Wali Ali in Kansas City, U.S.A 2011, photo by Mudita Sabato
EDITOR’S NOTE
The words of Wali Ali are put in bold print so that those who wish may easily find them by skimming. Contributor’s words are in italics, even when they are thought rather than spoken. Any third person named or quoted in a story has given permission for that.
Readers, please understand that when authors quote Wali Ali’s speech, they are usually giving “best guess” according to memory – sometimes by editor’s request because direct quotation flows faster and gives more flavor than paraphrasing.
A blue diamond emoji indicates what may be some “incursion” from beyond into our ordinary reality. Other emojis will be explained in FORMATTING, EDITING, along with remarks about the process of editing.
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Paula Saffire
AFTER HIS DEATH: BIRTH OF THE TREASURY
November 25, 2022. I wake. It is the day after Wali Ali took his last breath. He was – he is – the presence of love. My grief seems swamped by awe – at the gift of having known him for 18 years. The sheer luck of it. Of all whom I have known, Wali Ali carried the fullest range of Murshid Sam’s qualities. He had the insight, the fearlessness, the humor of Sam. He had Sam’s fire and light. Sam’s conciseness when needed. Sam’s love – a sweet, tough, doing love. And he was real. Always real.
I mull over the gift of knowing him. I let the memories sift themselves. I refuse to search for memories. I will let those with the most potency – is that it? – rise to the surface. I look at the clock: 3:41, my childhood address, always a sign. I start to write.
It is now the third day, and these stories are still arising in my mind, as if an endless movie reel. I think, “Maybe this will stop. And maybe I’ll forget which stories surfaced. I’ll type them up.” Because I am an ardent (Virgo) archivist, I can find the date of each gift of memory.
I type the opening: Here is what meant the most, what helped the most, what dazzled, what made me reel from awe or appreciation. And then, to my astonishment, my fingers type words I never thought. I see them on my laptop screen:
Here, I lay out my gifts for you to see. ‘What are your most precious gifts?
I would love for us to know this man together.
And so, the Treasury is born. I tell Munir about this, who tells. Darvesha, who tells Zardusht. And suddenly I am part of the Ruhaniat effort to preserve the memory of Wali Ali. Here is my “movie reel.”
THE MOVIE REEL: HIS MANY GIFTS
1. 2004. ACCEPTANCE, OPENNESS. Wanting to attend Wali Ali’s esoteric class at a Dance Retreat, I asked him whether I might be present though I was not his student, which was the requirement. “Yes.”
After attending class, I realize: I want to know and experience the ‘Wali-Alified’ version of myself. I ask, “Might I become your student?” “Yes.” And he adds, “I always know who is my student. Sam did, too. Only in one case was the student not recognized at once.”
But then I need to add: “I am a Meher Baba person. I am plugged into him. And if that would prevent my being your student, so be it.” “Yes. We see God in everyone. We can see God in Meher Baba. That shouldn’t be a problem.” The beauty of Ruhaniat openness!
2. 2005, 2011. LOST IN LOVE. 2a. 2005. I remember losing myself in his eyes when we were dancing Ya Hayy Ya Haqq just before he initiated me into the Ruhaniat. 2011. I remember gazing with starstruck love while being initiated into the Jamiat Khas.
3. 2013. BRINGING ME BACK TO LIFE. I am at a Wazifa Retreat with Wali Ali. Months earlier I had a bad bout of pneumonia, with quite a fever. I would go to bed at night thinking, “I might not wake up.” I was reconciled to that, but I did feel that I wanted to know my husband better. I recovered. It was just one more worldly event in my mind, so I never told Wali Ali.
At the Retreat, we are being interviewed one by one, so Wali Ali can decide what group of Names to put us in. “What do you want from this Retreat?” he asks. “I want to be able to die with equanimity,” I tell him. “It’s a wish that came to me during my pneumonia.” He gives me a sharp, inquiring look. “In fact,” I affirm, “that’s all I want. Ever.” Another searching look.
With one last penetrating look, he says, “You haven’t come back from death yet. I’ll put you in a Names group that will bring you back.” He puts me in the Qayyum group. I am stunned but sense that he is right.
And so it happened: I felt the first stirrings while repeating “Ya Quddus, Ya Jami’.” There was a kind of re-knitting of fibers; the basket of my life appeared again. There was even a hint of joy.
4. 2011. APPRECIATION OF 99 NAMES FLOW. We are in his cabin at a Retreat. I am performing the Names Flow for him, the tai-chi like sequence of movements for the 99 Names, which I have worked on for years. All that effort and concentration! He glows watching me. I remember feeling, “If it were just for this look on his face, it would have been worth it.”
5. 2006. INVITATION TO WORK ON PHYSICIANS OF THE HEART. I had been taking his Esoteric Course. He asked for corrections if we found the need. I nit-pickily commented that a comma was needed before “we” in the Healing Prayer: “And, we pray, heal our bodies, hearts and souls.” And I sent in other corrections. This invitation was his response:
“I am going to begin to do some serious sustained work for the next 6 months or so on the book(s) that I have been asked to edit rising out of conversations called ‘the wazifa project’. I thought with your skills as a close reader that it might be useful to send you some of the raw work as it is evolving for suggestions as to details, language, etc. Are you interested?”
Of course I accepted this invitation to help edit early versions of Physicians of the Heart. And how fertile the process was for me! I entered into the meaning of the 99 Names much more deeply because I wanted to help Wali Ali make the text crystal clear. It was a gift beyond imagining, which enriched me for life.
6. 2011. HELP WITH 99 NAMES: YA ‘AZIZ. I taught a course in my home for three years on the 99 Names, based on Physicians of the Heart, with Wali Ali’s permission and with his help. He was so generous. I always receive a quick response when I had a question about what I’d be teaching.
After that, I co-taught a course called “Leaping out of Stuckness.” One of my contributions was the choice of a guiding Name for each class. For one class I wanted the salutation Ya ‘Aziz for our opening. How to capture the essence in English? I tried. “You, who hold the strength of Being, who strengthens us with the soul’s dignity.” Clumsy, repetitive. All my attempts fail.
As always when in doubt on Names, I consult Wali Ali. I wait breathlessly. When my email is about teaching, his response usually comes swiftly. Three hours before class the rescue-email arrives: “O Omnipotent strength rooted in the intrinsic beauty and worth of the immortal soul.” Awesome! And so is Wali Ali’s modest ending: “There’s my off-the-cuff stab at a translation. love, waliali” How can I not miss him?
7. 2011, 2017. INSTANT DIAGNOSIS. 2011. Wali Ali instantly unravels my problems with a Dance mentee, after years of a difficult relationship. Two sentences do the job: “She should never have been your Dance mentee. She was assigned to you by X and resented that.” 2017. Wali Ali validates my campaign, questioned by others, to maintain a certain level of attunement in the Dances held at my home: “It’s your home.”
8. 2006. HUMOROUSLY OBLIQUE. I was remembering something he told me once: “Sam always said, ‘Give me material.’ I, too want material. If something is troubling you, tell me.” I had never done it. I won’t consult a doctor unless my life is in danger; I won’t ask God for a parking space. But now my husband Stephen has done something that really gets my goat. “OK,” I think to myself, “Wali Ali said he wants material? I’ll send it!” And so I do: “My husband blah-blah-blah… didn’t apologize …. blah blah blah … ”
In his return email, Wali Ali suggests that I do a home retreat. But he never says a single word about my story! Actually, his P.S. says it all: “Please convey my condolences to Steven on the Colts perennial playoff stumble.” My initial reaction: “ ‘Condolences to Stephen’ ??? I thought I was the one who needed condolences!” Next, I have to admit: “Okay, messaged received: He wants material, but not the kind of I sent. I won’t do that again!”
Strangely enough, it is not until 2022, 16 years later — when I am tracking down this provocative P.S. – that I even notice its second half: “Human psyches are indeed bound together in an incredible patchwork.” So true!
9. 2014. FEARLESS, TRUTH-TELLER – or is that LOVING SCOLD? I send Wali Ali an email explaining my fury over an act of supreme ingratitude by an in-law. Lots of justification. And blah-blah-blah. In essence: a tantrum. Wali Ali calls me out for it in an email:
“dear paula, imperfections in others that impact your world often seem to evoke rage and agitation of nafs. quite appropriate to say estaferallah for one’s forgetfulness of unity at such times. arguing with him will only allow you to vent and to win an argument in your mind. whatever help he needs to change will need to come from someone he can accept. your job is simply to be paula in her eternal movement in and toward the one, an activity of god. love, waliali
Such a refreshing slap! He has no fear of my disliking his response. He can’t be bought. Teaching comes first for him. Always. Who now will challenge me like this? Who will say, “Oh, come on, Paula! Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” – and love me while saying it?
10. 2007. UNVARNISHED. He just is. For his second Retreat in Indiana I suggest the title “Pure Unvarnished Being.” He turns that down for something he perhaps finds more inviting: “Sun & Moon: Exploring Radiance.” For me Unvarnished Being is inviting; it is the most inviting — part of Wali Ali’s greatness.
11. 2010. UNVARNISHED. I am walking behind him in an airport corridor. We are heading toward the same plane, for his Wazifa Retreat. I don’t say hello. I want to take this in. I marvel. He looks so shabby – shabby clothes, not smooth-shaven. The bag he carries is shabby. “Wow. He looks like the male equivalent of a bag lady. Who in this corridor, besides me, can possibly guess the splendors inside?” Wali Ali just is. I know no one like him. Plain, unvarnished being.
12. 2016. RECOGNITION: BOOK BLURB. I have asked Wali Ali if he might write a blurb for my book, Hands-On Spirituality. I expect a no. His praise is generous beyond my imagining. “ … a dedicated and brilliant teacher working in an accepting and inclusive way … and insisting only on honesty. The process that unfolds is marvelous to observe …” I am so grateful for his recognition of what I have been doing in my college course. He is so supportive, so appreciative – of us all.
13. 2017. THE TAILOR-MADE GIFT: ZEN AFFIRMATION. This is the big one, the gift that keeps on giving.
I had never been drawn to the Zen path. I appreciated the teachings of the Buddha, but I wanted bliss, drama. One spring in 2016, while visiting Meher Baba’s home in Myrtle Beach, I received a gift not of my asking: a weeklong period of almost no thoughts, which began on Easter Sunday. This totally unexpected (and exquisite) state persisted when I got home. I killed it by working twelve hours straight on taxes. I lamented the passing of the state. I never noticed how it continued to sculpt me, below my radar. The state returned at the same time next spring and survived taxes. It lasted a week again, then dulled over time.
Now, in 2017, retired from college teaching, I am finally able to come to a gathering of mureeds. I tell Wali Ali I can spend a few days in San Francisco on retreat after the gathering and ask if he will give me instructions. “I’ll do any practices you ask me to do.” He asks me where I am spiritually, to see what sort of practices he might assign.
Now I have to examine myself and reveal my state – to him and to myself. I’ve been avoiding this. I can see some of the effects of the sculpting. But the truth is: I have an unconscious fear. “Maybe I’m just sliding into some weird kind of spiritual lethargy. Maybe this is just one more turn on the spiral of being not-quite-back in life.” I’m uncomfortable emailing him about the changes, but I do it:
“What draws me is Nothingness. I used to feel a sort of dissonance between spiritual paths. Not any longer. Anything that works is “Nothing-ish” for me. Names of God. Om Namah Shivaya. Sitting still. It’s as if it is all Toward the None (rather than the One). I have no resistance I know of to any practice. I am not drawn by much. As for what to ‘assign,’ I am puzzled, too. What first came to me was walking the streets and remaining undistractedly in a state of awareness of the whole. That still seems good.” My unspoken, underlying question: “Am I OK?” Wali Ali responds to this question with a quotation from Sokei-an:
“There are four periods in Zen study. In the first period you realize Samadhi. In the second period you realize wisdom. In the third you realize emptiness, and in the fourth you are affirming everything and there is nothing that you can deny in the world. You will affirm from God to bedbug.” [Sokei-an in Holding the Lotus to the Rock]
I feel validated, recognized, encouraged. Instead of wondering whether I am sliding downhill, I begin to embrace the changes and let them develop. I devour Sokei-an’s books, as if I am reading the story of my life. And I am still, to this day, being sculpted by those magical two weeks of non-thinking. That’s quite a gift! Thank you, Wali Ali.
14. 2017, 2018. DOG SITTING. In 2017 Wali Ali sends a thrilling invitation, asking if I can dog sit for him for three weeks in summer: “We have two lovely dogs …. Shakur would help with dog walking. You could sleep in my bed and have access to the front room where Murshid taught and the downstairs meeting area where he also taught.” I still believe that this invitation to dog sit – so that Wali Ali and his family can go to Northwest Sufi Camp – was the unexpected fruit of my odd suggestion that he give me the practice of walking the streets!
Twice I spent three weeks with Bart and Sheba – in the summers of 2017 and 2018. It was amazing to live in Murshid Sam’s home, in Wali Ali’s home. My love of the Dances, already strong, was enlivened. My desire to have a dog again was awakened; beauteous Sasha now dwells in my home. And who knows what other blessings continue to arise from those weeks at 410 Precita?
DURING HIS DYING
15. Nov 21, 2022. Monday, early morning. I read the email: Wali Ali has been brought home to make his transition. I am incredibly tired all day long. In response? Am I with him? I don’t know. I’m often tired.
Nov 22. Tuesday my breathing, always slow, is even more slow. It is as if each breath is an event, almost a surprise. I comment on this to my friend over lunch – which nails it in my memory. That night I read the message about Wali Ali: “Breath is deep and long.” Yes, I do feel that I am with him.
Nov 23. Wednesday. I get up very early and wash dishes, do other chores. Now I am freezing — too cold to stay in the kitchen. I go back to bed and wrap myself in my blankets. I’m still freezing, my feet so cold they hurt. I take Stephen’s blanket and double-wrap myself, under and over, around the bottom of my feet. I stay wrapped, feet still freezing, for five more hours. Finally I am able to get up and have some food. Is Wali Ali losing all the heat in his extremities?
Nov 24. Thanksgiving Day. I receive the email: Wali Ali took his last breath at 7:40 a.m. California time. Yes, I do believe I was with him in his dying process. For some reason this means a lot to me.
GRATITUDES
16. 2006 and forever. Wali Ali has given me instructions for my first solo Retreat at home. While repeating Ya Shakur, I have what my friend Linda used to call a “gratitude attack.” I am overwhelmed by all the help I’ve been given throughout my life. I sit down and list 108 people to whom I am grateful. Later I call or send mail to the ones who are still alive and reachable, and I address the others within.
So now, in 2022, I gather all my gratitudes to Wali Ali. There is no pail big enough to hold them. Who could describe the grace of having him as teacher? Who could tally the blessings? Endless thanks to you, beloved teacher!
… LATER
17. Later more strong memories arise: Cold Hands. Swan Stick. Towed by Bart. And so on… (See Paula Saffire # 34.) But the stories above are still most dear.
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[1] Zardusht (Chet) Van Wert
1. “TELL ME WHAT’S GOING ON WITH YOU.” I was initiated by Wali Ali in 1974 and was an original resident of Khankah SAM. I spent time in my Murshid’s presence almost every day for more than three years – morning practices, communal dinners, Saturday workdays on the newly purchased Norwich Street houses, and retyping Murshid SAM’s letters/diaries in his office. I was in Wali Ali’s presence a lot, and this period of physical nearness planted a seed that has remained clear to me ever since, but one that took … <sigh> … a very long time to germinate.
In a talk he gave on initiation in December 1975, Wali Ali said this, which applies to mureeds like me: “A lot of things that Murshid left us, people realize in gradual stages … and some things take a lot of time.” That’s the story of my relationship with Wali Ali and his acceptance of the time it took me to grow up spiritually.
I left San Francisco in 1978, but Wali Ali and I maintained our relationship over the years, through my changes and his. Regardless of how much time passed or the circumstances in my life or his, our meetings always began the same way: first, a mutual eruption of joy, then we would sit and he would look at me with that bursting-with-love look of his, 100% focused and present, and he would ask, “Tell me what’s going on with you.”
This was an invitation, I understood, to take a step forward, to say that “what’s going on” was that I was evolving, that I wanted to take the next step. There was no particular expectation on his part, just an open door and a sincere curiosity, the loving attention he refers to when he explains the meaning of Ya Raqib to students in the God Is Breath course.
Year after year, “Tell me what’s going on with you.” In those moments, he communicated an energy that was both completely receptive to my state and, at the same time, all-consumingly, lovingly radiant. This invitation, this open door, was a constant over the years.
I often did not step up. I’d say, “Oh, everything is good.” My family, my work, my spiritual practices, whatever. From time to time, he would ask about my interest in some spiritual activity or even an initiation. My answer generally boiled down to, “I’m waiting for a sign. I see this open door, but I’m not sure I’m ready.” This wasn’t an excuse, it was how I really felt. He never pushed me, but his invitation remained open despite my holding back.
Year after year, “Tell me what’s going on with you.” My stubborn reply – can you imagine? – “I’m looking for confirmation that I should take the next step.”
On one occasion, Wali Ali wrote this to me: “Recently I have been feeling out the possibility of your being given the initiation of ‘Sufi’ (9th degree). How do you feel about taking on the role of a teacher on the Sufi path? Please don’t hesitate to be frank about whatever is up for you.” I replied, “One can only feel honored to be asked this question by his teacher. I think being a teacher is the highest possible calling. But the short answer to your question is that I don’t think I’ve received that inner initiation, so asking for the outer initiation feels wrong.” Can you imagine? I really said that!
Again, I received no argument, and ultimately I never received that initiation from Wali Ali. He took seriously the saying that “there is no compulsion in Sufism.” Of course, given the infinite variety of paths to realization, neither the teacher nor the prophet can carry us up the mountain. What would be the point of that? What would we learn? How would we grow?
Instead, much more profoundly, the teacher makes the commitment to travel our path with us. “Tell me what’s going on with you.” As Rumi might have put it, Wali Ali would lovingly stand by my side as I broke my vows a thousand times – a heartbreakingly beautiful commitment. For decades. Can you imagine the patience? The love?
Forty years after I left San Francisco, Wali Ali supervised a weeklong retreat I took at Khankah SAM. He gave it considerable thought – I have since found several drafts of his retreat program for me in his files. He also met with me in the late afternoon every day – a real blessing!
One afternoon during that retreat, I brought a list of questions I had for him. Before I could ask, he answered each one completely. There was no possible way for him to have seen that handwritten list in my pocket, and so there was nothing left for me to ask but, “Murshid, can you read my mind?”
“Yes,” he answered. Then he turned and paused for a very long silence, facing the door. I thought he had something to tell me, perhaps something criticism, but definitely something important. In the end, he said nothing and the interview was over. I wish I had heard his unspoken message…
Ultimately, I found that he had taught me the truth that he writes about in his commentary on Fana-fi-Sheikh – that fana is not a one-way commitment. It is, in fact, the realization that we are one. Not that we will become one in some cosmic Toward the One moment, but that we already ARE one. We have been one all these years and we remain one. I felt this sure knowledge every day through the last year of his life and I feel it more strongly every day since then. Of course he knew it all along. Too bad it took me the lion’s share of a lifetime to realize it.
So yes, some things take a lot of time. “Tell me what’s going on with you.” This was my koan, if only I had realized it. I may be ready to pass it now.
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[2] Eve Earley
1. 2007. CHANGED BY A BRIEF ENCOUNTER. Wali Ali was leading a Retreat in Indiana in 2007. I was not feeling very good about myself at that time. Toward the end of our retreat, I came to Wali Ali as partner in a dance, for a moment. It was a brief encounter; we were not partners for the whole dance. The way he looked at me, with such openness and love, affected me deeply and changed me. It was a long glance. I felt emotion, probably sadness, maybe forgiveness and love of myself, and tears came. I felt, “If he can love me so beautifully, unconditionally, and utterly completely, then maybe I am worthy of being loved. And maybe I can love myself.”
[Paula Saffire: I later asked Eve: Was it really a unique, life-changing experience? Her answer: “Yes. He gave me permission. I felt the love. I felt the love for me as a witness. I’m getting teary. I could love myself – this person who could be lovable. I didn’t feel any sense of self love until I got it from him. After that I was at ease with myself, content. Before I had been depressed. After that I had stable self-worth.”]
2. 2013. RECOGNITION: LOOKING GOOD. I attended a Wazifa Retreat with Wali Ali. Wali Ali was available for short meetings about our retreat practice. I took full advantage of those. After a few days I walked in for my third meeting. He took one look at me and said, “You look pretty good! What are you doing here?” I had to agree with him that I felt quite good, and I left.
3. 2013. TIME STOOD STILL. On our last evening, Wali Ali appeared in Sam’s long, simple yellow tunic. He just stepped into the middle of the circle and stood there with presence, looking at us, turning around a little to see us. It’s hard to describe the experience, but time stood still. I felt peaceful, whole and connected.
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[3] Tawwaba Bloch
1. 2005. ACTING ON GUIDANCE. Wali Ali was offering a retreat at the Sussmans’ country home in western Massachusetts. I went in for my mureed’s interview. Before I could say anything, Wali Ali asked me to be his esoteric secretary. I was speechless. We weren’t close. Although I had been on the path since 1997, I had taken hand with him just a few years earlier, transferring from another guide.
“I am very honored, but I don’t get it. Why me?” I asked.
“I don’t get it either,” he replied. “I need help, and this was my guidance.”
“So what’s my job description?”
“I don’t’ have a clue. I just know I need help and you’re the person to ask.”
“But I’m in New Hampshire and you are in California.”
“You’ll never be asked to do anything you can’t do.”
I’ve done many different things in my life. I have been a waitress and a homesteader, off the grid in a handbuilt home, growing most of our food. I made custom handwoven clothes, as well as managing other weavers and apprentices in a wholesale retail production business. I was a psychotherapist at the time of this meeting, owning and managing a healing arts center. Along the way I became skilled in computer graphic design and coding.
Personal computers were always my friend. Using them, I had become registrar and manager for Dance leadership trainings, Sufi camps and retreats. Other than that, I didn’t see at the time how my work experience prepared me for this role. But everything I had learned was used in some way for this job.
Wali Ali simply knew, at the beginning, “I need help.” After that, I knew what help he needed, often before he did. If didn’t know how to do it, I could learn the skills.
2. 2006. WALI ALI’S NEW OFFICE. In the fall of 2005, after completing his first assignment at home using my computer, I wrote to Wali Ali, “If you could find a place I could housesit for a month or so this winter, I could come to California. If I work alongside you. I think I could learn a lot more I could do to help.” (Not to mention getting out of frigid NH.)
Two days later Wali Ali replied, “Shabda’s going to Hawaii with Tamam in January after the Sesshin and he needs a house sitter.”
I attended the Sufi Sesshin and then I went to Shabda’s home in Terra Linda. I was intimidated, imagining he and Tamam lived in some especially spiritual place, pristine in every way of course. I was relieved to see their lovely suburban life. We had one hour, and they were leaving the next day.
Shabda showed me around and indicated what I should care for in their absence. When we entered his office in the daylight basement he said, “The reason I’m asking you do this is that I just contracted with Wali Ali to edit a book (Physicians of the Heart.) His workstation at home now is his laptop on a tall bureau in the kitchen, with a 2-year-old running around. Make him a desk here with filing cabinets and the necessary tech equipment to create a really functional workspace. I will tell Wali Ali that he has to come four days a week while you’re there. He’ll get into a rhythm that way.”
3. 2006. “KEEPER OF THE SECRETS.” I came back for another few weeks in March. At this point I worked in that basement office with both Shabda and Wali Ali. We would either have lunch upstairs in Shabda’s home or go to a Chinese place at the mall nearby. At lunch there, I learned that one of my main functions was silence. One day Wali Ali and Shabda were in the office discussing people on matters that seemed confidential. I said, “I’m good at not hearing.” Wali Ali said,
“No, you need to listen to all of this. Esoteric Secretary means ‘Keeper of the Secrets.”
4. 2007. WORKING SIDE BY SIDE. I started working in the Mentorgarten office in 2007. Wali Ali and I spent so much time working together there, just feet away from each other. People thought that was very intimate. It was but was not. We rarely talked face to face in the office. We would email each other if we needed to communicate.
5. 2008. “TRAIN WRECK!” From so much time together, we did develop a sort of private language of shorthand phrases. For instance: “TRAIN WRECK!”
I was taught in my family that I had been given a sharp brain and the ability to look at possibilities and see likely outcomes. And that it was my responsibility to use that gift to be a warner of coming dangers. Wali Ali noticed this tendency in me and pointed something out about my hypervigilance. One day, he illustrated this with his phrase and a gesture.
“You see two trains approaching each other at speed. From your perspective, you think they are about to crash.” He illustrated this with a gesture with the back of his two hands facing me, fingers moving horizontally, directly toward each other.
“You jump out with your red flag yelling ‘Stop, Stop!’ You are giving your warning: ‘TRAIN WRECK!’ “
Then he turned his hands 90°, palms down. This was the view of the trains from above. There was a gap between the hands that made it evident they would simply pass each other on their own tracks.
“So when you jump out there with that flag, the train near you veers to avoid you and runs into the other train, causing the crash you were trying to prevent.”
For example: Wali Ali invited Paula Saffire to be a dog sitter in the summer of 2017. His house could be messy. So I jumped in with my red flag: “Wali Ali, will you get a housecleaner before she comes?” His simple response: “TRAIN WRECK!”
And indeed, there was no collision. Yes, there were bed sheets in the washing machine, which Paula turned on after arriving. And yes, there was dog hair on the blanket of Wali Ali’s bed – a playground where Bart and Sheba would snooze, play, and mock-fight. But Paula walked to the Khankah, borrowed fresh blankets, and found a way to sleep with fur-free bedding for three weeks.
6. 2013. “AM I SMILING?” When Wali Ali was envisioning the God is Breath series, he asked me to lead Ya Shakur Allah and Ya Quddus Ya Jami’, two of Maboud and Tara Andrea’s wazifah dances in the first class. I said, “You know why I stopped leading dances…”
(History: I had come to Sufi dancing in 1987 in the Bay Area, and was immediately and irreversibly hooked. At that time they were primarily led by Murshid Sam’s direct mureeds. I was peripherally aware of Saadi and Tasnim’s initiative to fully institutionalize these practices as the Dances of Universal Peace.
I moved to NH and was drawn to lead the Dances simply to get my “supply.” After a few months I received a surprising phone call from X, who lived a thousand miles away: “You aren’t certified. Do you know you shouldn’t be leading without a mentor?” (How did she even know I was leading?) This was my first contact with this certification and the expectations and requirements. Wanting to be a good girl, I found a mentor and diligently worked toward certification.
In the trainings we were taught the requirement to lead a dance as it had been created by the originator. This was so different from what I had experienced in California where the mantras were established but the gestures and even the exact melody might vary to different degrees in the moment. The focus there was on attunement, not originator.
In the process of feedback I wound up internalizing the Dance Police. The result was that although I felt fully attuned, in my bliss, while leading a Dance, as soon as it ended I experienced self-doubt and shame. It didn’t matter how attuned or effective the actual dance had been. My inner critic would flay me. I began to lose that bliss and chose to let others lead. I could always touch it when dancing.)
Wali Ali knew all this. And now he wanted to have me lead in a program that was going to be video recorded for the first time? Anyone who took the course would be able to see.
He said “If someone calls you out on something, ask them if they could see me on the recording. Do I look happy? Am I smiling? That is all that matters.”
And so it came to pass. The first time I led Ya Shakur Allah, a few people contacted me, wondering about the way I led it. But there in the video, for all to see, was Wali Ali smiling.
7. 2022. THANKS GIVING. I visited Wali Ali a few times when he was living at the Ashram care facility. Our estrangement had been wiped away, like ‘Afuw, leaving not a trace on my heart. While the word salad of his dementia flowed, we met soul to soul. Mostly we would just laugh together. In retrospect, this was the sweet spot before things suddenly went downhill. He became agitated and difficult for the Ashram staff to manage.
He went home for a respite with Sabura, but within days, he was on hospice. I wasn’t involved in that last week. I just knew he didn’t want to be the person that the dementia was creating. But I knew from our visits that this tragic disease did not touch his soul. Just as he taught: The soul cannot be improved or diminished.
But on that last Tuesday I heard him say distinctly in my heart:
“I will die on Thanksgiving, so you will know that my final transmission is ‘I am grateful for the life I was given.’”
And so it was.
Thanksgiving will always be his Urs day for me. No matter the calendar date. I am thankful for the immeasurable gift of serving Wali Ali and through that, the transmission of Murshid Sam and the message of Hazrat Inayat Khan.
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[4] Anahata Iradah
1. 1994. A NATURAL TO INTERVIEW, MANTRA. After many years of dancing and only hearing stories about Wali Ali, it was announced that he would be on staff at the next Lama dance retreat. I believe it was the summer of 1994. I was on staff as well so I knew our paths would cross. I was also approaching the end of my filming for the movie “Eat, Dance and Pray Together” and I looked forward to the possibility of Wali Ali’s granting me an interview.
It was a glorious camp. Wali Ali was delighted to meet a new generation of leaders that had been coached and mentored by Saadi and Tasnim. Wali Ali invited me to be on staff at the next Mendocino Camp in California to represent the new wave of leaders that had developed whilst he was in the Midwest. But the crown jewel of our meeting for me was the interview he gave for the film. We agreed that it should be done at the gravesite of his teacher Samuel Lewis.
Wali Ali made my job as interviewer so easy. He was such a natural speaker and storyteller. At times it felt as if Murshid Sam was speaking through him. In fact at one point he said on film that Murshid Sam wanted to thank us, because we as the next generation were fulfilling his prophesy that the dances would spread around the world. I don’t think I had to do a single edit due to hesitation or mistake.
The interview was filled with quotable moments, all of which have stayed with me for over 25 years. One such quote: “Can you imagine that when you are doing an Om Mani Padme Hum dance how many people have gone on the raft of that mantra into full liberation?”
Murshid Wali Ali unlocked the mantra in my heart.
2. 1994. ELEPHANT TRAP. At some point in the middle of the week I told Wali Ali about a situation I was in that was a little uncomfortable for me. His response: “When God sets you an elephant trap you have no choice but to fall in.”
It was one of the most colorful and thoughtful responses I have ever received, because he had illuminated the exact nature of the situation for which there was no correct answer.
3. 1994. TAILOR-MADE GIFT: SAVING MY VIDEO. Some months later when a film I was working on came under attack, Wali Ali’s initial response was: “You cannot make a film by committee.”
He was moved to pass the film onto Pir Moineddin for his review. When Moineddin watched the film he publicly announced “There was so much actual baraka in this film that I wept for joy seeing the seeds Murshid Sam planted growing in the gardens of love all around the world. On with the Dance! On with the sacred Dance!” Six years of unbelievably hard work and fundraising protected by the final say of the Pir of the order! This was thanks to Wali Ali.
I have so much gratitude for the selfless and almost effortless way Wali Ali seemed to navigate the needs of whoever was in front of him. Now, as Wali Ali has exited this incarnation, my wish is that he is securely aboard the raft of Om Mani Padme Hum heading with swift ease to full liberation.
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[5] Munir (Peter) Reynolds
1. 1997. DARSHAN, WEEPING. I was attracted to the Dances of Universal Peace in the early 1990s and eventually became a regular at Wilderness Dance Camp, an annual, week-long DUP camp happening in Utah and other places. During that period Wali Ali attended as the ‘spiritual elder” at the camp, to give teachings and also to help ensure that the material being presented in the Dances was grounded in the various spiritual traditions and in universal Sufism. Wali Ali gave afternoon talks and walks classes, always well attended, in which he held the camp in rapt attention. I was greatly taken with his being, depth and teaching.
Finally at some point in about 1997 I got up my courage and asked for an interview with him. He was warm and very cordial. We sat, and he asked me a few questions and listened with his knowing and sometimes inscrutable look. Suddenly, he simply looked at me.
I will never forget that look…his eyes, his thick glasses, and the rather fierce expression on his face. Without warning I suddenly burst into tears. In that moment, the entire Sufi path, the dharma, the infinite universe, the unfinished work in myself – were transmitted straight into my heart all at once. I felt that he saw into my soul, and I was seeing what he saw.
My mind had, and still has, a hard time processing this. It says something about the eternal perfection of the soul against the foreground of issues it was carrying, and the Truth of what lay ahead. All this became a major focus in my journey ever since.
These episodes of weeping happened more than once. I would simply be in Wali Ali’s presence at camp, or at a Jamiat and would have to retire to a private place like the men’s room just to put myself back together. Just being with him had the effect of eliciting a deep response or release of energy.
Murshid taught me what it means to travel “Toward the One.”
2. 1999. APPRECIATION. At Wilderness Camp around 1999, Wali Ali was not feeling well. He was having difficulties all week with his health. On the final morning he was scheduled to lead Dances. He asked me if I would help him present Murshid Sam’s Dervish Cycle of Dances. That morning I played the music and demonstrated the movements. Wali Ali was mostly quiet, but occasionally gave commentary on the meaning of the cycle, and seemed to be consolidating all of his energy to do this. I tried to follow his tempo and attunement through the cycle. At the end he looked exhausted, but we made it through.
Later as I was packing up to leave camp, I found a note on my luggage from Wali Ali. It read, “Munir, thank you.“
3. 2011? IN SOME VAST STATE. At a Jamiat Khas in Kansas City I was out for a walk around the lake, and then I saw Wali Ali coming toward me from the opposite direction. I thought, “Oh, this is the perfect opportunity to ask him a question.” We happened to come standing at the same spot on a bridge.
. Our eyes met and I could see his presence was in some vast state. Not a vacant look but a look of intense contemplation and silent presence.” We briefly acknowledged one another and passed by on our way.
4. 2012. CO-LEADING WITH WALI ALI. In March 2012 Wali Ali and I co-led a retreat in Indianapolis. At the time I was struggling with some personal issues, so that difficulty was the background all weekend as he and I led Dances, gave teachings and wove our presentation together. At one pregnant moment Wali Ali gave an inspired teaching on “All My Relations”. It was an example of how he took the intensity of what was happening in any moment and brought exactly what was needed in terms of inspiration and realization. He spoke to me and to everyone about the real, and not just the apparent world of creatures and things. Until I embrace “all my relations” of inner selves, rejected parts, and sabotaging identities in choiceless awareness, I suffer as the limited false self.
Later that weekend on Sunday night, we co-led an evening of Dances for about 75 young people from Butler University. Members of the local dance circle were also present. It was the most memorable evening of Dances in my many years of leading them. Wali Ali was radiant and obviously having a wonderful time. The students had never danced before, but they threw themselves into it fully. Wali Ali and I seemed to work so well together that the energy keep going up and up. In the end, everyone including the students seemed to be glowing with ecstasy and delight. The experience was extremely uplifting. I will never forget it.
5. 2012. PLAYING MUSIC FOR WALI ALI. 2012. PLAYING MUSIC FOR WALI ALI. In March 2012, Wali gave a weekend in retreat at the Odd Fellows Hall in Ballard, Washington. He asked me to play music to accompany his dances and walks. Something extraordinary occurred during Wali Ali leading his Ya Hayoo Ya Qayoom dance. The improvised music and the movements, the dancers merged into an ineffable unity. Something about the rhythm, the music, and Murshid’s attunement evoked in me an experience of vastness and timelessness, of God’s being. When the dance ended we all stood facing the center of the circle. That moment forever remains like a snapshot pinned in my heart.
6. 2017. LEADING RAM NAM. Around August 2017 I was attending Wali Ali’s esoteric class at NW Sufi Camp and he suddenly said, “Munir, lead that Ram Nam that I like.” I started leading the Ram Nam that I thought he wanted, but I could tell by the look on his face that this one was not the correct one! Somehow I got through it and he rather brusquely moved on to the next material. That night I had a hard time sleeping. “I let him down.” It was important to me to please him and be of service and also be seen as competent in his eyes. All those stories. I also thought, “I lost my chance to prove myself.”
Next morning in the same class Wali Ali again said, “Munir, lead that Ram Nam that I like.” It was as if the previous day had not happened! But, this time I knew what he wanted, and led the Grace Ram Nam for the class. I felt amazed by this experience.
7. Undated. LETTING GO. Many years ago I met with Wali Ali in his room at the Jamiat Khas about my difficulty with an issue. He said two things that have reverberated down through the years. “You have to lie down in front of the door you want to go through.” I had never heard this way of speaking about surrender. Sometimes no matter how much we want to be free, it seems that God does not remove the thorn in our side. Waiting patiently at the door of surrender is sometimes all we can do.
But then he also said: “You’re going to have to find your original face before the universe was created.” This well-known Zen koan sounded startling and completely impossible to me at the time. But I oddly understood at some level what he meant. Keeping this I Am presence before me became a major practice. The last time I saw Wali Ali I told him that what he guided me to do was being revealed. He smiled in a twinkly way but didn’t say anything.
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[6] Donna Walia De Mille
1. 1960s – 1990s. MY PATH OF GUIDANCE TO INITIATION. High school graduation, Chicago 1967: After the ceremony, as we take off our white gowns, a best friend whispers, “Don’t tell anyone, I’m going to San Francisco tomorrow, want to come with?” I say “What? You couldn’t give me a little notice? I have to save money, pack a bag!” And then I think, “NOPE, Not San Francisco. Not the hippy scene. Not for me.” Still I am grateful that she expressed this determination to go where she wanted to go. It opens a door for me.
Freshman year of college: My first boyfriend is going to Rome his sophomore year. And my next-door neighbor is going to Europe for a year-abroad program. “I can do that too! Where does my soul want me to go?” And these are the days when you just packed a bag and drifted around and things happened. And I am that kind of a gal.
I go to Vienna for a year-abroad study program. On my journey back home, I stop in London and love it. But I force myself to go home. “Everything is set up: place to stay, job, boyfriend (wink wink). But I could stay in London. Neh! I have to go back to Chicago and finish up my degree – (laughing) dammit!”
In Chicago: I know the whole time I am going back to London. And I do. I buy a one-way ticket and leave. “No plans! Just go!” It was just wild and crazy times, I don’t mind sayin.’ Wild and crazy times!
I have no plan to settle in London; it just works out that way. About five years in, I get pushed on to the Path. And it is not a pretty story, not spiritual. I’m in a relationship that ends badly and ask, “What’s going on in my life?” I see there’s a psychic fair. “I don’t vibe with that kind of stuff, but I’ll try it.”
The reader tells me, “You have to recognize your spiritual nature.” My thought: “Um, forget about it.” She continues: “Give yourself three weeks. Follow anything that interests you in the slightest. And keep a sense of humor. Because not everything works out.” A few weeks later I see a sign on St. James’ Church Piccadilly: “All are welcome to the Sufi Healing Order. Open to all who feel the Call of the Holy Spirit in Healing.” I like the sound of that.
Following the Guidance, as instructed, I go in. There are the most wonderful women, all practicing healing modalities I’ve never heard of: color healing, music therapy, art therapy, osteopathy. I am thirtyish; they are elders. At the first meeting they say, “Oh you’re so lucky. Pir Vilayat’s coming – in three weeks!” “Who’s that?” “You’re so lucky, you gotta go.” I’m still following Guidance. “I guess I gotta go.” And that was the beginning, in 1979. I stay in London five more years and those wonderful women mentor me.
Eventually, in 1985, the Path takes me back home to Chicago, where I am now. And things start rolling. The Madison WI community brings Pir Vilayat in for weekend retreats. And — what a blessing! — they have Dances of Universal Peace. They must have shown a video of Murshid Samuel Lewis. “That’s my kind of guy!” I think. (But if I’d gone to San Francisco in 1967, there’s no way, no way I could have withstood that direct contact with that Being. And even now I know, I couldn’t have withstood it.). So it all worked out.
Wali Ali was in the video, so I knew of his closeness to Murshid SAM. I started traveling to distant retreats with him. The first was at Lama, when Wali Ali had just returned to teaching. I could feel that he had maintained the transmission and I resolved that I would ask him to be my teacher. “If he says no, I’ll just ask him again later … and again, if I need to.”
“Why do you want me to be your teacher” he asks me. I answered, “Because your vibration is closest to Murshid Sam’s.”
“That’s right,” he says. “I need to meditate on this.” The next day he nods to me before class and tells me to stay afterwards. And he initiates me. He says, “I’m going to be more of a friend along the path.’”
And that’s what he has been. I didn’t meet with him often, but I could always feel the silver cord that connected us. He gave me guidance at a distance. I would send him check-in emails, but not on a regular basis. Once I was at a Jamiat in Madison. I hadn’t seen Wali Ali come in. But I heard his smiling warm voice say: “Here’s one of mine.”
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[7] Ali Charles
1. 2010. EMBODYING THE TEACHINGS: THE GREAT WAY. Murshid was very often teaching me with very few words, or even none at all. Coming to mind first is a time when I attended a Wali Ali seminar at a home near San Diego, California, many years ago. I was fortunate to have an interview with him some time on the first day. During the interview I brought up this teaching that had impressed me, from the Third Patriarch of Zen: a teaching that begins “The Great Way is not difficult for one who has no preferences.”
Murshid’s response to this indicated to me that he had heard this a number of times from other students, and while I don’t recall his exact words, it was something like “That’s not the whole story.” I took this to mean not to rely too much on this one phrase. I could see how that could lead to a kind of stand-still in one’s life if one decided to give up making choices or decisions as a result of having “no preferences”. Next day at the seminar, as the morning session was winding down, the host pointed out that it was getting close to lunch time, and asked Murshid if he wanted to lead another practice or dance, or shall we break for lunch. His response was simply, “I have no preference”.
As I recall, after a long pause someone just said, “Let’s dance”, and so we did. But I felt he was making a point!
2. Early 2000s. DANCE INSTRUCTIONS FROM THE MURSHID. Another time when Wali Ali was staying with our family during a seminar in the Los Angeles area, we noticed he did not seem to be sleeping well at night, and he confessed to having to deal with insomnia much of his life. But I had experienced this years earlier at a Mendocino Sufi Camp:
At the camp, Wali Ali had offered anyone interested in leading the Dances of Universal Peace the opportunity to sign up to lead a dance, just with him watching with some musicians, and he would then offer constructive feedback. So, I signed up, having had some limited practice at leading dances at one seminar or another. I was quite nervous and worried about making a mistake in front of my Murshid. So, I chose what seemed the easiest dance to remember the movements to, an “Estaferallah” dance. (I did not know at the time that this dance came from Wali Ali himself, in conjunction with his good friend Jelaluddin Loras.)
When my time came, I went to the dining hall where this meeting was being held. When I arrived, there were the musicians waiting to play whatever dance I wanted to present, and there was Wali Ali…lying on his back on a bench, fast asleep and snoring away.
I presented the dance anyway and received some helpful feedback from the musicians. But I left feeling I had missed the chance for Murshid’s feedback on my dance leading… and perhaps Allah was saying this was not for me.
Evening came, with the usual all-camp evening meeting. The teachers took turns presenting. It became Wali Ali’s turn, and what did he present? The “Estaferallah” dance.
Not only did he demonstrate how to lead it, but also made a timing error in the middle of it, and just continued on as though nothing had happened. I saw how the occasional mistake is natural, immediately forgiven by everyone, and not to be so worried about it.
Even more, I felt the great love-connection with Murshid, that is beyond words. We never spoke of it, and never needed to.
3. 2002. A DREAM OF DIVINE UNITY. I rarely remember my dreams and when I do, they are generally silly things, like not being able to find my car in a parking lot, then wondering if I am even in the right parking lot! But this was the other kind of dream that one has more rarely, that is quite vivid and clear and meaningful.
In this short dream, Wali Ali and I were standing together on a high balcony overlooking a wide natural area. I said to him, “I had to give up my concept of God, in order to find God.” He just looked at me and smiled; then we embraced and we entered into the ecstasy of oneness with the universe, that might be called Samadhi or Satori.
I awoke still feeling the ecstatic joy of experiencing that unity with Murshid and all creation. Once again, it was with no words from Murshid. But I will always remember that dream-life experience.
4. Over the years. REMEMBERING HIS HANDS. Regarding Wali Ali’s hands, I can say this: Whenever we held hands I immediately felt like a little kid. It was a blessing.
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[8] Aarifa Laughs Out Loud Stewart
1. 1982? INITIATION. Our beloved Wali Ali often told the story of how he met Murshid Sam. As I recall, he was working on his PhD, and the topic of his dissertation was “Cosmic Laughter.” In his research, he found himself in the Bay Area. When he told someone about his research topic, that person told Wali Ali that he should meet Murshid Sam. And he did just that. Academia was left behind. Wali Ali met his teacher.
Years later, a lab tech at the Berkeley Free Clinic where I volunteered invited me to go to the Monday night meeting where we would find a bunch of folks like ourselves – lovers of music and dance. So I found myself at the Monday night meeting on 18thStreet in San Francisco. My spiritual life was suffocating under the very serious and very angry anti-everything movements of the times. When I arrived, Zahir Stewart was sweeping the floor, preparing the space. I saw devotion and humility in this person. He was beautiful. The dancing was fun. “Fun” was the surface experience. At the break, everyone gathered around, sitting on the floor, and Wali Ali took 20 minutes to do a bit of teaching and answer questions. It was the first time I ever heard the word “sufi.” So, what’s a sufi? Wali Ali said: “The aim of the sufi is to see the face of God in everything that happens. And there is no dogma in sufism.”
I was 100% on board from that moment. As people were circling up once again, I scooted across the floor to Wali Ali and said – “This is totally on inspiration. Will you be my teacher?” He was startled… and then his arm went around my shoulders and he replied: “Well, if you are asking on inspiration, I will reply on inspiration. YES!”
And so, on that night I met my spiritual teacher, AND my husband, Zahir. Inwardly, everything else was left behind.
2. 1983?, 1994. LAUGHTER, A POTENT DREAM, A NEW NAME. A number of years later, Zahir and I and our newborn Sophia drove in a borrowed van to visit Malachite Farm in Colorado, investigating the possibility of moving there. The farm was not far from Lama Foundation, which I had never seen. So we made a day trip to visit there.
I carried Sophia in my backpack baby carrier as we climbed a dusty, rocky hill toward the dome. The thin air was already affecting me. I felt giddy. I tripped and fell, flipping Sophia off my back. I scooped her up and realized she was fine, and easily comforted. In my mood, I was still giddy and a bit beside myself. Approaching joy. Like, “What IS this place???” There was no doubt for me: Murshid Sam was near.
For my entire life I have experienced cyclical bouts of depression. Sometimes severe and long-lasting. In 1994 I was in the midst of one of these… feeling utterly alone in the dark for weeks. One day, the sound of someone’s laughter cut through the profound darkness. I noticed that it created a barely perceptible lift in my mood. I realized that laughter was my medicine. So I began to actively listen for laughter. The medicine was effective. It led me out of the darkness.
One night, I had a dream. It was not in places or pictures, but in sounds and feelings. A feeling of happiness flooded me, reminding me of the “beside myself giddiness and near joy” of Lama. And Murshid Sam was near. I was laughing in my sleep.
I was, in that dreamy way, remembering an Indigenous man I met at Lama that day when Sophia and I took our tumble. His name was Tell Us Good Morning. When Zahir introduced me, and I heard his name, I marveled at its beauty. AND, I found it to be a surprising and funny and joyful name. The words “Laughs Out Loud” blossomed in my heart. I immediately understood it to be my name.
I wrote to Wali Ali about my experience, and he confirmed it.
3. 2022? “THAT WOMAN FROM CANADA.” My most cherished memories of Wali Ali have to do with the many, many times I became aware that he was tuning into my laughter. I am sure I am not the only one, but often he would make very funny statements – inspired! And from me would follow a burst of laughter. I could feel his appreciation of my appreciation of the inside joke.
The last time I had this experience was on Zoom. There was a Ruhaniat Family Gathering. I remember Rahmat Moore and Shabda being part of it… and Wali Ali and some other of our esteemed teachers. The news of Wali Ali’s cognitive decline had recently come out… but if you weren’t around him on the regular, it was not immediately apparent. Looking back, I can see that Shabda’s job was to make sure everyone had a chance to speak. When Wali Ali took his turn, he would swing from topic to topic, story to story. I didn’t realize this would never stop. I was resentful that people shut him down (gently, for sure). I wanted to hear every word and story he had to share. As he told one story, it prompted a burst of laughter from me. Wali Ali commented: “That woman from Canada knows what I am talking about.”
So there it was. He didn’t know my name. The name he had given me. But he knew the nature of Cosmic Laughter.
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[9] Musawwir Mike Walker
1. Undated. EVERY BREATH. I met Wali Ali at Maui Sufi Camp, it was one of my first camp experiences. Being new to Sufi practices and the dances I was moved. I experienced, “ …the first kiss of bliss”, one of many more experiences to come, there was much light, the sangha beautiful and lovely. As a newcomer I was in awe of the ubiquitous depth of musical and artistic talent. Further along my path, reading Hazrat Inayat Khan, “…God loves beauty”, I realized, of course this sangha would be blessed with this gift, it’s a living expression of the sangha’s silsila.
Wali Ali would teach and lead dances at camps and retreats. Our first conversation went something like this. “ I have never seen or experienced such a blessing, this sangha is a fountain of beauty and talent.” Wali Ali spoke, as if to say, where have you been, you are home now, welcome. In the most gentle and inviting manner, his words, “Oh, it’s always been this way” are as fresh today as when I first heard them.
Prior to my camp experiences, I had taken initiation in the Inayati Sufi Order. A few years passed, I attended the camps and dances. My heart continued to be opened by the dances and I felt the palpable presence of Murshid SAM. I learned there was an agreement between the Inayati Order and Ruhaniat that the blessing stream of the silsila could be conferred upon someone that had been initiated in the other order.
Fast forward to the Jamiat Ahm in Prescott. I approached Wali Ali and mentioned this agreement between the orders and expressed my wish to be blessed into the Ruhaniat so I could experience the silsila blessings to include Murshid SAM whose dances deeply moved me. His response was kind, gentle and warm. He took my hands, asked me a few questions, looked deep into my eyes and prayed a blessing, I felt complete. “Be sure and tell my personal assistant for the record” he instructed.
I learned from his teaching. His actions often taught more than his words. Among the lessons he taught me relative to this life, this is the most profound: Every breath I have is an opportunity to bring Love, kindness and gentleness into this world.
Wali Ali is kindness, gentleness and compassion. He enriched my life and everyone I touch.
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[10] Yaqin (Lance) Sandleben
1. Undated. DREAMS OF MURSHID SAM. When Wali Ali was in Prescott for a Jamiat Ahm a couple of years ago, he told us this: Murshid Sam told Wali Ali that when he (Murshid Sam) passed from the body, he would be in many people’s dreams after he passed, and it would never be a bad dream or nightmare. Wali Ali said: “I have had many, maybe a hundred people who told me they have had dreams with Murshid Sam in it. And not one was a bad dream.”
I am among those folks!
2. Undated. A BLAST OF ENERGY TRANSMITTED. At the same retreat in Prescott, the Jamiat Ahm, I was in charge of interfacing with the teachers, making sure the schedule was kept up, and so forth. It was just after dinner time, and folks were starting to move into an adjacent room for the evening program that Wali Ali was going to lead. There were still many folks sitting at dining room tables, making a lot of joyful noise, that unfortunately was clashing a bit with Wali Ali’s starting a walking practice in the adjacent room.
He came to me and blasted me with energy, saying, “It’s your job to move the remaining folks or else to quiet them.”
There was no anger, just pure energy, which I feel is still a part of me. I moved easily with confidence and purpose- accomplishing the transition. The experience reminded me of Murshid Sam’s experience with Inayat Khan, found in the “5 Meetings”, when he received a strong energy from Inayat Khan. I think Wali Ali may have had a similar experience with Murshid Sam.
To me, it felt like a passing down of a particular kind of Baraka.
3. Undated. WAZIFAS TO CALM ANGER. I was at a retreat once when someone expressed unkind thoughts, involving an old history about another Sufi teacher who was not at this retreat. This seemed to make Wali Ali mad. The next day, Wali Ali addressed the situation with clarity, and no trace of anger. I asked him later, “How were. you able to release the anger?”
He told me that after he left the gathering, noticing his own anger, he worked with three wazifas: Ya Muntaqim, Ya ‘Adl, Ya ‘Afuw, to pray for balance and clearing. “I poured my feelings into my recitation until the anger cleared.”
I was impressed by this. Since then I have used these Names to great effect. When I feel swept up in anger or other afflictive emotions, I give it some dedicated practice time and feel those emotions clear. “Like the tracks in the desert, disappearing in the wind.” (Ya ‘Afuw, from Physicians of the Heart.)
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[11] Cindy Lippon
1. Undated. DREAM DARSHAN. I am an “Outlander” Sufi. I touch in once in a while and partake of the lovely activities of the groups. I am a Shabda Mureed. I didn’t know Wali Ali and he didn’t know me… Or so I thought.
While at the Sufi Sesshin some years ago, in my sleep the first night, I had a dream that Wali Ali came to me. Nothing was said between us, but his intense gaze told me that I was “known”. That was it.
We never talked during the sesshin or ever. What was there to say? The memory of that has never left me and will always be a sweet mystery.
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[12] Halima (Barbara) Najork
1. Undated. MOMENTS OF DARSHAN.
I met Wali Ali only once, when he visited Summer School in Proizer Mühle, Germany. I danced with him, in an exercise, just for some moments.
. When we met and I looked into his eyes, I fell immediately into oneness. He was like a door into the universe.
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[13] Darvesha (Susanne) Bauer
1. 2006. DARSHAN MEETING HIS GLANCE. I met Wali Ali twice physically. The first time was at the European Summer School. Wali Ali gave darshan and I had no idea what that could be.
When I met his glance, my heart and consciousness were expanding and I felt just ONE – not the oneness I was familiar with through zikr, meditation etc., but a very physical experience. I felt myself and I felt him simultaneously. I didn`t know who was he and who was I. Yet at the same time I realized that my consciousness was bilocating and I could choose. Afterwards I couldn`t help but cry for quite a time. This experience opened many doors.
2. 2016. HE SAW MY SOUL. The second time took place in the Mentorgarten in San Francisco. My heart was fully committed to the path of the Dances. But what I experienced in Germany did not feel in full harmony with my deepest values. After holding this inner struggle in my heart for some years, I finally went to San Francisco to check out the roots of the lineage.
When Wali Ali welcomed me for a talk in the Mentorgarten, my inner sight opened and everything around us dissolved into the void. Only his divine spark and my divine spark remained. Beyond the words spoken I felt that he saw my soul and also that I knew he knew and simultaneously there was the realization of his soul while knowing he knew that I knew…
This encounter was priceless. It enabled me to fully let go of any remaining idea of a certain form of service or structure limiting the soul. After that I began to experience visceral concentrated galactic and then cosmic transmissions.
The impression of his soul that was given to me was a very subtle, calm, peaceful vibration – like a safe ground you can confidently walk upon. I sensed a loving warmth with a sprinkling of divine humor, an energy that was welcoming and accepting, while holding a very powerful, concentrated focus.
I was shown huge, selfless endeavors and silent service in the inner worlds, beyond the Dance organization, beyond the Ruhaniat path. I sensed in Wali Ali an immense capacity to balance all arising developments in peace while continuing to empower all individuals to follow their own unique path.
3. 2016. HELPER OF OUTLIERS, BEYOND ORGANIZATION. Actually, I was at the Mentorgarten because I had felt a conflict about the Dances and the Sufi path in Europe. The Dances had been in my heart since my first Dance. I immediately knew that I would learn, teach, and pass the Dances on. But it seemed to me that the Dances were being commercialized. There was the intention to make money with them. And the peace work got more into the background. I felt I had to leave the path.
After I had separated from my guide and mentor, I was told that without a mentor I was no longer allowed to lead Dances. In fact, I was “prohibited ” from doing all that I´d done for 20 years: Dances, Universal Worship, Healing service, Lord`s prayer. I disagreed. And I turned to the Ethics Committee. Magdalena, who was part of it, suggested that I visit the Khankhah. So I went to San Francisco to get a feeling for the roots of the Dances
I wanted to ask Wali Ali about these things when I met him in the Mentorgarten. But he basically answered all my questions before I even could ask. I had asked in my prayers always, “Let my heart be so vast that I will be able to embrace the whole cosmos.” This was part of the story that for most of my life I’ve been in service to humanity — not for an organization or a personal interest. And in our meeting Wali Ali supported me in this.
When we finished our talk and I was about to leave the room, he asked: “What will you do now?” “I have no idea.”
“You know that usually I take care for those who cannot deal with it.” “You would do that?” I asked. And he offered to be my checkpoint. Since then I have felt free to continue hosting and leading spiritual events.
Other things Wali Ali said to me:
“Sam never claimed ownership over the dances.”.
“You have not been initiated into a certain organization or to a certain teacher but into the Sufi path.“
“You are part of this path. Whether you have a teacher or not will not change that.“
4. 2017. BREATHING PEACE… Here is an outstanding example of Wali Ali’s energy of empowerment and his focus on selfless service beyond organizations.
I told him in an email that I would be unable to follow up on the invitation to his Mureeds Gathering in 2017. This was his reply:
“No reason to fly all that distance to come…
Breathing peace and holding all beings in our consciousness we efface ourselves in the activity of perfect peace with the intention to further its realization in the world.”
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[14] Tansen (Philip) O’Donohoe
1. Early 1990s. OKAY WITH BEING RIPPED OFF. Wali Ali came to England for a camp. We chatted. He was just coming back to leading things in the early 1990s. He felt lost. He said:
“I feel like the fifth wheel on a car.”
He said he felt out of his depth. And there was no need for him. He did teach the astral walks. And I loved it.
At the end I was supposed to drive him to the airport. But my car wouldn’t start. I said, “You’ll have to take a taxi. But be careful of taxi drivers in London. They’ll rip you off.” He said:
“That’s all right. I don’t mind being ripped off.”
2. 2011? FEAR NOT.
I was in Kansas City for my first meeting as part of the Murshid Circle. I told Wali Ali, “I’m feeling a bit of trepidation.” His reply:
“Oh well, turn that around. In-trepid.”
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[15] Shakura (Carol) McGowan
1. Undated. NO BADMOUTHING THOSE NOT PRESENT. There was a Retreat at the Abode. Wali Ali invited me to sit with him at lunch. Someone there was telling terrible stories about her ex-husband and also about a Sufi teacher. Wali Ali and I were trying to talk, but she kept interrupting. Wali Ali would say to her, “We’re trying to have a conversation.”
He also would tell her, “This teacher, like everyone else, has his own needs.” And he would say, “You shouldn’t talk so negatively about him.” Or “It is inappropriate to talk about people who aren’t here.”
I left him a little piece of paper that told him where we could meet to continue our conversation. Then I got up and walked to the kitchen to put my dishes away.
Wali Ali got up and left. Later the woman cried and told me he yelled at her. I said, “I don’t think so. I would have heard him.”
Wali Ali and I finally met up and continued our conversation elsewhere. In this conversation he told me about drugs and his parents.
He could keep his sense of humor and yet stay present and aware of everything going on.
2. Undated. “KEEP DOING WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND DON’T WORRY.” Kabir Kitz was my teacher. There was a rift between me and a woman who was one of Wali Ali’s mureeds. Wali Ali and Kabir had discussed this rift many times. Wali Ali thought this was a good time to try mediation. To me he said: “We have to try to give her a kick in the ass and see if it works.”
It didn’t work. Kabir thought we should keep trying. Wali Ali said to me: “Just keep doing what you’re doing and don’t worry about her.”
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[16] QuanYin (Lynne) Williams
1. Undated. SIDE BY SIDE. I was somewhere with Wali Ali. We were sitting together side-by-side. We laughed and laughed. And talked and talked, from the above to the below and all around. I brought up topics. He built on them. This side-by-sideness was a joy – so companionable, like a meeting of equals, heart-mind to heart-mind.
2. Undated. “DON’T EVER LEAD THAT DANCE!” There was a Zoroastrian Dance I’d seen led by a beautiful couple, which had the phrase “I live only to serve you.” I was leading it a year or so later, at the Southwest Sufi Community soon after its founding. Wali Ali had come in and heard that phrase and called out: “Nobody should be living just to serve someone else. Just serve God! Don’t EVER lead that Dance!”
Was I burning? Yes. But you take it for the team! I never led that Dance again. (And I agree with Wali Ali.)
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[17] Narayan (Eric) Waldman
1. 1995. SOLAR! I met Wali Ali way back at an Ozark Sufi Camp (maybe Lama?) and later invited him to Wilderness Dance Camp. At Wilderness we didn’t separate Walks and Dances. We were having a full-camp Walk, which started with several Dances. “Time for some Walks,” said Wali Ali. “Anybody have a Solar Walk?” I raised my hand. “Go for it.”
I thought about leading Ya Hayy Ya Haqq (hard to beat that SAM Dance for being solar!) but then I hesitated, dunno exactly why. Maybe I thought, that one is just too obvious. I not only hesitated but I said something like “Hmmm“…to let everyone know I was thinking.
“THAT’S NOT VERY SOLAR!!!” came a roar from my beloved Wali Ali! It almost knocked me over! Let me tell you, the very next second I was Ya Hayying and Ya Haqqing with SAM and the Circle…for sure!
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[18] Saul Barodofsky
I first met Wali Ali as Murshid SAM’s correspondence secretary, a role which he continued until Murshid Sam’s passing. Our interactions were many, and frequent. He gave me my first list of practices from Murshid SAM. We took walks in San Francisco together, watched Murshid take his last breath, had a double wedding ceremony, and reviewed applicants to the now lapsed connection of Spiritual organizations, The Meeting of the Ways. (That was a trip.). I assisted him in moving to Virginia, heard the Gathas from him, helped with teaching in his Sufi University, and more.
His was a full life, and although he was not a saint (none of us are) his Baraka was ever flowing. Here are a few memories to share:
1. PROSTRATION ON BUDDHA’S BIRTHDAY. Murshid took Wali Ali and me to a celebration of the Buddha’s birthday. I recall it was at a church, with an altar and rows of pews. We sat together, and at some point Wali Ali became so moved, that he prostrated himself in the aisle facing the alter. The folks there were not happy, and SAM called him back into his seat, and we left shortly thereafter.
2. YELLED AT BY MURSHID SAM. Murshid was leading dances in front of the Mentorgarten when he had an emergency telephone call. He asked people to wait a minute, and went into the house to take it. I followed him, as was my usual practice, and met his visitor, Vocha Fisk, who was Korzybski’s secretary. SAM heard chanting outside and went to see what was happening.
Then we heard him yelling at Wali Ali for “taking over his meeting!” Wali Ali attempted to explain his actions, but Murshid wanted none of that and kept on yelling. Then Murshid returned upstairs, and I watched Vocha Fisk calm him down. and return him to a more centered state. It was her tone and acceptance of his feelings which I do believe did it. ((I wasn’t the only one Murshid yelled at.)
3. A DANCER. We all came together in the late 60s and early 70s. The freedom of the 60s was all-consuming. I recall Wali Ali’s relationship with a married mureed, which was causing her marriage to dissolve. I called him on it, and his reply was “But Saul, she’s a dancer.”
4. SAM’S PURPOSE, WALI ALI AS SECRETARY. Perhaps his role as Murshid’s correspondence secretary was the one I resonate the most with. Murshid was invited to a Holy Mans Jam in San Francisco, where he led an Allah snake dance. There were thousands of people in the room. I saw Murshid counting the house. When he finished the dance, he told Wali Ali, “Write Sufi Barkat Ali, and tell him I have completed his assignment.” This assignment was to get 10,000 Americans to say “Allah”! It was, in my humble opinion, the reason the Dances were formed: sacred phrases in group movement.
5. MURSHID SAM: “PAY THE RENT!” Murshid was in hospital, in a coma. He awakened and dictated a letter to his living teacher, Sufi Barkat Ali. Daniel Lomax wrote down his words. We were thrilled and called Wali Ali to come over immediately. Murshid saw him enter the hospital room and asked him, “Did you pay the rent?” Wali Ali fumbled his answer, “No Murshid, we were so concerned with you we forgot.”
Murshid screamed at him, “PAY THE RENT!” Wali tried to explain, and Murshid again yelled “PAY THE RENT!” These were the last words Murshid spoke to Wali Ali, as Murshid went back into his coma and only semi-reawakened when he demanded I get him into the Chinese hospital – which I did.
6. DOUBLE WEDDING. One day a month or so after Murshid’s passing, both Wali Ali’ girlfriend and my girlfriend were pregnant. Wali Ali suggested we have a joint wedding. It was a powerful celebration of ‘new life,’ and a continuation and deepening of our family. Vilayat did a Universal Worship, Ajari Warwick did a fire ceremony, but the actual wedding was performed by the Rev Gene Wagner.
7. “LEAVE ME IN PEACE!” One day, a couple of years after SAM’s passing, Wali Ali called me to the Mentorgarten. He took me into his room upstairs in the Mentorgarten and asked me to look out his window. There was a very bright flashing large RED sign proclaiming GREAT WESTERN – a local savings and loan company. He stated, “This is driving me crazy. Come with me.”
We walked to the bottom of that tall building, where he lit incense and a candle, and clearly spoke: “Yes, you are more powerful and larger than I am. But you have no power over me, and I reject all of your influence. Leave me in peace!” And we then walked back home. He never mentioned it again.
8. “SHUT UP AND TAKE IT!” We were in downtown Charlottesville one day. As we walked on the Downtown Mall, he announced that they were considering making me a Caliph. When I demurred, saying it was “Too little too late,” he yelled, “Shut up and take it!” Which I did.
9. THROWING BEADS. Years later, at my initiation to the Murshid Circle, in the presence of Moineddin, Hidayat, Saadi and many of the original mureeds, he called out my name: “SAUL!” I turned to see a set of prayer beads flying through the air at me. I did catch the tasbi before it hit the ground, and still use it. (It was made especially for me by the late Ahmaddin Ah Salik)
10. AN “ATTACK.” Years ago at Lama, he had an ‘attack’ while teaching. I was called into the dome, where a nervous group awaited me. Wali Ali was feeling weak, had shortness of breath, and some chest pain. Emergency services were hours away, and so I worked on his feet, as I had done with Murshid SAM. He came back to normal and finished his class.
11. INSTRUCTIONS ON INTUITION. As mentioned earlier, he was my Gatha reader, after moving to the city from Marin, where Moinuddin was my Gatha reader. Wali Ali’s instructions on intuition remains a core practice for me.
Watch your breath. Place a question upon it.
As you breath, observe: Is it smooth? Is it easy? Does it feel light-filled? Is it heavy? Is it impacted? Is it slow to move?
Still a useful practice.
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[19] Insu Hyams
1. QUAN YIN’S BLISSFUL SMILE. At Mendocino camp one year, Murshid gave instruction and then we engaged in the walk, tassawuri Quan Yin. Everyone’s faces became solemn and long. Murshid sat us down afterwards and asked for feedback. I said, “Quan Yin is smiling.” Murshid just about jumped off the then bench and practically shouted, “THAT’S RIGHT!” He went on to say, “That’s because she is never separated from the great bliss.”
From this, I understand that resting in mystical wonder is so needful toward engaging in mushahida. Murshid’s lesson also reminds me of Thich Nhat Hanh’s emphasis on smiling.
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[20] Husam (Howard) Olivier
1. 2013 5 2. PINNED BY HIS GLANCE. I am at my fifth Wazifa Retreat in Prescott Arizona, on the 99 Names of God. I love surrendering a week of “regular“ life once again and inviting the universe to orchestrate whatever I need most. I am in the Fattah Group. Each group leaves the main hall once a day to meet with Wali Ali and receive that day’s assignments.
On the fourth full day, my group of five is with Wali Ali. I am sitting on the floor, close to him. We have handouts of the material. And Wali Ali is reading about Sabr Jamil, a blend of beauty (Jamil) with an attribute used to invoke the quality of patience (Sabur):
“The ultimate stage of sabr jamil fully manifests as the attribute as-Sabur, which is completely consistent in all situations. By grace, the traveler on the path of contemplation of the divine abundance may ultimately penetrate to the essence of beauty itself… Such a being walks gently on the earth and has loving gentleness toward the outer manifestation…”
I yearn to travel this path. My eyes move to the page in my lap, to see what Wali Ali will read next: “Through heightened insight into reality, he or she sees the infinite worth, or karam, of every individual. God is all in all.” Wali Ali reads the first sentence.
I am waiting for the next five words. But no, Wali Ali completes the sentence in a different way: “Through heightened insight into reality, he or she sees the infinite worth, or karam, of every individual — INCLUDING YOURSELF.”
As he says the words, “INCLUDING YOURSELF,” he raises his eyes and looks straight at me.
I feel entirely trapped, and utterly secure at the same time. He holds my gaze for emphasis, pinning me as if by a spear thrown through my chest into a wall behind me. The message he transmits in this moment feels sacred and accurate. I’m caught. It had never occurred to me when I practice seeing the infinite worth of people, I leave one person out: myself.
Instructions are concluded and our group of five parades out of the private room to rejoin the larger group. I sit in the main hall dazed, absorbing the experience of having something kept secret all my life so utterly exposed. I know that within a short time I’ll be doing solo practices in my room. Energy from the connection still reverberates, and I am eager to get started.
I have no inkling that within eight hours I’ll be an initiated mureed!
2. 2013 5 2. STUMBLING INTO CLARITY: MY YA FATTAH WALK. Back in my room, the experience of being pierced by Wali Ali’s glance still reverberated cellularly. I dove into the last full day of practices for this retreat, immersed in Wazaif (names of God). The assignment was to complete what Wali Ali called a ‘full cycle’ of each pair of names: 1001 out-loud recitations, followed by 201 silent, mental recitations, then 101 breaths simply dwelling in the essence of the sacred Name. A full cycle of two names takes 1 ½ – 2 hours. After three such pairs, a single name remained: Ya Fattah (“Oh Opener!”) Coincidentally, Fattah was the name of the group Wali Ali had suggested for me at this retreat. So it felt fitting to end the retreat with Ya Fattahs. I completed the cycle with lively energy.
Wali Ali’s next instruction was to walk outdoors: “You should take at least two 15-minute periods throughout the day to walk on a path and continue your inner remembrance….” What path to choose? For me this choice was complicated because I “share a body” with multiple sclerosis.
I use this phrase deliberately; it has meaning for me. I cannot say I “have” MS. Here is my truth: This disease does not have me and I (my essential self) do not have it. The most accurate way to describe our relationship is this: I once lived in a dwelling I thought of as “mine”. I moved in first. But…some years later, the Landlord added a roommate – a rather difficult one.
Life with this roommate has been an on-going practice of creative negotiations. There are a number of activities we don’t agree on. One of those is walking. I never know how long any walk will last. At times my muscle control deteriorates in bewildering ways. For me, an uneven trail requires concentration a “healthy” person might need to summon in order to walk on a narrow beam atop a wall ten feet high.
Two days before, I had gone on a scouting expedition to find out: What was the terrain of Slick Rock Trail? I found it doable but difficult. It was largely a narrow footpath, with loose gravel, and odd-shaped rocks protruding on the trail. There were sections of side-sloping granite to traverse. Even with my trekking poles, these are a perilous affair. At times the only way I can progress is by narrowing my attention and treating each step as a separate neurological puzzle to solve.
Wali Ali had said I could simply go outside on my bike, which would require no concentration on steps. But I had walked this trail once, and today I was in a mood to try it again. I grabbed my trekking poles and set off, with Ya Fattah! filling my heart.
From the first minute of the hike, I was intrigued. My stride was smoother than usual. This time — in places where earlier I had asked myself, “What business do you have walking out here?” – my footsteps flowed with confident ease.
Rather than puzzle over ‘why’ this was happening, I opted to simply enjoy the experience. At one point, as if I were watching myself from a distance, I marveled, “Man, I am flying up this hill!” Suddenly — “YIKES!” – my toe caught on a raised rock. Thankfully, I recovered balance and continued along the path.
As I neared the top of the trail, still travelling with uncommon ease, my mind drifted to admiring my progress: “I have walked well, all this way!” And — within microseconds – another stumble! I began to suspect a link between these ego-thoughts and being tripped. “Okay,” I thought, “The Universe is providing this speedy walk; perhaps the Universe is tripping me as well.”
I arrived at the turnaround feeling exhilarated rather than fatigued. Normally my balance muscles would have been depleted long before this; I was long past where I would usually stop and rest. But today’s walk was like no other. Might the magic last longer? Without a pause, I headed back. The ease continued.
About half-way back, I lapsed again. “Look at how easily I’m floating along!” This time the consequences were both immediate and drastic: My legs buckled and trembled sickeningly. And then – I lost all power to stand! Strength and muscle control simply vanished. I was collapsing straight down toward the trail, helpless as a puppet with snipped strings! This was one of the scariest moments of my life.
As I descended I understood: The Universe is now withholding assistance, its message unmistakable: ‘THIS IS HOW YOUR LEGS ARE RIGHT NOW, ON YOUR OWN.’ I had been experiencing a walk with surreal ease, without fully grasping the true situation: This is not ‘my’ walk at all.
The moment I realized this, the free fall stopped! I had dropped perhaps two inches toward the ground. So this whole lesson must have taken place in less than a second of clock-time. And now disaster was averted. The universe had offered me a terrifying tour of physical powerlessness. I felt as if I’d been asked, ‘DID YOU GET THE POINT?’
I stood motionless, mesmerized, absorbing the message. Clearly, this was a time for listening – not for scripting myself as hero. I continued my walk, paying heightened attention to my tentative steps. I knew, beyond words: This is not ‘my’ walk.
As I approached the retreat center, a glowing clarity emerged: Go see Wali Ali. I had attended his retreats for years without any sense of urgency for ‘more’. But now I saw his role in the arc of my life as central to who I most wanted to be. I had no idea what I was going to say. But in this moment I knew: seeing him was the most important thing in my world.
3. 2023. LISTENING: Ya Mujib, Ya Qarib. I went to seven Retreats with Wali Ali on the 99 Names of God. After that Wali Ali offered me Names to work with, based on what I was encountering in life. In the year after his death I encountered Al Mujib (the one who answers all prayers) in chapter 17 of Physicians of the Heart. I felt called to study this name further. Using the index, I began to read every Al-Mujib mention in Physicians of the Heart. As I read and connected with particular phrases, highlighted a line or two, or turned a page, I noticed that I felt accompanied; Wali Ali’s presence grew.
The index hinted at an extensive mention of Al-Mujib in chapter 18. Eagerly I opened that section. Al Mujib joined forces with Al Qarib (the intimate) in the narrative. The line I connected with most powerfully described Al-Qarib as ‘truly listening, and not simply desiring an answer to your request’. Reciting this pair felt immediately important, and also felt familiar – something I have done unconsciously for years. I was so grateful for expressive language to describe this sort of listening.
The first time I practiced aloud with Ya Mujib and Ya Qarib, my wife was away. I was able to vocalize with a fuller voice than I usually use (when she is sleeping in the next room). It felt enlivening to let my voice be unrestrained.
While I was reciting, it slowly dawned on me that I was hearing and responding to another voice: Wali Ali’s! I felt the thrill of seeking to blend with his tone and urgency. My heart quickened. My voice, combined with his, got louder and more insistent until it seemed it could be heard out the window. “YA MUJIB, YA QARIB!” It was a powerful force: The feeling was exultant.
“YA MUJIB, YA QARIB”. This ecstatic pledge grew its own energy field: a sense of connection, belonging and delight. Over and over again. “O Thou who answers every prayer, I solemnly vow to listen in the deepest manner.” This went on for some time. I scribbled down impressions of this experience, right afterwards. While writing the notes, I continued to sense Wali Ali’s presence, just over my shoulder. Gratitude for this sustained one-on-one time with him.
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[21] Nura Yingling.
I met Wali Ali at Sufi camp in Mendocino, 1985 or 1986. Soon after, Wali Ali moved from California to Covesville, Virginia and soon after that my family relocated to nearby Batesville. Wali, his partner Mira, and his daughters Alia, Neshoma and Amina spent a lot of time with my family in the first several years following our moves. Wali Ali and Mira were unofficial godparents to our kids, and we were very close to his three girls.
Wali Ali had secured a position at Tandem School in Charlottesville. Founded in 1970, Tandem was a progressive, non-hierarchical learning community known as “the hippie school” whose motto was “freedom with responsibility.” The students were wonderfully quirky, round pegs who did not fit into the square holes of standardized education. Wali Ali, known as Mel, taught English, Religion, and Philosophy. When Tandem added a middle school to its high school program, I applied to teach English and Arts. Wali Ali was on the hiring committee; he vouched for me and I was in.
1. 1988. SPEAKING UP, EMPOWERING US TO HONOR OUR WORK. At my very first faculty meeting, I found my place among the circle of 25 or so teachers and staff in the former living room of the antebellum mansion that served as the school’s main building. After opening introductions, the Headmaster introduced the President of the Board of Directors. Crisply shaped in a very expensive suit, looking very corporate (and un-Tandem), he marched in, stood before our expectant assembly and, after a stiff greeting, presented a budget data report, culminating with the dire proclamation: “As the School is facing serious financial difficulties, all faculty and staff will have to take a salary cut.”
My first meeting! Everyone seemed stunned. As I later learned, many of the teachers were thinking, “Oh, okay, we love the school and the kids so much, we’ll all pitch in…” Several meek questions were asked. And then …. Wali Ali stood up. He raised his fist and POUNDED it on the table. “THERE’S NO MORE BLOOD IN THIS TURNIP!” he thundered.
“You CAN’T come in here and announce lower salaries one day before the kids show up! This faculty is already making significantly less than teachers in this town’s other independent schools. And we’ve already taken on extra course loads and non-teaching duties over the past two years. You go back to your Board – they’re the ones with deep pockets – and find another way to keep this school afloat. That’s YOUR job. We’re doing ours.”
Clarity, courage, REAL authority… And the Board did indeed “find another way,” and Wali Ali’s words did more than just save our salaries. He showed us what it looked like to honor our profession, to “speak truth to power.”
2. DEPTH OF CONCENTRATION. One of my strongest memories of Wali Ali is how he prepared for a class: He would sit alone in the library, reading whatever text he was teaching at the time, NOT doing what most of us did – not jotting down lesson plans, composing a quiz, making Xerox copies. I could SEE him diving into a text. Whether reading Faulkner or Blake or Vonnegut, he was the epitome of focus and absorption. I began to emulate his depth of concentration, and it made me a better teacher.
3. AS A TEACHER. I often sat in on his classes – because I, like all his colleagues, knew he commanded the students’ respect. I recall, in particular, his philosophy courses: Twelve or so students – and me – waiting in his classroom.. He would stride in BEING the philosopher he was presenting that day. Embodying Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Freud or Plato, he taught via the Socratic method, posing the Big Questions. The kids knew that in order to grok what was being offered, they had to do their work. They couldn’t hide or bullshit some lame response. Wali was very clear and very firm, never unkind to his students, unpredictable and hilarious. He often quoted poetry from memory… “Tiger, tiger, burning bright …”
4. HIS WAY WITH WORDS. Wali was a consummate punster; the impeccable timing of his zingers redeemed many a boring faculty meeting. Once, when he and I were talking about certain parents’ pressures on their kids to achieve, he said, “Worldly success is like the wedding of dolls.” The wedding of dolls. That has stuck with me forever.
5. CHAMPION OF OUTLIERS. One last story: I was a young, inexperienced teacher when I was hired at Tandem. Yet in my second year, I was promoted to Head of the middle school. Though my heart was in the right place and I was a very hard worker, I had little to no skills or savvy in dealing with entitled parents or an over-involved board of directors composed largely of such parents.
One of these board members was unhappy with a comment I had made about his daughter’s over-scheduled life, and another was outraged at a disciplinary measure I had taken in response to her son’s behavior. Together, they pressured the Headmaster to remove me from my position. Abruptly, I was told I would not receive a contract for the upcoming year. The first thing I did was to call Wali Ali.
Wali met with the Headmaster and said something to the effect, I later learned, “There is no due process here. This person is loved, is doing her job. This is Tandem, not a corporation.” A committee was formed composed of faculty, a key administrator, volunteer parents and other board members to review my case. All constituents of the school were interviewed. In the end, I was reinstated as a full-time teacher.
Twenty-eight years later, I retired with honor and gratitude – and, I will say here, with an admission of my rookie errors and a deeper understanding of parents’ fears and protective love for their children. Not only did Wali Ali help me begin my career and save it. He generated and helped establish an egalitarian, community-based process for Tandem educators who need and deserve support, a process still in place over three decades later.
6. A VASTER CHANNEL. Paula told me she had asked Saul whether he and Wali Ali were friends. The answer (with Saul’s permission): “Yes, but not ‘friends-friends.’ I have observed that many spiritual leaders were, in a certain way, loners.”
Paula then asked me the same question: “Were you and Wali Ali friends?” This was an interesting question I needed to sit with. What came to me was this:
Wali Ali was tuned into a vaster channel, a less personalized channel. We respected each other. There was humor and fondness. But, friends? We were spiritual friends, in that we each had our own wounds and demons, yet always sought the light, the Way of the Heart. I would say we were both companions on the path and devoted colleagues.
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[22] Omar M’Sai
I was an early disciple of Murshid Sam, so I have known Wali Ali for a number of years. Originally there were only a handful of us. I was never in a room with the entire group of disciples and Sam.
1. 1969 LONELY. Pir Vilayat held a camp in Colorado, high up in the Rockies. Murshid Sam and Saul went to Lama, but many of us came to the Colorado camp, which was great. Pir Vilayat gave personal assessments – kind of like darshans or interviews, except that everyone could be present at everyone else’s counseling. This is the first time I got to know Murshid Wali Ali and when he was interviewed he mentioned how lonely his life had been. It touched everyone deeply. In all the years I spent with Murshid Wali Ali I don’t think I ever thought of him being lonely again after that.
2. 1970s. SUFI NAMES. I once asked, “”How do you feel about your name, Wali Ali? ” “I don’t like it,” he answered. “Why not?” “It sounds too much like Roly Poly.”
3. 1971 10 27. LETTER FROM WALI ALI. I was in Scotland and Wali Ali sent me a letter.
Beloved One of God …. As-salaam-aleikhum! My dear brother, please rest assured that our connection with all of us here continues to pulsate with mutual love…
Reshad [Feild] was just here and then broke down health wise in Los Angeles …. Just adrenaline-reaction as far as I can see. I feel no compulsion to expandexpandexpand. We are growing as a plant, so as long as we get sunshine and water, and continue to pull up the weeds, we have nothing to fear. Among Murshid’s last instructions was that we should emphasize concentration practices, until the whole life becomes focused.
One thing that did come from my conversation with Resahd was the feeling that the Dances must definitely be approached with reverence and with the understanding that they are actual spiritual disciplines in their own way. There are so many things to concentrate on in doing the dances: feeling the circle move together, harmonising vocally, placing the mantra in the heart, feeling one’s own body fully, listening to the leader at all times. We should feel no compulsion in presenting the dances to get it on, get it on, get it on, etc. It is better to present them with the attitude that they require careful attention, at the outset. That the same dance may be stopped many times until we get it right, in this way we will leave ourselves room to grow.
Please keep us posted. We love to hear from you—o beating heart, breath of our breath.
Ya Hayoo, Ya Qayoom,
Wali Ali
4. Late 1970s or early 1980s. CALMING THE STORM. I grew up in Southern California. Normally I felt safe with the Sufis. While attending some dance classes led by Murshid Wali Ali I became friends with a young couple. They were sweet, in their early twenties, I can’t even remember their names now. We camped out together once, on the hills overlooking SF Bay from the Marin County side of the bay. The next morning we dropped in on a friend of mine who lived at the base of Mount Tam. I never had a clue of what was to come, and had no idea that this woman’s mental health was as frail as it actually was. They both seemed like perfectly normal people to me.
After visiting briefly with my friend, the woman called up Wali Ali. I heard her say on the phone, “This man is trying to kill me.” She was talking about me! I had no idea what was going on, but after speaking with Murshid Wali Ali, he assured me that everything was OK, and indeed it did appear that the situation had been resolved. This episode bothered me at the time, but I didn’t dwell on it. I learned later that the woman was bipolar.
Several weeks after that I was in a Dance class Wali Ali was giving. Suddenly the dance group came to a screeching halt and I heard this woman screaming, “HE’S THE DEVIL!” She was looking at me! She then turned to Wali Ali and screamed, “DON’T YOU KNOW THAT THIS MAN IS TRYING TO KILL ME? HE’S TRYING TO KILL ALL OF US. YOU, MURSHID, YOU ARE ON THE OTHER SIDE!”
I was stupefied. I was the only black man in a white crowd, and everybody was looking at me. I hadn’t even had a conversation with this woman. I didn’t know what to do.
Wali Ali took the young woman’s hand and walked with her. He spoke very softly. I could hear him gently ask, “Did you remember to take your meds?” I could see him calming her down. He just … took all of the negative energy in the room and calmed everything down. We then resumed the dance class.
5. 2022. WALI ALI IN DEMENTIA. During the early stages of dementia, when I was visiting with Murshid Wali Ali, I realized that one of the first things to go was Murshid’s sense of style. He wasn’t too careful about how he dressed. I felt it was important for me to dress down, somehow to blend. So we would walk around in the neighborhood looking a bit like two homeless buddies.
Murshid WA was always the same sweet, loving and easygoing self. People would walk up to him and he would address them as if they were extremely important people. He would say, “Look at this beautiful man!” Or, to a woman, “What a nice smile you have on your face this morning!”
You might have expected people to be taken aback. But no, they loved to talk with him. It was interesting to watch the interplay. I couldn’t tell if they were people who actually knew him or if they were just so swept off their feet by Murshid’s charm.
6. 2018, 2019. GOING TO BAT FOR ME, TRUSTING ME. In the end, what I remember best were Wali Ali’s gifts to me. My daughter passed away in California. I was in New York, in great grief but without money. I couldn’t even afford to go to her funeral. Wali Ali went to bat for me. He put out a plea to folks in the Ruhaniat to contribute toward my flying to California. More money poured out to me than I’d ever seen. I was able to go to California and contribute to the funeral. It was incredible. It was the most profound gift ever.
When Tawwaba completed her work coordinating the “God is Breath” course, she and Wali Ali asked me to work with him as the administrator of the classes. This was a very sacred trust which I participated in for ten years, filling in when needed and completely running the classes with the help of Barakat when Murshid was unable to continue his work due to the dementia that he was dealing with.
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[23] Amina Meyer
1. 2018. MUTUAL APPRECIATION. I am the third child of Wali Ali and Jessica Hall, aka Khadija. I was born at home in the Mentorgarten, in Murshid Sam’s old bedroom May 23, 1976. I was raised in that beautiful community of Khankah Sam, where I was loved by so many illuminated souls. I experienced the reality of our practices, and that created the world for me.
At the age of five I went through my parents painful and public divorce. At 10 years old I moved with my dad to Virginia, until graduating from Tandem high school, where Dad was my English teacher, as well as my teacher of Eastern and Western Philosophy. Dad raised me through adolescence with Mira Scheibner, from when I was 9 years old to the time I turned 18.
On the one hand, I had great love and respect for my dad. On the other, I saw his human struggles and judged him harshly for them as a teenager and young adult. However, throughout my life I could always feel my dad with me in the unseen world. He trained me to listen to my own heart and follow the path it illuminated. In 2018, I was reviewing my life after a difficult divorce. I wanted Dad to know how much I appreciated his intention for me to live an authentic, awake and contributing life. I wanted him to know how proud of him I was. Two weeks before his birthday, I wrote him a letter I knew he would understand:
“Dear Dad, I love you. I’m proud of you and proud to be your daughter. You got your job done with me. I love you forever. Thank you. — Your loving daughter, Amina Meyer.”
His response was affirming and empowering. I am so grateful we worked through our humanity and fully expressed the love we had for one another. I am so grateful we forgave each other and so grateful for his love which is the eternal love. He would be proud that I am spiritual co-director for the Mendocino Retreat this year. (2024):
“Dear Amina, I love you very much too! … Just heard your message on my phone in the office. I’m sure I have many flaws as a father. I see you as a radiant heart of God who brings light and optimism wherever you go. The Mendo camp sounds very good. May your job be smooth. I had hoped to have Pir Asim at NW camp as it would be fun and creative to work together in a camp setting. Timing interfered. Inshallah, we will have a good opportunity to do this in the future. I really want to know how everything is going in your life. I feel a connection here between you and the khankah; some good synergy perhaps to be expressed in the future as the flow of our lives streams on. — Love and Blessings, Dad
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[24] Shakur Linkenhogen
1. 1970. FINDING WALI ALI. I met Sam in the Mentorgarten. He was interviewing people. He asked me, “Well, what are you looking for?” I answered, “I’m looking for the truth.” Sam said, “Well, see Wali Ali.” Wali Ali accepted me as his student.
2. 1971. INITIATION AND NEW NAME. Wali Ali initiated me in 1971, after Sam passed. I asked him for a name. He looked straight at me and said, “I name you Shakur. Gratefulness.”
When the Sufis are saying thank you, they’ll say, “Ya Shakur!” So I hear that word a lot. It’s a stimulation to me to become a little more forgiving, more understanding, more mature. I really like the word Shakur. I need all the help I can get.
3. Over five decades. TRYING TO HELP ME. Wali Ali was a good teacher with me. He was very patient. I grew up in terrible poverty. There were five children and my two parents. We lived in a shack on the river in Charleston, West Virginia. Cardboard windows. My father was a difficult man. The police treated you like trash if you were poor. They’d say, “Hey you dirty bastard, why don’t you take a bath?” I was jailed twice, once at ten, once at twelve for playing in a junkyard. I’ll never forget the terrible taste of jail food – just pinto beans and bread.
I grew up with an inferiority complex. I went into the Navy to escape my circumstances. The young ensigns there were kind. They told me I was intelligent and I could get a college degree when I got out, which I did.
Wali Ali understood me. And he was always trying to stimulate me. It might look rough to other people. But he knew what he was doing. He was always serious about what he did.
He might say publicly, “Oh Shakur would never be able to understand what we’re talking about! Could you, Shakur?” [Paula as editor: I once heard Wali Ali say that.] He wasn’t trying to insult me. His meaning was, ‘Come on, stupid, do this!” It was his way of getting me into a bit more clarity in my mind and in my heart.
He would come up and start pounding on my shoulders. He realized I had shoulder tension. I realized it was a blessing. I TESTIFY! His meaning was: “Loosen up! Release the tension! Relax!”
Whether I was being pushed or shoved or spoken to, he knew exactly what he was doing. He was always trying to stimulate and help me grow. He gave everyone what was needed. He understood what he was doing, and I understood it, too.
4. 2020. ENERGY OF RAM, OF PAPA RAM DASS. I studied the mantra Ram for a year with Devi and Iqbal. I know Ram energy. Once I was going to the acupuncturist. A very large, hostile man started to come straight at me in the street. He was about six feet, with an evil expression on his face. I yelled out, “Ram!” He froze. When I finished my acupuncture session, the man was still there, frozen, on the street.
Papa Ram Dass gave me inner darshan in 2002, more than forty years after he died. In 2020 Wali Ali was giving Thursday classes at the Mentorgarten. He was doing zikrs. We tried to tune into him, whatever he did. I was surprised. I could feel Papa Ram Dass coming through him in the room. I could feel it clearly. I knew that energy from 2002.
5. 2021. “CON-FI-DENCE!” When Wali Ali was dealing with dementia, he would walk up to everyone and say “CON-FI-DENCE!” He’d say it over and over. Wali Ali wanted to stimulate me, to give me more confidence. In his dementia he’d hug me and say, “SELF-CON-FI-DENCE! Come on!”
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[25] Melinda Ross
1969. AN OVERNIGHT IN THE DANCE ROOM. I was in San Francisco, staying at a hippie crash pad. Someone called out, “Does anyone want to go Sufi Dancing?” I loved dancing but I’d never heard of “Sufi.” Game for anything, I went to 410 Precita Avenue – and danced with Murshid Sam and Wali Ali. I LOVED it! The Dancing was pretty simple. Sam was amazing. I sensed he had three aims: to give homeless people on drugs a sense of purpose, also a sense of community, and to teach them gardening.
I went to a Dance class one more time. By now I was homeless and had just learned I was pregnant. Wali Ali and I got to talking after the Dance class. He had long curly hair and was round in stature. He was a beautiful guy, a loving person. I could tell that from our conversation. Hearing my need, Wali Ali said, “You can stay and sleep in the Dance Room tonight.” I did.
The next morning I woke up and heard loud shouting upstairs. It was Murshid Sam yelling at Wali Ali! It sounded as if he was upset that Wali Ali had let me sleep in the basement and had not told him about it. I rushed up the stairs and said, “I’m very sorry if I’ve upset you both,” and I left right away. I felt like I was such an intruder.
Soon after that I returned home to Indiana. It took me more than forty years to return to the Dances. I went to Dances and Retreats in Indianapolis. Recently I told my experience to Malika Lyon at the Ozark Sufi Camp. She said she had a dream that night: Sam said he was yelling at Wali Ali not because I had been invited to stay the night, only because he hadn’t been notified. That makes sense.
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[26] Narada Ian
1. 1990s, 2001, 2006. IMAGES OF HIS TOPICS, INITIATIONS. I was close with Saadi and Kamae and I partly worked with and for them and met most travelling teachers from USA through them. That is how I arrived at Sam’s and Hazrat Inayat Khan’s door – via Saadi’s Aramaic years with Matthew Fox at the University of Creation Spirituality in Oakland. At some point I asked Saadi to initiate me, but he said, “We don’t initiate friends.”
Some years later I met Wali Ali at the 2001 Peace Through The Arts Camp in England. With hindsight, I see that he had come partly with the intention of initiating me. (I believe Saadi had suggested it to him.) I could kind of feel the crackling anticipation, but it wasn’t in words . I attributed it to Sufism in general.
Wali Ali gave a class every morning at the 2001 Camp. On the third day I was sitting in class and I realized that I was seeing and assembling in my heart’s eye the words and concepts that he would then assemble in the next sentence! He was mostly speaking about Sam and quoting poetry. So I experienced this deep inner connection and literally saw and felt the transmission. I was grateful to have found an open door
This went on for a while! For example, I would see a kingly chair. And then Wali Ali would speak about the arsh, the throne of God. After that class Wali Ali came to my campfire. I told him, “I was enjoying the silences in between your words. It was in each silence that I could visualize your next topic.” It was heartwarming for both of us and he initiated me a few minutes later.
Next day Wali Ali gave me practices, which I was diligent about for decades. I would “report” to him a few times via email most years. A few years after I met him he returned to Europe to be the lead teacher at German European Summer School and initiated me to ninth degree – to my surprise!
2. 2001. SWOON. In the 2001 Camp I attended the morning class Wali Ali gave. One day he was leading us in the Walk of Kwan Yin on sentient skulls. Then he led another Walk which included a spin. I was doing fine until …. I was falling – kind of fainting in the Walk! Having kind of over-trustingly followed his words, perhaps still drunk from the earlier unexpected initiation, I lost all balance mid-spin and started to fall.
Murshid caught me. There were at least 40 people in the class in the Morning Room and yet he was the one who saw me, acted, and caught me whilst I was in the act of swooning. I didn’t hit the ground. I considered this highly synchronous and a little romantic! And just as it should be!
3. 2006. SHARING THE LIGHT. I was Wali Ali’s esoteric secretary at the European Summer Camp held in Germany. Part of that Retreat was his giving darshan. There were around 150 people attending. Darshan lasted about two minutes per person. There was little spoken after welcomes it was mostly by glance and breath. My job was to open the door in and out and keep the space. Kamae would give people a seed and a bead from Wali Ali on their way out.
In the role of a guardian angel – inspired by the beautiful gilded guardians who keep their wings outstretched around King Tut’s tomb – I kept my arms outstretched during each darshan. I remained invisible in the room, but always attentive to Wali Ali in case any need arose. About three quarters of the way through, a silent rapport had developed between us.
There were windows facing south in the room which supplied lovely light. But there was no direct light from the sun in the room. Suddenly through my eyelids came strong light. I opened my eyes. I remember seeing a presence next to Wali Ali. Then that distinct visitor left. My job was to hold the space, so I didn’t say anything.
But after the mureed had left, Wali Ali turned to me and said, “Did you see that?”
“I did,” I answered. We were amazed. But we both had a job to do, and we returned to it. At the end, Mudita had someone take a photograph of me. I could see that it showed some of that strange light. Wali Ali and I never spoke of it again.
Wali Ali gave me back that confidence in the inner light. I don’t share it with Sufi folks much. But when I teach it … people are hungry for it. Once you come in the door, you realize that these things are real and there’s no reverse gear. Once the Aleph is seen, there’s no avoiding it.
I emphasize a fool’s path. But I do sometimes quote Jesus to my students. This passage stirs my memory of the day Wali Ali and I shared the light: Matthew 1, 13 -17. “Verily I say there are learned and rich scholars who want to see what you have seen and hear what you have heard.”
(Well, that’s my version. King James is wordier: “For verily I say unto you, that many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them, and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them.”)
4. . 2022. BEING HANDED ON TO MARY. It was soon after the death of Wali Ali. I had a vision. I can’t remember what I was doing – sitting by the fire, I think. It was all quite literal. All of a sudden I realized I was seeing with my heart’s eye. No fuss to get to it. No big fuss and muddle about the its flooding in.
I am at a Dance. It is a circle Dance and there is a person holding my hand on either side. Wali Ali is my partner. Now it is time to change partners. Wali Ali pulls to ensure that I go in the right direction I can feel his skin, the muscle texture, the grip, everything of his hand. He is using all that concentration he usually has. By the use of his hand he directs me onwards to …. Oh, it is Mary! Mother Mary!
I am suddenly with the mother of Jesus. She was not in the Dance. But now she becomes the Dance. I feel as if I literally have been handed on to a very different relationship.
[Editorial comment by Paula: Narada sent a description of this experience to a listserv of Wali Ali’s mureeds. It stimulated a lively discussion of how it felt to hold Wali Ali’s hand.]
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[27] Fatima Lassar
1968. WALI ALI’S NAME. Murshid would take people to this Afghan restaurant. And if you didn’t have a name, you knew you were going to get a name. And so a lot of couples got their names: Amin and Amina, Halim and Halima. It was as if you took someone to a gas station now or a Seven-Eleven and asked the owner, “Give him his spiritual name.” But whatever the name was that the restaurant owner gave, Murshid forgot it. So he just made it up!
It was like the way he gave me my name. I was called Pat. He said he went from Pat to Fat to Fatima. He had a way of doing things you expected to be spiritual in a non-spiritual way. You had to get over that, you had to get past that. Murshid thought it was “Wali Ali,” but actually, it wasn’t.
Wali Ali knew what the name was, but he never told anyone.
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[28] Rahmana Marcia Rowe
Original Art by Rahmana Marcia Rowe 2023
Painted in acrylic with gilding on wooden panel 20” x 27”
1. 2022. HIS PORTRAIT, MY HEART’S DESIRE. In the summer of 2022, when I read that Wali Ali’s health was failing, I knew in my heart that I would paint a portrait when he passed. On Thanksgiving afternoon, at a family event, I was shocked by the news that he was gone from this earth. That evening, I sat at my altar saying prayers and feeling the deep loss.
The light of the candles flickered over an icon I had painted of Jesus and, in an instant, I knew that the portrait would be created in this style. I would begin the work in the new year and have the image delivered to California for his Memorial. After the holidays the full weight of the task was apparent.
It was very important for me to get a likeness that transmitted his energy, especially through his eyes. I wanted to keep the original, for now, but allow the community to print out their own copies. I pulled together styles from Islamic, Tibetan Buddhist and Orthodox Christian art and created the icon on a wooden panel (actually, a kitchen cabinet door) with gilded borders. Bismillah honors his Sufi path and Om Gate Gate his Buddhist path. And his beloved teacher Samuel Lewis is above his head symbolizing their enduring connection.
As I worked on the details, I listened to Saladin read by Wali Ali and felt a deep connection through his voice. Also the Allaudin Ottinger’s CD Friends of the Friend which created the atmosphere of the Dances he loved so much. I loved creating a thing of beauty to honor my teacher, who always supported my creative endeavors.
Prints were made and mailed to California for the March Memorial and by Wali Ali’s June birthday the final version was available to his mureeds. Final prints were delivered to the Mentorgarten for the first Urs in November 2023. One year after the inspiration, the project was complete and I was very relieved. As I sat in front of the icon, with the candle light flickering, he seemed to say “Thank you. Job well done.”
2. 2010, 2022. HIS WORDS, TRANSCRIBED. For many years, what I call Letters have come to me from Beings in the Great Beyond – unbidden, and sometimes unwanted because they always have to be delivered. This can be anxiety producing or embarrassing. But ultimately I am willing to be the messenger delivering the mail. Over the course of years I sent Wali Ali many examples of these Letters and he responded in an email:
“The transmissions …all feel like you are in touch with a stream of beneficent guidance. I would encourage you to continue to listen.” 7/8/2010
Also: “ It feels clear, excellent, blessed, guided, altruistic. I am happy to again affirm that this is a psychic and spiritual gift that you have received signs to develop and to use for the benefit of all beings.” 12/20/2010
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I keep paper and pen near my altar because I never know when poems or guidance might flow. On Sunday November 27th, 2022, after my morning practices, I started to hear words. I was not asking for a message from my Teacher, who had just passed into the Eternal. But I wrote down everything I heard. The message was for the whole community, and I sent it out by email lists. I hope it brought as much comfort to others as it did to me.
We have convened the Heavenly Murshids’ Circle for love never dies and the heart flies.
Beloved Ones of God,
Peace and Blessings be upon you.
My heart soars free of failing body and scattered mind.
Free to expand beyond the confines of space and time, location and personality.
Opening up in Sweet Surrender to the Luminous Love Light of the One
Be kind and gentle with each other at this time of separation.
The manifest becomes atomized, dispersed, all-pervading, the Only Being.
This is as it should be, it must be, for Life to continue on earth.
Cycles of rising and falling, coming and going, birthing and dying.
Grieve not for me. Join hands in the circle of Life and Dance once more.
Live life fully.
Love,
Your eternal friend Wali Ali /
3. 1996, 1997. MEETING, INITIATION. I met Wali Ali in April of 1996 at a weekend Dance retreat. Wali Ali was friendly and warm. I saw him as filled to the brim with insights and wisdom from many traditions. There was a moment when I stood beside him in a Dance circle and took his left hand. I had a flash of awareness: His right hand holds Samuel Lewis, who in turn is reaching out to Hazrat Inayat Khan, who is reaching out to his Teacher! I knew: I am in the lineage stream at this moment! This is where I want to stay. Maybe I had found my Teacher?
I knew that I wanted someone to help me process the mysterious occurrences that were often part of my life. I had a brief chat with Wali Ali about that. I gave him some examples. His brief response was, “This is all good.”
In August 1997, I decided to ask Wali Ali to be my guide. We were both attending a Dance retreat at a military school in Vermont. At mealtime there was a fascinating combination of Cadets in drab camouflage and Dancers wearing every color of the rainbow – peacekeepers and peacemakers together in one beautiful rural setting. After a morning Dance session, I waited until the others left and asked Wali Ali, “Would you be willing to be my Teacher?” He hardly knew me. We had exchanged words at a retreat one year earlier. His answer:
“Do you not want another teacher who would be more available? I am often unavailable, indifferent to paperwork, and living in California now.” Then he added, “I take only two or three new people a year, but I feel no reason to say no.” And he concluded: “I will meditate on this and you should, too.”
Later that day, after a session of Dancing, he said to me,
“Seven o’clock in the chapel, if that is all right with you.”
I rushed into the bathroom and cried big sobs of gratitude. I was overwhelmed! Wali Ali was planning to initiate another woman that evening and I could join that ceremony in the chapel. Usually before any important decision, I felt enormous anxiety. This time I felt joy! I had found my Path and now Guide. In the words of Hazrat Inayat Khan, I could say, O inspiring guide through life’s puzzling ways, in thee I feel abundance of blessing. Alhamdulillah!
My initiation went smoothly. And the next morning, I had a conversation with Wali which did give me further guidance. I revealed to him more of the mysterious or strange things that were happening to me, not sure myself whether they were safe to share with others. This was his response:
“It is for your growth in magnetism that you should contain the insights. Tell me instead of others. It is the Sufi way to allow something to be told if it seems to be pulling one three times.”
4. 1996-7. A LOST EMAIL. All was not smooth, however. There was a test of my heart’s decision from the very beginning. In our first conversation after the initiation, Wali Ali said to me,
“Please write a bio for me so I can understand your life and concerns.”
I poured my heart out in a long letter that I mailed to his home. I never heard back.
At the end of 1997, while I was waiting for Wali Ali’s response, I took the risk of signing up for a Retreat with him in Mexico. It was a major expense and I kept waiting to hear from him. Again, no response!
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. I was getting more panicky by the moment. Have I made a huge mistake? When I asked him about initiation, he had warned me about this and I had not listened. Is this another large error of judgment about men? And this time, a cosmically huge one! Anxiety came pouring back with a vengeance.
At the retreat in Mexico, I was holding back, not sure how I could trust this person with my deepest concerns. So confused! Finally, I had an opportunity for a private talk. I asked Wali Ali about my letter. He said “I think I received it.”
We had a very long talk and I felt relieved. Later in January, I received an email :
Dear Marcia
I must sincerely apologize to you for something. When you asked me in Mexico if I had seen the letter you sent, I vaguely said yes remembering something I had seen. Yesterday, I had to move the bed in my room as I was getting a new phone service installed and I found your letter unopened!! It was a very good letter that deserved a response. I am sorry I misplaced it.
Love, Wali Ali
Reading this , I just laughed out loud. The absurdity of it all ! Here, this teacher had been studying the Laughter of God, and now I was having a taste of it through him. What a trajectory! I had gone from joy to terror to laughter with this man. Relax!
5. 1998 – 2021. GUIDANCE THROUGH EMAIL. For me, emails were a better way to communicate from then on. Usually, Wali Ali responded within two days. Sometimes, an email got buried just like the first letter. But if I did not get a reply to an email after two weeks , I just resent it. And then he wrote right back to me. I wrote whenever I was in a difficult situation. And I wrote a check-in email once a year, just to update him.
Sometimes he wrote back “Don’t wait so long,” or “Thanks for resending this. The original got lost in the maze of stuff here.”
I have kept our correspondence of 23 years in a fat binder. Here are some gems:
1998. I wanted his insight before I signed up for a three-week Green Tara pilgrimage to India and Nepal. My heart said yes but my body and mind said, absolutely not! Wali Ali wrote:
“I also get a very large YES on your participation in the pilgrimage, alhamduillah !”
I did go. It was fabulous and a peak life experience. I am still telling the stories.
2008. I wrote about feeling frustrated with never feeling satisfied with my artwork achievements. His response:
“The funny thing about life’s accomplishments is that they are all incapable in themselves of satisfying that inner longing. That can only be satisfied by realizing our oneness with the source of all happiness; then outer accomplishments can be fulfilling as an expression of that reality. It’s an expression of that reality. It’s so easy to say these things in words, but that is what our path is all about. And we find ourselves with a wonderful opportunity in life. Do you think even Michelangelo felt satisfied after completing the Sistine Chapel? yet that beauty continues to lift up hearts and souls. Let the beauty you love radiate thru you.”
2008. I was considering using my Sufi name (in Arabic) on my artwork, but I worried about any possible fallout. His response:
“If a man named Barack Hussein Obama has a good chance of being elected president, I see no reason why a woman named Marcia Rahmana can’t succeed as a public artist”.
2019. Ever since Trump was elected, I had been having fearful, angry, and confused thoughts about our country’s leadership. His response:
”Think of Trump as a rakshasa, a demon entity. These things happen. In WW2 when Murshid Sam became aware that Hitler was using occult practices to strengthen his power in the world, in his meditation the inner voice came to Sam and said, ‘Go higher.’ He would recommend to you extended recitation of Allahu Akbar…. Let your concern for the grief in the world come forth in creative expression.”
2020. Early in the pandemic, I wrote about sewing masks for protection. His response:
”My wife is also making masks these days, but our message is to unmask our view of the world and see the heart of God within all by not getting attached and distracted.
2021. I had been getting Messages about our political situation, writing poems and creating cartoons. I wondered whether I was supposed to be a messenger for my immediate circle or for a far wider circle. I sent Wali Ali an email about my despair over Trump and included some of my poems. This was a period when some saw Wali Ali as declining. I would never have guessed it from his response:
2021/1/13. “I am in your camp. I just read through the 4 links you put forward. Your analysis is clear. You are a person of spirit within a climate of despair. You are not the only one. We have Nancy Pelosi here in San Francisco. …. My feeling is that your poems and analysis will touch people’s hearts. Many will hear you. When Biden was first seen as the correct President, hundreds of people celebrated in Precita Park. Not a soul there was championing Trump. Everyone had a drum or a wind instrument or a group of children dancing with them.
Dear Marcia, people will dance with you and your ability to bring forward the challenges of these times. My sense took me across the street to connect with the people there celebrating. One of the black women doing it had a lovely drum and a face of strength. I went up to her and said gently that she reminded me of our oncoming vice president. She smiled and kept on with her drum and her smile never ended. Did you hear the talk of our California Senator when Biden first spoke to the whole country? She was magnificent, and reached out to so many minorities across the world. You are doing the same thing. Don’t give up. Let the world continue to hear your confident and compassionate voice. After all the nonsense and foolery there is definitely a God. Toward the One is a reality. ….
Love and Blessings,
Wali Ali
Next day he sent me another email, with similar words of encouragement. His closing:
2021/1/14. Stay with the truth, I say and don’t worry…. Don’t be shy…. Don’t think it is your ego talking; it is the voice of truth inside your heart Love, Wali Ali
Wow! His final words are a summary of his years of guidance. Asking Wali Ali to be my Guide was one of the best decisions of my life, along with surrendering to Allah. He was always generous, patient, kind, helpful, wise, encouraging, supportive and proud of what I created. Ours was / is the best relationship I have with any man.
I am so grateful for the Divine Plan that brought me to the Dances of Universal Peace and the Sufi path. It has been the constant in a life of full of highs and lows.
Allhumduillah !
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[29] Fateah Alice Saunders
1. Undated. MURSHID WALI ALI’S TASBIH. Murshid Wali Ali used to wear a tasbih around his neck. A striking tasbih, very long with large beads and other ornamentation, strung together in an unusual way. On one of Wali Ali’s early visits to PTA – the annual Peace Through the Arts DUP camp held in southern England – he offered up this tasbih for the auction that was held yearly to raise funds to support the camp. I happened to hear Wali Ali say that the tasbih was made by his daughter Amina, when she was a child.
This had a deep effect on me. Wali Ali was showing willingness to let go of a tasbih he not only wore and used, but a tasbih made by his own daughter. A tasbih clearly made with much youthful creativity and enjoyment. The implied relationship between father and daughter, absent in my own family, moved me greatly and I felt a huge respect for Wali Ali’s act of generosity. I decided to bid for the tasbih in the auction.
The bidding was interesting, exciting and, as usually happens, bidders began to drop out until there were only two left, myself and another. To my complete surprise suddenly the other, apparently determined, had also dropped out. Afterwards, holding the tasbih in my hands, I went to speak to the other bidder, questioning his withdrawal. “I thought you really wanted it” Amida said quietly. Again, I felt overwhelmed by the generous act being shown.
When Wali Ali’s tasbih came into my possession, it crossed my mind to wonder how, with such simple yet meaningful modelling of generosity from both Wali Ali and Amida Harvey, I would at some future point find a way of releasing the tasbih myself.
Yet, after all, it was easy. Ever since becoming a DUP teacher there’s been a strong urge within me to share the Dances, share the Sufi Message, the Aramaic work, by participating in, or leading events in other countries as well as in remote regions of my own. Some years ago I spent nearly two months on the other side of the world, and while there attended the New Zealand DUP annual camp. Like PTA, it had an auction. Externally at least, I was able to emulate Wali Ali’s earlier gesture at PTA, and felt pleasure at releasing the tasbih in another part of the world.
Yet the story is not quite over. The person who went away from that camp with Wali Ali’s tasbih told me – spontaneously, I didn’t ask – that she would pass it on at a future auction. So somewhere in the world – who knows where! – someone may be counting out their 101s with Wali Ali’s tasbih, and it may have gone so far and been exchanged so many times that the present holder has no conscious knowledge of the tasbih’s origin.
As they use that tasbih, may they feel the love, the vibrancy and the open-heartedness that the tasbih was gifted with by its creator and first owner. Personally, I feel immense gratitude that the Cosmos gave me the same lesson more than once in different ways.i
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[30] Sura Gail Tala
1990s. DOING WHAT WAS NEEDED. I went to Lama in the 1990s. I could not sing “May All Beings Be Well.” I could not get the tune or key. I told Wali Ali and he took me aside and stood 4 inches from me and sang it with me about 6 times until I got it!
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[31] Therese Mubdi Collentine
1. From 2007 on. PLACING HIS FEET ON MINE. Interviews with Murshid were generally joyful. One of the things that was consistent was our laughing together. Wali Ali had a great sense of humor and would often have me giggling over his puns or stories.
The other consistent thing was his pulling up the green chair that Murshid Sam sat on, sitting directly across from me, and then placing his stockinged feet right on top of my own feet before we talked. Gently, firmly, clearly, he put his feet on mine – every time. It made me feel comfortable, connected. And grounded, I believe. I never asked why he did this. I just assumed he did it with all his mureeds, though I’ve come to find out he did not.
I truly loved that pressing on my feet. It was like a warm hug and a knowing that we were connected. As I’ve thought about this, it also showed me that his teaching was so individual, based on the needs of his mureeds.
2. 2021. DARSHAN, THE BREATH OF TEACHER(S). We were several women in a group working with practices given by Wali Ali. On one occasion we had a zoom meeting with him so we could each ask him questions. Naturally, Murshid would go off topic, but Barakat and Tawwaba had a way of bringing him back to the theme.
One particular question that I wanted to ask was directly related to one of my own experiences of getting darshan with Murshid in 2014 or 15. It was during a retreat. When I looked at Wali Ali while receiving darshan I saw Hazrat Inayat Khan in his face. I kept looking and it was Pir-O-Murshid Inayat Khan gazing at me. I wept, and took it back to prayer and meditation.
I had never had an experience like that one and I wanted to learn more about it. I wanted to hear from the master how he did darshan. I felt an inner permission, and so I asked: How is darshan done?”. Murshid answered clearly and directly:
“I just get in the breath of my teachers.” He did not elaborate any more than that. Nothing more was needed.
3. 2022. TOUCHING FOREHEADS. Wali Ali and I were walking in Stern Grove, a well-loved dog park. He was sharing about his days at the University of Alabama as the editor of the University newspaper, The Crimson Tide. He told me how Gov. Wallace had him targeted at the time, and so there security guards sent by the university to keep him safe.
In the middle of that sharing we may have touched our foreheads together. Or perhaps he just suddenly remembered, and he said, “You know, when I met the Dalai Lama, and we touched foreheads, I felt like I got his inner life.” That was it. Then he went back to talking about his college days. Murshid didn’t offer an explanation or elaboration. It was just that statement.
This statement brought me vividly back in time. I remembered my history with Wali Ali. I had known him peripherally for many years without more than a passing thought of asking him to be my spiritual teacher. But a few months after his exchange with the Dalai Lama, I unexpectedly got a strong energetic jolt from him. I knew I had to grab on because this was something so much larger than me, and yet included me.
Weeks later I asked him, “Will you be my teacher?” He gauged my sincerity by putting up some obstacles – such as his busy schedule and the difficulty of navigating to the place where he lived. But in the end, he said, “Yes.”
4. 2022. JOKESTER. While Wali Ali’s mind was transitioning, I went to be with him, while also giving a break for Sabura. We were in his office, and he was going through his papers on God is Breath, and showing some of the work for Murshid Sam’s biography, but generally was in a dementia ramble as he was doing this. I went along with his flow.
At one point he is going through his binder of mureeds, and shows me my own picture and makes a comment. Then – surprise! He shows me a picture of a mureed, whom I have had a secret crush on for years. He just looks at me with his raised, questioning eyebrows, soft direct eyes and impish smile, and says,
“Remember him?”
Now, he has over 100 mureeds in this binder. He could have pointed out any of those, but he picks this one particular one? And then looks at me with that knowing, mischievous smile? I just wanted to say, “Murshid, how did you know?” He was showing me that one’s Murshid knows one’s mureeds.
I think he kind of liked being a jokester at times. He didn’t mind giving me a little poke. Though I felt a bit exposed, I was happy that he knew my secret. It seemed to reveal that my teacher, Wali Ali, was aware at so many different levels – and that even in the dementia, he still understood me and my heart.
5. May 2022. BRUSHING HIS HAIR. The last time I saw Murshid Wali Ali in the body, I received one of the strongest teachings he ever gave me. Some spiritual friends were meeting with him every other Sunday at the Mentorgarten to delve into Murshid Sam’s long poems. They wanted to engage with him as a teacher, even as his mind was transitioning, and also to give Sabura a bit of a break.
Murshid was rambling, pacing, was a bit confused, and yet, unbelievably present at times. We had done walks, readings, some dances, zikr and sobhet. Murshid was tired, but happy, and Sabura had made brownies for us all.
Murshid was well dressed, but his long, flowing hair was gnarled in his pony tail and sticking out everywhere. As his mureed, I wanted him to look like the magnificent teacher he was. I knew he didn’t like his hair brushed or combed. (Several people had told me.) But being that we all had just had a nice afternoon, and he was more calm and relaxed, I asked if I might brush his hair. He said, “That would be fine.”
I was a bit surprised. Sabura, perhaps with reluctance, handed me a brush. I started gingerly. We were all talking, and I was brushing, ever so gently, and it appeared that Wali Ali’s hair was getting slowly untangled.
At one point I looked at Wali Ali as I was brushing. And I saw him wince in discomfort! It was subtle, but there. That’s when I realized he was teaching me. At that moment I really understood it: he was showing me that love can, and really does, include sacrifice for your beloved.
He didn’t care about his hair, but he knew that I did. He was willing to submit to something he really didn’t like or care about, because he knew that it would make ME happy. He was submitting to my brushing his hair showing that he loved me, as a sweet parent might submit to a child. Also, incredibly, he was still being my teacher teaching me.
I knew I was loved, and I knew what loving someone really mean: giving them happiness even if it hurts a little bit, because the hurt is minimal and temporary, while the love is maximum and continual. No stoppage.
Murshid was over the discomfort in minutes, and here I am, two years later, still remembering and absorbing his teaching of love.
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[32] Richard Cuadra
1990s and decades more. FRIENDSHIP, ALLOWING EVERYTHING TO UNFOLD. Some of the things I got to witness with Wali was a deep friendship, a kind of brotherhood. He was never my teacher, although I saw him as a magnificent teacher. We were simply friends. I was always impressed by his ability to just be present. He always allowed everything to unfold, he just allowed it. And from him – just from our brotherhood, our friendship – I learned this capacity to allow things to unfold the way they were unfolding, to watch and be present to people unfolding. I did not hear him criticize, I did not hear him judge. I just observed the qualities of being present and allowing.
JUST CRUISING ALONG. We watched a lot of football together. And we also had moments where Wali just sat in his own innocence. Sometimes I liked to poke at him. I’d ask him “What’s going on in there?” He would just look at me with innocence and, in a very gentle voice, say,
“Just cruising along.”
Some things were challenging to him and he simply withdrew. But most of time he just sort of popped into allowing them to unfold rather than try to figure them out or try to do something about it. And I really respected that and watched how hard that was at times, because he wasn’t really a great initiator. He never called and asked how I was or wanted to know what was really going on with me. We were comfortable in our friendship. One time he did say to me that coming over spending the day with me watching football was like taking a vacation. That’s when I saw the sadness in his eyes and he often took a deep sight.
PLAYFUL, LEARNED, GAMBLER. Wali was incredibly playful. Sometimes he came through the door and was so excited about a forty niner game, because it was a big game. And he would be telling me all the statistics. He would read Sports Illustrated, everything about the forty niners. And he could recall all of it. He was like a library about football. And we had a lot of arguments about football. That was so much fun, arguing about who was the best quarterback or what was the style of football. You know, he always thought he was right about it. He was a gambler – a professional gambler. He played a lot of poker. And he bet on sports with me – all bets a dollar. He was always shocked when he lost. And I made him sign the dollar bills he paid me. We laughed a lot about that.
AFFECTIONATE GESTURES. Wali was very gentle. wherever we might be, at Mendocino camp or in the house. He would come around every so often and just walk up to me and put his hand on my cheeks, or put his hand on my head and just sort of rub it with his big burly hand. He could sort of maul you in a very loving way. And it was quite beautiful.
2003. “AN ARGUMENT WITH GOD.” My mother was dying and I had been interviewing her about her life. She told me about a recurring dream that frightened her: She was locked in an attic and arguing with someone who would not let her out. Later in the interview, when I asked her what she thought about God, she got very angry and refused to continue. We never had another interview.
I was curious about that. One time I asked Wali Ali, during the halftime of a game, “Why was she so upset?” He just wheeled around, looked right at me, and just breathed. There was a long pause. Then he said, “She’s having an argument with God.” It stunned me. It stunned me because it was so true, so obviously true. And I later talked with my mom about this and she said it was true. And Wali was so pleased. He was so happy that he could just step into this channel and help me understand my mother a bit more.
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[33] Madhura Cuadra
1975. FREEZING COLD SHOWER. The first time I met Wali Ali was at the last Sufi camp in Woodstock, New York. It was very rustic and everyone was camping. And, of course, it rained a lot. It was so muddy. There was a dome that was being built, and this was where we were taking showers. There was a big tarp with some nozzles. Everyone showered together, and the water was freezing cold! I would just run in – the water was so cold – and I would tense up and try to get out of there as fast as I could.
One time I went to the shower room and Wali Ali was there. He was holding Neshoma, his infant daughter. I could see that he was totally relaxed in the cold water and he was just singing to Neshoma. It was so beautiful! I couldn’t believe that anyone could be so relaxed in such totally freezing cold water. I was so impressed and so moved. My whole body relaxed. I didn’t know him at all, but I totally took in his attunement.
After that, every time I saw him with a towel over his shoulder, I would run and get my towel and take a shower with him. He had no idea I was doing it! That attunement of his would always stay with me. It was deep peace and the way he would let go. It was so much part of him and the way he met life. (This is a story Sabura loves.)
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[34] Paula Saffire
Editor’s Note: KOAN STORIES
I did not select the stories told at the beginning of Stories, stories! They selected me. I barely composed them. They typed themselves and I made minor revisions. Now, inspired by the solution of a Story Koan, which came from hearing Richard and Madhura Cuadra speak at the first Wali Ali Urs Gathering, I am finally doing what all the other Treasury authors have done: I am culling my memories, deciding what “makes the cut” for inclusion in the Treasury, and working hard on the wording. (Wow, authors! Now, two years after the Treasury opened, I am finding out how much work you have done. Thank you so much! )
Stories have always fascinated me. I believe the saying (by Muriel Rukseyer), “The universe is made of stories.” And I believe that our stories are living creatures. They morph over time. As we change, they change. Or maybe it’s vice versa: They change and that changes us.
I am especially intrigued by what I call “koan stories” – stories that contain a riddle. Such stories can “itch” us for years – until we solve the koan. (See Zardusht, who is Author # 2.)
A koan story surfaced strangely for me on the day of the Wali Ali Urs Gathering. For half an hour before the Zoom program, I kept reliving a moment in this story. Wali Ali and I were walking up a steep path and he was being pulled by Bart. I was stealing glances at him. It was as if I was trying to learn some lesson. But what lesson? And why was I reliving this now? I learned the answer hearing the Cuadras speak on the Zoom.
1. 2017. TOWED BY BART.
It was the beginning of my dog-sitting time. I needed to practice driving Wali Ali’s car before he left with his family for Northwest Sufi Camp. We went to look at a park he had heard about but never visited. I drove, he navigated. And Bart, his hefty flat-coated retriever, sat in the back of the car. The park was on a long, skinny piece of land that went steeply downhill. We parked at the top and walked down to the bottom. We were the only ones there. Bart sniffed and wandered happily. And then, to my surprise, Wali Ali said, “I cannot walk up. I have a vein condition which affects my legs.”
I was dumbfounded, and quite worried. “What will we do???” “You’ll have to walk up and drive down the hill. Park the car close to the park and come get me.”
I did all but the last. I could see Wali Ali through the fence, but there was no entrance at the bottom! “I’ll leave the car here,” I said. “My parking space up top may be gone. I’ll hurry back, and we’ll make a new plan.” I raced uphill and then down. By the time I reached Wali Ali, he had his plan: “I’ll let Bart tow me.”
Wali Ali grabbed Bart’s leash. Bart forged ahead at a slow, steady pace, and I walked at Wali Ali’s side. I could see how amazingly satisfied he looked, how nonchalant – like a relaxed skier holding on to a tow-line. There wasn’t a trace of irritation or wishing things were other than they were. Wow! I kept taking covert sideways glances at Wali Ali, as if trying to absorb something. I later learned that Wali Ali frequently let Bart tow him.
When Richard Cuadra spoke, he laid out what I now call Wali Ali’s “non-resistance to the flow of life.” (See # 32, partly based on his talk.) And Madhura (# 33) “nailed” this quality with her cold-shower story. “Going with the flow” was a capacity I badly needed. I was trying to “learn” that quality without knowing I needed to.
I’ll tell my two other Koan stories first, then move to chronological order.
2. 2014. COLD HANDS. I was at a Jamiat Khas. In general I’m not a self-sabotaging person. But this was different. I could feel myself sliding towards a choice that would destroy my happiness, and I was scared. I needed to talk with Wali Ali. I couldn’t get close. Oh, how I longed to be in the situation of my roommate, who was having breakfast, lunch, and dinner with her teacher every day. I shared my fears with her.
One night we were all holding hands in a circle dance, my roommate on my left side. I was dancing with closed eyes, as I often do. Suddenly, instead of my roommate’s hand, I felt an ice-cold hand holding mine! I opened my eyes: it was Wali Ali! I must admit, my first thought was “What? Why now, when we can’t talk? How will this help?” After two minutes, my roommate’s hand was back. After the Dance, my roommate asked emphatically, “Did you see that?” “See what?” I asked.
“Wali Ali walked in from the cold and made a beeline for you. Then he left and walked back outside. He definitely came in to be with you.” That was consoling. But I still I was anxious: How could two minutes of holding my hand have helped? Was disaster still on its way?
For no reason I could see, I did stop worrying. And a short time after I went home, the whole problem evaporated. The person involved got into a huge quarrel with a friend of mine and left my house saying, “We will never see each other again.” (Good thing! I had recently learned that every room of this person’s house contained a gun.). But I still did not understand my own story.
After Wali Ali died, Tawwaba created a listserv where his mureeds could communicate. Nurjamila sent in a comment on how it felt to hold Wali Ali’s hand. Then Narada sent in his story of being “handed” over by Wali Ali to Mother Mary. [Treasury story.] Tawwaba remarked, “You know, his hand is beginning to emerge as a theme.” Another mureeda commented that there was magnetism in Wali Ali’s hands. And Zardusht had convinced me [in his Treasury story] that Wali Ali could read minds.
Finally, eight years after feeling Wali Ali’s ice-cold hands, I “got” it. Two minutes of holding Wali Ali’s hand was all I ever needed. He knew it; I didn’t. Koan solved.
3. 2013, 2014, 2023, 2024. WHACKED! I was working with X, someone I cared dearly about, whose connection with sanity was tenuous and who was drawn to take what I considered spiritual risks. (Wali Ali later spoke with X and confirmed my view.) At a Wazifa Retreat in 2013, he told me that in order to help X, I needed to befriend the realm of Al Khabir. I had always resisted any thought of using occult powers and I felt that these powers belonged to the realm of Al Khabir. Wali Ali said that this was simply a hidden realm, not reachable through the senses, and it could be a source of knowledge. In fact, he said, the poet Ferdowsi had known nothing of Persian history but had been able to write a long poem on it through entering the realm of Al Khabir.
“You don’t have to stay there. But you do have to be willing to enter it.”
That night I sat near a lake in the dark imagining it was the realm of Al Khabir. I willed myself to be willing to enter it, unafraid, for the sake of X. And something in me loosened. Later Wali Ali talked about Al Khabir and Ferdowsi with our Wazifa group.
Now it was 2014, a year later. Wali Ali was giving a retreat on the 99 Names. I had a chance to talk with him beforehand. I asked if he could help me understand Al Khabir better. He repeated what he had said about Ferdowsi. I felt a bit frustrated. If only I could hear a story that would help me totally drop my mistrust!
During the Retreat Wali Ali mentioned many Names, including Al Khabir. At one point he paused, scanning all of our faces and asked, “Does anyone have any questions?” I so wanted to be able to help X. And, I confess, I did have a slight doubt. Was it possible that Wali Ali did not know any more about Al Khabir than he was telling me? I asked him, “Could you say something more about Al Khabir?” He repeated what he had told me about Firdowsi – my fourth time. And then he growled:
“Why are you asking me this? I already told you.” And that was that.
I felt whacked, to use a term I later learned from Amina. This was the only time Wali Ali ever whacked me in public. He had whacked me twice in emails, but those emails felt so good – so caring and helpful – that I didn’t even count them as a whack.
Years later, in 2023, I was in a Zoom class on Book IV of Rumi’s Masnavi. It was the teacher’s custom to have us all take turns reading a passage. I glanced ahead and read some lines that gave me quite a turn. Rumi was excoriating anyone who was such a dolt as to criticize or challenge God or their Teacher. This instantly brought up the memory of my Al Khabir whack. I was picked to read that passage. The entire time i read, I felt sweaty and itchy. Surely I am nailed: guilty as charged. Surely I was wrong to challenge Wali Ali – even if doubt was only 5% of my motive.
Fast forward to 2024. I was hosting a program on Wali Ali Koan Stories on Zoom. I had my three koan stories in reserve. I had been advised not to bring up WHACKED! because it was so unresolved – like a cake in the oven, not yet baked. At one point in the Zoom, Amina spoke about her own koan. These are her words, with some additions made later:
““This is one of my koans. My dad had a certain impatience for people who hadn’t had an awakening. He could give them a sort of Whack. To people he felt a natural affinity toward, they got the softer side. But to some people who were pretending to not understand, or not thinking the concept though themselves, then he could be very sharp with words, very incisive. He could slice you in a single second. Mostly he saw you with compassion.”
I could not resist; here was my golden opportunity. I told the WHACK story and asked Amina, “Was this a Whack?” She gathered her words carefully and spoke. Here is what she said, with some words she added later:
“It was a whack. He was talking about the realm of the unknowable with the mind. It requires a leap of faith; it was a whack telling you to do the work. I can also say this: I only saw this a few times. If my dad felt like he had misspoken or didn’t know something … I can’t imagine that he had no other Khabir stories. But if he actually didn’t and you found a blind spot, he could give you a little pinch. You pushed the button.”
Is the Koan solved? Am I guilty as charged? Or had I, by accident, uncovered some lack in Wali Ali and been stung for it? That would not bother me at all. As God once said to Murshid Sam, “Your imperfections are my perfections.” And as Wali Ali once said to me, “You don’t have to be perfect to be a perfect teacher.”
In my view, Wali Ali lived with his own imperfections and that made him an exceptionally strong teacher, able to reach us in ours.
4. 2004. MEETING WALI ALI. My feeling is that I was never savvy enough to be a seeker. Instead, I was an accidental finder who, by grace, recognized good things I chanced upon and held them close forever. I led Sufi Dancing in my home without a clue that there was such a thing as Dances of Universal Peace. Eventually I “backed into” joining DUP, because someone told me about it and assured me our Dance would flourish if I joined. Next, I “backed into” initiation with Wali Ali because I wanted to take his Esoteric Course. It happened through a series of Okays. Farrunissa, then my Dance mentor, suggested I come to the Retreat she was organizing. Okay. She suggested that I take the class Wali Ali would be giving Sunday morning. Okay. At the Retreat, she told me I had to get Wali Ali’s permission. Okay. And so I spoke with Ali.
I came to class and was drawn to Wali Ali. After class I asked him whether I might become his student and he said yes. “May I take the Esoteric course?” “Send a request to Muiz.” I did that and received an instant response: “Who is your initiator?” Oops! To take the course, I needed an initiation. I emailed Wali Ali and asked if remembered me – I was the one who said I’d like to know the Wali-Alified version of my self – and if he would initiate me. I would create a Retreat in the Dance Room in my home. His response:
Great Joy and Peace of the One be with you! Yes, I do remember you from the Raleigh gathering where I felt a deep heart connection. … I would be happy to initiate you and function as your guide in the Ruhaniat if that continues to be your intention. I feel comfortable with your ongoing connection with Meher Baba. …. I am open to travelling to Indianapolis to do a workshop this coming year if we can work out the details.
5. 2017. GIVING DARSHAN. Before the retreat, I asked Wali Ali if he would give a private darshan to each person who came. I was probably thinking of how things were done at a Zen sesshin. Wali Ali said Yes. I did not realize what a bold request this was. We set a darshan time of 6 minutes. I was gatekeeper and timekeeper. My job was to alert people to come upstairs shortly before their darshan and to wait with them, and then to knock after the allotted minutes if someone was still inside with Wali Ali. After three darshans with no intervening time, Wali Ali came out and said, “I need to rest between darshans.”
So we reduced the time by one minute. A friend told me later, “Knowing we would get to spend some private time with Wali Ali intensified every other aspect of the Retreat.” I forgot to include myself on the list. “Oh well,” I thought. “There will be time at the airport.” So naïve! At the airport, as Wali Ali and I were sitting in Starbucks having coffee, I asked if he might give me some practices. He smiled his refusal – with a smile that was affectionate, regretful, and amused all at the same time. He said, “I can’t get into the concentration of it at the moment.”
I learned that Wali Ali does not hand out initiations casually. He told me that during darshan, three people had asked for initiation. He said no to one, gave an assignment of practices to a another to see if she was serious, and initiated the third (whom he had met before).
6. 2005. ANCHORED IN BEING / INVISIBLE SHIELD. One thing that really impressed me during his visit was the way Wali could break into total quietness “at the drop of a hat.” He would be pacing the Dance Room in my house while I was making breakfast. Suddenly, I would see him sitting in a chair, eyes closed, immersed in peace – “sunk” in stillness for maybe two or three minutes. He would do this repeatedly throughout the day as he prepared for the Retreat. It was as if he could withdraw into emptiness and be replenished. His inner quietness seemed sacred and unbreakable. I didn’t want to disturb him by making a sound. I hoped I would someday be able to experience his quietude.
7. 2005 and Always. WARM, AFFECTIONATE, LOVING. In 2005 Farrunnisa wanted us to take paired photos with Wali Ali. When it was my turn, to my surprise, Wali Ali leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I would come to see him in later years, questions lined up in my mind. He would call out, “Give me a hug!” I think about changes in the “Wali-Alified” version of myself. Here is a big one: When I met Wali Ali, I wondered how people could so readily call others “sweetheart” or “darling” all day long. Now I do it, too – through his influence, I believe.
8. 2005. SWAN STICK. The day after the Retreat was over Wali and I had time for a walk. I wanted to walk with him on a nearby peninsula. But there was a vicious swan named Clyde, who had beaked a neighbor twice and who had whacked my husband with his powerful wing. I could imagine the newspaper headline: “Spiritual Teacher Mauled by Swan”! I explained this to Wali Ali. His response: He picked up a stout stick to ward off Clyde and said decisively, “LET’S GO!”
These words were a transmission. I am usually a ninny on the physical plane. But when Wali Ali spoke those words, I had a taste of physical bravery. “Ah, so this is how it feels!” I didn’t really change. But it felt as if now physical bravery was part of my repertoire – something I could summon if needed. I told Wali Ali I was impressed with his bravery. His surprising response: “I used to play football.”
Editor’s Note
Stories like “Swan Stick” make me feel the Treasury is important. I might have heard or read hundreds of Wali Ali’s public words on bravery. But none of them would have the effect of this firm, private call to courage. After Wali Ali’s death, there was an “official” call for records of his classes, talks, and important emails. But where was anyone saving the experience of his presence? the shifts that came from keeping company with him?
It seems to me that many of the changes in us from knowing Wali Ali – the way we were all becoming “Wali-Alified,” to use the phrase that occurred to me when first I met him – were due to our private interactions. If others are going to get to know him fully, our experiences need to be shared and preserved. So readers, please share your stories!
9. 2005, 2017. “IT’S OVER!” While the Retreat was underway, I learned that two people who had known Wali Ali for many decades had been turned down by the registrar for admission because the Retreat seemed to be full. Had I learned their names I would have asked Wali Ali and then admitted them. (After the Retreat I apologized to him profusely. “It’s past!” he said. “Don’t dwell on past mistakes. Learn from them and move on.” And then he added, “Good may come of it. Don’t fret.”
A year later the folks involved came and led a beautiful zikr in my home. I told Wali Ali and he commented, “You see, it did have a good result.”
Twelve years later, in 2017, Wali Ali picked me up at the airport for my first dog sitting. I was again apologizing profusely. My lack of recognition that my cell phone was defective had caused him to have to circle the airport for about 20 minutes – until he was warned by a policeman that he could not circle one more time. “I’m so sorry,” I kept repeating, after I was finally picked up at the right door and was being driven to the Khankah. Wali Ali must have turned toward me for a mini-second while driving, because I have a clear memory of seeing his eyes wide open with amusement at my ongoing abjectness. He spoke decisively, with a bit of a melody: “IT’S OVER!”
Earlier, I had grasped the importance of letting go intellectually. This time I “got it” – a lesson in my body. Afterwards, whenever something needed to be dropped at once, I would hear Wali Ali’s resolute “IT’S OVER!” I used to refer to Wali Ali as “a sword that cuts through all my botherations.” This is definitely an example. After a while, I didn’t need to hear his voice instructing me. It became routine to exhale a disturbance. Wali Ali taught us his art of living in so many ways!
10. 2006. FUDO. I saw Wali Ali’s Fudo in action only once. It was at a Retreat for Dance leaders, Spirit Ripening II. He was raging over the decision in Judaism to prohibit pronouncing the Name of God. At first I thought he was objecting to the use of “Yahuva” in the Dances, a make-do Name based on four Hebrew consonants. No, he liked that term because it countered the prohibition. He was voicing Sam’s opposition and he seemed so fierce. Later I learned that Fudo isn’t really aggression or attack. It is a Japanese martial-arts term and literally means “I will not be moved.”
I may have seen Wali Ali’s fudo side in a year earlier. An orthodox Muslim woman – who had probably heard him speak at my university the evening after his 2005 Retreat – emailed him, warning him to stop presenting a false view of Sufism and misquoting Rumi. She wrote, “No Sufi Order can outweigh the Shariah of Islam. It is no higher than Islam. Hence, what you’re preaching is totally out of context. Do not preach without knowledge.” She quoted Rumi on how obnoxious false Sufis are, ending with “May God show you the right path.” Wali Ali responded in kind. His answer, orthodox in tone, seemed fierce to me:
Dear X, As-salaam aleikhum wa rahmatullahi! Thank you for your letter. …. I appreciate your prayer that I be shown the right path. I aspire to be a Muslim, one whose nafs is surrendered in peace to Allah. And I am certain that Allah is aware of the secrets of our hearts and that we are all in His hands. On that Day that is promised we will be aware of what is true. I will be happy to receive what Allah has in store for me and I trust you will also feel that way. I would also like to offer a prayer. These are words of Pir O Murshid Inayat Khan who brought the jewel of Sufism to the West: “O Thou, Who art the perfection of Love, Harmony, and Beauty …. Very truly yours, Wali Ali Meyer
11. 2007. I had a long conversation with Wali Ali at a Mendocino Wazifa Retreat. He had mentioned in class that “God holds all the bets.” Now he asked me whether I knew that he had been a professional gambler, made money by betting on the internet. I didn’t. Then he asked, “Do you understand what it means to say God holds all the bets?” I didn’t. “That‘s like the house, the gambling casino holding all the bets.” “Oh, that’s kind of delicious,” I said. “Whether I think I’ve won or lost the gamble, God is real all along.” “How you could lose if God holds all the bets?”
I had a little list of topics and Wali Ali heard them all with apparent interest. I told him about some impossible finds in my life that were recent. “It seems like instant manifestation.” His response: “That’s how things are working in my life, too. It’s not so much psychic phenomena etc. but things seem to manifest externally almost at once.” (Years later he told me, perhaps elaborating on this sense of manifestation: “I have a relationship with the elements, with shamanism. I’m a rain bringer. I don’t do it. It’s just something in my psyche that makes it come out.”)
12. 2007. SHOCK TREATMENT / FORGIVENESS OF HIS PARENTS. At a Wazifa Retreat, Wali Ali was talking about the meaning of the vowel sounds in the 99 Names. A-U showed penetration to the essence, for example in Ya Ghafur. “It’s easy to forgive others. We find it much harder to forgive ourselves.” He went on to speak of his shock treatment.
“I had taken a lot of drugs. I had a policy of ‘say no to nothing.’ ” Others had thought him out of his mind and had gotten him locked in a psychiatric ward, where he received shock treatments. (In my memory it was his parents he felt might never forgive. But it was his sister who brought him to the hospital.) He continued: “I had shock treatments. I felt I would never be able to forgive them. But then, after I met Sam, things got better for me. On day I realized, I didn’t have to try to forgive them, it had just happened. I had already forgiven them.” It was surprising to hear him say all this. He so rarely told stories about his life.
At the end of his talk he said, “I am grateful that with all my faults, many seem to have reaped good results from the teaching that comes through me.”
13. 2009. “DO ONLY WHAT COMES FROM INSIDE.” If there was a single instruction from Wali Ali that molded me, it was this one. It’s odd. I am an uber-Virgo archivist and I cannot find this exact wording in any of my notes. Yet I am sure this is what he said and what entered me deeply. I had an interview with him at the Mentorgarten. I told him that I was getting a bit worn out from all the details in my life, all the things I was doing for others. He said, to my surprise, “Maybe you’re too much of a good girl.” That sounded right. He also said, “Just show up and be your authentic self and everything will fall in place.” And then, at some point, he looked at me and said, gently but emphatically, “Do only what comes from inside.” This is locked in my memory.
For years the interpretation I lived by was “Do what comes from inside.” That was because my mind was always supplying me with creative, imaginative, interesting things to do and I didn’t need the “only.” Doing what came from inside became a sort of spiritual disciple for me; for years I kept my inner ear cocked for instruction… Until one day my supply dried up! Inner voice was giving me absolutely no instructions. Now I began to understand the power of the word “only.” I would wake without a single impulse or desire. All right, then! I would stay in bed playing solitaire, waiting. sometimes for hours. This felt to me like an exercise in obedience. And it created a new and different sort of quietness in me, years before my unexpected Zen awakening. So much came from Wali Ali’s six words of instruction! I did find a rephrasing of this instruction by Wali Ali in a 2013 email: “Let things evolve naturally, only doing what you get a “yes” in your heart to do.”
14. 2010-2011. BECOMING A GUIDE. By another series of Okays I came to a Jamiat Khas meeting. I had college courses to teach and had never been able to come to a Jamiat Aam. But now I was on sabbatical and would be visiting family near the North Carolina Jamiat Khas. Farrunnissa advised me to come. I asked Wali Ali’s permission, having no idea what a Jamiat Khas was. When I entered my room, a woman sitting on the bed near mine introduced herself, asked my name, and then asked, “What is your rank? “RANK????” I was shocked. I felt as if I had stumbled into a group to which I did not belong.
Wali Ali emailed me and asked if I was planning to come to the next JK. I said no, I saw no reason to attend a meeting where I did not belong. I mentioned that I was going to retire. I was teaching my courses the way I would have loved to be taught as a college student, but that did not seem to be wildly appreciated by my students (except for those who took Hands-On Spirituality). Wali Ali’s response: “Your feeling is exactly why I was never tempted to go back and teach in Universities. Why trade in relationships with students who are looking to grow and learn for those with students whose motivation for the most part is way more mixed and murky.” And he continued with an unexpected question: “Perhaps you too will be called into the sphere of being a guide for others drawn to the spiritual path. How do you feel about the possibility of taking this path within our Order?” This was an amazing thought. I considered deeply and came up with a list of four reasons why I might not be suitable for 9th level initiation. I tried them out first on X, a Ruhaniat teacher, and then I emailed them to Wali Ali. Here they are in the order of his response:
(1) “I still swear at other drivers when I’m at the wheel.” “We don’t require perfection in all our relationships to become a guide. No one could begin. Together we can look at the issues of self trust. It may prove a productive place to focus awareness.”
(2) (parapharased) At the JK, X asked why I wasn’t teaching in the Ruhaniat. I told X that I wasn’t sure I could be a Ruhaniat teacher, that my thoughts when pondering some question went first to other spiritual figures, not to Hazrat Inayat Khan. X said, “I wish I could give you my perception of Hazrat Inayat Khan’s teachings.” Y told me later , “I would have replied, ‘That’s great! No matter!”” “Both are right. What matters most is that you have a living relationship with a guide, an understanding of the universality of the message, an ongoing prayer for self-effacement in God and to be a vehicle of wisdom, love, and blessings. Inayat Khan and Murshid Samuel Lewis have a special blessing for us when we open to it. It will come or not as a natural thing; it is not required.”
(3) (paraphrased) I told Y some doubts I had about some of the “higher ups” in the Ruhaniatt, some behavior I found puzzling, maybe unbecoming. I thought order this might disqualify me from teahing. I knew that if I had to choose between my discrimination and being in the Ruhaniat, I’d choose my discrimination. “Yes, absolutely. You cannot become blind in order to fit in to some structure of belief.”
(4) “My last reservation has to do with you. There is no one who holds second place to you in the Ruhaniat for me. Third place? Maybe. Fourth place? Probably. I very much appreciated learning, in the course of a discussion at the Jamiat, that the Ruhaniat had a “post” position for folks who felt like me and who then lost their Teacher.” “Yes, we try to make that accommodation, and over time encourage many of these mureeds to find a new guide. However the link between murshid and mureed is not dependent on being in the body. If your relationship is deeply accomplished, guidance continues. We just ask that you have a check in person. … Shabda is my check-in and I am his, but Murshid Sam continues to be our living guide.”
I told Wali Ali that I trusted his perception on this more than my own. He listed his reasons for finding me ready, including what he said was my “direct experience of that reality which is beyond our concepts” and my “heart for engagement with beings.” I wasn’t sure what he meant by these. I mentioned a puzzle: “It’s odd. When you gave me permission to lead zikr, I felt so blessed, so full of joy. Here it is more mixed. There’s more fear, I guess. He explained: “It is that sacred sense of responsibility for a person’s spiritual well being resting in your trust.”
Days later, I emailed him: “Deep thanks for your comments and for your trust. I am ready to begin, whatever that means.” His reply: “Already you have begun. The art is to continue wisely and confidently.”
15. Throughout the years. HANG LOOSE
Editor’s Comment
I never heard Wali Ali use the phrase “hang loose”. This is simply my summarizing phrase. Wali Ali had a thousand ways of encouraging us not to be rigid. This basic instruction, worded in so many different ways, always made me smile inside and still does. Here are some ways to expand it:: BE CREATIVE. FOLLOW WHERE THE ENERGY TAKES YOU. STAY IN THE FLOW. IT’S ABOUT SPIRIT NOT THE LETTER. FOLLOW INTUITION, NOT SOME ARBITRARY “RULE.” AND TRUST THE PROCESS.
I don’t know that the following examples add up to a story. And I suspect we all have our own precious list of such instructions. But this quality of Wali Ali’s needs to be celebrated somewhere, and the Treasury seems a good place for it.
Wali Ali could be demanding when it came to Walks. My first “bust” from him the day after I met him. He commented on my (anemic) Sun Walk using Sam’s phrase: “You pass by flunking.” Ever after, what I received was training in “HANG LOOSE.”
PRAYERS. This was my first “HANG LOOSE” instruction, in 2006. Paula: “I am not doing the prayers Saum and Salat daily. Is that okay?” Wali Ali’s answer: “I don’t care if you never do those prayers again in your life. I just do them for formal events. Some of the phrases if they catch you, do them. Do what inspires you.”
HOW LONG TO MEDITATE? “I don’t meditate much. And if I do, it’s for a short time. (Hidden question: “Is this okay?”) “Sam never meditated for more than about 5 minutes. He said, “If you didn’t get it in five minutes, you’re not going to get it.”
CREATIVITY IN PRACTICES. “When I do Wazifas outdoors, I use the sky as Samad and the knob on a branch as the dot of Ahad. Is that all right?” “Yes, I want you to be doing things like that. Use your creativity in these practices. Go inside. Say the Names and see what comes to you as the motion for that Name, and do that. Individual creative energy is encouraged on the path.”
HOW TO USE PRAYER BEADS. Is there a proper way – fingering etc. – to use prayer beads? “The proper way to use prayer beads is to pray using them. Otherwise, anything goes in my opinion.”
WHAT PRONUNCIATION? Wali Ali had given me some assignments for a Home Retreat. “I’m afraid I’m not pronouncing the Name you assigned correctly.” “Enjoy the process. Get into the stream and don’t worry about little details. Let the practice lead you on.” (And in fact, soon after that, at a Wazifa Retreat, I had an extremely deep experience with a set of Names I mispronounced!)
WHAT TEMPO? “Should I just go with what comes naturally – which is to say the Wazifas kind of slowly, with a bit of melody, in a tempo that is a bit off-and-on, or should I operate with more will, more regularity?” “Go with the flow.”
WHICH RHYTHM? “Does it matter whether I use the rhythm of La Ilaha El Il Allah Hu as the Hidayat folks do it or as it is done in the Ruhaniat?” “Hu knows. Whatever moves your boat is fine with me.”
WHAT LANGUAGE? “I have not been doing practices lately, but also I have not been feeling guilty. It is as if my subconscious mind is not straying — at least not straying badly — from the Beloved. When I do sit and “say,” for example, Ya Rahman, Ya Rahim, I wonder why am I doing this in Arabic.” “If the veil of a different language separates you in your heart from truly calling out to the one who is all loving and compassionate, then you should use your own words to do it, and your silent inner focus.”
WHICH WAZIFA TO USE? (Asked that question when speaking to a group) “Sam said, ‘You don’t have to go through every door to get into the mansion.’ …. We don’t have to connect with all the Wazifas. Maybe one Wazifa will work for you.”
WANDERING MIND. (Asked what to do if the mind wanders) “Just bring it back. Forgive it. ‘Come Come whoever you are.’ If it wanders 1000 times bring it back 10001 times — instead of berating how many times it wandered, be grateful for how many times it didn’t wander. Stay focused.”
INBREATH OR OUTBREATH? “Is it okay to vary the order of the Names you are repeating, start the second name on the inbreath, the first on the outbreath?” “It’s OK to vary the order. I’m on the side of the spirit of Guidance.”
16. From 2006 on. APPRECIATION / ENCOURAGEMENT. Wali Ali’s first appreciation was in 2006, when he recognized that I was a close reader and invited me to help edit Physicians of the Heart. I could tell that he loved my attention to detail in organizing retreats. He told me. But also, he would watch me with a delighted mother-hen look when I was giving a series of instructions for furniture moving or food preparation before a Retreat meal.
He praised his mureeds to me, sometimes extravagantly. And he praised others in the Ruhaniat. His appreciations were for matters small and great. Sometimes he used sober language, other times he waxed lyrical. He encouraged and appreciated all his mureeds. And he wanted his mureeds to appreciate each other. Here are some examples that especially struck me:
BABY EAGLE. I sent Wali an adorable image of a baby eagle, in reference to the “eagle quality” of Al ‘Aziz. He emailed back: “The baby eagle made my day!” Hyperbole for such a tiny offering! I was very moved by this and I remember it often. How instantly – and how unguardedly – Wali Ali voiced his appreciation! He never tried to create or maintain an artificial teacher-student distance.
SHINE! Lyrical! (Isaiah 60:1?) “Shine, oh radiant one, go forth with ease!” He was encouraging me to begin my 99 Names course.
DAMAGE CONTROL IN ADVANCE. X wanted to organize a drum circle at a Wali Ali residential Retreat, at night after the Dancing. I had some doubt about whether this would further the intention of the Retreat. Wali Ali sent X an email and copied it to me: “I am not quite sure how the drumming being proposed for the retreat at Y will serve the overall theme of the week end but I have an open mind about it. If, as you say, you are not a drummer yourself, the question arises: Who can speak as to the purpose and tone of the drumming gathering being proposed?” He gave a green light to the drum circle, which had mixed results. I asked Wali Ali later about his email. He said he was doing “damage control.” I pondered this for years and eventually saw how much he wanted us to be creative and adventurous. I have a long list of permissions he granted me. He tried never to block our door. Sam’s first words to Wali Ali were: “DON’T BLOCK THE DOOR!” This was in reference to a San Francisco fire regulation. But it serves as a metaphor for how Wali Ali treated us.
WATCHING LIKE A HAWK / WANTING US TO APPRECIATE EACH OTHER. X was a prominent mureed whose teaching style was not my cup of tea. Wali Ali knew this. One day X was giving a talk at a JK. I was sitting directly in front, spellbound by the style of the story being told. I was laughing with glee. Something told me to look left. I looked left and standing there, in a small room off to the side, was Wali Ali, looking intently at me, a pleased expression on his face. I got it. He not only appreciated his mureeds; he wanted us to appreciate each other.
2010 and always. SCHOOLING FOR LIFE. I was about to leave for a Wazifa Retreat. There was a student in my Hands-On Spirituality class who had played “Joe Cool,” dissing our activities, often out loud. When my students complained of him in their journals, I disregarded it. Now I was furious with him because he was warning people not to take my course. ! Wali Ali had asked us to let him know what we wanted from the Retreat. In an email I railed, and told Wali Ali, basically: I want to resolve my anger.
At the Retreat Wali Ali said he would put me in the Hakim group and that would help me. How? The Hakim lore seemed deep and often over my head. It was now the last full day of the Retreat. After strenuously practicing some Wisdom Names, I fell into a deep sleep. I awoke with a realization: I had been playing Joe Cool myself when I disregarded my students’ complaints. I was trying to show – not really my students, but myself! how absurd is that? – that I was “above” stooping to reprove someone for petty insolence. Wow! I was humbled, chastened. Wali Ali had indeed helped me.
In 2012 I was telling Wali Ali how irritated I had been when someone had gone into the kitchen adjoining our Dance Room and used her coffee grinder to make coffee during a Retreat talk, distracting us with the grinder’s loud buzz. He said, “When you really dislike a trait in others, you usually have it in yourself. The situation is basically a drunk railing about drunkards.” And he added, “Try to go to school on the people who irritate you. You learn where your vulnerabilities are.” Yes, indeed.
I often appreciated the subtlety with which Wali Ali counseled me. Once I told him about the effort I was using to maintain a warm and respectful attitude to someone who seemed to dislike me. I was aiming for the quality of Al Ra’uf. Wali Ali said, “If you’re making an effort, it’s not the true Ra’uf.” Another time I mentioned that whenever people talk about brutality, my mind goes to Nazi Germany. His response: “Do not go into the question of evil with your intellect. Intellect can never solve it.”
17. 2012. WASHED UP THE BEACH. Wali Ali had given a Retreat in my home. Now a group of us were at a neighbor’s house for an informal session with him. He told us the story of a drug experience. He was on Coney Island, lying down, hearing the sound of the waves. He was Yunus (Jonah), spewed forth on the beach. He had died, been reborn, spewed out of the whale. All dross had been taken off. How disoriented he was! He had been swallowed by the unconscious, had been through the experience of dying. What he knew: “Remove the obstacle to inner flowing from the source. Flow freely.” For him this story was connected with Al Mulhim. It resonated with me because I, too, had had a B.C. / A.D. experience with a drug which motivated decades of spiritual searching.
18. 2013. CHAMPION OF DE-SEGREGATION. Without any explanation, Wali Ali sent me an article about his standing up for de-segregation in 1962, when he was editor of his college newspaper. I wondered why he had included me in the few people to whom he sent this. Maybe he realized that one day I’d be deeply involved with stories about him?
It was lovely to see his younger face. Even then he lived his instruction: Be authentic and let the chips fall where they may. His standing up led to threats of violence from the Ku Klux Klan. (His parents never let him know the full extent. They wanted him to continue as he wished.) The article appeared in the Jewish Daily Forward. The author, Dina Weinstein, commented on Wali Ali’s gap-toothed smile. (He was then Melvin Meyer.) I took this as showing she had caught the homespun, unvarnished quality in him.
She quoted Wali Ali in her article. He had said this when interviewed for the article: “Have your own authentic voice and dare to stand for it” — words he lived by. And he gave us this instruction in many iterations. Nurjamila once wrote, “I have repeatedly heard Wali say to me, ‘Stand in the light of your truth and be unafraid of the consequences that may follow.’ ”
19. 2013. SAMADHI. One afternoon, during the Wazifa Retreat at Lake Doniphan, I faithfully tried to spend every moment of practice in intense concentration. It worked! I could tell it was samadhi from the aftermath. (This is the only such sxperience I ever earned by effort.) I saw Wali Ali on the lunch line and hinted about my experience in a brief sentence. He gave me a knowing smile. I was so happy to have this almost wordless communication. We never spoke of this again. (I later learned, from Tawwaba, that he felt we should regard this sort of experience as a momentary grace – “Nothing to get a swell head about.”
20. 2013. INNER WALI ALI. I had four questions for Wali Ali, most related to the workshop I was about to lead. I was so spoiled by his instant answers. This time there was no answer — not even later, after the workshop. I emailed Tawwaba and asked whether Wali Ali was all right. Or whether I might have offended him in some way. She said she knew well the experience of waiting to hear from him and wondering if there was some reason behind his “absence.” Meanwhile, I had answered each question for myself as I thought he would answer it and had acted on my “inner answers.” I reported back to Wali Ali about this. He was delighted with that. He said I had indeed been right about his responses. Tawwaba later told me that what he wanted for us was to be able to cultivate and eventually trust our “inner Wali Ali.”
21. 2014. SELF-EFFACEMENT. In 2014 I sent Wali Ali an essay I had written about the call to self-effacement in Dance Leaders. I felt that it could be mis-seen as erasure of personality, and it is not that. Sam was effaced but had a fully expressed personality. Wali Ali’s sole response:
empty of thoughts of self,
living mirror of heart,
finding the beloved’s face where’er we turn,
love, waliali
22. 2021. MY LAST TIME WITH WALI ALI / “I GREW UP!” I spent a lovely few hours Wali Ali on Saturday and Sunday in the Khankah. It was easy, lighthearted, companionable –filled with warmth, understanding. joy, and humor. We were discussing someone who had a good portion of Sam’s energy. I said “It’s good if there are many Sams. Wali Ali replied: “You could never have enough Sams in this world.” There were times when I filled in the blanks in his stories – supplied names or places. He tried to tell me the story, “I met Abraham.” “Abraham Sussman?” “No, the other Abraham.” He tried many times to explain, but I never did understand. He was not frustrated; he simply dropped his attempt with grace. And I was told the story later by others.
The most difficult moment was in during my Masnavi Zoom class. I had opened it hoping Wali Ali might enjoy it, as it was led by someone whose book he had recommended to me. Something in the academic setting flipped a switch. Wali Ali, ever the teacher, began to lecture everyone on the Avatamsaka Sutra, with quite a bit of heat. I had to close down my laptop.
We returned to our chatting. And soon we came to the “high spot” of my visit, something that warms me still. Since 2007 I had wondered how he was able to forgive his parents for the shock treatments. Now was my last chance to ask. “Wali Ali, do you remember how you once said that you didn’t know how but you forgave your parents for the shock treatments?” He nodded. “It was at a Retreat and you were talking about forgiveness. I’ve always wondered: how on earth did you do it?” There was a pause. Wali Ali was clearly thinking, combing his past for memories. Quite a few moments passed. And then his eyes twinkled and he smiled:
“I grew up!” Wow! He continued: “My parents didn’t force me to have shock treatments. I wanted to get out as soon as I could. So I asked, “What’s the fastest way for me to get out of here?” Someone told me, ‘Oh, just agree to shock treatments. The minute they’re over, they’ll let you out.’ So I did.” That was sobering. (Some wonder whether the shock treatments might have caused or contributed to his dementia.) I later heard, from Amina, that he underwent over 30 shock treatments – an extraordinary number.
AFTER HIS DEATH
23. 2021 and ever after. CLOCK TIME. After Wali Ali’s death there was interest in the question of how we experienced Wali Ali after his death. For me it has always been by the time on the clock. On the third day after his death when I looked up from typing my stories about him the clock said 3:41, my childhood address. To this day, the number of times I look at the clock and see a special number (childhood address, childhood phone number, all repeating digits, all sequential digits) is phenomenal. I try to capture it in photos because who would believe this? I’ve been told that this is Wali Ali winking at me.
24. 2023. MARRIED TO THE PROJECT. Tawwaba created a series of Portal Meetings to help us access directly the energy of Murshid Sam. Wali Ali’s energy was there also. At one Portal Meeting, I was feeling worn down from having scant response to my requests for Treasury stories. In a Portal session I was completely gone in a meditation. When I returned I was at peace with the Treasury Project. I came out of the meditation realizing: “I am married to this project. For better or worse. I accept. I have put on the “harness” of the Treasury and I will not take it off. My job is to curate stories now and later create a portrait. Wali Ali’s job is to nudge people to give their stories.”
25. 2023. SPIRITUAL HIERARCHY & MUCKETY MUCKS. Ali Charles asked at a meeting for a volunteer who would create titles for divisions in a video of a Wali Ali talk at Lake of the Ozarks. I said yes. Being a ridiculously thorough Virgo, I had to transcribe the talk, not just mark sections. When I got to the section on Spiritual Hierarchy I was thunderstruck. Here are Wali Ali’s words, with what stood out for me is in bold print:
[Starting at minute 48] WA: This whole business of hierarchy can be confusing. …. The real hierarchy is not something you can argue about …. And the real Hierarchy has to do with … greatness of heart. …. [T]here are beings on earth who are responsible for being instrumentations of these qualities for the protection of the planet. But this remains mostly unknown. And most of our earthly hierarchies are pitiful attempts to try and reflect this, uh, truth — which is that there is a protection of this planet and there are realized beings. And there are people whose development of heart is great. Very great.
Question: So what’s the purpose of the hierarchy? WA: The purpose is to acknowledge that people go through stages of growth and to recognize people in those stages of growth and to confirm those experiences. That’s the purpose of it. And it would work if the people that were responsible for acknowledging those stages of growth could always see truly that they were acknowledging something that was real and was an established growth and not just, you know, following their own fantasy or their own pocket book or their own good will to desire for that person. And so things get strange. Because I make “Zolon” — you know, “Zolon is made a high muckety muck. But Zolon is not a high muck really. You know, he’s a low muckety muck. [laughter] But somebody made him a high muckety muck. And, you know, [much loud laughter throughout] Mr. High Muckety Muck is going to muck around. [more loud laughter] And give every other muckety muck a very bad name. And people get this whole idea –that there really is a high and a low muckety muck, you know. So, that’s what happens… [T]he greater the hierarch, the less the ego. If you can get down and be a servant of all, then you may be a heirarch. I remember a story of Ramakrishna, who was one of the great realized beings of the 20th century. … [A] great Hindu actor came to Ramakrishna and he said, “I want to perform the Ramayana and I will play the glorious part of Ram.” And Ramakrishna says, “Very good, wonderful! I will be the dust at your feet.” [lots of laughter]
There was so much laughter – and so loud! I wish I had an instrument to measure the duration and loudness of laughter. I believe this passage might win the Laughter Contest! The shocking part for me was Wali Ali’s ultra-clear statement of the purpose of a Spiritual Hierarch. He “nailed” his own job completely. In 2017 Wali Ali had sent my his all-important email, which allowed me to keep drawing from the Zen state I had experienced. And he did it exactly as he had described: (a). He recognized my state, (b) he affirmed it, and (c) he set it in a classical sequence of (Buddhist) spiritual teachings. It still amazes me. He knew back then … He always knew …
26. BEFORE IT WAS TOO LATE. There are so many stories of people feeling sorry that they forgot to show their appreciation of someone and now it was too late. I look back through my notes and emails and am glad for the times I expressed my appreciation. Here are four gratitudes in their date order: 2012. I send you love. I am so utterly, unutterably grateful that you are in my life.2012. You are part of the steady hum of energy in my life. I turn to you with gratitude in my heart. 2018. I was moved [reading over our correspondence] at the power of words, even in emails. You “made yourself a person” through the emails. When I met you, you were a figure for me, someone who had reached a pinnacle which inspired me. But through our many emails, you became someone whose judgment I valued and — most important — trusted as I have never trusted any other living person. 2019. I am always grateful for your presence in my life, a presence which is very full despite distance and few communications on the physical level. If I look at what makes life good, there you are.
27. FAREWELL. It feels so odd to have communicated all my stories that might be of use to others. It’s a variety of emptying. It tugs like a kind of goodbye to Wali Ali. But can a relationship with him ever be truly over? His instructions stay active. As he said at a Retreat in 2007: This is ongoing work. Continue with practices that have spoken to you here. How? From getting insight about your own nature – that speaks a lot. Trust in the flow that has begun. What has led us here will lead us further. Don’t grasp. But trust.
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[35] Khalil Mark Elliott
Quoting Ishaq: “Wali Ali is Murshid Sam.” I was a fairly new mureed of Sheikh Ishaq Jud. I was at Mendocino Camp and Wali Ali’s class was particularly engaging and wonderful. I had been with him a couple times before that camp, yet that week he was on fire. In a phone call with Ishaq between Mendocino and Northwest Camps, I was raving about how wonderful Wali Ali’s class was. I realized I was gushing about a teacher to my own initiator, so I slowed down a bit with my enthusiasm.
A week or two later, we were all at Northwest Sufi Camp together as Wali Ali was the Guest Teacher that year. The first morning Ishaq and I sat together in Wali Ali’s class. Afterwards he asked me if that’s what I was talking about when I told him about Wali Ali at Mendocino. I told him, “Yes, he’s off to a wonderful start and it will build throughout the week“. Ishaq said “Very good, we will both go to all of his classes and we’ll sit together. Wali Ali is Murshid Sam.”
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[36] Selim Bill Lockheart
1980s and later. NO GUILE. I saw Wali Ali mostly in Mendocino and at occasional meetings in the Southwest Sufi Community. What impressed me about Wali Ali was that he appeared to have no guile — although he was obviously embarrassed when we caught him smoking at one business meeting. When a subject came up, he would discuss it openly and publicly within the Ruhaniat, even when others tried to quietly lead him away from “dirty laundry.” He was quite open.
At one Mendocino camp (1988, I believe), someone was complaining about people making money from their spiritual positions. Since Wali Ali was sitting next to him, he asked, “How much are you paid for being here?” — obviously expecting that Wali Ali had come free. Wali’s reply, “Five Hundred Dollars.” The man then had to back pedal and make excuses for why that was not much money. As I said, no guile — he just answered the question.
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[36]
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By Wajida Jamila Pape
THE MEMORIES I WANT TO SHARE
Reflecting on this for a few months, I realize how difficult I find it to start the writing process with more general considerations. I feel a need to start with “moments”, and continue with “phases” – the long, long phase of working closely together on bringing “Physicians of the Heart” to Germany, and the never ending “phase” of being connected without him being in the body.
Each walk led by Wali Ali seems to have left a strong impression. Some opened the heavens for me; they taught me fundamental truths; they gave me encouragement and empowerment, in a very deep sense, in a wide field. They restored freedom, dignity, and some more balance between self-expression and selflessness.
A very touching moment happened beyond meetings in workshops or programs. I was on my way to a bus stop near Precita Avenue, when I saw Wali Ali leave the house. It was close to where I was standing, but I hesitated to go and say hello. He stood there for a moment, looked down and started to walk – a most sacred walk, a deeply attuned walk, right away, from the first step. Like so many times before I burst into tears of joy and was deeply touched. Maybe this is not good English, but this walk I witnessed stayed with me as the walk of “Tending the Earth”.
On my way to a Sufi Sesshin I usually spent a few nights in the Khankah. Arriving after a night flight, exhausted and feeling a little dirty, I just crossed Precita Avenue before walking the last steps up Norwich, when I discovered Wali Ali walking his dog only a few steps away, and he discovered me. He came up to me to welcome me in the warmest way I can imagine. I felt a bit shy and in an inappropriate state after the long journey. He told me that in a few days, just before New Years Eve there would be a meeting in their family home with the Khankah residents. It was intended as an expression of gratitude for all the support throughout the year, with a little meal, some music, or whatever people wanted to contribute.
I clearly expected he wanted to prepare me to be alone for a few hours or plan some undertaking for myself. Instead, he said: “Of course we want you to be there with us. You are part of the family.”
Healing for decades…. Whenever I look back to this, I do not feel for an instant that this was a therapeutic intervention (fixing someone who seems broken and saying something nice is the medicine). It feels like telling a simple fact to someone who may be unaware of it. Not more, not less, conveyed with natural warmth and love.
I remember having an appointment with him in the Mentorgarten for dance mentoring. I wanted to show him a Zikr Dance that had come through a long time ago, and that, according to some “rules” I had learnt, wasn`t “as it should be”. He fully (and with a sense of humor) approved that I do not need to stick to this rule.
We went on to Dances that had unfolded out of the translation process of “Physicians of The Heart”. I realized that his commentaries were encouraging and affirming, but not very detailed. After a while he went on to another issue. While we talked, I was working through an indistinct feeling inside. After a few minutes I interrupted him and shared my impression that the Dances and body prayers that had come through so far, were jemal without exception and what was needed, are those melodies and movements that express jelal. He said: “Oh, interesting, that you found out yourself” and continued with the talk we had started before my sharing.
TRANSLATING PHYSICIANS OF THE HEART
Wali Ali was a most supportive, most available teacher, editor, counselor through the translation process of “Physicians of The Heart” into German. Here comes a more general statement about this working together. It is a fact that shows his depth of commitment and his willingness to keep up with the process through the whole period of working on it full time (11 months in 2012/2013). In this period of time he responded in detail to 400 questions! I counted them from my mails a few months later and told him.
We had a meeting in his office in Precita Avenue, right after a Sufi Sesshin, when I had not yet decided on doing the translation. Yet we went through general guidelines and some details. I explained to him how German grammar and gender is related and we talked about the options we have.
He said clearly (and more than once): “Gender whenever possible”.
As a result of doing this, throughout the book, I received a lot of “not good”, “not well translated”, and many times: “redundant”. Yet I stayed with it, attuning to Allah as all the qualities rather than a male deity, following my teacher`s guideline and translating for present and future generations.
One day I sent a message to Murshid on behalf of the book, mentioning a passage with considerations about psychological and developmental influences during the first few years of life. My concern was that women who read this passage (especially, if it comes to breastfeeding and the ideal setting) might feel judged, whereas the passage about the father`s s role seemed more empathic to me (remember: four male authors, one female translator!).
He responded to a few other questions first, then continued, in a more general sense, that not all my questions are easy to answer, but some are.
Finally, he suggested that I mark the passage for him and put it into more adequate words – in my estimation – then translate this into English for him to edit. He edited, agreed, and the short passage was retranslated into German and inserted.
It happened quite a few times that I sent my questions to Wali Ali after a long period of work and went to have dinner right afterwards. While I was working in the kitchen, I literally felt that he was working on a specific question I had sent. I sensed when he had finished and sent a message back to me. Now and then I went over to check my mail account right away, when I had this feeling, and I found out that it had been sent in the same minute.
It was through Wali Ali, but it was also with the whole group of his mureeds who came together in the Mentorgarten after the German version was out, where I found, what was oftentimes lacking in my home country during this demanding process, apart from very helpful and generous proofreading. In this mureeds meeting I experienced deep interest, empathy and understanding, emotional support, being seen. All this helped me to gradually accept and integrate the changes this year of work had brought into my life. It touched me deeply when Wali Ali, in spite of his own substantial contribution, expressed his gratitude for what I did, and he expressed it in very different, ways, sometimes unexpectedly.
WHAT DID I FIND IN HIM?
HIS LAUGHTER: – My impression was that he wouldn’t leave out a single opportunity to bring fun in.
MY TEARS: Whenever he entered the room; even before eyes met; even though I was standing somewhere else and didn’t realize he had come in.
During a Wazifah retreat crying took several days – a crying, that was not painful, not even emotional. Looking back, I would say it was an extended state, together with the feeling of breaking open.
CERTAINTY that his love is unconditional in the deepest sense.
AFTER HIS DEATH
This happened within the first day after his passing from this world: I was doing some mundane housework – vacuum cleaning, as far as I remember. Without much concentration and without any intention I asked: “How is it – dwelling in the heavens, Murshid?” The answer came instantaneously: “Same as dwelling on earth, yet with nothing in the way.”This is how he gave me certainty that he is there – and available for me.
A message that came in without words, as a feeling he conveyed to me, after an intense and challenging working situation, while my exhaustion confused and frustrated me: He simply wants me to respect myself for how I live and to be generous with myself. Something to take to heart …
I was doing my work as a music therapist for the severely disabled people in a care home. This occurred a few weeks after Murshid`s passing. I was working with Sigrid, a woman who had trisomy 21/ Down`s Syndrome. She was struggling with early dementia in addition, and of course I had to slow down and make all kinds of adjustments.
While in the session, my mind wandered to Wali Ali: Why couldn’t I contribute to his caretaking? What could I have done that I did not do? And so on. Suddenly, in the ongoing session and while I was not yet fully aware of my thoughts, he came in, he seemed to point at me and my beloved client and said with a very tender voice: “See, this is, for example, something you are doing for me”.
I share this because many of us were unable to contribute to caretaking. And we all need to realize that, in doing what we are doing, we continue the work of those who left, and in doing so, we become their continuation.
AFTER HIS DEATH: MURSHID GUIDING ME IN A PRACTICAL WAY
I sat down one evening, trying to find out what is going wrong and how it is possible that I have been feeling for a couple of weeks as if I was working too much. Without even thinking of him and without any depth of concentration, I distinctly heard him say in a clear and sober, yet gentle voice:
“Because you are working too much.”
At another opportunity I had a time of doing much computer work. It was going well, but I could feel the imbalance physically. The joy in getting things done subsided. I heard a whisper, again and again, somehow in my body and in my ears:
“uplifting, uplifting, uplifting …Do something uplifting.”
This came through one day when I was approaching him/ attuning with him, because I had no inspiration how to deal with a difficult situation in my life:
Ride on the waves of your breath
This is the mystery
And the solution
WHAT HELPS ME TO ATTUNE, AFTER HIS DEATH?
Many people mentioned his hands.
I want to add: HIS FEET,
while sitting close to him on the floor
while he gently put them on my feet when I was crying, slightly out of control (with good results!)
while we were dancing
while leading the walks, esp. those he started by watching his own steps
HIS POSTURE, while sitting on a chair. I don’t take this posture consciously, but may feel that he is there, with me, inside of me, while I am “sliding” into his way of sitting.
HIS EYES, always an open gate, always a consolation, always good to connect with his sense of humor, optimism, easiness.
MORE GUIDANCE
One day I am struggling to become ready for practice. I try this and that, yet distractions still control me. Somewhere between frustration and despair I whisper: “Where are you, Murshid?”
He whispers back to me: “In your breath”.
Forever grateful, Wajida Jamila from Germany