Sending love, light & ancient wisdom through modern mediums via: music, poetry, workshops, retreats & classes. Contact: [email protected]
Facing the One
Joined February 2008
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Sometimes it is named sun
Sometimes they call it tree
Sometimes it is named cloud
Sometimes they call it sea
Sometimes it is named you
Sometimes they call it me
Pass beyond the names now
Is it not the time to see?
Baraka Blue retweeted
“Having entered into this world, the spirit forgot its original home and its covenant with God. Man identifies himself with his ego and is unaware of the ocean of the spirit that lies just below the foam of his awareness. If man can pass beyond the veil of his own ego, his spirit can rejoin its original state of purity and unity.”
— Dr. William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi
#sufism
#tasawwuf
There’s a time for admonition
and a time to add munitions,
In the sad maydan of the self
sad is the man who had
to feel the blade to listen.
Have you seen a one whose nafs
is his religion?
What is the worth, to such a one,
a word of wisdom?
Baraka Blue retweeted
"Now the question arises: How does a person who wishes to pursue the Süfi Path make do under these circumstances? Does he occupy himself with the quest of the spiritual guide? Or does he abandon the search and simply wait? And in either case, does he engage in the activities of the wayfarers, or not, in the meantime?
I say there is no point in searching for the spiritual guide, whether or not one is actively practicing Sufism. The spiritual guide is a gift of God Most High. It is His way of directing the aspiring servant who has turned his attention entirely to following the way and is sparing no effort and using all of his capabilities, however humble or grand. It is in this context that God Most High leads the individual to a more excellent state, safe from innovation and error, in which the seeker is secure from the pitfalls that await everyone who relies on the spiritual guide's solicitude and supervision as a buffer against past and future tribulations.
It is equally pointless merely to wait for the spiritual guide while postponing the active practice of Sufism... Only the fourth option remains: involvement in spiritual activity while one waits for the spiritual guide. The seeker can attain that goal by purifying his intention through vigilance over the sincerity of his relationship with God Most High. Anyone who desires the presence of God needs complete truthfulness, for God is present to those who are veracious. Sincerity consists in making demands of the lower self and disciplining it for the state of piety required in Sufism. That includes personal prayer, a heart intent on the door of the Master, a positive frame of mind, genuine hope, and an entering into the presence of God Most High with awe, reverence, and humility. As one disciplines himself and brings his lower self into line in these matters, he should ask God Most High to fulfill His promises, and he will arrive at his desired goal."
—Ibn 'Abbād of Ronda, Letters on the Sūfī Path, Letter 16.
Baraka Blue retweeted
小孩问庄子，什么是诡辩。庄子反问：我家来了两个客人，一个很干净，一个很脏。我请他俩洗澡，你觉得谁会洗？
小孩脱口而出；肯定是脏的那个!
庄子摇摇头：不对。干净的人爱干净，脏的人不在乎脏，应该是干净的人洗。
小孩赶紧改口：那就是干净的洗。
庄子又笑了：又错了。干净的人没必要洗，脏的人才需要洗，是脏的洗。
小孩情了：那到底是谁洗？
庄子说：干净的人有习惯，脏的人有需要，两个人都洗。不等小孩反应，他又补了一句；其实俩人都不洗，干净的不用洗，脏的不爱洗。
小孩彻底迷糊。
庄子这才点明：这就是诡辩。逻辑都通顺，但答案却不一样，很多人跟你争论，逻辑听着都没问题，但结论可以随意变换。
绕来绕去，目的不是求真，只是把你绕晕。
遇到这种诡辩，不必争辩。
All luminous souls,
by the Truth, are consumed
and exposed
to the breezes emanating
from the Beautiful Rose.
ﷺ
Baraka Blue retweeted
Love is the mark of the people of tasawwuf (Sufism), as mentioned in Maybudī’s classical tafsir. The Sufis are the people of ‘ishq, a word derived from ‘ashaqah, which refers to a kind of vine. When this vine winds itself around a tree, the tree withers and dies. In the same way, worldly love and the ego die within the Sufi.
Baraka Blue retweeted
🌟 One thing I will never truly understand about the disagreement between many exoteric jurists and many Sufis is musical instruments.
How can you prohibit musical instruments, yet somehow permit the duff, whether only for women on occasions of celebration or without qualification?
Do we really think the duff was permitted because it is a duff, rather than because it was being played in a clean context?
It is well known that blacksmiths could and did experience tarab from the rhythmic, sonorous blows of their work, and their hits on the anvil, and many even intentionally listened to those sounds. Yet somehow this is permissible because it is not called "music"? And this is why Mawlana Rumi whirled out of ecstasy when he heard a blacksmith forging away.
Birdsong is basically a woodwind instrument, and somehow I can intentionally listen to birdsong, but not to a Mawlawi nay or Mozart’s flute and harp concerto?
And today we do not even need to go to concerts or taverns to hear music. We can simply open Spotify and listen to Adib al-Dayikh.
Indeed, all the hadiths and Qur'anic verses invoked by prohibitionists are explicitly tied to a context of blameworthy diversion, where music is accompanied by prohibited wine, fornication, and the familiar setting of moral decadence. And since when is iqtiran hujja?
There is not a nation on earth that does not produce and celebrate music. Indeed, Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, became Muslim in significant part through the adoption of indigenous musical traditions such as gamelan to sing beautiful Sufi and monotheistic poetry.
And some of the greatest Qur’an reciters we know of were hardly strangers to musical culture. Abdul Basit Abd al-Samad openly listened to Umm Kulthum and Muhammad ibn Abdelwahab, while Mustafa Ismail played the oud and owned a massive collection of Western classical music.
Now, let me end with what the Sheikh al-Islam and Grand Mufti of Al-Azhar Hassan al-Attar said in the 19th century:
"He who is not moved by delicate poetry, recited with the tongue of stringed instruments, on the banks of rivers, in the shade of trees, is a coarse-natured donkey."
- Sabri Moudallal, the past Grand Mu'adhinn of the Grand Mosque of Aleppo and a master of the Aleppine musical tradtion
- Le Concert de Nations, an early music ensemble of the master Jordi Savall
Baraka Blue retweeted
Children who take music lessons develop a larger corpus callosum, the bridge between the two halves of the brain, and the change is permanent. A 2005 review in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences found that early music training produces structural brain changes that persist into adulthood, even if the person stops playing.
The review was led by Gottfried Schlaug at Harvard Medical School, one of the leading researchers on music and the brain. He found that children who started instrumental training before age seven had a significantly larger anterior corpus callosum than non-musicians, and the size difference was still visible in adults who had not touched an instrument in years.
The corpus callosum carries signals between the left and right hemispheres. A larger one means faster, richer communication between the two sides, and the effect shows up in tasks that have nothing to do with music: spatial reasoning, verbal memory, and the ability to process multiple streams of information at once. The music built the highway, and the brain uses it for everything.
Schlaug also found that musicians had larger cerebellums, the region involved in timing and motor coordination, and more grey matter in the areas that process sound. The brain had physically reorganised itself around the demands of the instrument, and the reorganisation was visible on a scan.
The age window matters. Children who started before seven showed the largest changes. Children who started after ten showed smaller ones. Adults who took up an instrument for the first time showed the least structural change, though they still showed some. The brain is most willing to be rebuilt by music during the years when most parents are debating whether to sign their child up for lessons. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1659…
Baraka Blue retweeted
Stretching before exercise does not prevent injuries. A 2014 meta-analysis of 26,610 participants in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that stretching had no effect on injury rates at all. Strength training cut injuries by a third.
The study was led by Jeppe Bo Lauersen at the University of Copenhagen. His team pooled every randomised trial that tested whether exercise-based programmes could prevent sports injuries, and compared the results by type: stretching, strength training, balance work, and combinations. Stretching reduced nothing. Strength training reduced injuries by 33 percent and cut overuse injuries, the ones that build up slowly over weeks, by nearly half.
The reason stretching fails is that it addresses the wrong problem. A muscle tear happens when a muscle is asked to produce more force than it can handle. Making a muscle longer does not make it stronger. Strength training does, and it also thickens tendons and stiffens the connective tissue around joints, all of which protect against the sudden loads that cause tears and sprains.
The finding goes against what every gym teacher, track coach, and physical therapist has said for fifty years. But the data is not close. Across every trial, every sport, and every injury type, stretching before exercise had zero detectable effect on whether the person got hurt.
This does not mean flexibility has no value. It means the five-minute hamstring stretch before a run is doing nothing for injury prevention, and replacing it with five minutes of bodyweight squats and lunges would be measurably better. The body does not need to be looser before it works. It needs to be ready to handle load, and that is a strength problem, not a flexibility problem. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2410…
Baraka Blue retweeted
Here are some English poems I would recommend to anyone looking to start reading poetry or return to it. Some of the poems on this list may be difficult, but they are more than worth the effort.
