I am connecting with spring and its urgent affirmation of life – its green shine and fecundity. It is the sunrise season, the season of early growth. For me, where I live, the immediate pre-equinox period often generates a strong feeling of dynamism and emergent potential. I am in sync with the awakening earth.
Elaine’s return from hospital and the enhanced clinical support she is receiving are helping me to live this season more fully. In our joint lives we are both feeling more agency in shaping a new phase in our life together.
In this moment I feel refreshed and optimistic within my Druid contemplative path. I have adjusted my formal practice so that I have two practice sessions in the day, both of them roughly twenty minutes long. The first, at the beginning of the day and standing, is affirmative and dynamic. It includes body and energy work and a theme of healing and rejuvenation. The second, at the end of the day and sitting, is contemplative. It includes breathwork, a mantra meditation using beads, and prayer. In the modern Druid manner it includes a commitment to the collectively imperilled qualities of love, peace and justice. This shift is having a renewing and reinvigorating effect on me, as befits the season: another way of gratefully affirming the gift of a human life.
Sufism is often referred to as the Way of the Heart. Hazrat Inayat Khan was a Sufi teacher and musician from Gujarat, India, who took his teaching to the West in the early 20th century. His combination of spiritual teaching, philosophy and music was normal in this culture and tradition. In his own life and work, Hazrat Inayat Khan created a Universal Sufi movement independent of its Islamic origins, though always inspired by them. Practitioners from his movement created the Dances for Universal Peace.
The image above is the Ace of Cups from Ayeda Husain’s The Sufi Tarot (1). Ayeda Hussain is a teacher in the Ineyatiyya, a global organisation dedicated to Universal Sufism as taught by Hazrat Inayat Khan. She sees Sufism and Tarot as two systems of healing and transformation that can be valuably brought together. She treats Tarot as a vehicle for spiritual teaching, going so far as to include contemplations and affirmations for each card.
Referring to her Ace of Cups, she says: ‘In Sufi poetry, the cup is the heart that must be emptied before the beloved can pour the Divine nectar into it. Just as a cup that is filled cannot be poured into, neither can a heart filled with limiting impressions. The work of the mystic then, is to clear impressions that clutter and cloud the heart, so that it may be able to receive. As the heart opens, we become aware of new offers and opportunities in both love and spiritual growth’.
I came to The Sufi Tarot by an indirect route. When I began working with my Ceile De (2) beads, I didn’t at first expect to use them for mantra meditation and I looked at a collection of fuinn (sacred chants) as an option for working with the beads. Fuinn tend to be brief and I thought that a single fonn might work for me. They are in Scottish Gaelic and frequently use heart language, as in:
Gun tigeadh, solas nan solas
(Goon tee-guch, sol-us nan sol-us)
Air mo chridhe
(Air mo chree)
This translates into English as Come light of lights, to my heart.
I found this fonn beautiful though somehow not right for my purpose. But the phrase air mo chridhe would not leave me. As soon as I heard it, in the old language, it needed no translation, and I felt I had known it forever.
What I did in my own practice, having decided on the Soham mantra for the beads, was to create a version of the modern Druid peace prayer as a love prayer.
Deep within my innermost being, may I find love.
Silently in the stillness of this space, may I nurture love.
Heartfully, in the wider web of life, my I live in love.
Now using this prayer, I felt the desire for friendly guidance in this work of the heart. I felt prompted to search for ‘Sufi Tarot’, and was surprised when came up immediately. When I received the pack, I was quickly reassured that I had had been given what I asked for. I look forward to this new thread within my contemplative inquiry.
(1) Ayeda Husain The Sufi Tarot Carlsbad, CA; New York, NY; London; Sydney; New Delhi: Hay House, 2022. Art team Nazish Abbas, Hassaan Aftab, Momina Khan
Recently I wrote about the balanced cross (1), linking it to the paidirean (pahj-urinn) prayer beads of the Ceile De (Culdees), a modern monastic order based in Scotland. This post is about the beads and my work with them. Beads like this were part of the original Ceile De tradition and are known to have been used in the days of Columcille (St. Columba).
There are 150 beads, each about 5 mm wide. They are made of unstained rosewood and were left immersed in rose damask oil for a month. As well as scenting the beads, the oil gives the beads a pinkish colour. A cross hangs from the beads – at heart level when worn as a necklace.
Each Paidirean is ceremonially strung in Scotland by a Ceile De Order member. The process takes two hours and involves prayer, meditation and continuous chanting during the stringing. Then a blessing is spoken over the completed Paidirean which is anointed with water and with oil from a local holy well, used for at least 1500 years. The Paidirean is an object of power as well as beauty.
I am not a member of the Ceile De, and when I acquired the Paidirean they knew that I would work with the beads in my own way. I bring together meditation and prayer. I work with the Soham mantra, with Satish Kumar’s understanding (2) that it means ‘you are, therefore I AM’. Whilst I am mindful to my breath, to the mantra and to the movements of the beads, mindfulness is a means and not the purpose of the practice.
The purpose is to make an offering to Spirit – an offering from one lamp to the light, one wave to the ocean. After some hesitation and experiment, I have adopted the word Spirit, rather than Goddess or God, to address the Divine. It is more universal and inclusive as, for me, befits a panentheist view. In making my offering, I am aware that Soham also works laterally, including relations between all beings within the web of life, just as the Druid prayer speaks of ‘the love of all existences’. Ultimately, we are recognising the divinity in each other.
Spirit is not beyond us in some other realm. It is here, now, and everywhere. When I work with the beads, I am making both an offering and an affirmation.
Contemplative Inquiry 