Tag: mysticism

The School of Love

The essence of Sufism is the creed of the heart, or the "School of Love"  ( mazhab-i 'ishq).  The cornerstone of this school is the insight that the Universe is a phenomenon of love, the ripest fruit of which is the human heart.  In this talk, Pir Zia Inayat-Khan will explore the individual and collective implications of the spiritual cultivation of the heart.

Thoreau, Mystic of Walden and Beyond

Review of Letters to a Spiritual Seeker by Henry David Thoreau, edited by Bradley P. Dean, New York: W.W. Norton, 2004, 192 pp. In this essay, Coleman Barks, today’s leading ‘Voice of Rumi’ in the ‘West’, writes eloquently about Thoreau, as a great American mystic of the 19th century who is, sadly, often a mere historical footnote in a high school or college undergraduate course. More than a meditative man watching the intricacies of life of Walden’s frogs and ducks, more than a fierce proponent of civil disobedience, more than the occasional harborer of runaway slaves, as his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson put it:“ He [Thoreau] had a great contempt for those who made no effort to gauge accurately their own powers and weaknesses, and by no means spared himself, of whom he said that a man gathers materials to erect a palace, and finally concludes to build a shantee [shanty] with them.”* 

Honoring the Founding of the Chartres School

Early in the second millennium, the Chartres school was a center for healing, arts, the honoring of the earth and the Divine Feminine Principle, as well as for the use of alchemy as a tool for personal transformation, and for the revolutionary perspectives of world citizenship and interconnectedness. As author Jim Garrison writes, our work in the present age is “to reclaim our wholeness and to reconnect with those great educators of the past who understood that art is as important as logic, that personal transformation is as important as belief, and that feeling one with the cosmos is as important as having dominion over nature.” The school at Chartres thus is both a precursor and an inspiration for Seven Pillars House of Wisdom.

Meditation

A.E.'s The Candle of Vision is an eloquent poetic prose description of the author's personal experiences, his reveries and inner openings. A.E. uses a form of writing that directly reflects the quality of his inner mystical experience. His emphasis is on the imagination as reality and on the critical importance of the development of concentration. This piece was first published in 1928. We have chosen to maintain A.E.’s spelling and word usage although they may cause the reader to occasionally pause.

Sufi Dreamwork

There are many paths in which the dream is regarded as important. Some paths emphasize the practice of studying one’s dreams more intensely. The Naqshbandi Sufi path is among these, and Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee speaks eloquently of some of the benefits that may derive from this type of study.

The Garden Of Mysticism, Part I

The garden of mystical teachings has many flowers, each unique in beauty and each offering a nuance and variation on the possibilities of the mystical life. The flower that attracts, the specific form, delicacy, and brilliance of a particular blossom, indicates a path whose attributes are shared by other members of that species.

Accessing Prophetic Sources & Wisdom Traditions

Pir Zia discusses the need to access prophetic sources and wisdom traditions for the articulation of a forward-looking world culture. This talk was originally given at the Sufi Conference, held October 2008. For the full audio or set of DVDs related to this event, please visit http://www.suficonference.org/2008preorder.html and for the text of this discussion, please see http://www.sevenpillarshouse.org/article/a_forward_looking_world_culture

Taj Inayat on the Mystical Path

Taj Inayat, one of Seven Pillars' co-founders, shares a meaningful teaching from her early days on the spiritual path.

Invitation to Attend Seven Pillars’ Labor Day Gathering 2009

Seven Pillars will host Wisdom House Architectonics: Building a House with No Walls over Labor Day weekend, September 4-7, 2009, in New Lebanon, New York.

© Copyright 2010 Seven Pillars. All rights reserved.
.