What a question. I’ve been asking it all my life. Publicly, I am known for writing and workshops about the spiritual search, intuition, the still, small voice of God, angels, and miraculous time-warped synchronicities that seem directed to our benefit. I have written about my own mystical illuminations in A Book of Angels, The Ecstatic Journey, The Path of Prayer, in novels, plays, stories, and poetry. My work is translated into some 25 languages (most recently Chinese). But underneath I’m an ordinary flawed, failed human being, stumbling, searching for meaning, struggling toward God, and trying to be of some small service before I go back home.
I am not suggesting any particular book of the poems of this famous Persian poet and Sufi mystic. There are dozens of translations. Read any. His ecstatic poetry, as well as reflective musings all, lead to deepening love, the center and meaning of a spiritual experience.
The poetry of the medieval Persian sage Rumi combines lyrical beauty with spiritual profundity, a sense of rapture, and acute awareness of human suffering in ways that speak directly to contemporary audiences.
Trained in Sufism—a mystic tradition within Islam—Rumi founded the Sufi order known to us as the Whirling Dervishes, who use dance and music as part of their spiritual devotion. Many of Rumi’s poems speak of a yearning for ecstatic union with the divine Beloved. But his images bring the sacred and the earthy together in startling ways, describing divine love in vividly human terms.
I’m a creative writing professor and the author of five award-winning YA and MG novels. Nevertheless, for decades no matter what I accomplished, I felt like a failure who wasn’t doing enough. Eventually, I drove myself to a breakdown. Having a breakdown (my lucky break!) gave me an opportunity to reassess what creativity is, and to discover better ways to go about it. I’ve since spent the past 5+ years researching creativity, and how to make creative endeavors more effective and enjoyable. I wrote Breakthrough to share some of the life-changing insights and techniques that helped me. Here are a few books that might prove useful in shifting your creative paradigms and enhancing your life. Happy creating!
I’ll confess right off the bat that I’m the only person I know who genuinely enjoys reading Spira’s books. His philosophical, highly conceptual, contemplative chapters might not be for everyone. But if you take the time to carefully read and contemplate what Spira discusses, his books can be deeply impactful.
Spira is a “Direct Path” teacher, who conveys some of the deeper teachings of Tantra, Advaita Vedanta, Sufism, and other nondual traditions in a secular, direct, philosophical way. If you want to dive deep into what experience is, what can make life a struggle, and how to experience greater happiness, Spira can be a powerful teacher. The Transparency of Things is a great introduction to his work, but the concepts Spira discusses cannot be understood intellectually. Ultimately, they must be directly experienced to be grasped, and that can take a bit of time, work, and luck.
The purpose of The Transparency of Things is to look clearly and simply at the nature of experience, without any attempt to change it.
A series of contemplations leads us gently but directly to see that our essential nature is neither a body nor a mind. It is the conscious Presence that is aware of this current experience. As such, it is nothing that can be experienced as an object, and yet it is undeniably present.
However, these contemplations go much further than this. As we take our stand knowingly as this conscious Presence that we always already are, and…
From about the age of 14, I have been exploring how unusual ideas and experiences might change a person’s life. This led me to become an author and experimental psychologist studying the effects of religious beliefs, rituals, and meditation exercises on our minds and bodies. I have spent a good part of the last 4 years putting together a book which tries to answer many of my questions on the varieties of meditation practices around the world.
A delightful 12th-century spiritual travel book. As a young man, the mystic Ibn Arabi travels through southern Spain, Portugal, and North Africa in search of holy figures. He meets plenty of them, who tell him of their daily spiritual and physical discipline and experiences of God. In one of my favorite depictions, Ibn Arabi is harshly told off by one of the individuals who refuses to acknowledge he is the one whom the young traveler seeks — if people learn of his spiritual eminence, he finally confides, he will never have a moment of peace; there will be a never-ending queue of individuals seeking guidance, healing, and prayers from him.
I am a Professor of Islamic Thought and Global Philosophy at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Perpetually drawn to ideas and concepts that seek to explain the underlying nature of things, I predictably read and write books on such topics as consciousness, self-awareness, mysticism, God, philosophy of religion, metaphysical poetry, and virtue ethics. The titles listed here are in my own area of expertise (Sufi philosophy). Intellectually rigorous and spiritually informed, they each represent perfect points of entry into Sufism, which is an ocean without a shore.
Not suitable for the faint of heart, this title offers rare glimpses of insight into the Sufi philosophical worldview, taking in such key topics as the oneness of existence, the nature of light and consciousness, the interrelationship between thought and practice, and points of convergence between Sufism and Zen Buddhism.
Essays in Islamic Mystical Philosophy CREATION AND THE TIMELESS ORDER OF THINGS Essays in Islamic Mystical Philosophy Toshihiko Izutsu Creation and the Timeless Order of Things brings together Toshihiko Izutsu’s most important essays on Islamic mystical philosophy. Though primarily concerned with Iranian mystics and philosophers, it displays Izutsu’s unique insights in comparative philosophy by comparing and contrasting Islamic Sufism with Vedanta, Mahayana Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Archetypal Psychology, and modern Existentialism. The studies in this volume explore the deep structures of mystical insight particularly as developed around the key concepts of the unity of existence, “creation” and “being” within Islamic mystical…
I fell in love with Rumi when I was 15. My parents introduced me to him, and lines of his poetry show up in daily conversation with them. Rumi had insights about life put much more eloquently than I could have expressed myself. I have devoted myself to studying this path of Radical Love for over 35 years now, and have the great joy to share these teachings with people in both academic and communal settings. I lead spiritually oriented tours to Turkey and Morocco through Illuminated Tours. I also teach online courses on Rumi and spirituality through Illuminated Courses and courses on Islam and Islamic spirituality at Duke University.
Attar’s masterpiece is a Sufi classic. It represents the journey of the birds—which in Islam as in so many traditions represents the spirit. 30 birds set out to see the “Big Bird”, the Phoenix, and in doing so travel through seven valleys which represent the stages of the spiritual path. In one of the more famous puns in Islamic literature, when they reach the destination, they see God as a mirror of themselves, the thirty birds (in Persian “si-murgh”, si=30, murgh=birds) recognize themselves as a reflection of the Simurgh, the phoenix. Peter Avery’s translation is a wonderful resource, as it is accompanied by incredibly helpful notes.
Mantiqu't-Tair is one of the masterpieces of Persian literature of which a complete and annotated translation into English is here presented for the first time as The Speech of the Birds. The text revolves around the decision of the birds of the world to seek out a king. Their debilitating doubts and fears, the knowing counsel of their leader Hoopoe, and their choice of the Simurgh as a king, is in reality an allegory of the spiritual path of Sufism with its demands, its hazards and its infinite rewards. The poem contains many admonitory anecdotes and exemplary stories, including numerous…
My exploration of Sufism began in the unlikely environment of the Soviet Union where Sufism was considered a relic of the past to be replaced by the atheist, world-asserting ideology. The fact that my Muslim academic advisor assigned this topic to me, an active customs officer, was nothing short of a miracle. It was the beginning of a chain of miracles that punctuated my teaching and research career in the USSR, UK, US, EU, and the post-Soviet republics of Eurasia, especially Tatarstan and Kazakhstan. Having observed Sufism in various shapes and forms for over thirty years, my knowledge of its precepts and rituals is of great help to me in everyday life.
This book offers a poignant personal view of Sufism by a Scottish-born actor and writer who became disillusioned with a world “where people teach but know nothing, where the sentences flow on endlessly but lead nowhere.” He seeks and finds wisdom and solace in the deserts of Sahara under the guidance of a Sufi master to whom he dedicates his short but powerful book. When I picked it up as a reading for my class on Sufism, I thought I would find a usual mushy account of Sufism by a starry-eyed neophyte. The book was anything but: it was eloquent, deeply personal, and felicitously free from platitudes. I was pleasantly surprised and so were my students. I recommend it to everyone interested in spiritual quests regardless of his or her background.
I fell in love with Rumi when I was 15. My parents introduced me to him, and lines of his poetry show up in daily conversation with them. Rumi had insights about life put much more eloquently than I could have expressed myself. I have devoted myself to studying this path of Radical Love for over 35 years now, and have the great joy to share these teachings with people in both academic and communal settings. I lead spiritually oriented tours to Turkey and Morocco through Illuminated Tours. I also teach online courses on Rumi and spirituality through Illuminated Courses and courses on Islam and Islamic spirituality at Duke University.
This is the most complete biography of the lives of Sufi saints, better known in Islam as “friends of God.” So many of them are here, Rabi’a the famous female mystic, Hallaj the martyr, and Bayazid Bistami. There are earlier translations, but those are abridgments that leave out many of the miraculous accounts.
In Farid ad-Din 'Att?r's Memorial of God's Friends, readers will explore the sole extant prose work of the great Persian Sufi poet Farid al-Din 'Att?r (d. ca. 1230). Integrating the writings of generations of Sufi scholars and historians, it relates the saga of Islamic spirituality through the lives and sayings of some its most prominent exemplars. 'Att?r combines popular legend, historical anecdote, ethical maxim, and speculative meditation in lively and thought-provoking biographies. 'Att?r's lucid and economical style encourages readers to participate fully in the efforts of these pioneers of the sacred to live out and express their unfolding encounters with…
I’ve been fascinated by—and working with—the chakra system for more than 40 years. Because of my practice as a metaphysician, I have long sought the meanings behind what we experience as reality. Meaning is what makes reality worth living. The chakra system is a vital key to creating a life past surviving to thriving. Over the years, I’ve seen detective work in the chakra system unravel issues from the past, present, and future gently and for keeps. Every single one of us should know our chakras as a matter of basic health, and my 40 years of experience with clients proves it!
Cyndi Dale is perhaps the doyenne of the chakra experts. I’ve read a lot of her books, and she’s quite knowledgeable. However, I completely disagree with much of her chakra system. It’s too complicated for my taste, but then I am most interested in the whole population knowing how to work with their own chakras in an everyday way just like we brush our teeth. She’s training experts. Her work is valuable to know what others have discovered, and… her section on the history of the chakra system as well as how it has been a part of health and healing in cultures from the Incas to the Taoists to the Hindus to the Sufis to the Maori and more throughout time is quite simply the best.
Powerful centres of subtle energy, the chakras have fascinated humanity for thousands of years. Llewellyn's Complete Book of Chakras is a unique and empowering resource that provides comprehensive insights into these foundational sources of vitality and strength. Discover what chakras are and how they work. Explore how to work with chakras for personal growth and healing. Examine the ways our understanding of chakras has transformed through history and across cultures. Lively and accessible, this definitive reference explores the science, history, practices, and structures of subtle energy systems. With an abundance of illustrations and a wealth of practical exercises, Llewellyn's Complete…
I've always been fascinated with the idea that humans have so many layers of consciousness, and reality is multi-faceted. I've studied Zen Buddhism, yoga, and for the past 43 years, Sufism. My experience of life has developed into a journey of changing difficult situations into exhilarating discoveries, finding hidden patterns in nature that delight me and tell me I’m not alone in the universe, and helping many people transform into beings of joy and gratitude. I’m beginning to see that our transformation delights and changes the Divine; we are not a passing phenomenon but contributors to new creation on a major scale.
This book is based on Middle Eastern poems from the 1300s which cuddle up close to you and turn you around, such that the world will never be the same again. You find yourself illuminated in new ways with every poem. How amazing to be so intimate with a great being from so far in the past.
Chosen by author Elizabeth Gilbert as one of her ten favorite books, Daniel Ladinsky’s extraordinary renderings of 250 unforgettable lyrical poems by Hafiz, one of the greatest Sufi poets of all time
More than any other Persian poet—even Rumi—Hafiz expanded the mystical, healing dimensions of poetry. Because his poems were often ecstatic love songs from God to his beloved world, many have called Hafiz the “Invisible Tongue.” Indeed, Daniel Ladinsky has said that his work with Hafiz is an attempt to do the impossible: to render Light into words—to make the Luminous Resonance of God tangible to our finite senses.…
After my father died when I was eleven years old, I started asking those deeper spiritual questions. This started me on a journey both personally and academically to find needed answers to my queries. I became fascinated with mystical experiences and how seekers navigated their way through the vicissitudes of the spiritual journey. With this interest as a focal point, I received a doctorate in theology, attended retreats, and received guidance from Sufi, Buddhist, and Christian teachers. I taught mysticism and world religions at Ithaca College and co-founded Light on the Hill Retreat Center in 1991, where I still guide people of any or no faith on their spiritual journeys.
This engrossing and inspiring book portrays the author’s wondrous encounters with Sufi master, Hazrat Inayat Kahn, first as a beginning student and then as his assistant. He witnesses the experiences of this sage as he moves through the stages of illumination, dark night of the soul, and unitary consciousness. Interspersed throughout the book are the essential teachings of Sufism as taught by Inayat Khan, its message of love, harmony, and beauty, the Ten Sufi Thoughts, meditation, and the workings of the inner life. Memories of a Sufi Sage is a great introduction to Sufism and one of its great mystics.
