Introducing the "Spiritual Sommelier Series"

Meet Sufi Teacher Kabir Helminski

(For the audio version, click above.)

Over the years, there have been a number of spiritual writers and teachers who’ve helped shape the way I see the world. I carry their ideas around like rubies in my pocket, turning them over in my hand for comfort and counsel. And I thought it might be helpful to your own journey to do a series of reflections on the ‘rubies’ that have been the most valuable to me.

It will introduce you to some spiritual writers/teachers you might want to explore further, and you may just come away with a few rubies in your own pocket (without having to read all those books!).

Or to switch metaphors, I’m officially offering my services as your spiritual sommelier. I’ll curate what I think are the best-of-the-best spiritual insights and offer suggestions I hope will pair well with your theological taste profiles.

Perhaps I could interest you in a well-aged, but surprisingly fresh, Hildegard from the Bingen region of Germany. Or a classic ’68 Merton with Japanese cherry blossom undertones. Or for something a little quirkier, maybe a nice Bourgeault, that at first confuses the palate with its unconventional nose, but finishes with notes both ancient and familiar. (Too much? That was too much, wasn’t it?)

Well, you get the idea. So, let’s kick off this “Spiritual Sommelier Series” with someone you’ve probably never heard of:

Kabir Helminski

Kabir is a sheikh in the Mevlevi Order of Sufis and he and his wife Camille co-direct a non-profit called The Threshold Society in Louisville, Kentucky where they offer retreats and workshops in the Sufi tradition. Sufism, you’ll remember, is the mystical branch of Islam and the Mevlevi order traces its roots to the teachings of 13^th century mystic and poet, Jalaluddin Rumi. (They’re also known for their Whirling Dervishes that you check out in this short video. So cool.).

I met Kabir about three years ago when I was fresh from a retreat at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, where my heart had been blown wide open. Which is a wonderful thing, of course, but when it happens, you need something, or someone, to help you make sense of it. And for me, that was K. H. Okay, we didn’t actually meet, but I sure felt like we did, as I stumbled to the couch every morning with my cup of tea and his book, Living Presence; The Sufi Path to Mindfulness and the Essential Self.

I think I underlined something on almost every page, and I highly recommend the book if the time is right. If it’s not right, then it might seem a little strange (like many of the ‘wines’ in this series!). But with my heart wide open like it was, everything he said rang deeply true.

There’s so much in the book we could explore, and I’m sure I’ll come back to it in this series. But for today, I want to share the deceptively simple idea of “zhikr.”

Zhikr (also spelled dhikr) is the Arabic word for ‘remembering,’ as in remembering God, a very important idea to Sufis. But they don’t mean: “Hey remember when God showed up and did that cool thing with the bush?” They mean remember that God is here, now, in this moment. They mean don’t forget the holiness and mystery that is always all around us, and try to keep, say, 10% of your attention on that mystery, even as you go about your day. Kind of like the Apostle Paul’s encouragement to the Thessalonians to, “pray without ceasing.”

Here's what Kabir says in the opening words of the Introduction:

“The practice of presence invites us to a conscious relationship with God. Faith, righteous action, ethics, and social justice are all founded upon a state in which the human being remembers God. Yet, the capacity to remember God is related to the ability to be awake, to be here…This theme runs through all the great spiritual traditions. It goes by many names – awakening, recollection, mindfulness, remembering, zhikr – and by no name at all.”

So remembrance is similar to mindfulness in that it’s about being awake and “mindful” of the moment-by-moment unfolding of life. But the way Kabir talked about it opened something new for me. For one thing, he seemed to suggest that in that moment-by-moment unfolding, God really could be felt, experienced as a Living Presence (thus the name of his book). And second, he seemed to think we can learn how to initiate that connection with God and open to it any time we want.

Here he is again:

“We can learn to activate this presence at will. Once activated, it can be found both within and without. Because we find it extending beyond the boundaries of what we thought was ourselves, we are freed from separation, from duality. We could then speak of being in this presence.”

I think I had internalized the idea that we are down here and God is out there somewhere, and once in a while God makes an appearance…maybe while we’re watching a sunset or at the birth of a child. But Kabir was suggesting it really is true that this mystery we call God is right here, all the time, like water we’re swimming in. And that we can learn to feel the subtle sensation of that water against our skin.

When I read that in those moments we can “speak of being in this presence,” my whole body went: YES! Because in my heart-blown-open state, that’s what I was experiencing. I felt surrounded by something. I felt IN something. And, contrary to what I had been taught, it only took a subtle shift out of my thinking mind to experience it.

On those early mornings on the couch, if I first got really still and looked around the silent room, and then focused on opening my heart to the miracle and mystery this life is, and then stopped thinking long enough to just be in it, often there would be a subtle shift, and almost like stepping through a portal or waking from sleep, everything suddenly looked a little different.

What’s more, I would often feel a kind of buzz inside me. Something that felt joyful; sometimes even giddy. I would say now that I think my vibration was coming into harmony with God’s vibration. But at the time, I just knew I felt good. I felt joy…from within. And then it didn’t matter very much what was happening around me because, in this Presence, I felt totally at peace and completely safe. My mind would say, ”But you’ve got this and this and this to worry about!” And some deeper “I” in me would just smile back. It was, honestly, a little disorienting. But Kabir offered this explanation:

“This presence…is our connection to that greater Being to which we belong, but which is often buried beneath mundane concerns, bodily desires, emotional disturbances, and mental distractions. Through knowledge, practice, and understanding, this presence can be awakened. Eventually, we will not be without it – whether in speaking or moving, whether in thinking or feeling. Awakening this presence is the most reliable and direct means of cultivating our essential human qualities, of activating everything that we need to meet the conditions of our lives. Presence is the point of intersection between the world of the senses and the world of the Spirit.”

This was so helpful! He was suggesting that dropping into the presence of the Presence is basically plugging into the world of the Spirit. And from there, we have everything we need to meet the demands of the world around us. I decided to give it a shot.

It was a radical shift from my usual m.o. of trying to manage and control everything in my life. “Remembering God” sounds so simple. But to put our attention there means being willing to put less attention on the plates we have spinning. It means we don’t take those plates so seriously, which requires a certain kind of surrender. And to our ego, that’s scary.

Our ego (which is just trying to keep us safe, bless its heart) says we’d be idiots to put our trust in some new-age-sounding, woo-woo-feeling, quote-unquote Living Presence. We’ve got things to do, places to go, deadlines to meet!

But what I started to see (and am still in the process of trusting) is that we can do all those things, and often do them better, while being in the Presence. As Kabir says:

“Whoever makes all cares into a single care, the care for simply being present, will be relieved from all cares by that presence, which is a reflection of Spirit. We can take a step back from the world of attraction, comparison, and dependence on externals, remember this vitality within us, and connect with it. Perhaps then we will be liberated from our compulsions, and we can learn to act through Spirit, rather than through our own limited egos…Eventually, we reach a certain invulnerability in relation to outer things, so that we do not depend on them, but live from this presence instead…Our work is to cross a threshold into emptiness and stillness. It is like entering an empty room that proves to hold a great presence. The apparent emptiness of simple presence is richer than the crowded experience of ordinary personality. We can either be empty with Spirit or full of ourselves.”

Now there’s a ruby for your pocket.

Until next time,

Ian