A Hidden Treasure

Pir Zia Inayat-Khan

Imagine yourself floating in space with outspread limbs. Thus suspended in midair your recumbent form gives itself over to a delicious languor, and one by one your senses close down. The eyes cease to see and the ears cease to hear. Smell and taste go dormant. Afterimages linger for a time, but in the absence of new stimuli the eidola that haunt the halls of memory slowly fade into oblivion. The void that surrounds you now pervades you. You are dead to the world—and yet you live. read more »

The Practice of Presence, Part Two

Lee Irwin

The mystery of the human experience is inseparable from our capacity to recognize the multiple fields of awareness that infuse our day-to-day consciousness. This flow of consciousness is the experiential ground of Being and Spirit, and as such this flow is the participatory medium through which our capacity to be “a light unto the world” is actualized. read more »

Goethe in Marienbad

Christopher Bamford

Appropriately, if only by name, the legendary Bohemian Spa of Marienbad is a place of alchemical associations, harking back as it does to the legendary alchemist Maria the Jewess, “divine Maria” or Maria Prophetissa, the supposed sister of Moses, who was the inventor, among other alchemical apparatuses, of the celebrated balneum Mariae or the bain Marie: the double boiler. read more »

Seven Pillars Update & News

January – March 2012

Spring has sprung, and with the energy and inspiration of rebirth that accompanies this time of year, we have been very happily up to our eyebrows in exciting new projects! As we wrote about in our 2011 Year-End Review, everything we do from this point forward will focus on the “seven pillars” – The Journey of Life, Universe Story, Cloud of Witnesses, Unity of Being, The Cry, What May Be and The Pledge. read more »

Vanishing Valentines for You

Introducing Floetry

Seven Pillars' Vanishing Art Festival last August experienced some unexpected weather issues, particularly with Hurricane Irene. Consequently, we never developed an envisioned (non) manifesto on art and wisdom. We have our chance now, through Floetry. We invite you to create a poetic (non) manifesto with us. read more »

Reimagining the Arts in a Material(ist) World

Christopher Bamford

Do we live actually in a dualistic world, a world of matter and spirit, mind and body? To treat matter as separate already makes it so. Matter, as we know it, is the matter of materialism (egotism, dualism). Yet it really didn’t come into being until Descartes divided the world into res cogitans and res extensa, thinking things—minds—thought of as spiritual, and extended things—bodies—thought of as mechanical. read more »

Vanishing Art: Water Element

Consecrating the Pond at the Abode of the Message

Each day during Seven Pillars’ Vanishing Art event in late August 2011 a “poetic action” was planned related to one of the elements, Earth, Water, Fire and Air. Nature, in the form of Hurricane Irene, as well as other unforeseen factors, intervened, leaving the poetic action for Water undone. read more »

Seven Pillars Year-End Review 2011

All along the primary question we’ve been asked is “What are the seven pillars?” During the spring of 2010, with this question vivid in our consciousness, the seven pillars revealed themselves in a dream and a new vision for Seven Pillars was born. read more »

The Practice of Presence, Part One

Lee Irwin

The practice of presence is no easy task and, spiritually, it is perhaps the most elusive of all practices. Imagine for a moment being fully present to yourself and to your situation. That is, imagine being fully aware of all that passes through and within you and also simultaneously aware of all that impacts you from the surrounding environment—people, places, atmosphere, sensory sensations, integrated with inner thoughts, feelings, memories, and bodily reactions. read more »

Dispelling Ignorance and Developing Harmony

Sister Joan Kirby

What ignorance are we addressing here? I am considering ignorance here from the point of view of a westerner. We live in the global village, we share the same roof, we are interdependent and co-responsible for care of the Earth. And yet, we still think of ourselves, and our religion, as separate, distinct, and unique. read more »

Reflections on the Life of a Mystic

Excerpt from the New Book Fragments of a Love Story

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

When I first met my teacher, Irina Tweedie, I sat in her small room, looked into her blue eyes and I knew that she knew. From that moment, without knowing why, more than anything, I wanted what she had. Much later I understood this as the knowledge that can only come from direct inner experience, which for the Sufi is imaged as Khidr. Khidr is the most important Sufi figure, the archetype of direct revelation. read more »