I grew up in a household infused with Shi'ism.I still remember the first Persian poem I heard my Grandfather reciting during Muharram, it was Qaani's elegy: WHAT IS RAINING? BLOOD. ...
http://zoya-thewayofasufi.blogspot.com/2017/10/imam-hussain-in-sufism.html
I am sorry but due to the shortness of time, I rarely read or comment on the post comments. My work is to simply put Sufi ideas and stories out there and spread the message of Sufism but I don't ...
Some of you have emailed me as to why I don't post very often, I have migrated to a new country & started a Ph.D. ( not in esoteric matters) but something very worldly and I am busy running a soc...
http://zoya-thewayofasufi.blogspot.com/2013/01/how-sufism-was-branded-heresy.html
RUMI HAS NARRATED A STORY OF A SLAVE GIRL OF SAMARQAND. ACCORDING TO THE NARRATIVE, ONCE THE KING OF AN ADJOINING STATE VISITED THE BAZAAR OF SAMARQAND. There in the shop of a goldsmith, he sa...
http://zoya-thewayofasufi.blogspot.com/2020/06/we-are-all-slave-girls.html
A READER COMMENTED ON ONE OF MY BLOGS THAT QURANIC TAFSIR BASED ON BAATIN IS UN-ISLAMIC AND HERETICAl. Nothing could be farther from the truth. It deeply hurt me that petrodollar-funded ...
http://zoya-thewayofasufi.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-batin.html
A SUFI STORY.... A MAN WENT IN SEARCH OF TRUTH. THE FIRST RELIGIOUS MAN HE MET WAS SITTING UNDER A TREE, JUST OUTSIDE HIS OWN VILLAGE. HE ASKED, ”I AM SEARCHING FOR A TRUE MASTER. PLEASE TELL...
http://zoya-thewayofasufi.blogspot.com/2018/08/when-time-is-right-master-would-come.html
The experiences of ZikAR cannot easily be described: They belong to a level of reality beyond the mind, to a dimension of unity in which everything is merged, where the mind cannot get a foothold...
http://zoya-thewayofasufi.blogspot.com/2018/08/zikar-of-heart.html
I trapped my breath in the bellows of my throat: a lamp blazed up inside, showed me who I really was. I crossed the darkness holding fast to that lamp, Scattering its light-seeds around me as I ...
http://zoya-thewayofasufi.blogspot.com/2018/03/lala-dad-sufi-kashmiri-poetess.html
Rumi was dancing the dance of life. He knew it, and so did his listeners, which is why the line between poet, saint, and lover became quite blurry in his case. No poet is more intimate than Rumi...
http://zoya-thewayofasufi.blogspot.com/2018/02/i-am-and-i-am-not-by-rumi.html
I LOVE THIS POEM BY RUMI, THERE ARE SO MANY SECRETS IN IT THAT A NEW LAYER OPENS UP TO ME EVERY TIME I READ IT. IT'S ABOUT THE DANCE BETWEEN LOVE, FEAR AND SURRENDER. Love Said to Me I worshi...
http://zoya-thewayofasufi.blogspot.com/2018/02/love-said-to-me-by-rumi.html
In Sufism, love is an alchemical force of enlightenment; the lightning bolt which brings you back to life. Love symbolized the emotional element in religion, the rapture of the seer, the coura...
http://zoya-thewayofasufi.blogspot.com/2018/02/sufi-love.html
All the ridicule being thrown Bushra Maneka( witch, magician, Melisandre) has made me realize how most Muslims remain unaware of female sufi mystics contribution to Sufism throughout Islamic hist...
http://zoya-thewayofasufi.blogspot.com/2018/01/female-sufi-mystics.html
Rumi, the mystic who was born 1207 in Vakhshoutside Balkh in present day Afghanistan, and is arguably the most widely read poet in translation today.RUMI is ranked as America’s best-selling poe...
http://zoya-thewayofasufi.blogspot.com/2018/01/from-east-to-west-rumi.html
Confronted by racial profiling, wars, and bonfire of vanities, the ordinary humans relate to the subtext of a transcendent spiritual yearning regardless of their backgrounds and nationalities. T...
http://zoya-thewayofasufi.blogspot.com/2017/12/sufism-beyond-borders-beyond-creed.html
WHAT CAN I DO, SUBMITTERS TO GOD? I do not know myself. I AM NEITHER CHRISTIAN NOR JEW, neither Zoroastrian nor Muslim, I AM NOT FROM EAST OR WEST, not from land or sea, NOT FROM THE S...
http://zoya-thewayofasufi.blogspot.com/2017/12/i-dont-know-myself-by-rumi.html
Fanaa IS THE SUFI TERM FOR EXTINCTION. IT MEANS TO ANNIHILATE THE SELF, WHILE REMAINING PHYSICALLY ALIVE.Persons having entered this state are said to have no existence outside of, and be in c...
http://zoya-thewayofasufi.blogspot.com/2017/12/ego-death-fanaa.html
A SEEKER EMAILED AND ASKED, "WHAT IS SUFISM?" And I was stunned into silence because how do you encapsulate an ocean into a drop. Sufism is fundamentally indefinable as Nicholson observed long ...
http://zoya-thewayofasufi.blogspot.com/2017/11/what-is-sufism.html
So the good Muslims of ISIS have martyred 300 ( and still counting ) Sufi Muslims in Sinai in their attempt to reach heaven riding on the blood of innocents. Many would read the global war ...
http://zoya-thewayofasufi.blogspot.com/2017/11/salafi-war-on-sufism.html
You wish to have proof of a world beyond this one? See how the old leaves and makes room for the new A new day, a new night, a new garden, even a new trap to fall into A new thought in ...
http://zoya-thewayofasufi.blogspot.com/2017/11/you-wish-to-have-proof-of-world-beyond.html
So a 32-year-old man with no leadership experience and toxic religious agenda is playing with the lives of millions of Muslims with the support of a NeoNazi President elected mainly on his hatre...
http://zoya-thewayofasufi.blogspot.com/2017/11/wahabism-free-masonic-conspiracy.html
Years before on the night of my Sufi initiation, I had dreamed of Fatima who initiated me in the Mundus Imaginalis, or the Imaginal World. I dreamed I had entered the sacred precincts of the Ka'...
http://zoya-thewayofasufi.blogspot.com/2017/09/fatima-fatir-divine-feminine-within.html
LADEN WITH MY LOAD OF MISDEEDS, I MOVE ABOUT IN THE GARB OF BLACK GARMENTS. AND THE PEOPLE SEE ME AND CALL ME A DERVISH. These lines are by FARID, one of the most followed mystic in ...
http://zoya-thewayofasufi.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-sweet-loving-saint-baba-farid.html
Prophet Muhammad himself was the “speaking Qur’an” and the ultimate authority over the meaning and practical application of whatever he recited as qur’an (recitation) was always in his h...
http://zoya-thewayofasufi.blogspot.com/2017/09/sufi-interpretations-tafsir-of-quran.html
I MARVELED AT AN OCEAN WITHOUT SHORE, AND AT A SHORE THAT DID NOT HAVE AN OCEAN; AND AT A MORNING LIGHT WITHOUT DARKNESS, AND AT A NIGHT THAT WAS WITHOUT DAYBREAK; AND THEN A SPHERE WITH NO LOC...
http://zoya-thewayofasufi.blogspot.com/2017/09/an-ocean-without-shore-by-ibn-arabi.html
HE SAW THE LIGHTNING IN THE EAST AND LONGED FOR THE EAST, BUT IF IT HAD FLASHED IN THE WEST HE WOULD HAVE LONGED FOR THE WEST. MY DESIRE IS FOR THE LIGHTNING AND ITS GLEAM, NOT FOR THE PLACES AN...
http://zoya-thewayofasufi.blogspot.com/2017/09/he-saw-lightning-in-east-and-longed-for.html