Sufi Practice Quotes

“Choose one day in the coming week in which you will go through the entire day without making any judgments about what is right, wrong, valuable, or invaluable. Buy any magazine, any newspaper, any drink order any item on the menu, so forth and so on without discrimination or judgment.”
― Laurence Galian, The Sun at Midnight: The Revealed Mysteries of the Ahlul Bayt Sufis

“Allow yourself to wander and travel through your world for one day without resorting to dividing the world up into pairs of opposites. The Journey Without Aim is often propitious.”
― Laurence Galian, The Sun at Midnight: The Revealed Mysteries of the Ahlul Bayt Sufis

“The reality of the dualistic nature of the world will not change for those who are still lost in duality. However, your orientation toward that reality will change. You are just allowing that reality to arise within the TOTALITY of your being, rather than fragmenting your being by making value judgments. You will not be buying into choosing sides.”
― Laurence Galian, The Sun at Midnight: The Revealed Mysteries of the Ahlul Bayt Sufis

“Spiritual life means learning to become one-pointed, to focus all our energy in one direction, towards Him. Through continually repeating His name we alter the grooves of our mental conditioning, the grooves which like those on a record play the same tune over and over again, repeat the same patterns which bind us in our mental habits. The dhikr gradually replaces these old grooves with the single groove of His name. The automatic thinking process is redirected towards Him. Like a computer we are reprogrammed for God. It is said that what you think, you become. If we continually think of Allâh we become one with Allâh. But the effect of the dhikr is both more subtle and more powerful than solely an act of mental focusing. One of the secrets of a dhikr (or mantra) is that it is a sacred word which conveys the essence of that which it names. This is the mystery of the identity of God and His Name („in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God”). In our common everyday language there is not this identity. The word “chair” does not contain the essence of a chair. It merely signifies a chair. But the sacred language of a dhikr is different; the vibrations of the word resonate with that which it names, linking the two together. Thus it is able to directly connect the individual with that which it names. (p. 121)”
― Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, The Bond with the Beloved: The Mystical Relationship of the Lover & the Beloved