The One You Feed - Omid Safi on Radical Love

Episode Date: November 21, 2018

Omid Safi on Radical LoveSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In order to love God, we have to love God's people, which is all of us. If you want to get to that beloved, then we've got to learn to love the beloveds around us. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back

and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF, and me, Mandy B, as we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex,

and love. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. Tune in and join the conversation. Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Omid Safi. He's one of the leading American

Muslim public intellectuals. Omid is a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, and for the past seven years, he has led the study of Islam section at the American Academy of Religion. His new book is Radical Love, Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition. Hi, Omid. Welcome to the show. Thank you. It's good to be with you. I am really happy to have you on. We're going to spend most of our time talking about your most recent book called Radical Love, Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition. But before we go into that, let's start like we always do with the parable. There is a grandfather who's talking with his grandson.

He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second and he looks up at his grandfather and he. And the grandson stops, and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather, and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life, and in the work that you do. That's a beautiful parable, and it's one that I've used in some talks, and I think at least once in something that I wrote. I think what I most like about that particular parable is that it really returns

moral and spiritual agency back to us. Instead of a conversation that talks about our spiritual path as being something that is destined up in heaven, which it very well might be, it talks about the fact that the world is not divided between good nations and bad nations, good religions and bad religions, good communities and bad communities, or even good people and bad people. That every single one of us is somehow a work in progress. That every single one of us has these tensions inside of us. And it's a matter of which garden we water, which tendencies in us we're going to be feeding in that sense.

And so I like the fact that it calls us back simply to where we are, human beings with a sense of agency and the ability not to control anybody else on the planet, but to say, my spiritual journey begins with me. I am in charge of the actions that I take. And I think that's a really powerful starting point for any kind of a process of transformation. I agree. And it makes me think of something that I got a lot of in your book, Memories of Muhammad, Why the Prophet Matters. And it's just something I hadn't heard. I mean, I learned a lot in that book. But you talk about how in Islam, love and justice are seen to be intrinsically connected. You say that, in other words, before there can be a social

movement, there has to be a spiritual awakening. In fact, one could say that attempts to ameliorate the lives of human beings by forgetting about the spiritual need to uplift humanity simultaneously are doomed to be counterproductive, and in fact, lead to the further fracturing of humanity. One must uplift all of the human being, including the heart and soul. But it was really that love and justice being so tied together in the tradition that was really revealing to me. Yeah, and as is the case with so many other beautiful teachings on the planet, no one has a monopoly on them. So, of course, we encounter the

same teaching as, you know, in the heart of the Jewish faith, the Christian faith. I think all of us who are students and participants in the great American freedom movement, known as, you know, the black-led civil rights movement, you know, we all know that all that we mean by justice is love when it comes into the public spaces. And not surprisingly, in the Islamic tradition, that very same teaching is contained in the Quran, in the teachings of Muhammad, by linking together the notion of justice and the idea of how do we live a life that makes beauty real, that make love be something that we actually do with one another, towards one another. And I think what it has to do for me in terms of the conversations that I see around us in so many different parts of the world is I see a lot of people who are rightly and beautifully engaged in a process of spiritual

transformation, right? Go into all kinds of retreats and maybe listen to podcasts like yours. And then I also see many people who have a sense that something is fundamentally broken in our social fabric, that the way that our society is dividing up our finite resources is neither good nor just nor sustainable nor beautiful. And I think what the heart of the Islamic tradition has to offer us is that these two attempts at transformation have to be brought together because they're actually part of one and the same movement. That in order to transform the self, we have to have an understanding of ourself that's already integrated with the world. And if we want to change the world, right, everybody wants to save the world, we are already embedded in the world. So a rotten self embedded in a transformed world is going to lead to a rotten world. So somehow this is what our Jewish

friends would call tikkun olam, right? It's that healing of the world, which is also involved with the process of spiritual transformation. And I think this is really one of the great gifts that these wise and ancient spiritual traditions have to offer us. that these wise and ancient spiritual traditions have to offer us. Yeah, that's a topic that has definitely been on my mind more so lately. We had a guest last week. I don't know if you're familiar with his work. His name's Terry Patton, and he just wrote a book called A New Republic of the Heart.

And it really is one of the best writings about this idea that we have to do both these things simultaneously. I thought it was really good, and he was a great guest. So your latest book is called Radical Love, and it's a translation of a lot of, I don't know if you'd call them poems or teachings from the Islamic mystical tradition, and you did the translation on all these, is that correct? I did. I went back to the Quran, the words of Muhammad, as well as some of the beautiful teachings and poetry of great, lovely souls like Rumi and Hafez, whom many people have heard of, but also many mystics who might be less familiar to people. It makes me think of something else you wrote in the book, Memories of Muhammad. And it's, it's, I just thought it was funny. And I love to

bring in animals anytime I can into conversation. You say an old joke about the Arabic language is that every word has four layers of meaning, a basic meaning, a secondary meaning opposite to the basic meaning, something related to camels, and a fourth obscure layer of meaning. And you're kind of talking in that, around that, about how fundamental camels were to that time and place in history. But like I said, I thought that was funny. And anytime I can bring a camel into the show, I'm going to do it. It's a good thing. And you know, the other thing that's really important about it is there's so many, you started the show with a parable and there's so many of the biblical parables, which are all puns on the names of animals or other creatures that

are used in scripture. So, you know, when you read some of these parables, like it's easier for a rich man to get into heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, right? A lot of these kinds of parables involve puns in Hebrew or Aramaic or Syriac languages that Jesus spoke or similar puns in the Arabic language. And sometimes when we translate them to English, you know, it's almost like we forget about the delicacy of that creative humor that was part of the original context. Yes. So let's jump into your new book and let's start with a story that you tell pretty early on about a story where everybody is gathered before God, and then there's a series of questions asked to them. And I think you know the one I'm talking about. Yeah, it's a lovely story. It comes up in the poetry of Attar. And Attar was a giant of Islamic spirituality, also a poet, also someone who compiled the lives of saintly beings before him.

There are some legends that he might have met Rumi when Rumi was a young boy and Attar was an old man. And what's really lovely about the story is that it takes place in the hereafter. about the story is that it takes place in the hereafter. So it's a saint having a dream of the day of judgment to come. And God collects all the people who've ever been and who shall forever be. And he says to them, you know, who here wants to have every worldly pleasure? Well, you know, nine out of 10 people raised their hand and they're like, yep, that sounds pretty good. And the voice of God comes to them and says, it is granted unto you. And so they leave. And then, you know, they hear the voice of God come in and saying, who here wishes to be spared all suffering, no more pain, no more fire, no more torment, no more hellfire. Well, you know,

of the ones who left, nine out of 10 raised their hand. And the voice of God comes to them saying, it is granted unto you. There's but a handful of people left and they hear the voice of God again. Who here wishes to be given access to my loftiest paradise, a garden that no eye has ever seen. Well, you know, sounds pretty nice. And so nine out of 10 people raised their hands again and they hear the voice of God coming and saying, it is granted unto you. And when those people leave,

there's just four or five people left. And this time they experienced the voice of God thundering at them, saying to them, I gave you every worldly pleasure. I offered you salvation from pain. from pain. I gave you a chance at my loftiest garden and you chose none of it. What are you here for? And these folks lower their head in humility and they simply answer, we came for you. We came for you. We came for you. And then one last time to hear the voice of God coming to them saying, in that case, I am yours.

I am yours. And I think the path of love at the end of the day is about a group of seekers who are in it for God's own heart. This is not about salvation. It's not about getting into heaven. Nor is it about somehow going on a spiritual high. It really is a sense of choosing to walk the path for the sake of the ultimate beloved. choosing to walk the path for the sake of the ultimate beloved. And they know that in order to love God, we have to love God's people, which is all of us.

That if you want to get to that beloved, then we've got to learn to love the beloveds around us. And that's the most difficult thing to do, is to love human beings. God is easy. Human beings are hard. Indeed they are. So let's move into some readings from the book. I was thinking we could start with, I was thinking we might start with page 28. This is, you know, a passage that is attributed to the Prophet Muhammad. And it will sound a lot like the oracle that we know from Greek thought, man arafa nafsahi faqad arafa rabbihi. To know God intimately, intimately know yourself. intimately know yourself. He who knows his own soul knows his Lord. And it's a favorite saying of the mystics because what it signifies to them is that the knowledge of the divine and the knowledge of our own heart and soul are actually linked up together.

are actually linked up together. Just as if we want to love God, we have to learn to love humanity. If we want to know God, we have to get to know ourselves. We have to get to know what makes us tick. Because if we don't, then we're drinking from a dirty cup. And we might think that we're pouring water or wine into it. but if your cup is dirty, then so will your drink be. So this notion of who are we? Who are we? What are the dark corners of our own soul? And where are the cracks where the light pours in? I think this is one of the teachings of this tradition. Yeah, that makes me think of something that you wrote. I think this is one of the teachings of this tradition. Yeah, that makes me think of something that you wrote, I think in one of your blog posts, but I'm just going to read it because it really struck me and I've never heard it articulated this well, but you say, the contraction of the heart, what might be called the dark night of the soul in

Christian spirituality, is also part of the path. This is one of the differences between any genuine spiritual path and New Age spiritual fluff, which promises abundant happiness and fulfillment without any parallel process of suffering, penitence, and repentance. And I've never been able to articulate what it is about some of the New Age stuff, besides some of it seeming patently absurd to me, but what else about it sort of irked me? And you put your finger on it right there. It's this something-for-nothing feeling that I get, which I don't think is the way life works. It's not the way life works, and it's also not the way that i think any genuine spiritual path

works i would be extremely suspicious if i went to a meditation session or a dharma talk or a sufi talk or for that matter a mega church And the person standing up front said, follow me and I promise you happiness. I promise you happiness. I think in some ways, this is one of the great heresies, and I don't use that word lightly, of a lot of commodified, commercialized spirituality. It's the gospel of success.

Follow me because God wants to make you rich. Well, then what do you do when your father, your mother comes down with cancer? What do you do when the person that you might love the most in this world leaves you? What do you do, as many people have had to do, if you have to take care of your sick child or, heaven forbid, heaven forbid, bury your own child, right?

Does that mean that in that moment God hates you, that God has forsaken you? I think any real spiritual path has to be a path that takes you to the mountaintop and is also with you deep in the valley. And it has to tell you that it's the same God who is the God of the mountaintop, who is the Lord of the bottom of the valley. And there are resources and teachings that you can practice deep down in the valley as you can on the mountaintop. And I think that's why when I listen to spiritual teachings,

I always pay attention to, yes, there has to be the talk of love and expansion and transformation. But I also want to know, is there talk of sacrifice, right? Is there something that they tell us upfront, you're going to have to give up if you actually want to be transformed? Is there talk of the need for some kind of ritual? Is there talk of the need for some kind of ritual?

Because, you know, getting up in the morning and having a donut and eating Cheetos and surfing the web and, you know, watching 12 hours of TV a day. Cheeto flavored donuts. Fairly certain is probably not the most luminous path towards being transformed. Tell me what I need to do. Whom do I have to love? How do I serve? How do I get over my own damn self? How do I get beyond this illusory confine of the ego? And that is sacrifice. And many people actually experienced it as a kind of death. It's a death of a self-centered worldview, which is a necessary part of the growth, where at some point we learn, and this is where love comes in.

It's not all about me. It never has been. Love makes it about you. Love projects you beyond yourself. And I think any real path has to offer you that. So I would want to see ritual transformation, sacrifice, and community. Now, we're not meant to live alone. We're meant to be together.

We're meant to have these people who mirror to us beautiful qualities that we're not meant to live alone. We're meant to be together. We're meant to have these people who mirror to us beautiful qualities that we might not be able to see in ourselves. And they mirror to us some places that we got to keep working on. Thank you. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer.

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Courts are not really supposed to play a big role in choosing our elected leaders. It's for the voters to decide. Follow the Big Take podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. One of the other things I was struck with in the book, and we're going to move to a couple of these right now, was you often say when you boil a tradition down to its mystical tradition, they all start to look very much the same. But there were a couple of the readings that really struck me a lot as being in line with, you know, some of the Buddhist idea of non-self or less ego. And I thought we could start on page 38, and you could read that

one for us as a starting place on a couple of those that caught my eye. So 38 is only God has the right to say I. And I mean, this is an extraordinary statement, because I think ultimately, if we keep thinking of ourselves as even a rival to God, to say that is to say that we conceive of ourselves as existing outside of God. And there is a type of humility that actually opens you up to the whole universe. Why do we think we're so small? Why do we think we're so small? Why do we think we are so finite? How lovely would it be if we actually say, we are part of this vast tapestry.

I am a drop in the ocean and I'm part of the ocean. I'm a drop in the ocean and I'm part of the ocean. In that sense, the minute that I let go of my dropness, I can see myself as being part of this ocean. So, you know, there's another saying a few pages later that says, finding my Lord, I lost my heart. Finding my heart, I lost my Lord. So I think some of these initial parts of the path where we realize that the greatest temptation, the greatest idol for us is not that we're bowing down in front of an idol or a statue out there. we're bowing down in front of an idol or a statue out there. We worship our own self. It's the worship of the ego. It's your three favorite gods, your holy trinity being me, myself, and I. And

that has to be shattered. That has to be broken. It has to be given up at some point. So I think it's at that stage that these mystics are encouraging us, pleading with us to rise above and see ourself as part of this greater union. So let's go on to another one that I think speaks to this really eloquently. And of course, I just picked one. I mean, there's so many of them in here. I just had to pick a few that spoke to me particularly. And I'm sure if I picked the book up on a different day, I'd have different ones. But this one is on page 54. I always love seeing which sayings and which teachings speak to different people. Because I've never had, you know, two people pick the same set of

teachings that speak with them. So this was that poem called This and That, which is, you know, really about that great ultimate mystery of how do we have a beloved who is so manifest? You know, when you're walking in the woods, you experience that sense of closeness to the divine or when you're in the mountains or by an ocean, you know, maybe holding your child. And then at the same time, God is also hidden. And it's not that God is simply invisible to us, it's that even the most luminous of people have at least an occasional experience of feeling like they can't experience the sacredness of God. You know, even Jesus at one point says, you know, Father, why have you forsaken me? Right? So this is what this particular poet is talking about, right? So this is what this particular poet is talking about, this and that. He says, you are manifest, you are hidden, both. Not this, not that, yet, this and that.

How can you be manifest when you're always hidden? How can you be hidden when you're eternally plain to see? And I'm willing to bet that you could find Hindu and Buddhist teachings, of course, that resonate with this teaching very much. And I think that's sometimes one of the greatest challenges of spiritual life is these moments where we feel so connected and we see so clearly and we're full of love. And then another day, it's almost we're bereft of those things. And that is such a challenging thing to deal with and knowing how to deal with it wisely. It is. And that's why I think a life that is in commune with nature offers us such a way forward because nature operates through exactly these kinds of cycles. your heart contracts and then it expands. And it is actually the dance between the contraction and the expansion that gets blood going all over your body.

You need the contraction in order to propel the blood everywhere. Look at this starry night. Yes, the North Star might always be there, but the moon waxes and wanes from a full moon to a crescent, and there's a night or two every cycle that you don't see the moon. So I think for people who are trying to figure out how to live with our spiritual life that has its own cycles, this sense of staying in commune with nature can be a really powerful way forward. Great. Well, let's finish up the readings on this sort of topic on page 64.

Oh, this is a great, wonderful, saintly being that I'm very fond of. You know, it's one thing to translate Rumi and Hafez that everybody has heard of them, but then you get to work on some of these people like Kharaghani, and he's new to a lot of people, but every bit the giant that those others are. So it's a very short passage. It says, they asked Kharaghani, where do you see God? He said, wherever I don't see myself. So again, these are the different parts of the path. You have to know yourself to know God, that your path to God can go through yourself, but then you also have to get over yourself.

You have to be willing to transcend yourself. You have to be willing to say, it's not all about me. And ironically, the less of yourself that you see, the more of the divine. And I love all those because I think they speak to that idea of less ego. And you can think about that a lot of different ways. Traditions talk about it. But it really points to the upside of losing that ego is that that ego is often what blinds us from, you know, God or oneness or, you know, awakening or call it, use the term that your tradition likes.

I just thought those were beautiful readings. So those readings all came from a section of the book called God of Love. And then you have another section of the book called God of Love. And then you have another section of the book called Path of Love. And I thought maybe we could hop over to page 79 and take a look at one of those. And this gets back to the conversation we were having a little bit earlier about a genuine spiritual path, not being all unicorns, that there's both the top of the mountain, as you said, and the valley? Well, I would say, I don't know much about unicorns, but I know something about roses. I would say the path is, in fact, all roses, as long as you remember that real roses have thorns, and that somebody who loves a rose has to be willing to endure being pricked by a thorn every now and then.

The real spiritual path teaches you how to navigate your own suffering. And this poem called Pain, you can also easily translate it as suffering. How do you ever expect for your heart to become polished like a mirror without putting up with the pain of polish. And it's a Rumi poem. And oftentimes when he would write about this notion of suffering, he had a very vivid metaphor in mind, which was in those days when people's homes would be covered with these fantastic Persian and Turkish tribal carpets, they would get dusty. So once a week, people would take their carpets out into the street and they would beat them with a stick so that all the dirt that their feet had dragged in would fall off of the carpet. And as Rumi is sitting there watching these beautiful carpets being beaten, he also sees

the dust coming off. And he says to himself, this is what suffering does to my own heart. A question for you, because this is a question I ask a lot of guests, because I'm really intrigued by it, is that we all know that suffering and hardship can be a polishing event for us. It can be grist for the mill. It can make us into stronger, better people. But it doesn't always. We all know people who are broken by suffering or who become bitter and closed from suffering. For you, what are some of the fundamental things that allow people, some people to transform

suffering into, I'll just use the word positive because I don't have a better word for it off the top of my head, but to use suffering in a good way versus being broken or bittered by it? I think I usually think about two simple points into a conversation that is anything but simple. simple point into a conversation that is anything but simple. And the starting point for me, exactly as you said, is what a difference there is between people whose heart breaks, whether it is in a romantic context, it is in the context of witnessing war and occupation and poverty, whether it's in a context of seeing a loved one struggle with disease, and that breaks a heart. There are people whose heart breaks, and there are people whose heart breaks open. And there is a huge difference between those two. So I think the first point is sometimes what might seem like the external stimulus might

be the same, but somebody who goes through a sickness, goes through poverty, goes through being fired, goes through losing a loved one, a divorce, comes out of it a much more beautiful and humble person than they were previously. They see in their fellow human beings a vulnerability and a suffering that maybe before they were not able to notice. I think that's the first part. And then the second part is, as people who aspire to be on the path, I think it's really important when we notice someone who's hurting, not to flip through our mental Rolodex of spiritual teachings and to think about what do we say to them. and to think about what do we say to them. The real essential first response to suffering is silence. We sit with people.

We behold people. We allow them to share as little or as much, and we hold them. And I think there has to be that holding back of the attempt to say, you're hurting, how wonderful, what an extraordinary opportunity for spiritual growth this is for you, because that may not be what that friend needs to hear at that time. So to begin with silence, with genuine empathy and compassion, and to let whatever teachings it is that we're in such a rush to share, let that be something that speaks through our being and our presence and our action rather than necessarily through our words.

Yeah, there's nothing really more annoying than someone when you're in a lot of pain who's like, well, this is an opportunity to grow or an opportunity to learn. I always find it such an interesting balance because I do think that ultimately remembering that as a person who's in suffering can be useful at points. Not as an escape, but as a perspective. Yeah. And a very related aspect of that is you see someone whose heart is broken and is suffering. And our first response is, I know exactly how you feel.

Because let me tell you about all these things that have happened to me. And I think I myself have been guilty of that on more occasions than I would care to admit. Because the person who's hurting isn't really interested in that moment about hearing your life chronicle. They want to be seen. They want to be heard. They want to be heard, they want to be embraced, and they need to be embraced. I agree. And that is an easy one to fall into, a desire to empathize and share. Like, yeah, you're not alone. Can very easily become me, me, me, me, me. අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි අපි I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast,

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And Zoe Tillman, senior legal reporter. Courts are not supposed to decide elections. Courts are not really supposed to play a big role in choosing our elected leaders. It's for the voters to decide. Follow the Big Take podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. So let's talk about page 89. So this one says, the Sufi path, one could substitute any kind of a path, is this. You own nothing. Nothing owns you.

You own nothing. Nothing owns you. And I think, you know, this idea of owning nothing, that can be a little deceiving, right? I mean, these are people, after all, they have clothes, they might live in a house, they have food. But I think to realize that ultimately, we're not the masters of the things, and more importantly, the people around us. I mean, there's a wonderful quote from Khalil Gibran, your children are not yours. They're the universe's calling for itself. Yeah, that's a great one.

And nothing owns you. I mean, how ironic is it that so many of us define what it means to live a successful life, to be that we live in a big enough house or in the kind of neighborhood or in the kind of zip code that we then have to work like a dog to be able to afford to live in that house, in that neighborhood, in that zip code. And in that sense, I think it's worth asking, who owns whom? Who's working for whom? Does the house serve us or are we serving the house? Are we serving our things, our car, our life expectation and standards? So, you know, I think if we're able to think of being able to

perceive the universe as moving through us without the need for us to cling to them, that might be a more beautiful way of living. Yeah, I think that's a great way to say it. And I really like this one too, for the reasons you articulated. I'm not sure if I read it, if it was something that you wrote that I read, or if it, you know, things get mingled together for me. But this idea of, you know, nothing is permanent. And that recognizing there, one analogy or one story I know is the Buddhist teacher Ajahn Chah talking about a cup. And he says, you know, to me, this cup is already broken. Because he can see that's the ultimate destiny of it. That's where it's going to go.

And by seeing that, by seeing that things are impermanent, that we don't know if they're going to stay, you know, it really helps us to realize we don't own things. They're on loan to us. All right. The next section of the book is called Beloved Community. And I wanted to just pull a couple of readings from there also. Maybe we could look at page 221. Yeah, I mean, this term Beloved Community, community of course is my homage to the civil rights tradition and uh the the people um who have embodied this particular kind of teaching so this is a very famous uh roomy poem um many people of course will recognize echoes of the famous uh leonard cohen yes um poem right there's a crack in everything that's where the light gets in. Yeah. So he's talking about, and the poem is called The Wound is Where the Light Enters You.

Trust your wound to a skilled healer. You can't see the ugliness of your own wounds. Flies hover over them, your thoughts. Your wound is your heart state, unilluminated. The healer, the sage, puts a band-aid on your wound. The pain is gone. You think you healed all by yourself, but know this. The healing was from the light. The wound is where the light enters you yeah and you know this notion of we are healed by god of course ultimately but also in terms of our interactions with one another and in this context it's the interaction with a teacher, with a healer, with someone whose very presence can bring healing to us.

And then what we once saw as the wound can come to serve as a memory of the place where this healing enters us. Yeah, I love that one. The next couple I want to look at, I think, are they speak to the beauty of community and they're just great advice on being a friend. So, page 234. them. All the good deeds you did for them. Forget. Forget. This is from a beautiful book written by a Sufi named Salami. It's available in an English translation called The Book of Sufi Chivalry. And it's all about how do we live in friendship with one another. another. So I think, you know, this notion of don't keep an accounting firm responsible for all of the nice things you've done for your friends. Do it and set it aside. Yeah. And so the next one is page 236. And this really spoke to me. I mean, a again, it's just a great way to live. But there's a underlying word that we hear and something that we hear a lot in the personal

development space, which is, you know, I hear it in yoga classes a lot, let go of anything that doesn't serve you. You hear, you know, if somebody causes drama in your life, cut them loose, right? And I recognize there are people and places that are truly toxic and a distance is needed and that's the right thing. often encouraged to sort of like, well, if something is unpleasant for us, we should get it out of our lives. And I love how this reading speaks to that. It does. And I think, you know, the caveat that you put in there of if something is truly dangerous or abusive kind of for us. And I think it's useful to remember that the mystics that I'm writing about, they operate in the context of a world which has that safety mechanism in place. And for them, that's the notion of a religious law that serves as a kind of protection against murder and theft and rape and occupation and

warmongering and things of that sort. So I think it's really good to avoid those kinds of abusive contexts, but understanding that human beings are difficult and that the greatest annoyances in our life come from the people closest to us, right? Someone cuts you off in the road, you're likely to forget about it 10 minutes later. But something that your partner, your mother, your father, your child, your sibling does to you, that could linger for years. So this one is called Never Leave Your Friends.

years. So this one's called Never Leave Your Friends. Show your continuous love and understanding and never leave your friends because of the inconvenience they may cause. Yeah, I love that. And again, I think everything has to be taken with a sense of perspective. And I think some people have a tendency to stay in abusive and awful situations way longer than they should. And then I think there's other people who have a tendency to be like, well, I don't like it. So get out, you know, and it's somewhere in between, you know, it's that, you know, middle ground, I think of being willing to say, you know what, the people around me aren't always going to make me happy. And that's not a reason to get rid of them. And there are times where there is plenty of good reason to get rid of them. So the right

perspective is there. But I just, I've been to a lot of yoga lately. And I keep hearing that let go of anything that doesn't serve you. And there's something about that, that I totally understand and make sense. But there's this other part of me that immediately thinks, but what am I serving? But there's this other part of me that immediately thinks, but what am I serving? You know, it's that if I'm always looking at what's serving me, for me, that is, as we've sort of talked about, not a very good path to be on. So, you know, I think it's equally useful to ask, what am I serving? Yeah, it's, you know, I think Brother West, Cornell West always has this beautiful saying of every person, there's only two questions worth asking. How deep is your love and whom do you serve? to talk about some of the debates that happen in communities about whether Islam really is

a religion that has fundamental problems that lead to the violence we see, and some debates that you've had with that. And I, you know, there's some genuine questions I want to ask there. And then we're also going to talk about a little bit more context around the difference between Sunni and Shia and what that really means in the world. So listeners, if you're interested in that, you can go to oneufeed.net slash support, and you can get access to all of the post-show conversations, mini episodes, ad-free episodes, etc. So thank you so much for taking the time to come on. I've really enjoyed this. And as I say, occasionally, I could probably do this for another two hours.

Oh, listen, it's a pleasure to be with you. And thank you for creating such a beautiful space. Thanks so much. Okay, bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to oneyoufeed.net slash support. The one you feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. I'm Jason Alexander and I'm Peter Tilden. And together our mission on the really no really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions. Like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor.

What's in the museum of failure. And does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to really nooreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast.

Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF. And me, Mandy B.

As we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. Tune in and join the conversation. narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. Tune in and join the conversation. Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.