From Shabda: Beloved Fellow Class Members,

I invite you to spend some time between watching class videos with few assignments.

Please reflect on:

How can I develop a tenderness to my whole self, so I won't cut myself off from Allah- As Murshid Sam would say to us, Allah is your Lover, not your jailer This will allow us to have more insight into our strengths and weaknesses without judgment and play a more active role in transforming. We want to develop the skillful means of awareness of our minds and hearts.

We can reflect on the questions we went through during class:

Tell me something about your selfless motivations to serve?

Tell me something about your selfish motivations to serve?

Certainly we can assume there is an alluring nature to being seen and appreciated and reflect on how that allure plays a part in our service.

Excerpt from Maha Ati by the great Tibetan Master HH Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.

The everyday practice is simply to develop a complete acceptance and openness to all situations and emotions, and to all people, experiencing everything totally without mental reservations and blockages, so that one never withdraws or centralizes into oneself.

This produces a tremendous energy which is usually locked up in the process of mental evasion and a general running away from life experiences.

Clarity of awareness, may, in its initial stages, be unpleasant or fear inspiring; if so, then one should open oneself completely to the pain or the fear and welcome it. In this way the barriers created by one's own habitual emotional reactions and prejudices are broken down.

Read more.

Human Beings come from one family having been created from one essence, If one member is in pain, the whole family suffers If you have no sympathy for the pain of another, we shall not call you human

-Saadi Shirazi

Humanity is one body, the whole of life being one in its source and in its goal and in its beginning and its end.

No scientist can deny this. If a part of the body is in pain, sooner or later the whole body is affected

If your finger aches, your body is not free from pain

-Hazrat Inayat Khan

Much love,

Shabda

From Pir Shabda for Service and Serving Mureeds Course 2/2021 Questions offered to the Jamiat Khas gathering in 2007.

Dear friends and colleagues

Please review these questions and take note of your feelings around them. If you do not have mureeds, apply the questions to however it is you ARE working. You might have to rephrase the questions to make them applicable.

What do I do or what happens inside me:

1. When someone approaches me about initiation/friendship?

2. What do I find out about them and how?

3. How do I decide yes or no? How do I communicate it?

4. What do I find important to communicate about myself and my view of the relationship?

5. How do I perform the initiation? Do I add to or alter the standard form? What are my feelings about public and private settings?

6. How do I choose practices? How soon do I give them?

7. How much, if any, communication do I request? What, if anything, do I do if months or years go by?

8. How do I deal with difficult personalities?

9. How do I deal with emerging psychological challenges – my own and those of my mureeds?

10. Do I refer mureeds to other teachers? When, how, and why? What concerns might I have about this?

11. What other resources do I use?

12. How do I prepare myself before meeting with mureeds?

13. How would I describe the quality of self that emerges when I am sitting with a mureed? Is there an archetype, an inner Wise One?

14. What is most important for me when I am guiding mureeds?

15. Are there areas that I don’t feel able to address with a mureed, such as gender specific areas (pregnancy, children, couple concerns, gay or straight mureeds)?

16. What do I do when sexualized feelings arise in myself or my mureed?

17. For a traveling teacher – how do I work with someone who approaches me in a distant location when they seek either a first initiation or are having difficulties with their local teacher and want to switch to me?

18. How do I feel when I don’t know?

Much love,

Shabda

99-names-prescribing-guide.pdf