On Radical Love - with Omid Safi

Sufism points an unconditional openness at the core of what you are

Upcoming events

In you’re based in Silicon Valley, join me at Books Inc Palo Alto for a book signing event for the Dawn of Mind on the 21st of January. I’ll also be taking part in a book club event at The Interval at Long Now on the 19th of January.

Radical Love

In my last post, I wrote about the possibility that reality is based in a single cosmic creative principle. This principle is unconfined, boundless, an eternal generative outpouring. It is alive within each of us — not only are we created by the creative principle, we are this creative principle. There is no separate creator and created, just an eternal act of creation.

We orient to this creativity with us by cultivating aspects of the mind that relate to openness — awareness, curiosity, surrender, empathy, connection. A key signature of this movement, especially when it is taken down into embodied experience, is the feeling we call love. Unconditional love is a good word for the radical unconditionality, the totally open, limitless expressiveness, of creation.

I suspect this is what is being pointed to in Christianity through teachings such as “God is love” and “the kingdom of God is within you”. A similar perspective can be found in Islamic mysticism, in the tradition of Sufism which gave us timeless poets like Rumi and Hafiz.

Description of Love ―Rumi

Love is the astrolabe of God’s mysteries.
A lover may be drawn to this love or that love,
but finally he is drawn to the Sovereign of Love.
However much we describe and explain love,
when we fall in love we are ashamed of our words.
Explanation by the tongue makes most things clear,
but love unexplained is clearer.
When the pen came to the subject of love, it broke.
When the discourse reached the topic of love,
the pen split and the paper tore.
If intellect tries to explain it,
it falls helpless as a donkey on a muddy trail;
only Love itself can explain love and lovers!
The proof of the sun is the sun itself.
If you wish to see it, don’t turn away from it.

All the Hemispheres ― Hafiz

Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out
Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.
Open up to the Roof.
Make a new water-mark on your excitement
And love.
Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.
Change rooms in your mind for a day.
All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.
Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.
All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting
While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.

From: ‘The Subject Tonight is Love’, Translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Love doesn’t just take us into the ultimate reality, it invites us back into the conventional world through compassion for the suffering of others. It invites us to open our hearts to those human beings whose bodies and lives have been torn apart to make lives of alienated privilege possible — from the Palestinian child being intentionally starved by the occupying Israeli forces, to the people of Sudan having their resources and autonomy stolen and used by depraved empires. The invitation is to let one’s heart break open, to shed the perception of separation that is created by turning away from those society encourages us to ignore. From here, love invites us to contribute towards justice for our fellow suffering beings.

On the Living Mirrors podcast last week, I spoke with Omif Safi about Sufism and Islamic mysticism. Omid is a professor at Duke university and is an expert in Sufism and Islamic mysticism. He has authored and edited many books, including Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism, and Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition. He also has a podcast called Sufi Heart, which is part of the Be Here Now network. In this conversation we discuss radical love and justice, with a focus on the mystical experience of God’s love.