Mystical Islam and Rumi with Psalm 73

Welcome to Loving the Imperfect! On this week's episode, I will briefly discuss Sufism and Rumi in this episode since Psalm 73 reminded me so much of some of Rumi's poems. For those of you who don't know what Sufism is, this would be a good episode to introduce you to one of the most mystical orders of Islam. It is an episode that reminds us to love each other and ourselves just the way we are.

Blessings,
Brianne

Books mentioned in this episode:

Sufism: Transformation of the Heart by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Hafiz: The Gift
Rumi Unseen Poems by Mevlana Rumi 

For more information about me and my work, please visit www.brianneturczynski.com or www.lovingtheimperfect.com

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Loving the Imperfect. I'm Brianne Turczynski, your host. 

Before we begin, I want to offer my prayers and ask your prayers for Palestinians in Gaza. They're experiencing a tremendous uptick in the temperature right now, and a lot of people are suffering in shelters because of the war. And so, I ask your prayers for them.

And I ask your prayers for Palestinians and Jews all over the world suffering because of this conflict. and since this episode is about Sufism and Rumi and other, Sufi teachers who practice Islam, I want to remind everybody that Allah, the Muslim God, the Christian God, and the Jewish God are all the same God. They are the same. Okay. Today we are covering Psalm 73. It is the Psalm of Asaph, who I don't think we have met yet.

Asaph was a leader of one of the temple choirs.

When I read this psalm of Asaph, notice how much it resembles the voice of doubt in ourselves when we scroll through social media or watch celebrities on TV. And keep that in mind as I read through this. You'll notice behind me my dog is snoring. He's sleeping next to me, so you might hear some breathing in the background.

This shows up on a lot of my recordings, so I apologize if it bothers you, but he is a velcro dog. He's like a greyhound mix, so he never really leaves my side. So he's just always here, sleeping.

Okay. A reading from Psalm 73. 

“Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost slipped.

I had nearly lost my foothold, for I envied the arrogant. When I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no struggles. Their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from common human burdens. They are not plagued by human ills. Therefore, pride is their necklace. They clothe themselves with violence. From their callous hearts comes iniquity. Their evil imaginations have no limits. They scoff and speak with malice. With arrogance, they threaten oppression. Their mouths lay claim to heaven, and their tongues take possession of the earth. Therefore, their people turn to them and drink up waters in abundance.

They say, how would God know? Does the most high know anything? This is what the wicked are like, always free of care. They go on amassing wealth. Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and have washed my hands in innocence. All day long I have been afflicted and every morning brings new punishments. 

If I had spoken out like that, I would have betrayed your children. When I tried to understand all this, it troubled me deeply. Till I entered the sanctuary of God, then I understood their final destiny. Surely you place them on slippery ground. You cast them down to ruin. How suddenly are they destroyed, completely swept away by terrors. They are like a dream when one awakes. When you arise, Lord, you will despise them as fantasies. When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant. I was a brute beast before you. Yet I am always with you. You hold me by the right hand.

You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? Earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. 

Those who are far from you will perish. You destroy all who are unfaithful to you. But as for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Sovereign Lord my refuge. I will tell of all your deeds.” 

The 27th verse of this psalm says, those who are far from you will perish. You destroy all who are unfaithful to you. And I just want to say that God does not destroy us. We destroy ourselves.

Remember, we have free will. Sometimes people can use that to create a lot of damage, whether to themselves or to others. And faithfulness to God only means being kind to all creation, and being intentional about seeing others with the eyes of your heart. And seeing ourselves with the eyes of our hearts. This means when we see people that have everything, the body, the clothes, the life, don't envy them or think their life is perfect they have the same struggles as you and me. Most of us know this already. Suffering and joy are relative, meaning if I was explaining to you my sorrow, you would not be able to say my sorrow is greater than yours.

And joy is the same. If I were to tell you how joyful I am, It would be wrong to say your joy is greater than mine. Comparisons can't really be made, because you have to weigh a person's entire life experience in balance.

So even grasping their level of joy or sorrow is ineffable. As empathetic humans. We understand that about each other, so we don't usually go there. We don't really compare anyone's sorrow to ours or anyone's joy to ours when we're in conversation with people. 

So, if somebody is telling you about their joy or about their sorrow, as an empathetic person that knows social cues and is emotionally intelligent, you would know to be present with that person and be with them in their joy or be with them in their sorrow and listen to them. Be a place, a safe place, where that person can experience their own joy or their own sorrow with you.

But somehow when we see things on social media there's a lot of advertisements that are coming at you. You know, I'm 41 now. Instagram knows that I must be, almost hitting menopause and losing all my hair and wanting to lose weight and do all this stuff because it's sending me all these ads. 

And the people doing these ads are usually good-looking and they look like they've got it all together, it can make you feel even worse about your situation. Living in the real world with very real things happening to you every day. It can be pretty toxic, for everyone. And it's hard to not sit there and compare yourself to those people somehow the physical slips in about our bodies and our intelligence, when it is the same for emotions, we don't even try to compare someone's joy to our joy or someone's sorrow to our sorrow.

But how come it is that we're always comparing physical qualities, you know, body types or the quality of life or money, all these superficial things. We're always comparing that stuff. Why is it that we're intelligent enough to understand that to know how much joy someone is actually feeling, we have to weigh their entire life experience in the balance of their joy or of their sorrow. 

But we don't understand this with physical stuff. We just take the face value of their great looking body and compare it to our own. 

When it is the same as emotions, these people have a lifetime of different experiences that made them take the path they did and take care of their bodies the way they did, or grasp for money like they did. And for all we know, the qualities of these people that look seemingly attractive might come from a very dark place within them.

It might come from childhood trauma. That they’re trying to make up for trying to heal themselves somehow. And it could be the very thing that enslaves them. I mentioned in my last episode about the Red Sea, that we should free ourselves from anything that enslaves us. And for some of us, it's the negative voice in our head that tells us we're not good enough, that keeps us shackled to our workout routines and our diet plans and the bottle whatever it may be. have the piece of cake or the pie someone offers you when you go to their house. I used to deny dessert. I was always watching my calories. I would never take the dessert. And, you know, I think that if we're at somebody's house, and somebody is offering their hospitality to us in any way that they can.

I think it's important for us as guests and empathetic, beautiful human beings that we should accept hospitality, eat the dessert, eat the food, we just need to relax a bit. You are beautiful just as you are and working out is good in moderation. Eating healthy is good in moderation. Whatever you are incorporating into your life is good in moderation.

Even spirituality. I had a friend of mine, she's an, iconographer,  I was visiting her once, and, we always talk about spirituality and she said that too much of it can give you indigestion, she is a miniaturist, , she collects Things for her doll houses and she collects dolls and she creates these amazing beautiful miniature doll houses and She has one that's huge and every room is just immaculate and that's what she does as her hobby and she says I have to have fun and Balance out my spiritual life because too much of my spiritual life too much of that spirituality all the time and Would give me indigestion.

And I think that's true with everything. I've felt that way before too, because you have to stay grounded in the world, I do centering prayer every day. At least I try to some days I don't get to it. You know, and then reading a lot of spiritual work and doing these podcasts. So, I'm writing a lot of spiritual work. Too much of that can get to be too much.

And so to supplement that, I have to go have fun doing something else and it keeps me balanced and keeps me in the world, not really a part of the world, but just living in the world, have my, I have my ear to the ground of what's going on as far as events and, sometimes just listening to the news like NPR or whatever will, help me balance out all the spiritual stuff. In this psalm, we have someone embittered. The psalmist Asaph is embittered by the success of people who, , produce evil in the world. And he says, basically, what is the point of living a righteous life? When I am punished and others, the quote unquote wicked people, live great and have all the power.

But then he says, I ventured into the house of God and remembered God. And I was sorry for allowing my heart to be embittered. “I want nothing but you, he says. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. So, the second half of this psalm, before it talks about wicked people, it reminds me a lot of Rumi's poems. Those of you familiar with Rumi will know that he was a Sufi mystic, from Persia, which is now Iran. He lived in the 13th century, and his poetry spoke of union with the divine.  Rumi wrote amazing poetry. It's just beautiful, beautiful poetry. Hafiz, which you might have heard of too, he was also a Sufi mystic. He lived about a century after Rumi. And his poetry is similar, but it's a little bit different. It's a little bit more edgy, I would say.  I will put links to some books that I would recommend. by both of those poets in the info for this podcast. It said that when Rumi would compose his poems, he would spin around, and Sufis do this because that is everything in the universe.

The atom spins around, the earth spins around the sun, the moon spins around the earth, everything is spinning. And so, Rumi had this sort of divine inspiration that if he would spin around, he would be able to get in touch with the divine. And in Sufism, the Divine is the Beloved. You are in love with the Divine.

And the Beloved wants a relationship with you. And you want a relationship with the Beloved. And it's all about creating that union. 

With Sufism, any sort of mysticism really is getting back to the union with God or what Buddhists call enlightenment, so in Turkey, you might have heard of the whirling dervishes. These people are Sufi mystics and not all of them are. Some of them are just performers, but the ones that practice Sufism, they're praying when they spin around like that. They're in this trance-like state.

Rumi used to do this. He used to spin around and spin around composing his poetry because he was putting himself in a meditative state in order to write poetry because he felt like his poetry was the divine message. Just like, The psalmists did in the Bible.

All the prophets were doing that. They might not have spun around when they were doing it, but they were in a meditative state. And I think all creative artists, any artist will be that way too. You'll talk to a painter or or even a choreographer or anyone who's an artist at all.

They're in a meditative state when they come up with their ideas or during painting or creating. And iconographers also are in a meditative state, and they call it writing. You're writing the icon. So, you're getting a message from God and you're painting the image. whatever image that God is giving to you. Every brushstroke is a message from God. Every brushstroke is the voice of the divine painting and writing the icon or the painting. And it was the same for Rumi and his poems. Belonging to a Sufi order can happen whether a Muslim is Sunni or Shia. And a common practice of Sufism is whirling, like the whirling dervishes in Turkey. They are common there, and though Sufism is a brotherhood, there are women now who are whirling dervishes that are welcomed into these orders.

Not all the orders, but some of the orders do now accept women as whirling dervishes. Sufi Practices are forbidden in Turkey. They're allowed to dance for tourists, but they are not allowed to speak about their practices.

Basically, evangelize is what I would say. So, they're not allowed to do that. But Sufism is beautiful. There's a wonderful book by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, who's a Sufi teacher, and it's called Sufism, the Transformation of the Heart. And I'll mention this in the notes too for this episode. He says in his introduction, Sufism is a mystical path of love in which God or truth is experienced as the beloved. 

The inner relationship of the lover and beloved is the core of the Sufi path. Through love the seeker is taken to God. The mystic seeks to realize truth in this life and God reveals himself within the hearts of those who love him. The mystical experience of God is a state of oneness with God.

So, it's exactly like Christian mysticism which is experiential religion. It's the experience of the divine. And it's the same with Sufism and the same with, other mystical practices and religions.

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee also says in his book in chapter one, the pain of longing. So that, that union with God is what the Sufi mystic is yearning for. He says, this pain of longing is the most direct road back to God. 

Longing does not belong to the complexities of the mind or the veils of the ego within the heart. The beloved speaks directly to the lover. leading us through the fire of our own transformation. If we follow the thread of longing, we step out of the ego with its patterns of control and enter the arena of the heart. 

It is the heart that hears his call. 

It's so hard when you're living in the world and you have so much clamoring for your attention but underneath all that, in the undercurrent of our hearts and our spirits is this longing, I think, for God and oneness with God. And that's what mysticism, Sufi mysticism and Christian mysticism, helps people do. If you can get in touch with that part of yourself, that is more mystical, sort of shut down the ego a little bit and shut down that voice of doubt that while you're scrolling through social media tells you you're not good enough and tells you that you need this or that or the other thing in order to live a fulfilling life. It is a lie. That is not the truth. The truth is that you are beautiful just the way you are.

If you want to get healthier, awesome. But remember, everything in moderation. Or you will get indigestion.

And so I'll leave you today with a poem from Rumi. This is about that union that I was talking about. It's called, I Cry So Many Cries, My face so Pale.
I cry so many cries, my face so pale, until I wipe the rust from the mirror of doubt. The heart rides in the saddle of your love, at every step traveling miles towards the soul. Show your bright ruby in blind darkness, until stones from the sky rain.

On the heads of the stone hearted. In your radiance, why do they deny you? In your kingdom and glory, they are a shame and a disgrace. If they are blind in the end, they will finally see. Far away, thousands of souls hanging from the moon like stars. From the joy of your light, the blind will see.

From the joy of your path, the crippled will walk. Sometimes the mind gets lost on your path. Since poppies grow, in your green fields. On your path I see many lamenting, like empty hearted flutes. On your path, two hundred swaying cypresses bend from sorrow like harps. On your path, thousands of caravans were broken down. 

On your path, many capsized ships were sunk in the Ganges. The souls of the broken put their hopes in you, until they find wisdom in your endless knowledge, until you lift oppression with your kindness upon kindness. Until all sides find peace. Until wars fade away. Until we seek another way. Walk along another way.

Taking heart in the harmony of linking arm in arm. Shams of Tabriz accepts that joyful invitation with every atom of desire, every hair on his noble head.

Thank you for joining me. On Loving the Imperfect. Next week, we’ll be reading Psalm 80. Which is another one from Asaph.

Support the podcast, by subscribing and sharing And I now have a Patreon website. I'll be updating 3-minute bonus episodes every month. I hope you all have a great week.

I'll try to remember when I scroll through social media that I am beautiful just the way I am. And I hope that you will do the same. Thank you for joining me today. Bye bye.