Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

I have posted a true story of my Out of Body experience on the Darvish blog. To those interested, here is a link:
http://darvish.wordpress.com/2007/10/21/my-out-of-body-experience-a-true-story/

Ya Haqq,

Irving

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

RAMADAN KAREEM! – Below are 30 Daily Ramadan Prayers (Duas) that will, inshallah, make the fast easier, enlighten the mind, and ennoble the heart.

Ramadan Dua: DAY 1

ALLAH, on this day make my fasts the fasts of those who fast (sincerely), and my standing up in prayer of those who stand up in prayer (obediently), awaken me in it from the sleep of the heedless, and forgive me my sins , O God of the worlds, and forgive me, O one who forgives the sinners.

Ramadan Dua: DAY 2

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

The following is a question a brother asked in an email, and my answer. It is about love on the Sufi path, and is reprinted here with his permission.

Question:

Salaam Irving:

I have so much to say and so little time to sit and type.  Chainsaws & yoga.  Master of the Jinn and Blue-Eyed Devil are both delightful, though in rather different ways.  (Thanks to Irving, Baraka Bob, and Mikail El.)  We have dandelion wine brewing.  Getting the garden cleared and planted. 

  Salaam and Greetings of Peace:This is an experiment. I am offering the Sufi novel, Master of the Jinn, to anyone who wants one as an EBOOK. It will be emailed in pdf form to your home computer. This is the same book as the paperback, with all the interior illustrations intact, taken from the original file. After you have read it, and only if you like the book, please send me just $5.00 in US currency, either by check, money order or Paypal. If you want to send cash, put it in a greeting card or wrap it so it doesn't show through the envelope.

  Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

The Darvish blog has collected all the Master of the Jinn excerpts in one place. Just go to http://darvish.wordpress.com and click on the Sufi Novel tab at the top.

Ya Haqq!

In the bizarro file:

Pete Townsend has made a statement this weekend that he was a Sufi Mystic in a past life. OK! Glad to have you aboard Pete!

Couple of points of clarification for your past incarnation:

1. Turning, while poetic and beautiful, is not a tenet of all Sufi orders and especially not Meher Baba's. Really, it is just a Mevlevi thing.

I posted something on my blog yesterday that seems to have gone down with at least some readers. It was something I wrote, so to speak, and I posted it on my blog (and Urdu ke Naam), with the disclaimer that I knew some will be touched by it--in whatever way--but if you're put off by either metaphysics, tasawwuf (Sufism), abstractions, or weird, personal transliteration schemes, PLEASE, PLEASE, do not read on. I really don't want to get into detailed discussions of any kind.

The feedback since has been gratifying. It is my desire to bring the poets and qawwals of South Asia to as wide an audience as "Rumi-o-Hafiz-o-Khayyam". We all read these elders, and we all need to. But especially in this day and age we (all of us; South Asian or not; Muslims and not, Sufi-leaning or not, Westerners and not) need to connect and reconnect with the living tradition they represent--one very importand and rich part of which is rooted in South Asia. We need to connect with the zawiya, or angle, facet, of Islam that was, and still is, rooted so deep in the lands from where all we hear nowadays is "Deobandi", "Taliban", "Maududi", "Terrorism", and on and on.