Sufi Heart with Omid Safi

Exploring what it means to practice Islam in a world filled with evil, Omid Safi explains how strangeness can bring us back home to God.

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In this episode, Omid Safi holds a talk on:

• Sacred sounds and the movement of the heavenly spheres
• Heavy hearts from global suffering and genocide
• The counterculture of Islam when it began
• Looking into our own communities to consider what seems strange
• Not being afraid to veer from tradition
• Ways that we can become strangers to our own religion
• Standing with those who are vulnerable
• Returning home to the loving presence of God
• Remembering what it means to be a Sufi
• Taking care of the poor, the needy, the strangers, the lonely

“We want to become re-acquainted and return to our original home which is the very loving presence of God. That’s where and when we’re going to be at home.” – Omid Safi

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Omid Safi discusses how modern myths like Star Wars can connect us to Sufism and the mystery of the universe.

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This time on Sufi Heart, Omid Safi has a discussion on:

• The story of Moses in the Qur’an
• Moses’ teacher, ‘the green one’, and Yoda from Star Wars
• How myth-makers revive spiritual traditions
• The mythic language found in music and movies
• How Taoists, Muslims, Christians, and more see themselves in ‘the force’
• Everything as animated and the energy that flows through all things
• Recognizing that we are made of the elements and of God
• How George Lucas asks beautiful questions in subtle ways
• Considering the mystery rather than having all of the answers
• The many forms that Allah may appear in and finding saints in ordinary people
• How movies fill a gap when we mistrust formal religion

“Luke and Obi-Wan, apprentice and master, this is the very stuff of the Sufi tradition, This is part of that re-enchanting that Star Wars is trying to accomplish. It’s trying to remind us that there are these mysterious ways of the heart, of the soul, of the universe, that we can still learn.” – Omid Safi

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Sharing insights from the path of love, Omid Safi discusses the teachings of Sufi philosopher, Hazrat Inayat Khan.

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In this episode of Sufi Heart, Omid Safi explores:

• The universality of love
• Coming back to the center
• Experiencing God directly
• Signs of God in scripture, nature, and our own souls
• Having an open heart for all of humanity
• Practicing love as a religion
• Going into our breath for full presence and communion with God
• How vast God is, yet how close we are to God
• The singular focus of God as the beloved
• The necessity of our ancestors’ wisdom
• The path of the mystic vs. ordinary religion

“The center is where we come to have that direct, immediate, unmediated experience of God, which is to say, the heart.” – Omid Safi

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Examining how mysticism hides in plain sight, Omid Safi describes God as love, the lover, and the beloved with guest host Kelly Deutsch.

This episode was originally recorded for the Spiritual Wanderlust Podcast, with Kelly Deutsch. Learn more about this series that explores the wild, untamed frontiers of our interior life at spiritualwanderlust.org/podcast 

 This time on Sufi Heart, Omid Safi speaks with Kelly about:

• Discovering Islamic Mystics
• Sufism and having a pure heart
• Omid’s life in Iran and exposure to masculine displays of emotion
• The mystery of being human, the mystery of God
• Heartbreak and experiencing the heart breaking open
• Sacred Eroticism and using our senses to experience loveliness
• What we can learn from the type of love a mother provides
• Radical love and going into the roots
• Linking together love and justice

“The Sufis explicitly say something that of course we find also in the Christian mystical contemplative tradition. Mischievously, they almost say there is a holy trinity, a language which most orthodox Muslims would avoid and all Jews would have avoided. But they say the trinity is love, lover, and beloved. God is love, God is the lover, and God is the beloved.” – Omid Safi

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Pushing beyond the bare minimum of religiosity, Omid Safi inspires listeners to deepen their faith into an ecstatic adoration of God.

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In this episode of Sufi Heart, Omid Safi elucidates :

• Islam and the unity of Allah
• Iman as faith and Ihsan as virtue
• Spirituality and Aesthetics
• Doing what is required of us through religion
• How Habib (the chosen one) inspired a deeper level of faith
• How we can aspire to be in a state of love and adoration
• The eyes of the heart versus the eyes of the head
• Worshiping God for more than just salvation
• Islamic Saints and their stories of experiencing Allah through beauty
• Recognizing the unwavering divine presence of God
• The eternal now and present moment awareness
• Undivided attention as an act of love
• Courtesy and recognizing our individual journeys
• Being a beautiful witness

“God is to be found here and now…the divine simply is not to be experienced in the afterlife, in the heavenly realms, in the celestial realm. Here and now where you are, where we are, we can come to experience Allah.” - Omid Safi

You can join Omid on one of his heart-centered and spiritually-focused educational tours of:

• Mecca and Medina Umrah program: December 14-21st, 2023. [For Muslim participants]
• Morocco: April 13-22nd, 2024.
• Turkey: somewhere in late May to early June, 2024.

Further information is available at Illuminated Courses & Tours where you can also find information on virtual courses, spiritual talks, and more.

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In this interview from the 2023 Mystics Summit, Omid Safi joins Taya Ma for a conversation about Rumi, his main teachings, and how he’s situated on the wider Path of Radical Love.

This interview is part of the 2023 Mystics Summit a free online event. For more information, please visit mysticssummit.com. This recording is a copyright of The Shift Network. All rights reserved.

In this episode, Omid Safi and Taya Mâ talk about:

• Rumi’s background and why his real legacy is more than just his poetry, it’s his being
• How the Path of Radical Love keeps us rooted and grounded, and how we can cultivate those roots
• Practices that can guide us towards oneness
• How we can interpret Rumi’s work both on its own accord and through the context of the time in which it was written

About Taya Mâ

Taya Mâ Shere plays passionately in realms of transformative ritual, embodied vocalization, and ancestral healing. She is a professor of organic multireligious ritual at Starr King School for the Ministry, founder of the emergent online mystery school From the Deep, and co-founder of the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute. Learn more about her at taya.ma

You can join Omid on one of his heart-centered and spiritually-focused educational tours of:

• Mecca and Medina Umrah program: December 14-21st, 2023. [For Muslim participants]
• Morocco: April 13-22nd, 2024.
• Turkey: somewhere in late May to early June, 2024.

More information is available at Illuminated Courses & Tours.

“Approach the teachings of the Path of Love, or of Islam, or of Sufism, or whatever tradition it is that draws you closer to God, in an interactive model. Don’t look at it purely and simply as receiving the teaching, but also keep a journal of your responses to the teachings, to the stories. And when something touches your heart, write that down. And write down what it was and what it made you think because sometimes those momentary realizations are like a lightning bolt in a dark sky, and for one minute everything is clear. You see your own self clearly, and then it may be gone.” – Omid Safi

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Omid dives into the ocean of love, contemplating how the nature of the waves washing ashore and receding back mirrors the human experience.

This special episode is from Sharon Salzberg's Living an Authentic Life Summit and is hosted by Andres Gonzalez from the Holistic Life Foundation.

Lifetime access to the full summit, featuring all 30 speakers and five days of content, is available here: Living an Authentic Life Summit: A Journey to Inner Peace, Freedom and Joy

In this episode of Sufi Heart, Omid is interviewed by Andres Gonzalez exploring:

- The journey of living a spiritually luminous life

- Anger as a path to higher consciousness

- Expansion and contraction as the rhythm of life

- Breaking the callousness of the heart

- Being true to the inner child within

- An expansive and contractive breathing exercise

- To explore more on the topic of expansion and contraction, listen to episode 186 of Heart Wisdom.

“Every heart has to break and not every heart that’s broken breaks open. We want a heart that opens up. Opens up towards God, opens up towards all, opens up towards our fellow human beings, and opens up to that ultimate mystery of what we are. And what an awesome encounter that is, and how terrifying that is.” – Omid Safi

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Omid returns with a timely and flowing discussion on the connection between spirituality and conflict transformation.

Join Omid on a heart-centered and spiritually-focused educational tour of Turkey coming up in June 2023: Illuminated Tours - Turkey

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In this episode of Sufi Heart, Omid Safi discusses the spirituality of seasons. We learn to look at Islamic cultures for inspiration on attuning to the sanctity of nature.

“We have gained a lot in terms of productivity, but we have also lost a lot in terms of the rhythm of our life, the attunement to nature, and the ability to live a harmonious life”. —Omid Safi

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Omid Safi offers us a sense of the significance of Christmas, the birth of Jesus, and the sacred experience of Mary in the Islamic tradition.

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In this deeply personal episode of Sufi Heart, Omid Safi shares some lessons for the heart by remembering the events of 9/11, and reflects on how we can carry these teachings forward.

This talk was originally recorded by: Hicksville Public Schools 

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Journalist, Abdhul-Rehman Malik, from This Being Human Podcast interviews Omid on the commercialization of spirituality, Rumi's Guest House, reframing emotions, and embracing radical love like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Abdul-Rehman Malik is an award-winning journalist, educator, and organizer. He is a frequent contributor to BBC Radio, offering contemporary perspectives on spirituality. His recent documentary work includes the "The Muhammadan Bean: The Secret History of Islam and Coffee." Since 2019, Malik has served as a lecturer and associate research scholar at the Yale Divinity School. He is also the program coordinator for Yale University's Council on Middle East Studies and the director of the Muslim Leadership Lab, an innovative program being incubated at Yale’s Dwight Hall Center of Social Justice.

This podcast was is a part of the Aga Khan Museum’s new series - This Being Human, hosted by Abdhul-Rehman Malik. Check out interviews with Ginella Massa, Sultan Al Qassemi and other cultural leaders who explore what it means to be Muslim in today’s world: This Being Human.

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In this special episode, Sikh Activist, Simran Jeet Singh, joins Omid Safi for conversation exploring anti-racism as a spiritual practice.

Recognized among TIME Magazine’s 16 people fighting for a more equal America, Simran Jeet Singh is Senior Adviser for Equity and Inclusion at YSC Consulting and a Visiting Professor at Union Seminary. He is a 2020 Equality Fellow with the Open Society Foundations, a Racial Equity Media Fellow with Interfaith Youth Core, and a Senior Fellow for the Sikh Coalition. Simran holds a PhD, MPhil, and MA from Columbia University, an MTS from Harvard University, and a BA from Trinity University. He is the author of a best-selling children's book, Fauja Singh Keeps Going: The True Story of the Oldest Person to Ever Run a Marathon, and is in the process of writing a non-fiction book for adults, titled, More of This Please: Sikh Wisdom for the Soul. For more information, please visit SimranJeetSingh.org

Originally recorded for Religion News Service

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Ankhet Rumi and Omid join together to explore embodying truth through teaching, fighting for social justice, the contemporary American Saints of the Freedom Movement, working with anger, & the divine Sufi poetry and wisdom of Rumi.

Returning from a short hiatus, Omid is back with the Sufi Heart podcast, welcoming friend, poet, artist, and fellow podcaster, Ankhet Rumi, to the show. This special episode will be dual-casted, not only appearing here on the Be Here Now Network, but also on Ankhet's self-titled podcast, Ankhet, which illuminates the wisdom of Sufi poet, Rumi, and elucidates Eastern mysticism for modern times, holding deep credence towards the transcendental poetry of existence, social justice, and radical love.

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Omid Safi shares wisdom on expanding our circle of compassion, redefining success, the dis-ease of busyness, and how love is synonymous with social justice.

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Omid Safi shares a conversation with Marilyn Shannon about listening from the heart, dealing with suffering as we face a pandemic, and the powerful wisdom of the poet Rumi.

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Speaking directly to the global crisis presented by the Coronavirus pandemic, Omid Safi offers a reflection on how we can find refuge in love and our spiritual practice even through the most difficult times of change.

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Dr. Omid Safi continues to explore the teachings of Rumi, this time focusing on religious pluralism, the essentials for prayer, and returning to a state of presence.

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Dr. Omid Safi begins a series of discussions around the teachings of Rumi that illuminates the path of our spiritual journey.

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Omid Safi offers a look at the life and teachings of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a civil rights hero who had a passion for serving God and mankind equally.

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-72), was one of the leading Jewish theologians and Jewish philosophers of the 20th century. Internationally known as scholar, author, activist, and theologian. Learn more about Rabbi Heschel's life and teachings at Heschel.org.

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