Marianne Williamson Is Seeking to Restore Honesty and Integrity to the DNC

The young Canadian journalist Wyatt Sharpe is sharp indeed! His podcast, The Wyatt Sharpe Show, is dedicated to taking an informed “deep dive into the politics and news of the day.”

Yesterday, Sharpe interviewed one of my political heroes. . . . Now, you don’t have to support Marianne Williamson’s bid for DNC Chair to appreciate the passion and wisdom she shares in the 20-minute video below. But I’m thinking that after watching this interview some may just find themselves thinking twice about both Marianne and her mission to restore honesty and integrity to the leadership body of the Democratic Party.





NOTE: For Wyatt Sharpe’s July 2023 interview with Marianne, click here. Also, for a lengthier recent interview with Marianne, see Don Lemon’s hour-long interview here.


Related Off-site Links:
Break the Mold: Why Marianne Williamson Should Be DNC Chair – David and Dai (David & Dai’s Call Me Limbo Substack, December 30, 2024).
Marianne Williamson on How Democrats Can Win Again – CNN Newsroom (December 30, 2024).
Marianne Williamson Runs for DNC Chair – NewsNation (December 29, 2024).
Marianne Williamson: Democrats Need a “Radical Transformation” – Sky News (December 29, 2024).
Marianne Williamson on DNC Run and Why Elon Musk’s Influence Over the GOP Is “Terrifying” – Jason Lemon (Newsweek, December 29, 2024).
Marianne Williamson on Why Americans are Rejecting the Stats Quo – NewsNation (December 28, 2024).
The DNC Needs Marianne Williamson – Brandon Clark (December 28, 2024).
Marianne Williamson Discusses Her Bid for DNC Chair – Fox News (December 26, 2024).
Who’s Running for DNC Chair? Marianne Williamson Throws Hat in Ring – Monica Sager (Newsweek, December 26, 2024).
Marianne Williamson Discusses Her Bid for DNC Chair – ABC News Live (December 26, 2024).
Marianne Williamson Is Running for DNC Chair – NewsNation (December 26, 2024).
Marianne Williamson on Her Bid to Head the DNC and Reinvent the Party – LA Progressive (December 26, 2024).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Marianne Williamson Makes Her Case for Being the Next DNC Chair
• Progressive Perspectives on Where Democrats Went Wrong in the 2024 Election
• “A New Chapter of the Democratic Party Needs to Begin”
• What the Republican Party Now Stands For
• The Green Party’s Jill Stein and Butch Ware Give Their First Post-Election Interview
• Neoliberalism vs Neofascism: Cornel West on the State of U.S. Politics
• The Cassandra of U.S. Politics on the “True State of the Union”

December Vignettes

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Interiors – December 9, 2024
• Advent Questions for These Times of Challenge and Change
• Held in the Presence of God
• The Act of Surrender
• The Journey Home
• Honoring the Inner Light of the Soul
• Photo of the Day – December 21, 2024
• Progressive Perspectives on This Moment of Class Consciousness
• International Migrants Day
• Hope and Courage – Christmas 2024
• Christmas: A Reminder That Only Love Is Real
• Far From Summer
• December Vignettes (2023)
• In This Time of Liminal Space (2022)
• Adnan in Morning Light (2020)

Images: Michael J. Bayly.

An Orchestra Conductor’s Review of Maria

Just before Christmas my friends Kathleen and Lori and I watched Pablo Larraín’s recently released film Maria, about the great opera singer Maria Callas (1923-1977), played by Angelina Jolie.

Billed as a “biographical psychological drama,” Maria is set in Paris during the last two weeks of Callas’ life. The film depicts the reclusive singer secretly rehearsing for a possible comeback and, while under the influence of Mandrax, both reminiscing and hallucinating about past people and events, including her impoverished and traumatic adolescence in Greece, her illustrious career highlights, and her tempestuous relationship with Aristotle Onassis.

As a long-time admirer of the life and art of Maria Callas I must admit I had some reservations about this film and the American Angelina Jolie playing Maria (pictured at right in the mid-1970s). I have to say, however, that I found the film to be a beautiful work of art and Jolie’s contribution a touching portrayal of a far too often misunderstood, even maligned woman and artist.

That all being said, no biographical film is ever perfect, and one of the most insightful reviews of Maria I’ve come across is by an orchestra conductor (by the moniker of “How I Met The Opera”) who analyzes the film by exploring “some missing context” of Maria’s career as well as “some personal reflections on how classical music is depicted in movies, especially when it comes to the topic of art as suffering.” Angelina Jolie’s singing scenes are also examined and discussed. All in all, it’s a very informative review, one that’s of 15-minute duration.





I conclude this post with an official Netflix mini-documentary on the making of Maria. In particular, this 10-minute video focuses on Angelina Jolie’s thoughts on “the gorgeous and tragic world” of Maria.





Related Off-site Links:
Angelina Jolie Is Graceful and Sharp as Opera Star Maria Callas in Maria – Lindsey Bahr (AP News, November 27, 2024).
A Review of Maria – Tomris Laffly (RogerEbet.com, November 27, 2024).
Maria Review – Angelina Jolie Plays the Diva in Magnificent Stroll Around the Cult of Callas – Xan Brooks (The Guardian, August 29, 2024).
An Opera Singer Reviews Maria – Robin Hahn (YouTube, December 2, 2024).
Becoming Callas – What Made Her So Special? – Phantoms of the Opera (December 6, 2023).
The Operatic Sound of Pablo Larraín’s Maria – The Dolby Creator Talks Podcast (December 10, 2024).

For more of Maria Callas at The Wild Reed, see:
• “Better Than Callas We Will Never See”
• Remembering Maria . . . Celebrating Callas
• Maria by Callas: “Revelatory, Unprecedented, and Authoritative”
• Callas Centenary
• A Queer Aria
• Re-Visioning Callas
• Remembering Callas
• Callas Went Away
• Maria Callas – “Ave Maria”
• Callas Remembered
• The Impossible Desire of Pier Paolo Pasolini
• Europe 2005 – Part 6: Paris

Marianne Williamson Makes Her Case for Being the Next DNC Chair

Author, activist, and former Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson has joined a growing field of contenders to be the next Chairperson of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the principal executive leadership board of the Democratic Party in the U.S. She is the first woman to join this field, one that includes Ken Martin, Martin O’Malley, Ben Wikler, Nate Snyder, and James Skoufis. In related news, Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivor and gun control activist David Hogg recently announced that he is running for DNC vice-chair.

Like fellow Democrat Pete Buttigieg, Marianne Williamson isn’t shy about appearing on Fox News, the conservative news and political commentary television channel and website that is a mouthpiece for the Republican Party, just as MSNBC is the mouthpiece for the Democratic Party establishment. And like Buttigieg, she always holds her own.

Following is Marianne Williamson’s appearance yesterday on Fox News where she discussed her bid for DNC chair.

Following is Marianne’s December 25 open letter to the voting members of the DNC.

To Democratic National Committee Members,

This year’s election of a DNC Chair feels different than in past years. Before now, the party had faced defeats to be sure. But our playbook still basically worked. The waters were turbulent at times, but our ship was steady.

This year, the party faces a more critical problem than we have ever faced before. The MAGA phenomenon now challenges the very way that politics are done in America, and the traditional tool kit of party organizing will not be enough to meet the moment.

President Trump has ushered in an age of political theatre – a collective adrenaline rush that has enabled him to not only move masses of people into his camp but also masses of people away from ours. It does not serve us to underestimate the historic nature of what he has achieved.

In fact, it’s important that we recognize the psychological and emotional dimensions of Trump’s appeal. We need to understand it to create the energy to counter it. MAGA is a distinctly 21st century political movement and it will not be defeated by a 20th century tool kit. Data analysis, fundraising, field organizing, and beefed-up technology – while all are important – will not be enough to prepare the way for Democratic victory in 2024 and beyond.

That’s why I have decided to run for DNC Chair this year. Running for the Democratic nomination for President twice, I have traveled extensively throughout this country speaking with voters. I’ve witnessed up close the fraying bonds of affection between the party and the working people of the United States; I met many who had been traditional Democratic voters yet had lost hope that the party had their back. In the 2024 election, throughout my campaign I warned of a coming electoral disaster if Democrats did not listen more deeply to the pain of people throughout America.

My experience of what went wrong has given me insight into what needs doing to make things right. (See my Manifesto for a Renewed Democratic Party.) As Chairwoman, I will work to reinvent the party from the inside out. For if we want a new President in four years, and a new Congress in two, then we must immediately get about the task of creating a new party.

It will be . . .

• A party that listens more, and makes people feel that their thoughts and feelings are as important as their wallets.

• A party that advocates unequivocally for the working people of the United States.

• A party with the humility to recognize we need to look in the mirror, and be willing to reinvent ourselves.

As DNC Chair, I will not just have a 50-state strategy; I will have a 365 days-of- the-year strategy. We will create ways for the American people to be involved in the political process not only when there’s an election, but all the time. People will know not only what Trump might be doing that transgresses our values, but what Democrats are doing – all around the country – to promote them!

We won’t just fight; we will inspire. We will create a surge of patriotic fervor, and a connectedness of the American heart to the great historical legacy of this country. Our ultimate success will be creating in people’s minds a sense that in order to further that legacy, your smartest move is to vote for Democrats.

And the party will be worthy of that trust.

To DNC members, I hope you will please sign the petition below to get me onto the candidate panels in January. I look forward to contributing to the conversation, hopefully to win the election for Chair and get started right away.

The Republicans will be ready on Day 1. As DNC Chair, I’ll make sure that we are ready to take them on.

Sincerely,

Marianne Williamson

12/28/24 UPDATE: Marianne Williamson on NewsNation . . .





And on CNN Newsroom . . .





NEXT:
Marianne Williamson Is Seeking to Restore
Honesty and Integrity to the DNC

Related Off-site Links:
Who’s Running for DNC Chair? Marianne Williamson Throws Hat in Ring – Monica Sager (Newsweek, December 26, 2024).
Marianne Williamson Discusses Her Bid for DNC Chair – ABC News Live (December 26, 2024).
Marianne Williamson Is Running for DNC Chair – NewsNation (December 26, 2024).
Marianne Williamson on Her Bid to Head the DNC and Reinvent the Party – LA Progressive (December 26, 2024).

UPDATES: Will Marianne Williamson Be the Next DNC Chair? – Don Lemon (Lemon Drop, December 28, 2024).
Marianne Williamson Runs for DNC Chair – NewsNation (December 29, 2024).
Marianne Williamson on DNC Run and Why Elon Musk’s Influence Over the GOP Is “Terrifying” – Jason Lemon (Newsweek, December 29, 2024).
Break the Mold: Why Marianne Williamson Should Be DNC Chair – David and Dai (David & Dai’s Call Me Limbo Substack, December 30, 2024).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Progressive Perspectives on Where Democrats Went Wrong in the 2024 Election
• “A New Chapter of the Democratic Party Needs to Begin”
• What the Republican Party Now Stands For
• The Green Party’s Jill Stein and Butch Ware Give Their First Post-Election Interview
• Neoliberalism vs Neofascism: Cornel West on the State of U.S. Politics
• The Cassandra of U.S. Politics on the “True State of the Union”

Far From Summer

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Brigit Anna McNeill on “Winter’s Way”
• That Quality of Awe
• December Vignettes (2023)
• Winter . . . Within and Beyond (2020)
• Winter . . . Within and Beyond (2019)
• Winter . . . Within and Beyond (2017)

Christmas: A Reminder That Only Love Is Real

The other day my computer froze, and as with any electronic equipment the best course of action was to turn it off for a moment and then turn it back on again. To me, that’s Christmas. If for even one day we can have a break in the action – turning off the usual resistances to love that keep us stuck in patterns of separation and fear – then perhaps we can have a chance to start over. To begin again. To change the circuitry in our brains that spew out constant excuses for why love is not the answer . . . when in fact, we know it is.

This Christmas, for all kinds of reasons love can seem hard. Our personal relationships as well as politics and world events are riddled with walls of division. Those walls keep our hearts in isolation and our lives in the grip of sadness and fear. This is, once again, the dark night of the human soul. Christmas is a Light that appears in the darkness of our inner sky, beckoning us to be the people we are called to be, Jesus an innocent child within our consciousness guiding us to the actualization of our more powerful and loving selves.

. . . At this darkened time, may we all remember – thinking of those who have hurt us, as well as those we have hurt – that the deeper truth of the soul is that we love each other. Beneath the pain, beneath the suffering, beneath the cruelties of this world, only Love is Real.*

– Marianne Williamson
Excerpted from “Christmas and Hanukkah
and the Coming of Light”
Transform
December 25, 2024

* In the esoteric/mystical traditions, “Real” (with a capital “R”) refers to that which is ultimately real. Yes, the pain, suffering and cruelties of the three-dimensional material world are real in the sense that we experience them and are called to acknowledge and address them, but they are not ultimately real. They will not have the last word; they “too shall pass.” Love, however, being ultimately real, is never-ending.


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• The Christmas Miracle
• Christmas for Mystics
• Hope and Courage – Christmas 2024
• Christmas 2023 – Reflections, Activism, Art, and Celebrations
• In This Time of Liminal Space (2022)
• Christmas 2020: A Time of Loss and Grief, Gratitude and Hope
• The Joy of Christmas (2019)
• Christmas 2018 – Reflections and Celebrations
• Christmas in America, 2018
• Christmas 2017 – Reflections and Celebrations
• Christmas 2016 – Reflections and Celebrations
• Christmas 2015 – Reflections and Celebrations
• Christmas 2014 – Reflections and Celebrations
• Celebrating the Coming of the Sun and the Son
• Christmastide Approaches
• Something to Cherish (2012)
• A Christmas Message of Hope . . . from Uganda (2011)
• John Dear on Celebrating the Birth of the Nonviolent Jesus
• Clarity and Hope: A Christmas Reflection (2007)
• A Christmas Reflection by James Carroll

See also:
• In the Chill of Winter, a Prayer of Light and Love
• Shining On . . . Into the New Year
• Aligning With the Living Light
• The Light Within
• Honoring the Darkness While Remembering the Light
• Being the Light
• The Mystic Jesus: “A Name for the Unalterable Love That All of Us Share”

Image: Michael J. Bayly.

Hope and Courage – Christmas 2024

I don’t know about you, but I’m struggling to feel much “holiday cheer” this year, given the horror that continues in Gaza . . . and the fact that my tax dollars are helping pay for the Israeli government’s genocide of the Palestinian people.

Writes Abby Zimet:

The death toll has passed 45,000, two thirds of whom are women and children, many (unfathomably, still) shot in the head and chest by Israeli snipers. Also killed are at least 1,000 health workers, 200 journalists, and many hundreds of teachers and writers. . . . Health care and homes are decimated, Israel’s brutal blockade has left most Gazans without power or water and starving or at least hungry. Nearly 107,000 have been wounded or maimed, untold thousands of dead remain rotting under rubble.

Almost a year after international jurists declared Israel is committing genocide – ungodly news an indifferent world met with thunderous silence – Amnesty International has just released a meticulously detailed, 300-page report confirming that yes, it is. They added, “Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity.”

It can all feel so overwhelming.

One way I choose to respond to the heaviness of our time is by remembering the true meaning of Christmas – that we are called to birth the light of love, of Christic consciousness, through our thoughts, words and actions here and now.

This deeper mystical understanding of Christmas heartens and sustains me. It’s also an understanding that can be worded and expressed in as many ways as there are people in the world. After all, we all have our own unique ways of being divine light- and love-bearers, of embodying the liberating truth that, ultimately, “love’s the only dance.”

One way I embody this truth is by “showing up,” by being willing to bear witness to injustice and stand with the oppressed in whatever way I can. This led me to participate this past Saturday in a vigil and rally in downtown Minneapolis against U.S. support of the Israeli government’s “genocidal project” in Gaza and beyond.

For my Christmas post this year at The Wild Reed, I share some images of this event and do so in a spirit of hope and courage. Hope for an end to the genocide and to violence and war everywhere, and courage that I may continue to be an active participant in the realization of this hope by continuing to speak out against such loveless things. May courage also be kindled in the hearts of others as they join in hope in such efforts and in advocating for justice and peace.

I conclude this Christmas 2024 post with Chris Hedge’s recent podcast on the meaning of Christmas. As part of this podcast, Hedges interviews Rev. Munther Isaac, the pastor at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem and the Lutheran Church in Beit Sahour.





Related Off-site Links:
Another Somber Christmas in Palestine as Gaza Genocide Continues – Brett Wilkins (Common Dreams, December 25, 2024).
“Christ Is Still in the Rubble”: Bethlehem Rev. Isaac Calls on U.S. to Stop Funding Gaza Genocide – Democracy Now! (December 23, 2024).
Sheltering in Churches, Gaza’s Christians Face Another Christmas Under Fire – Ruwaida Kamal Amer (+972 Magazine, December 24, 2024).
“We Are Being Attacked in Plain Sight”: Israeli Forces Besiege Three Gaza Hospitals – Jake Johnson (Common Dreams, December 24, 2024).
A Consensus Is Emerging: Israel Is Committing Genocide in Gaza. Where Is the Action? – Nesrine Malik (The Guardian via Other News, December 23, 2024).
It’s Becoming Harder to Protest Gaza War on Campus – and Also to Teach About It – Michelle Chen (Truthout, December 20, 2024).
The Biden Administration’s Legacy in Gaza’s Genocide – Khury Petersen-Smith (Institue for Policy Studies, December 17, 2024).
This Genocide “Worse Than Any Phase of Palestinian History”: An Interview with Rashid Khalidi – Marc Lamont Hill (Al Jazeera, November 29, 2024).
Christmas and Hanukkah and the Coming of Light – Marianne Williamson (Transform, December 25, 2024).

UPDATES: UNICEF Says Deaths of More Gaza Children “Tragically Foreseeable” as Israeli Assault Continues – Eloise Goldsmith (Common Dreams, December 27, 2024).
U.S. Doctor Warns of “End of Humanity” in Northern Gaza as Israel Assails Hospitals – Jake Johnson (Common Dreams, December 27, 2024).
Meet State Dept. Official Michael Casey, Who Resigned over Gaza After U.S. Ignored Israeli Abuses – Democracy Now! (December 26, 2024).
“That Amnesty Is Claiming This Is Genocide Is Profound and Necessary”: An Interview with Iman Abid on Israeli Genocide – Janine Jackson (CounterSpin, December 27, 2024).
Gideon Levy on Israel’s “Moral Blindness”: Gaza Babies Freeze; Strikes Kill Medical Workers and Reporters – Democracy Now! (December 27, 2024).
Palestinian Children Freeze to Death While the World Watches – TRT World Now (December 31, 2024).
New Year for Palestinians Starts with Israel Killing 17 in Gaza: An Interview with Muhammad Shehada – TRT World Now (January 1, 2025).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Christmas 2023 – Reflections, Activism, Art, and Celebrations
• In This Time of Liminal Space (2022)
• The Christmas Miracle
• Christmas for Mystics
• Christmas 2020: A Time of Loss and Grief, Gratitude and Hope
• The Joy of Christmas (2019)
• Christmas 2018 – Reflections and Celebrations
• Christmas in America, 2018
• Christmas 2017 – Reflections and Celebrations
• Christmas 2016 – Reflections and Celebrations
• Christmas 2015 – Reflections and Celebrations
• Christmas 2014 – Reflections and Celebrations
• Celebrating the Coming of the Sun and the Son
• Christmastide Approaches
• No Room for Them
• Something to Cherish (2012)
• A Christmas Message of Hope . . . from Uganda (2011)
• John Dear on Celebrating the Birth of the Nonviolent Jesus
• Clarity and Hope: A Christmas Reflection (2007)
• A Christmas Reflection by James Carroll

See also:
• Voices of Reason and Compassion on the Crisis in Israel and Gaza
• More Voices of Reason and Compassion on the Crisis in Israel and Gaza
• “This Is a Tragic, Heartbreaking Moment in the History of Humanity”
• “A Year of War Against Children”
• Anti-Genocide Presidential Candidate Jill Stein Reflects on the First Anniversary of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza
• Protesting Weapons Manufacturer and Genocide Enabler General Dynamics
• “It’s a Systematic Slaughter That We’re Funding”
• Phyllis Bennis: “We Can Never Give Up Hope”
• Outrage and Despair
• “This Is a Genocidal Project”
• “A Genocide Has Been Normalized”
• In the Midst of the “Great Unraveling,” a Visit to the Prayer Tree

Images: Michael J. Bayly.

The Journey Home

– Artwork: Niki Bowers

The Wild Reed’s 2024 Advent series concludes with a third excerpt from Sufism: Transformation of the Heart by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee. (To start at the beginning of this series and to learn why I chose this book, click here.)

________________

Sufism is the ancient wisdom of the heart. Like a stream which goes underground and then reappears, this wisdom is always present in the world, sometimes visible and sometimes hidden. Some great Sufis have been public figures; many have worked in the disguise of ordinary men and women. They belong to God and respond to the need of the time. At the present time in the West there is a need for this path of the heart to be made known, for this ancient tradition to be made accessible.

In our Western world there is a hunger for the wisdom and nourishment that come from the inner world. In dreams, visions, and the silence of longing, the inner journey awakens within us and we are called back “to the root of the root of our own self.” Yet our culture has forgotten the way of the mystic, which is so at variance with the rational and material values that surround us. There appear to be few signposts to guide the traveller, who is so often left stranded, confusing longing with depression, or believing that the desire for God is just an inability to adjust to the “real” world.

In [the twentieth-century], psychology and the many different forms of therapy [arose and] helped us to understand the dynamics of the unconscious. We are beginning to learn about the healing and transformation that can come from within. Psychology is a valuable contemporary science, but the mystic has different intentions from those who seek psychological healing or the resolution of problems. The heart’s desire for union with God activates a process of psychological ego-destruction that is both terrifying and intoxicating, The mystic does not seek ego-fulfillment, but to be lost in the abyss of nothingness. At the same time we need to live a balanced life and not allow the contents of the unconscious to overwhelm us. The Sufi path has explored and documented the psychological and spiritual unfolding that belongs to the journey Home. This wisdom is valuable not only to those who follow the Sufi path, but to others who need to understand the processes of transformation that belong to the mystical journey.

The wayfarer follows love’s call, like the moth drawn to the flame of annihilation. At the same time the Sufi lives an everyday life in the world. We have to learn to live in two worlds, to have both feet firmly on the ground and yet with our head to support the sky. Living in two worlds is an integral part of the Sufi tradition. The subtle balance of inner and outer states, the integration of the spiritual and everyday life, belongs to the wisdom of this path.

. . . Living in both realms – working in the world, having a family, while at the same time realizing the Truth – is a cornerstone of the Sufi path. The inner and outer world, the heart’s secrets and the most ordinary things, combine to create the necessary conditions for the path. The friction between the two worlds wears away the ego, which is unable to contain the seeming contradiction of the endless inner expansion and the limitations of everyday life. The prison of our temporal home contains the key of the heart's freedom. Here lies the secret alchemy of the Sufi path.

The combination of the inner and outer worlds produces a powerful dynamic that helps the wayfarer to realize her true nature. Remembering God in our daily life, we bring the imprint of the soul into the world of time and space. Only within the heart can we contain the most primal pair of opposites, that we are at the same time divine, immortal spirits and temporal creatures. The tension between our divine and human natures produces the longing that burns [and transforms us] us and takes us Home.

Inwardly looking towards God, we learn to live our devotion not as some idealized state, but as a center of stillness and love within the limitations and difficulties of the world. We do not reject God’s creation but rather come to know its deeper purpose, as a reflection of God’s Oneness. When we love God in the midst of the world, amidst our mundane, everyday life, we realize this hidden secret of creation – “in everything there is a sign, a clue to 'God is One.’”*

The way of the Sufi is to contain duality within the oneness of love. We are both separate and united with the Beloved whom we love.

– Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Excerpted from Sufism: The Transformation of the Heart
The Golden Sufi Center, 1995
pp. 144-145

* Fakhruddīn Irāqī, Divine Flashes, translated by William Chittick and Peter Lamborn Wilson, p. 126.

____________________

Something special now to mark the conclusion of this series: a 40-minute talk by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee that serves as a very accessible and eloquent introduction to Sufism, the “path of love” that reveals the “secrets of mystical Oneness.” This talk was recorded on October 18, 2009 in Tiburon, California.





See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Held in the Presence of God
• The Act of Surrrender
• The Sufi Way
• Sufism: Way of Love, Tradition of Enlightenment, and Antidote to Fanaticism
• Doris Lessing on the Sufi Way
• Sufism: A Living Twenty-First Century Tradition
• “Joined at the Heart”: Robert Thompson on Christianity and Sufism
• Sufism: A Call to Awaken
• Don’t Go Back to Sleep
• Clarity, Hope, and Courage
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Doris Lessing
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Kabir Helminski
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Inayat Khan
• Inayat Khan and the Heart of Sufism
• Inayat Khan: “There Must Be Balance”
• Inayat Khan on the Art of Selflessness
• The Most Sacred and Simple Mystery of All
• Prayer of the Week – October 28, 2013
• Neil Douglas-Klotz: Quote of the Day – December 29, 2011
• Birthday Musings
• The Onward Call
• A Sacred Journey, a Pilgrim Path
• In the Footsteps of Spring: Introduction | Part I | II | III | IV | V
• New Horizons
• Advent: Renewing Our Connection to the Sacred
• Advent Questions for These Times of Challenge and Change
• Advent Thoughts
• A Threshold Season
• A New Beginning
• Advent: The Season of Blessed Paradox
• An Advent Prayer
• Advent: A “ChristoPagan” Perspective
• Guidelines for the Advent of a Universal Mysticism: An Introduction | Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
• Active Waiting: A Radical Attitude Toward Life
• Bismillah
• Cultivating Stillness
• Thoughts on Transformation | II | III
• As the Last Walls Dissolve . . . Everything Is Possible

Opening image: “Serpentine Starlings” by Niki Bowers.

Something to Think About . . .

Related Off-site Links:
The “Silent Violence” of Corporate Greed and Power – Ralph Nader (Common Dreams, December 8, 2024).
Behind UnitedHealthcare’s CEO Is a Larger System of Corporate Rule – Derek Seidman (TruthOut, December 12, 2024).
The Hated U.S. Healthcare System Is Why Government Shouldn’t Be Run Like a Business – Thom Hartmann (Common Dreams, December 9, 2024).
For-Profit Insurance Industry Rife with “Greed”: An Interview with David Sirota – Rising (December 9, 2024).
62% of Americans Agree U.S. Government Should Ensure Everyone Has Health Coverage – Julia Conley (Common Dreams, December 9, 2024).
Serving the Public Good? – An Analysis of Private Prisons and For-Profit Incarceration in the United States – Karoline Marko (Frontiers, November 4, 2021).
For Illinois Students, the Promises of For-Profit Colleges Often Ring Hollow – Lisa Kurian Philip (Marketplace,July 23, 2024).
Taxpayers Cover Tuition at California’s For-Profit Schools. The Results? Low-Wage, High-Turnover Jobs – Adam Echelman (CalMatters, August 21, 2024).
For-Profit Colleges Fund Lawmakers Who Led Attack on Top Universities Over Campus Protests – Tom Perkins and Will Craft (The Guardian, August 2, 2024).
How Americans Differ in Their Views on For-Profit Education – Cristian Reyes (New America, September 13, 2024).
“Stupid Is as Stupid Does”: The Gumpification of America, 30 Years Later – Melanie McFarland (Salon, July 7, 2024).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Progressive Perspectives on This Moment of Class Consciousness
• Something to Think About – December 8, 2024
• A Deeper Perspective on What’s Really Attacking American Democracy
• The Wrong Type of Government Intervention

The Act of Surrender

– Artwork: Niki Bowers

The Wild Reed’s 2024 Advent series continues with a second excerpt from Sufism: Transformation of the Heart by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee. (For the first installment of this series and an explanation for why I chose this book, click here.)

________________

We have to make every effort [to renouce the ego], but without [the Beloved’s] grace all our efforts would be useless because we would still be caught in the ego. There comes the time when we have to give up even the desire to progress, even the desire to get closer to Him whom we love. We have to surrender every effort in order to be taken by God to God. In the words of Abu al-Hassan al-Kharaqāni: “He who says he has attained God, has not; while he who says he has been taken to God has indeed attained union with God.”

What we most want we cannot find, but we have to seek with every effort until we surrender. Then in the act of surrender we create an inner space for the Beloved to reveal Himself. We die to our own desire, even the desire for Truth, and then Truth reveals Itself. The eye of the heart opens and we see that there is nothing other than God.

The process of dying is a slow and gradual work. Slowly the ego dies as attachments and conditioning fall away. With each little death a veil falls away and the horizon of the Self expands. After these moments of expansion there is usually a period of contraction as we integrate our new-found awareness, learn to live with a wider perspective. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the focus of our awareness shifts from the ego to the Self. As this happens the rate of expansion, the speed of the journey, intensifies. Faster and faster we flow with the currents of love which carry us Home.

The dissolution of the ego unites us with the Self. What was always present but hidden comes to the surface. The all-knowing and all-seeing Substance within the heart permeates consciousness with its presence. We continue to live our ordinary, everyday life, but we begin to feel that it is included within something greater, something which does not belong to the mind or the personality. When He wills we can have access to this other dimension within us. The ego cannot reach the Self, but once we learn to surrender, the Self can reach us. The ego and the mind instinctively step aside and we are in the presence of what is eternal.

. . . To be surrendered to God is to give oneself into unknowingness, into a space beyond thought or form. His presence then comes into our life in many forms – as a companion, as inner guidance, as a sweetness suddenly felt. And underneath all His manifestations is a deepening communion with what can never be manifest, with an emptiness, a nothingness, “the dark silence in which all lovers lose themselves.”* This silence is the real Home of the mystic, where we inwardly abide with God.

In this inner silence, love reveals its secret potency, an unending expansion of the heart.

– Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Excerpted from Sufism: The Transformation of the Heart
The Golden Sufi Center, 1995
pp. 144-145

NEXT:
The Journey Home

* The Blessed John Ruysbroeck, quoted by F. C. Happold in Mysticism: A Study and an Anthology, p. 293.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Held in the Presence of God
• I Surrender to You
• The Sufi Way
• Sufism: Way of Love, Tradition of Enlightenment, and Antidote to Fanaticism
• Doris Lessing on the Sufi Way
• Sufism: A Living Twenty-First Century Tradition
• “Joined at the Heart”: Robert Thompson on Christianity and Sufism
• Sufism: A Call to Awaken
• Don’t Go Back to Sleep
• Clarity, Hope, and Courage
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Doris Lessing
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Kabir Helminski
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Inayat Khan
• Inayat Khan and the Heart of Sufism
• Inayat Khan: “There Must Be Balance”
• Inayat Khan on the Art of Selflessness
• Jesus and the Art of Letting Go
• The Most Sacred and Simple Mystery of All
• The Soul’s Beloved
• The Gorgeous One
• Resting in the Presence of the Beloved
• A Sacred Journey, a Pilgrim Path
• Finding Balance in the Presence of the Beloved
• Michael Morwood on the Divine Presence
• You Are My Goal, Beloved One
• Be In My Mind, Beloved One
• Your Peace Is With Me, Beloved One
• Beloved and Antlered
• Meeting (and Embodying) the Lover God
• Prayer of the Week – October 28, 2013
• Neil Douglas-Klotz: Quote of the Day – December 29, 2011
• Advent: Renewing Our Connection to the Sacred
• Advent Questions for These Times of Challenge and Change
• Advent Thoughts
• A Threshold Season
• A New Beginning
• Advent: The Season of Blessed Paradox
• An Advent Prayer
• Advent: A “ChristoPagan” Perspective
• Guidelines for the Advent of a Universal Mysticism: An Introduction | Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
• Active Waiting: A Radical Attitude Toward Life
• Bismillah
• Cultivating Stillness
• Thoughts on Transformation | II | III
• As the Last Walls Dissolve . . . Everything Is Possible

Opening image: “Short Days, Long Shadows” by Niki Bowers.

Photo of the Day

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• The Prayer Tree
• Summer’s End
• On This Momentous Day in U.S. Politics, a Visit to the Prayer Tree
• In the Midst of the “Great Unraveling,” a Visit to the Prayer Tree (2023)
• A Visit to the Prayer Tree (2023)
• A Very Intentional First Day of the Year (2021)
• November Musings (2020)
• Prayer of the Week – March 17, 2019
• December’s Snowy Start (2018)
• The Prayer Tree . . . Aflame! (2018)
• “Everything Is Saturated With the Sacred”
• The Mysticism of Trees
• Cosmic Connection
• “I Caught a Glimpse of a God”

Image: Michael J. Bayly.

Honoring the Inner Light of the Soul

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Winter Solstice Blessing
• Solstice Eve: Honoring the Darkness While Remembering the Light
• Brigit Anna McNeill on the Meaning of Winter Solstice Time
• “Silent Night, Longest Night”
• Soul: The Connecting Force in Life
• Thomas Moore on the “Ageless Soul”
• The Soul Within the Soul
• Your True Source
• Where Soul Would Have Us Go
• Trust and Surrender
• The Soul’s Beloved
• The Gorgeous One
• Awakening the Wild Soul
• My Love, “Return to the Root of the Root of Your Own Soul”
• Soul Deep
• Brigit Anna McNeill on “Winter’s Way”
• Brigit Anna McNeill on Hearing the Wild and Natural Call to Go Inwards
• Winter Light
• That Quality of Awe
• To Dream, to Feel, to Listen
• Reclaiming the “Hour of God”
• Celebrating the Coming of the Sun and the Son
• The Light Within
• No Stranger Am I
• The Source Is Within You
• Like the Sun
• Aligning With the Living Light
• Chadwick Boseman and That “Heavenly Light”
• Light and Dark: “Both Holy, Both Life-Giving”
• Winter . . . Within and Beyond (2020)
• Winter . . . Within and Beyond (2019)
• Winter . . . Within and Beyond (2017)