Hello again friend newform,

It really is a small world, isn't it? These sorts of synchronicities (i.e., my Buddhist meditation teacher having a relationship with Rashad Khalifa in everyday life) are what I take as "signs from God," and I try to open myself to what they may be trying to teach me. At this point, I feel that God is encouraging me to continue in the direction of challenging orthodoxy, which is almost always separated by degrees from a tradition's original inspiration and attainment. Tradition is enticing, but if it exists as a self-perpetuating authority structure that has the effect of barring its adherents from the original teaching, what good does it do to keep chasing after it?

Thanks for the kind words regarding my blog. It's just something I do to remind myself (and hopefully others) that a positive spin is what keeps us moving down the road. Getting hung up on difficulty just makes more difficulty.

Blessings,
Michael

Hello again to everyone, and a Happy New Year to you all.

Jim19, Hak Solo and Alen Thanks to each of you for your warm and kind welcomes. Sorry to have been so uncommunicative these past several days. I've had family in town for the Holidays, and have been fighting a vicious cold at the same time... so, not much left over for going onto the Internet.

I received Rashad Khalifa's interpretation/translation of the Qur'an in the mail a few days ago, and have been enjoying my initial investigation into it. A dear Turkish friend who happens to be a traditionalist and a Sufi is nearly coming unglued by my interest in God Alone -- he has unleashed all sorts of invective against Rashad Khalifa and Edip Yuksel, to the extent of engaging Edip in comments at my spiritual blog. Edip, to his credit, has remained calm and even-headed even while sternly defending himself. Also to his credit, he has ceased participation in the conversation in light of the horrifying events in Gaza.

Here is a link for anyone who cares to follow (or join) the conversation

http//adreampuppet.wordpress.com/2008/12/18/god-alone/

As it turns out, my Buddhist meditation teacher, Jeffrey Brooks (aka, Jhanananda) lives in Tucson, AZ and owned a Mac computer repair business in the late 80's/early 90's. Turns out that Rashad Khalifa was a regular customer of Jeffrey's. Jeffrey tells me that he and Dr. Khalifa carried on many informal discussions around the "Miracle of 19" and other such topics. Dr. Khalifa came into the store one month before his assassination and told Jeffrey that he suspected he would be killed soon. As I mentioned in my initial post here, I am able to see a clear parallel between Jeffrey's interpretation of Buddhism and the God Alone approach to Islam -- so this story comes as no surprise, as it is clear that Jeffrey and Dr. Khalifa are, in a sense, spiritual "twins."

My prayer for the people of Gaza (and for the world) is one of peace and brotherhood/sisterhood. May sanity be restored so that the love of God may begin the desperate job of healing all around.

Blessings to you all,
Michael

Hello again all you friendly people,

Newform Good to meet you, brother. Thanks for sharing about your personal circumstances, and for being honest about the trickiness of finding yourself alone as a Muslim (or Submitter) amongst family and friends who probably think you're crazy or worse. I'm lucky, in that my wife is very open and encouraging of my spiritual pursuit, and I have a college-aged nephew out in California who is very into reading the Qur'an (I just sent him the Muhammad Ali translation, which he got yesterday). Also, while I am still grieving my mother's death, there is something about her passing that has opened the way for a fuller investigation of the Qur'an and its teachings. My father is even okay with it. So, I am fortunate, indeed.

One thing I found out when I left home at 19 is that, in America anyway, drug use is pervasive across the board. I have stories!!! And it's true the absence of spiritual meaning -- the big, vast Void in the center of our collective Heart -- is what we feed with these substances, which can never take us Home but will always lead to abandonment and disappointment. In the Pali tongue (the liturgical language of the Buddha's original teachings), they refer to "dukkha," which is a sort of profound dissatisfaction mixed with suffering -- and this is what spiritual practice is designed to deliver us from.

Anyway, I appreciate your warm welcome.

Dc2 Thanks, also, for the kind words, and for the encouragement.

From what I've read in the forum so far, it seems like there's a generally high level of maturity going on here -- such that trolls and other hijackers are set aside pretty effectively. I always figure that, if I come across a "lame" post, I can just jump to another one. You guys do seem to have your heads screwed on straight... D

Prince Well, since you asked...

My friend, spiritual Big Brother and meditation teacher has spent years putting together a website that pretty much lays out our practice strategy, as well as the philosophical/canonical framework that supports it.

Here is an essay that gives an ideal practice strategy, which is pretty much what I've followed on a daily basis for the past four years.

http//www.greatwesternvehicle.org/practiceregimen.htm

Here is the Phala Nikaya, which are the Buddha's discourses on meditative attainment.

http//www.greatwesternvehicle.org/pali/phalanikaya.htm

Here's a spiritual bio I wrote for the site a few years ago.

http//www.greatwesternvehicle.org/casehistories/michaelhawkins.htm

One thing I want to say is, while I love my spiritual Big Brother and am ever-so-grateful to have come into his orbit of influence during this lifetime, it's important to assert that his conclusions are not always aligned with mine or anyone else's. This is why he prefers to keep everything on a "peer" level, rather than a hierarchical teacher-student level. He is very scientific and rational, which is fine, except that he tends to discount revealed sacred texts as "fairy tales," while I see in them a Mystery that helps guide me back into the arms of the Beloved. I take from what Jeffrey teaches those things that resonate in my own experience, I give thanks for the "unpacking" he has done... and I come to my own conclusions, allowing him to have his own.

And thanks for the tip on reading front-page articles at Free-Minds.org. This is a wonderful resource. I've been ordering books recommended here, as well. As mentioned above, I see a lot of philosophical resonance between the work done here and what we're doing at the GWV. It's no accident that I've been led here.

Blessings to all,
Michael

Hello again my new good friends,

jankren ;D ;D ;D.... I've been mistaken for a Russian novelist, Fidel Castro, an Orthodox Patriarch and the guitar player for ZZ Top... so I'll now add Rabbi to the list!... bravo And thanks for the warm welcome.....

Stani Thanks, also, for reaching out to me in this forum. You all are so kind and accepting -- I truly do feel blessed to have landed here.

As for my "drug habit," it's an interesting thing I never considered myself to have a "problem" with drugs or alcohol, and can actually say that I had some mighty fine times during my wild years. I used to say that I found more spirituality in a basement bar than in any church I'd ever been in, and I was not just making a joke. As I grow older and look back on my life, however, I see that all that mind-bending, soul-distorting, body-damaging, bliss-seeking behavior was nothing less than a spiritual cry in the dark. I now understand that I am a "natural mystic" and have been one since birth -- and I live in a culture that not only does not support the mystic, but actively seeks to blot him/her out. In the mid-90's, during a time when I was spending upwards of 10 hours a day on my back doing "trance work" (which I now know to have been "shivasana," or laying-down meditation, but at the time was just something I intuitively had to do), pleasant sensations began to manifest in my forehead just above the nose, spreading out like a halo around my head, then pouring down through my entire body to form an "egg-shape" of bliss, joy and ecstasy. I would vibrate in this place for hours and hours and hours, ignoring all other aspects of existence. At the time I lived in a student house with four of my workmates at an independent record store, with a very kind landlord who did not like confrontations. After seven months of receiving no rent from me, however, he banged on my window and said, "We need to talk." He worked out a repayment plan (I was ready for homelessness), I cut my long hair, got a job as a night clerk at a doctor's office, and gradually integrated back into the world... but noticed that the bliss, joy and ecstasy had not abated, and was, in fact, gradually changing my physiological being. I'm telling you all of this as a way of saying that the drugs and alcohol naturally gave way to self-arising bliss, which made it so much easier to choose a consciously spiritual "sadhana" (sorry, haven't picked up the Arabic vocabulary!) for the remainder of my life. Looking back, I feel that we all have a certain time-trajectory that God knew about before we were ever born, and we have certain windows of opportunity for "getting it" in terms of our divine mission in this life. I needed to gain certain experiences that built a certain amount of wisdom in preparation for spiritual insights that would otherwise have gone unnoticed -- and as I absorb the Qur'an at deeper and deeper levels (a process that is infantile compared to many of you on this list), I recognize that this may be the biggest window of them all.

Yes, please go easy on me!

And thank you so much for your kind words about my mother's death. I hope that, from her current perspective, she understands and condones this opening into what she would earlier have considered the most egregious blasphemy. She loved me very, very well....

Pamela You know, I am such a newbie that I have received zero training in Salat or any other Islamic practice. I own a few books on the subject, but it seems like the sort of thing that needs a teacher, yes?

That said, let me assume that properly-done Salat is a vehicle that leads to what I am calling "meditative absorption." While the process of accessing absorption is automatic for me after all these years (i.e., I don't have to work very hard at so-called "concentration," because I know that the signs of absorption will kick-in after 45 minutes or so in the silence, and then I can just follow them into one-pointedness that leads to an ever-expanding merging with the Divine)... I sometimes take hold of my mala beads and chant a name of God, counting with the beads, giving thanks for this life that's been so graciously given to me. "Allah, Allah, Allah... Allah...." There are no words to describe what happens when God smiles down and wraps His being around me in this way.

I suspect that those of you who have a rigorous and skillful Salat routine are already familiar with meditative absorption. As a teacher of this stuff, I am used to speaking directly to it on a regular basis, so I apologize to anyone for whom this seems tactless or arrogant. There is not a day that goes by when I don't think to myself, "Oh, I wish I could give this bliss, joy and ecstasy to every living being on the planet!"

Anyway, I am so happy to have met you, Pamela. Thanks for reaching out.

Blessings,
Michael

Ali Thanks for the kind words and sentiment. Good to meet you.

Kurt Looks like I've already found a kindred spirit here! We sure seem to have a lot in common, starting with the whole "reading sacred texts while drunk" meme. Thank goodness we both got dried out under the Fire of Truth...

Supernaut Thanks for the gracious welcome. You know, when I wrote "organization" I felt a twinge that suggested my depiction of this group wasn't quite right. What I meant was, I've always shied away from approaching mainstream Islamic institutions for reasons of my upbringing... and it's a pleasant surprise to find this gathering place.

Hello friends,

I just discovered this community yesterday, having Googled my way from the Monotheists Group translation of the Qur'an. Having spent a day reading through several threads here, I thought I'd take the plunge in offering an introduction.

I am a "preacher's kid" who grew up in the Presbyternian Church, a Protestant Christian denomination. My father's father, grandfather and great uncle were Pentecostal preachers, before my father ended up with the Presbyterians. My first 19 years featured three-times-weekly trips to church, with summer camps, choirs, softball, pancake breakfasts and other activities thrown in as well. My parents were Young Republicans, which is to say, very conservative and intolerant of other belief systems. My father has since become very liberal/progressive and is involved in various eccumenical programs. My mother passed away earlier this year, remaining true to her conservativism all the way to the end.

As a good preacher's kid, I rebelled early and often. At age 13, I told my father, "Dad, I don't think I'll ever be able to live within the System." When he finished laughing, he said, "Well, I hope you don't mind being poor." So far, there's been truth in both our statements. At age 15, I began a long relationship with elicit drugs -- mostly marijuana and alcohol, but also psychotropics, speed and other pharmaceuticals. At 19 I left my childhood home in Central California to move to Los Angeles, where it is a true miracle that I did not die or end up in prison. I had a lot of anger toward God (for reasons I'm leaving out for now -- it has to do with a tragedy at church and the congregation's reaction to it) and fell off from a daily prayer habit, giving myself over to a party lifestyle that (in retrospect) undoubtedly made Satan smile >D

I'll skip ahead in the story to 1991, when I got a divorce from my first wife and moved to my current location in Colorado. I met some spiritually-minded friends who helped me to re-connect with an early-life companionship I'd had with the person of Jesus Christ -- who would come to me during silent times and take me on incredible journeys that I would now call "lucid dreams," but which were very, very "real" to me at the time. In the early 90's I spent a lot of time in contemplative silence, until "signs of absorption" began to manifest -- which, in Hindu terminology, have to do with various stages of samadhi. I had no idea what was happening to me, but I sensed that it was natural and good.

Again speeding ahead in the story, I'll say that I spent the bulk of the 90's into the early 00's searching for validation and instruction as to the spiritual phenomena that were awakening in me. I even got a job at a metaphysical bookstore so that I could read up on things like kundalini, Shakti, jhana, Chi, pranha and other names for "divine energy." At some point in there, I found a used copy of Pickthall's Qur'an translation and read 50 pages or so. I was obviously not ready for it at that time, and I let it go.

After all that searching, I found a spiritual "practice strategy" in the Buddha's early discourses on meditative absorption (known in the Pali language as the Phala Nikaya, or "discourses on attainment&quot. I found a teacher who was able to guide me in establishing a daily practice of rigorous and skillful meditation, which I've maintained now for four years. I am, in fact, a teacher with a non-sectarian (i.e., trans-religious) Western contemplative organization called the Great Western Vehicle. We have in the group 800 "recovering" Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, Vedantins, Advaitins and every other brand of religious refugee, each having had authentic spiritual experiences that are either ignored, pathologized, domonized or otherwise repressed by the tradition within which they had previously been involved.

(Interestingly enough, the GWV is a "Nikaya Only" group, rejecting all subsequent texts that are accepted as canonical by mainstream Theravada Buddhism. We do not see the Buddha's teachings as religious or dogmatic. They are simply a roadmap to initiating and working with divine transformative energy, and this roadmap is universally true within itself -- it does not need any "expert" to explain them, especially when it is obvious that such experts have not had any first-hand experience with what the Buddha actually taught! We also value writings on meditative absorption by contemplatives from other traditions, whether they be Christian, Jewish, Muslim or Hindu -- again, these are universal experiences available to one and all, regardless of their religious perspective.)

Throughout these past four years as a jhana yogi, I have returned to a "beginner's mind," in that, despite all the spiritual knowledge I'd picked up during the 90's, there was "something missing" that I could not quite put my finger on. As time went on, I found myself returning to my Christian roots -- I read the Bible through two times and am halfway through the third. I've also been in conversation with my father about Christianity, which never supported me spiritually except for my relationship with the person of Christ. While this part of the process has been emotionally healing, it hasn't made me run out to join a local church !

And... I have gone through another two cycles of Qur'an reading, the second of which I am still engaged in. I've been using Asad's translation as the base, but am consulting at least 12 others as I go along (I would list them, but I'm at work and don't have access to my bookshelf).

All I can say is, there is something about the Qur'an (even in English translation) that is so compelling that I cannot stay away from it -- and, in fact, I cannot get enough of it. I want DESPERATELY to overcome my religious conditioning, which is fear-based and filled with all sorts of erroneous suppositions, so that I may avail myself fully of the Qur'an's miraculous ability to bring one as close as possible to God. So, I include the Qur'an in my "dhamma reading," which is a part of my daily practice. I also have a Muslim friend in London who has patiently listened to my questions and offered helpful replies, never pushing me too hard, always trusting that Allah is at work in my spiritual unfoldment. I am ecstatic to have found this group (and others like it, though I've not fully explored the links list here), as I sense that you are a very tolerant group that is willing to challenge the entrenched and corrupted priesthood within Islam. Despite having been reading the Qur'an and all sorts of Islamic literature (including Hadith!!! Yikes!!!) over the past few years, I've never felt comfortable enough to connect with an actual Muslim organization. Perhaps Allah was just waiting for me to be ready to connect with folks like you.

I look forward to conversing with you all as questions and comments come up in my studies. Please feel free to hit me up with any questions you may have about anything I've written.

Many blessings,
Michael