Adnan and the Winged Heart

I spent the afternoon with my friend Adnan, and took the above photo of him with the beautiful winged heart wall ornament that my friend Kate gifted me with when we visited northern Wisconsin this past summer.

Following is what author Toby Johnson says about the winged heart, symbol for the mystical path of the Sufi.

The symbol of the Sufis is a winged heart. Sufism is not a way of the head but of the heart. The way to fly to God is to open the heart, to be human and to love and offer life in service to God and to others. The primary mystical teaching of Sufism is contained in the Sufi interpretation of the Islamic credo La Ilaha El Allah Hu. What most Muslims interpret as a declaration of monotheism, “There is no God but Allah,” the Sufis understand as a revelation of ultimate unity: “There is no reality but God.” To remind themselves of the implications of this, Sufis sometimes greet one another with Ya Azim: “How wonderfully God manifests to me through you.”

See also the related Wild Reed posts:
• The Sufi Way
• Sufism: A Call to Awaken
• I Surrender to You
• Sufism: Way of Love, Tradition of Enlightenment, and Antidote to Fanaticism
• Doris Lessing on the Sufi Way
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Doris Lessing
• A Living Twenty-First Century Tradition
• Bismillah
• It Happens All the Time in Heaven
• Oh, Yeah!
• Clarity, Hope and Courage
• “Joined at the Heart”: Robert Thompson on Christianity and Sufism
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Toby Johnson
• Love as Exploring Vulnerability
• Saaxiib Qurux Badan – October 8, 2024
• Saaxiib Qurux Badan – September 21, 2024
• Summer’s End
• Ghosts
• Saaxiib Qurux Badan – June 27, 2024
• Undeniably Real
• Like a Lotus Flower
• In the Stillness and Silence of This Present Moment
• I Need Do Nothing . . . I Am Open to the Living Light
• Blue Yonder
• What We Crave
• November Musings
• Adnan Amidst Mississippi Reflections and Forest Green
• The Landscape Is a Mirror
• Adnan With Sunset Reflections and Jet Trail
• Saaxiib Qurux Badan – April 16, 2019
• Saaxiib Qurux Badan – March 29, 2019

Images: Saaxiib Qurux Badan (“Beautiful Friend”) and the Winged Heart, Minneapolis, MN – Michael J. Bayly (10/12/24).