these three older gentlemen came
up and afterwards and I said, oh, here it is.
It's coming. And they said, we have a question to
ask you, and I said sure. I said, We've been
going to temple every week all of our lives. They
were about in their late seventies, early eighties. We've heard
this prayer over and over again. This was the first
time we felt peace when you said it. How is
that possible You're not a Jew anymore?
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. What I find fascinating, Salima, is you know
I come from a Catholic background. Yeah, so I come
from I'm sure he still feels guilty about it. So
I you know, I've been exposed and I went to
a Jewish preschool when I was when I was a
little kid in New York. So I've been exposed to
Judaism and Christianity most of my life in one way,
shape or form, with either friends and family and so on.
But what I find fascinating is this, and I wouldn't
call it tribal, but the programming, societal programming, community programming
that religions put into you when you're born, Because when
you were born, you were just a little girl. You
weren't a Jewish girl or a Christian girl or anything else.
You were just a girl. And they and the programming
is so so ingrained that you, being the odd duck out,
you know, say hey, I'm with Islam now, not even Islam.
I'm just going a different path than Judaism. That they
can that little story with those those gentlemen is so
powerful because they were like, wait a minute, I don't
understand how I can still feel something that's not part
of the programming or part of the traditions that I
grew up with. And that's such an important part about it.
I had the other day, I had a Christian near
death experienceer on and I've had people comment and a
lot of people came because of the Christian part, but
they were completely confused about the idols and I wouldn't
call them idols, the masters the avatars that I have
up on my wall in the live studio. And they
were just confused. They're like, wait a minute, I don't understand.
Their programming was so ingrained in the you know, Jesus
is the God, Jesus's Lord, all that kind of you
know thing that they couldn't wrap their head around, you know,
Buddha being up there or or Yogandanda or something you know,
or Ganesh or Vishnu or anything like that. It's it's
fascinating to me, and I'm trying and I'm hoping that
these kinds of conversations open people up to break free
from their programming, to understand that you can find it anywhere.
You were on already a spiritual path.
Speaker 2: It sounds like, absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 1: You were not looking for Sufism if someone would have. So,
if someone will walked up to you and go, hey,
you know, I think what you need is Sufism, you'd
be like, oh, okay, they move it along.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But that path connected with you, and it it
brought you some It brought you something that you had
just not felt before and the other paths, and that's
perfectly fine, correct.
Speaker 2: Exactly, because you know, I think every individual, whether they
realize it or not, are searching for truth, are searching
for meaning, are searching for who am i and what
am I doing here? And whichever path you takes that
answer those questions. For me, Sufism gave me the experience
rather than the talking, and that's what made the difference.
Then all of a sudden, and I mean, here I
am a Jew in Palestine, right my programming, These are
my enemies, of course, yeah, right to my enemies. And
here I am in the home of a Palestine Sufi
master who was only treating me like his daughter.
Speaker 1: You know, that's what Jesus said, That's what Jesus said,
That's what Buddha said.
Speaker 2: They all they all say the same thing because it's true.
But when you experience it. Before that, I didn't know.
But when I experienced it, it's like, oh, yes, we
know truth when we hear truth. You know, some people
get goose pumps, some people get an awakening, some people
get a sense of aha. But our human vessel, our soul,
knowes truth when we hear it and when we experience it.
And for me, I didn't realize, even though I was
having wonderful experiences meditating, I didn't realize how much separation
was existing within my heart, this separation of Jewishness and Palestinians,
this separation between me as a female alan my brothers
as a male. We carry all this separation within us.
I was so locked into my own head that I
had no idea all the turbulence that was going on
within my heart. And what Sufism does is take that
turbulence and bring it into a deep divine love and
surrounds it with such peace and such calm and serenity
that you get to we say, you see the world
through God's eyes. You hear the sounds of the animals
singing God's praise, You speak the words that move the
hearts closer towards the one. Your hands become the hands
by which God heals you. Sound like Roomy one of
the great Sufis.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, he's one of the great
great sufis of of any time, let alone art time.
Speaker 2: And it's universal and that's why, even though a lot
of it is based in Islam, it's absolutely a universal
path for everyone, regardless of whether you're believing or not believing,
whether you're an atheist or an agnostic.
Speaker 1: I think it's really important. And it's also one of
the reasons I wanted you on the show is to
show a different side of Islam, because you know, Islam
does get a little bit of bad press.
Speaker 2: And it's a little bit.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to be kind, but like in every religion,
I mean, there's extremists in Christianity, there's extreme there's even
extremists in Buddhism. Uh, there's a screen of been hindu it.
There's extremists in every religion and every philosophy. Even We'll
be right back after a word from our sponsor and
now back to the show. But I want when I
heard I when I when I was doing my original
studies back in back in the years and years go by,
when I started studying world religions in college just for
fun because I was interested in it. I discovered Zufism
at that point and didn't go too deep into it,
but I just was fascinated with like, huh, there's a
mystical side to Islam, and then there's then there I've
discovered the Cabal. I'm like, oh, there's a mystical side
to Judaism, and then there's a mystical side to Christianity
as well. So it's just like the mystical side is
really interesting to me because that's away from the traditional path.
Because a Sufi is so as a Sufi, what's the
major difference between being a Sufi and being someone who
just follows Islam or or you know, a run of
the mill Muslim. If you.
Speaker 2: Most, as you say, run at the mill Muslims. So
most most born Muslims don't understand why they do certain rituals.
You know, they pray five times a day, they follow
the laws and the prohibitions, but they have no understanding
of what we would call the hoki ka or the
inner truth, the mystical reasons behind it. And what Sufism
does is open up so why are you doing these things?
It opens up the the reasons behind what happens when
you pray five times a day. In my own experience,
I knew how to pray before I went to study
Islam and to study Sudhism, and I have to be
honest with you, I had a lot of resistance to
learning how to pray in the Islamic traditional way.
Speaker 1: Right because you were like, I had enough of that already.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've done that. I've done that. I don't need that,
and I'm finding God within and et cetera on out.
But one of the things that I noticed, and it's
one of the beauties of having inner vision, is I decide, well,
let me just watch and let me see what happens
during these movements that Muslims are doing in the traditional prayer,
and what I was shown shocked me, because what I
was shown was there are angels that are actually washing
your light body every time that you pray, that there
are prophets and ascended masters that are standing in each
of the positions and helping to bring you closer to
that God within and God without. And I was like,
I'm a fool here. I am saying no to something
that has all these gifts and treasures to it that
I never experienced in any other prayers that I did.
And that's what happens. We don't have as human beings.
We don't have enough curiosity. We don't have enough mystical
knowledge about the hockey co about what's called the inner
truth behind the things that we do that bring us joy,
that bring us happiness.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. What I also love about what you just
said is that you're not just talking specifically in the
story or the I hate to say the words genre
of Islam, but you were talking other ascended masters, other prophets,
other avatars, other saints, if you will, who are there
in that process. It seems that Sufism is a bit
more open to a bigger, larger truth than just the
dogma that has been taught, Like you were saying, like
you have to do this, this, this, this, and this,
but no one ever tells you why it's like for me.
For me, it was like Jesus was born, he does
a whole bunch of stuff until he's twelve YadA YadA, YadA,
eighteen years gone, and then he shows up on a
donkey and I in first grade, I'm going, where is
the YadA YadA YadA years? Like that's what I call them.
Yet those are the most interesting. Yeah, I want to
know where Jesus was in his twenties and his late teens, like,
you know, it's as a teenager, is he? Is he
a rebel? Was he you know? Was he smoking and drinking? Like?
What is he doing during this time? You know, I'm
curious to find out. So, but those things in the
traditional past of any religion seemed to be frowned upon. No, no,
don't talk about that. Even in Hinduism. There's aspects of
the mystical side that they don't, like a traditional Hindu
would not want to even.
Speaker 5: Talk about at all at all. So it's fact, it's
I guess it's it's fear. It's fear it's fear because
like for me, I was fearless. I'm very We're both troublemakers.
I can smell my own.
Speaker 1: We're both. We're both troublemakers, which is great. Jesus was
a troublemaker, Buddha was, They all were troublemakers. Weren't good company,
as they say. But as troublemakers we always question everything.
And for me, I hadn't no fear of questioning because
I want the truth as you did. We want the
truth regardless of what happens or what comes crumbling down.
I need to understand the truth. That's my I guess
what I've always looked for, and I assume the same
for you. So as you're you're searching for truth, people,
when you ask these kind of deeper questions, Hey, why
do I pray five times a day? Why can't I
have this or that? Why are these prohibitions in place
on your end? Or why do I have what happened
to Jesus? What happened those eighteen years? If you start
to go down these roads that the doors are normally closed,
it shakes the foundation. It could possibly shake the foundation
of your belief, because if your belief is all of this, this, this,
and this, then if Jesus really did go to the
mystery schools in Egypt, he really did go to Tibet,
he really did go to India and learn from the
Yogis and then came back as a master, a realized
matter yesterre at thirty, Well, that changes your whole foundation
of your belief because that's not the narrative that I
was told. I'm assuming similar for you.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah. And you know, there's a difference between following
the law and following the dogma and having a path
that opens up the truth and then having the experience
of the truth. And that's the difference between Sushism and
traditional Islam. So at our university, we have many quote
born Muslims that are coming into our school and saying, wow,
I never knew that I'm.
Speaker 4: Right exactly, you know, And here they have, you know,
a white former Jewish girl teaching them about what they
think they know.
Speaker 1: Just yeah, because a perfect, perfect, perfect illustration of that
is the Bible, the Bible that we know, the Old
Testament and New Testament, the Old Testament being the Torah
or I think versions of the Torah, and the New
Testiny being the stuff about Jesus if you will. I
was never told that. There was a Roman emperor called
Constantine who put this all together at the Council of Nicia,
and there was an editing process and they got everybody
together and like, hey, let's figure out what the canon
is of this story, and like, oh, we can't leave
your incarnation and that's going to ruin what we're trying
to do, which is control people. And so that's a
perfect example of what you're saying. I was never told that.
But that's historical fact, but it's never promoted. And let's
not even talk about the King James Bible, which is
the one that we all talk about and the one
we all really read. Now, well, who's King James? And
how did the king and why is there Thou and Lord?
And it's all these kind of things are inside the
Bible because the King said to put it in there
and rewrite it according to him. It's just fascinating. But
this is all historical stuff that's never told to us
because unless.
Speaker 2: And what's the beauty of Sufism is there's a book
inside of our heart, and that's slowly book. And the
more that we read this holy book, the more the
truth of the holy books that are out there become
known to us.
Speaker 1: So it's it's it's similar to the Kingdom of Heaven
is within you. Yeah, the truth, but the truth is
within you. That's the key.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: We just have to understand how to look inside and
look for the answers that are within us all the time.
It's kind of like the old horror movies is like
the phone calls coming from inside the house kind of thing,
and you're looking for the monster or something outside, but
it's actually inside. And that's the thing. We're looking for
the answers outside of us, but the answers are inside
of us. And that's what the masters have said for
all these years. We'll be right back after a word
from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
Speaker 2: And the other thing that's important here that I'd want
to mention is our heart is like a mirror, and
if we don't polish that mirror, we're going to have
a distorted perception of our reality. And that's what I've
learned inseudism is how do we polish the mirror of
our heart so that the light of our soul shines through,
and that light touches everything that we do and everybody
that we meet.
Speaker 1: Very roomy esque. I have to say, I love those
I love it. It's beautiful. Now, you mentioned earlier that
when you met your master, the Sufi master that puts
you on this path, that he started explaining to you
the evolution of the soul from his point of view?
Can you explaining that in you know, I'm assuming a trunk.
It's a longer conversation, but either the evolution of the
soul five minutes gone. So from a Sufism a Sufism
point of view, what is the journey of the soul
and the evolution?
Speaker 2: So one of the best ways I can describe it
is by talking about what we call the naps are
our ego, and in Sufism and also in life, our
ego tends to run the show. And our ego either
is listening to darkness and things that are going to
get us off of the truth, or it's listening to
truth and it's looking for truth. This evolution of the
ego's journey or the journey of the naps from its
primitive state, if you will, from the place where we
say we have three major voices, if you will that
we listen to the voice of our ego, the one
that says, I know I'm the best, or conversely, I
don't feel good about myself and I'm the worst, right,
and an outside voice that we learn from our programming,
as you said, from our teachers, from our siblings, from
our peers as we're growing up, that feed us information
about ourselves that set the picture or the image of
who we think we are. Part of the evolution of
the soul is breaking down those pictures, breaking down those
images and those illusions, so that in that process of
breaking down, in those process of taking the wounds that
we've experienced, and everybody has experienced wounds in their life,
taking those wounds that we've experienced experienced and bringing the
love and bringing the light to them, it opens up
the pathway that takes our human experience and what we
would call in Sufhism are human qualities in our soul
and elevates them into our divine qualities. So we may have,
for example, love most of the time, when humans love,
it's a condition of love. I'll love you if right.
When we talk about the evolution of the soul, it's
evolving that human love into a divine love that's an
unconditional love that says, no matter what, I will love.
Speaker 1: You when in your in your university, that you how
you teach your students, how can you how do you
teach them to embody the divine presence as opposed to
understanding it intellectually, Because there's so many people on the
spiritual path who use this a lot more than use this.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. It's through the spiritual practices that
we do in Sufism. I've given a little giveaway if
you will at the end of your show. It's called
the Live Seas of Sufism, and in that you'll have
an opportunity or your audience will to use some of
these Sufi practices to actually experience the presence within you
and then to be present with that presence.
Speaker 1: So is there one that you can kind of just
talk about right now before.
Speaker 2: They're a little long. But one is very simple, and
it's I'm sure one that is very universal, and you
just take your breath and do the ah ah sound.
The first thing that it does is what it opens
the heart. No other sound does that. If you look. Yeah,
other sounds have different effects on the body, but the
ah sound That's why we say it when we take
a deep, deep sigh right to sort of let out
the tension in our body, that as sound begins to
open the heart. When the heart is open, then that's
when we can start to experience whatever is inside. Sometimes
it might not be the best thing. It might be
in my case right, It might be all those separations
that I thought I was way beyond right, but they
still existed within me because when I was meditating, I
was going up and out and having my soul. My
spirit was having the most glorious journeys outside of my
body without ever being aware of the beauty inside my body.
We say in Sufism, you think you're a small star,
when in fact you comprise the entire universe. Imagine experiencing
that entire universe within you just through the Ah sound,
combining that with the law Ah Law, and repeating that
over and over. It means the one. It's also the
name of God in Islam, but its mystical meaning is
the one. So it connects you to that oneness within you,
and it connects you to the one who created you.
Speaker 1: What is the biggest misconception that people have about Sufism
in general? Because it's because it's connected to the let's say,
the bad press. Sometimes not Sufhism in general, but Islam,
and people have preconceived notions.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, people do not recognize that the word Islam actually
means peace.
Speaker 1: Wow, I didn't know that, right.
Speaker 2: That is the biggest misconception, that the word Islam means peace.
It comes from the word salom meaning peace.
Speaker 1: So so as far as but out of Sufism. What
is some of the misconceptions of Sufism that you've come
across in your in your journey down the road that
people might have of it.
Speaker 2: That it is only for Muslims, That it is a religion,
that it's based on dogma, it's based on shoulds and
should not, That it is interested in just one aspect
rather than the totality. Those are all the misconceptions that
I've come across it that, for example, and atheists couldn't
be a Sufi. And what I say to any atheists
do you love? And they say, oh, yeah, that's the
primary ingredient to beginning the path is love?
Speaker 1: Is love, It always says.
Speaker 2: It always is. I used to work in a children's
hospice program years ago, and wow, yeah, and I learned
so much from those kids, so much. They would say
to me, tell my parents not to cry, and they said,
they're going to cry, my love, And they say, tell
them not to because I know that I'm going to
be out of pain. I know that I'm going to
a place where there's only love. So I'd ask them
to draw a picture of where they're going. And you
know that every single child that I worked with drew
exactly the same picture, which was this beautiful like white
castle in the sky. They were going home, and that's
what they say, and they knew it, and they wanted
to make sure that I helped their parents. They said,
we know they're going to be sad, but tell them
not to be.
Speaker 1: Said, We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
And now back to the show that that work as
being a hospice worker children's hospice no less which is
even even more heartbreaking in many ways. What are the
lessons that you besides that one, What are some of
the things that you've picked up on, Because that's a
very special and privileged space to be in. You know,
when anyone's passing to the next to the other side
is especial, but a child, it must have a different
feeling because they're still they're still close to the to
the creator. You know, we lose that as we get older,
but then gain it as we get closer to the end.
That's the fascinating. As you're dying, all of a sudden,
I see angels, I see Uncle Bob show up. But
during but in the middle of your life, you're just like,
I can't think about any of that stuff. I need
to create, create, created, hustle, hustle, hustle, make money, make money,
make money, kind of thing. It's ego, ego, ego. But
at the beginning, we're so close. We're joyful, we're loving,
we're unconditional loving almost, but it's it's kind of beaten
out of us by society as we get older. So
what was what is that like being around them at
such a young age.
Speaker 2: It's joyful, it's peaceful, and I think, more importantly, it's
remember I talked earlier about who am I and why
am I here? That's what I love the most from them.
It's like I know that I'm here for a short time.
I know what I was sent here to help my parents.
I know that what I'm doing here is part of
a larger plan, and I'm okay with that. There was
an acceptance and a beauty in how they dealt with
what was going on in their lives that even when
I worked with people who are older who were dying,
did not have that same sense of purpose and commitment
to this is what my destiny was, This is what
my destiny is. I'm not meant to be here forever.
I'm only meant to be here for a short time.
I've completed the work that I was meant to do here.
That really shocked me. Mm hmm, you really did, you know?
But you're only five years old.
Speaker 1: What work did you do?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 2: What were you to do? Right?
Speaker 1: But the thing is that they, from my point of view,
work interviewing so many in near death experiences and mystics
and you know, intuitives and so on, I understand from
my at least my point of view, is that a
soul comes in, even if they're in there for a
few minutes, it's a job. It could be how that
affects the parents, how it affects the world around them,
how you know, and they it's very very different. So
it does make sense that they say that, like my
work here is done. I get it, because they this
life might have just been. But you have to have
the understanding, foundational understanding that we have multiple lives, that
we incarnate multiple lives. Is that something in Sufism as well,
or is it a one to go?
Speaker 2: Actually, it's not interesting enough. That was probably the hardest
adjustment I had to make to Sufism, because remember, I
came from a meditative path where reincarnation is a part
of it, and I really had to sit with it
for a long time to really understand how do I
reconcile this within my own being? Because Sufism doesn't believe
in reincarnation, but they do believe in parallel universes. So
our work here is done, but we're in a million
other but we may go to another universe to do
another part of our work. So if we don't complete
ourselves here, we get another opportunity someplace else to complete ourselves.
Speaker 1: Well, Selena, that's basically a different flavor of reincarnation in
so many ways. It's just a different point of view,
but it's the same concept. If the soul's work's not done,
they will go somewhere else parallel to us, or come
back in a recycling scenario, and.
Speaker 2: That's just and that's what's interestingly enough. I was working
with a man who was part of my meditation community
at the time, and when he transitioned, I had the blessing,
if you will, to see what happened. And what happened
in his transition is he immediately went to work on
the other side. And everybody was asking me what was
going on, because I was kind of in a shock
kind of state. I say, what's happening because the room
was so peaceful, and if you've ever been in a
room when somebody transitions, there's a real peaceful flavor of
happens in the room. And they said, and I said,
he just went to his next job. And I saw
it as clearly as I see you sitting there. And
that's when I realized that there is an afterlife. There
is something that happens. I'm not sure whether we return
to this earth or not, but I do know that
our soul continues to evolve until it's complete, until it's
reached its perfection.
Speaker 1: That's so beautiful, because I mean we're saying the same thing.
That's so beautiful thing, and this is a perfect illustration
of what we've been talking about in this conversation different
paths to the same place. Sufism believes in parallel realities,
which is pretty quantum physics of them, you know, and
also also very marvel comics of them as well, with
parallel realities. And then in the Hindu tradition or in
the Yoga tradition, it's or in the Buddhist tradition, it's
a coming back of reincarnation. They're both, I mean, as
you explained it, they both sound the same to me.
It's just one's up and down. One is parallel, but.
Speaker 2: We're doing In the Hindu tradition, one of the things
that fascinated me was if you've completed your your cycle,
you don't come back.
Speaker 1: You're done right, You finish eventually, Eventually you can if
you've learned everything you need to know and you evolved
to a point of self realization, you truly understand. Now
you're a master, hence an ascended master. But many times
those masters the bugle was it called when they decide
to come back to help humanity. I forgot the name
Bogie Bogatasata. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about, Kwan
Yin is. Yeah, the master don't come back.
Speaker 2: They generally don't come back in this form.
Speaker 1: Right they but they stay around and help as opposed
to transitioning to the next office. Uh So, I have
to ask you this question because I've I've never I've
always been fascinated. What's with the dancing, the.
Speaker 6: Dancing and that whole that whole world tradition, the whirling,
the whirling cefees Yeah, because if I heard this is
what I heard that it's a meditative practice in a sense.
Speaker 1: What is it exactly? Because that's that's the famous that's
the image that most people think of if they know
anything about Sufism.
Speaker 2: Is that right? So Sufism has many different what we
call Tarika's, many different paths that are part of the
umbrella of Sufism. The particular path that I'm a member
of is called the Shadowiah path. It doesn't whirl. I
was fascinated by whirling, so I went to Syria to
study whirling. What I can tell you is it's an
absolutely ecstatic experience. So it's it's the opportunity to bring
Heaven to Earth within your body through the whirling.
Speaker 1: So it is a meditation in a form of it, in.
Speaker 2: A form of it. Yeah, it's a way of taking
your soul and returning it to its source and then
bringing it back in to live in the world.
Speaker 1: And speaking of the world, Salima, the world is going
through some stuff right now, there is it, sure is.
I was talking to a friend the other day about this.
When I'm assuming you know who Yoga Nanda is, Paramahansa. Yes, yes,
he's right behind me. When Paramahansa when he was writing
autobiography of the Yogi, in the process of writing it,
they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima h And it's such
a dichotomy of what the work that he was trying
to put out into the world and what was happening
in the world. I say that to kind of put
people in a state of like things are bad or
things are rough right now, but they've been a lot
rougher in humanity's history. Without question, it just seems like
it's a lot crazier because of all the connection and
social media and stuff. But from your point of view,
and I brought the Yoga on the story too, because
those teachings were needed more than ever at that time.
It's and those teachings are now even more needed more
than ever. Than before. We'll be right back after a
word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
All of these different journey or paths, like Sufism, like
the Kabbalah, you know, like mystical Christianity, these paths are
starting to come out of the shadows almost and starting
to come out into the public, you know, public way.
For perfect example, someone like yourself who was on a
meditative path, you know, and you know, I'm assuming more
of the Eastern philosophy kind of world all of us
sudden was introduced to this, this path. It was very
in the shadows. Cabalo was very in the shadows for centuries,
but it seems to start it's becoming more mainstream. Do
you believe that these things are starting to come into
the world because we need them more than ever before,
and that people are are more receptive to this because
they're losing kind of their they're losing their faith in
this more dogmatic, traditional, separational, fear based ideals and any
and any and all paths, and they're looking for something
a little bit more inward. They're looking for answers, and
they're looking for answers anywhere they can get them. And
the traditional paths are not doing it for them. Do
you think that's why all of these different ideas are
coming up right now?
Speaker 2: I'm not sure that that's the reason, as much as
our own evolution as a human race, right I happened
to have been on a peace mission to Japan last
year and we met with some of the victims of
the Hiroshima bombing. Interesting enough, two weeks afterwards they won
the Nobel Peace Prize. But their journey of evolution of
their soul was fascinating to listen to, and it reminded
me of the journey of our civilizations, of how we
have to go through such darkness in order to appreciate
the light in order to navigate our way through the darkness,
through the sadness, through the grief, in order to arrive
at our joint and our happiness. And for me, I
feel like our human race is in that evolutionary process
right now, and we're ready for that because of all
the experiences that we've had. My Sufi master used to say,
how could you know happiness if you've never experienced sadness.
Speaker 1: It's the duality of this experience.
Speaker 2: Right How we experience God is through that duality.
Speaker 1: Can you explain that a little bit more.
Speaker 2: Sure we have what we in Sufism will call jamal,
which is the beauty. One of my favorite exercises I'd
love to give people is just to say steering a
mirror and say, when God created me, God created beauty,
and just notice what comes up in your being and
continue to say that until you find the truth within yourself.
Those are experiences of jamal. Of the beauty of a sunset,
the beauty of the ocean, yeah, the beauty of our environment.
I live in the New England, so the beauty of
a fall, and all the different colors. We also have
the jamal That jamal is. The more severity, the more
what we would call in Suphism, the majesty of God,
right the crises that we face, the storms that happen
in our life and in the environment. The center point
of that jimbon and jeelo is known as comal or
completion or perfection. It's in that comal that we know
ourselves and we know God. It's in that place that
God describes himself as expanding and contracting our breath. Can
you imagine if all we did was exhale all the time?
Are all we did was inhale all the time impossible.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: It's in that contrast that we begin to see truth
and know truth and find God.
Speaker 1: As you were talking, what came to me is you
were talking about humanity as a general, as a macro,
but on the micro, it's our journey. The only times
I I mean, at least in my lifetime, that the
biggest lessons I've learned are always been the more difficult ones,
the more challenging ones, the more painful ones. I appreciate
the relationship I have now with my wife, who have
been with for decades at this point, because I had
bad relationships before I knew what I didn't want. I
learned what I didn't want painfully, painfully as she did
as well. So it's just an example.
Speaker 2: Of those hard times for how we grow. Without me,
it's no growth, right. It's like, you know, the squeezing
of the lemon to get the lemonade, to get the juice.
You know, we're not going to get the juice of
life if we're not squeezed. And those experience that we
have that we may label bad actually help squeeze us
so we get to experience the joy that we get
to experience our own growth.
Speaker 1: Well, and if I may quote, grew me one more
time in this conversation, I just adore a door room
me and I might I'm paraphrasing here, but isn't the
very famous one is like the cut that happens to
you allows the light to come in, or something along
those ones.
Speaker 2: The wound is where the light is.
Speaker 1: Right, but you need the wound, you need order to
let in order to let the light in.
Speaker 2: Your heart needs to break open in order to find
the divine within. In order to find that divine spark,
that divine light that God placed in every single human being,
the heart has to break open in order to find it.
I have a farm where I live in Pennsylvania, and
we raise chickens for a while, and you know, when
the chicken is in the egg, all it knows is
the inside of that shell.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Our soul is like that, when it's imprisoned in our body.
We have to break free, just as that chick breaks
free out of a shell, to experience more.
Speaker 1: The truth that chicken is experienced, the truth, the truth
of where it actually is. It's not his world is
not the shell.
Speaker 2: No, it's so so much more right and our world
is not just this body.
Speaker 1: It is not.
Speaker 2: In the universe inside of us to explore.
Speaker 1: And it's a pretty big one too.
Speaker 2: Yoga Nanda inside of your heart, right inside of your heart.
Speaker 1: If you could tell, if you you can give one
piece of advice to someone who's watching, who is lost,
who's lost because they're in tremendous amount of pain, They're
lost because they haven't been able to find a path
that resonates with them on their journey and their search,
or just feel lost in general in this life. We've
all felt that way at one point or another. We
feel this thing that we're like, Oh, I don't know
what to do, where I am, I don't know where
I'm going, all that kind of stuff. If there was
something you could say to that person listening or watching
right now, what would that be?
Speaker 2: Probably two things. Number one, find something that you love,
even if it's a cat, a dog, and share that love.
And the second is find something that you can truly say,
I'm grateful for love and gratitude helps anchor us when
we feel lost. It helps establish a sense of meaning
in places where we're not feeling much meaning.
Speaker 1: Beautiful, thank you for that. We'll be right back after
a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
One question I want to ask you in regards to
the mystical side of Sufism, which if you have been
and I'm assuming you've been in India, so you've spoken
to yogi's and have heard the stories of the yogis
and the mystical the mystical aspects of what they do
by by location, levitation, manifestation, all these kind of yogic
powers that they have. Is there anything like that in Sufism,
like when you evolve to a certain place that there's
these stories, these these myths of a aa master, master Sufi.
Speaker 7: Who can not only story when I said, when I
was in Syria, there you saw it was a Sufi master.
Speaker 2: Who literally put a sword through one of his disciples
and pulled it out, no blood, no nothing. I witnessed this.
Speaker 1: Don't try this at home, everyone, don't try.
Speaker 2: I was on a trip to Morocco. I took a
group of women to Morocco. We met with some Sufis
in Morocco. They would take a kettle of hot water,
and it was hot, a kettle of hot water, pour
it into their mouth and then spit out cool water.
Speaker 1: So what what's happening there from your understanding?
Speaker 2: So, what's happening there is an a way of transmuting reality. Yeah,
so that we're moving of what we would call him sufism,
the world of imagination, into the world of we have
a word call it's called la hut and I'm trying
to find an English definition for it, into the world
of all possibilities.
Speaker 1: It's kind of it sounds kind of like Neo from
the Matrix understanding how to use the code and manipulate
the code in this simulation. And now he knows how
to do things, and he could do things that nobody
else does because he's kind of seen behind the curtain
almost and he understands the game. Does that makes sense?
Speaker 2: It is? And that's not the end of the story.
If we stop at the miracles, right, then we stop
with our own evolution and we become and that becomes
the illusion rather than continuing on that journey.
Speaker 1: It's the it's the egoic traps, if you will, of
the Yogi's talk about these this kind of on the
path to enlighten, there are these little traps and the
perfect example of this a great parable and please forgive
me if you've heard this before. People listening are watching
where there's two yogis on the edge of a river
and there's in one bridge. One yogi turns to the
ugger and he goes, here, watch this, and he levitates
across to the other side of the river. And then
the other yogi just walks fifteen feet and goes on
the bridge and walks across, and he goes, what did
you think of that? And he goes, I feel that
that's a waste of thirty five years of your time
when I could have just taken a bridge. You know,
it's you learned. You take it three decades to learn
this trick, but you could have it. Like, what's the
point of that? Because as you evolve spiritually, certain things
unlock within you and you're able to like do them.
Those are pretty amazing.
Speaker 2: They were pretty As I said, I've witnessed them with
my own eyes, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's not just worries, it's.
Speaker 2: Not just stories, but more importantly, and I think this
is what I'd love to leave your audience with. In Sufism,
we have two concepts. One is called finah, which is
the annihilation of your ego. And when I first heard that,
I was like, I don't know if I want to
annihilate my ego, but the actual experience of it is
the dissolving of your ego into divine love. We have
many pictures around the world, and at least I did
around the word annihilation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I already. I just saw armageddon coming with
the Giant comics. I just what I saw.
Speaker 2: So, but the actual real experience of it is the
dissolving of the ego into pure divine love. And then
from that, the other term in Sufism or the other
experience suphism is that of beca and because is the
self subsisting within that divine love within the world. And
for me, that's where we're all headed.
Speaker 1: It sounds to me that what the goal is of
all of this, almost of everything we're talking about, every path,
every tradition, is to find quote unquote heaven on earth,
to experience what you feel when you're a soul on
the other side. But you're it's kind of like you're
a soul on the other side. You're dropped into this
experience in this reality, and then you have to learn
and learn and learn and learn, whether in a parallel
reality or in a reincarnation scenario, you're learning, you're learning,
you're learning up until the point where you finally learn
how to break free of this or understand what this
reality to know the truth. Once you understand the truth,
then there's no reason for you to be down here
anymore because you've already know how the game is played.
And we're all kind of everything you're saying sounds like
versions of what I've discovered and what I've experienced speaking
to near death experiencers, where on the other side is
pure love. There is no ego, instant manifestation, all these
kind of things which we're trying to do down here,
and you were saying, is like trying to find pure love. Well,
that's what's on the other side. That's what all I
ever hear from near death experiences is this pure unconditional love,
and we're trying to achieve that here on our own
spiritual paths. Does that compute to you? Oh?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? And the beauty is that that's all of that's
all inside of us, and we keep looking outside for
something that is inside. And that was my biggest aha
in Sufism is you know, the one of my favorite
movies is The Wizard of Oz. You know, yeah, so
many spiritual parallels in the Wizard of Oz.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Yeah, it was the matrix of its time. Yeah,
it's I love I absolutely love that movie.
Speaker 2: To be able to find that and here where it
exists all along is such a gift, gift to yourself
and gift to humanity.
Speaker 1: Is that what was? So it's you know, I haven't
actually sat down thought about the Wizard of Oz, but
it's just like like you've had the ability to go
home all the time. Yeah, all you have to do
is click those those heels of the slippers and you go.
Speaker 2: That's it. And that's why we say Sufism is really
a path of remembering and being reminded because it's already
inside of you. And one of the practices is actually
called remembrance. That you're remembering who you are in truth,
you're remembering and reconnecting with that divine light, divine spark
within you that's connected to all of us.
Speaker 1: I've really truly enjoyed this conversation. You're such a You're
such a pleasure. Your energy is so beautiful, so peaceful
and loving. I can sense it coming off of you
off the screen, so it is. It is so beautiful.
Where can people find out more about you and the
amazing work you and your organization are doing in the world.
Speaker 2: Through our Sufi University. It's www. Dot Sufi dot net
or www. Sufieu that works level to see you all
your many courses. You can either take a whole program
or just dive in with a little foundation and just
learn the basics.
Speaker 1: So that's amazing. And if you can leave our audience
with one remembrance or prayer to awaken that divine beauty
that we've been speaking about within them, what would that be?
Speaker 2: So if this is one of my favorite prayers that
I'd like to share. It's called the light prayer, and
it goes like this. Put light on my right side
and light on my left side. Light in front of
me and light behind me. Light in my senses, in
my eyes, my ears, my nose, my hands, my mouth,
light in my heart. Make me all light. Remember we
are light, we are love, and spread your light into
the world. It is the light that will take us
out of the darkness and into the love. Thank you.
Speaker 1: That's so beautiful, Selema. Thank you so much again for
being here. It's been such a pleasure meeting you and
continue doing the amazing work you're doing to help bring
some light into this world and into every soul that
walks it. So I appreciate you and everything you're doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you. I appreciate your podcast and all that
you're doing to help spread the word out to help
people of all, to help the souls go to their
next level.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, Thank you for spending this sacred
time with us today. If you feel called to explore
this conversation further, you'll find the show notes for this
episode at Next levelsoul dot com Forward slash six five
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