Keep a Healing Journal

Please keep a notebook specially dedicated to your experiences of all aspects of healing: how you become more aware of healing yourself; noting experiences with your healing practices; healing you receive; healing you give; your dreams, any item about healing that touches you on the media, book, course or conversation. Try to write in it every day, or at least a few times a week, as short or as long as you wish. This is for your private record, not required for showing as course work.

Practices

1. Attunement with the Presence and Healing of the Messiah

   Choose a representative figure of the Messiah that calls to you, inspires you or your soul has a natural affinity with. Take a time daily to connect with this archetype through the following 3 stages:

   To do this exercise, create a sacred space first and then try and do it in the same place everyday. The sacred space can be a small altar which you can personalize by placing a picture, symbol or any other reminder of your chosen Messiah. Burn a candle and some incense. Place a fresh flower daily at the altar to pay homage to the archetype. You may write a prayer for healing or help that you need, fold it and wrap it in a piece of cloth or special paper and put it on the altar.

   • Sit with devotional attention. Emptying the mind and focusing on the breath establish a rabita (link of sympathetic resonance) with the heart of the Messiah. Allow the energy of the Messiah's spirit of infinite love, compassion, empathy and healing understanding of your pain and any other pain that you have brought to this presence, flow into your heart and soul. Feel your whole being becoming charged with this beautiful healing and restorative energy.
   • With your magnetized heart, palms of your hands and your glance, let the power of the Messiah's Love‑Healing Force radiate forth into the world, directing it wherever needed.
   • Gently fold your hands in the gesture of prayer and holding them at the level of the heart, bow your head slightly and invoke the help of the Messiah through Murshid's words:

     ‘Heal my soul by the all‑sufficient power that comes from the glance of Your Messiah.’

2. Sending Thought on the Breath for Distant Healing
   • Preparation, developing the focus of breath and glance.
     Stand 6’ or 2 metres from a plain wall. Relax your body, your mind, your breath. Holding your glance at a point on the wall, inhale and exhale thinking ‘Jalil’ (pronounced ‘JaLEEL’) ‑ the absolute divine force that manifests in everyone and everything. On the exhale, direct the breath to that point on the wall. Start with 5 x, and increase to 11 x. Without stress.
   • Developing the extension of the breath.
     To develop the extension of breath, put something before you (a flower, a candle, a crystal) and try to extend your breath by blowing at it, putting it every day a little further. This must be done not by force but by imagination, so that you are creating a channel, directing a channel, through which the breath can travel.

     You may use the wazaif ‘Shafee (inhale) ‑ Kafee (exhale), for directing the healing breath to the objects. These may be close by, at many metres’ distance, or out of sight.

     ‘The breath is like a swing which has a constant motion, and whatever is put in the swing, swings also with the movement of the breath.’

• ‘Breath, so to speak, is an electric current that can be attached anywhere; distance makes no difference. A current of breath so established puts the ethereal waves in space into motion, and according to the healer’s magnetic power the space between the healer and the patient becomes filled with a running current of healing power. There is no doubt that spiritual evolution is the first thing necessary; without this the mind power of a healer, however strong, is too feeble for the purpose.’

3. Dhikr-i Jarub

   This practice comes from the Naqshbandiyya lineage of Sufism. The name of this practice is Dhikr‑i Jarub, the dhikr of the broom. It is a dhikr of sweeping; there is a sweeping motion of the breath over the subtle centres. It is a very powerful practice for purification.

   It is important to sit with the back straight not leaning against something. I prefer the kneeling position, but you may also sit cross‑legged. We are working with the breath. The breath is the current which flows through and unites all seven levels of our being and it is the breath which unites our experience as a single reality. The breath is the secret of the two divine Names, what is called ‘Ism‑i Dhat, the essential Name Allah, and the name Hu. The ‘h’ in Allah and in Hu represents the breath. Allah is the breath, the breath of all breaths. In invoking the name Allah, the final letter is ‘h’ and in Hu we begin with the ‘h’. So we take the names as silent invocation, inhaling “Allah,” exhaling “Hu”.

   Now be aware of the base of the spine, the Latifa Qalabiya and from there, inhaling with intensity of concentration, draw the breath up to the Nafs center in the abdomen, just below the navel. As you exhale “Hu,” the energy of the awakened Nafs is channelled downward to the base of the spine, purifying and magnetizing the Qalab.

   Now we redirect the breath, inhaling “Allah” from the Nafs in the abdomen... to the Qalb in the left breast which becomes activated and radiates a red light. We exhale “Hu,” drawing the energy of the Qalb into the Nafs which is purified and magnetized.

   We redirect the breath, inhaling “Allah” into the Ruh. in the right breast, which awakens and radiates white light, exhaling Hu charging the heart centre, with the magnetizing energy of the Ruh, purifying and magnetizing the heart.

   Once more we redirect the breath inhaling “Allah” into the Sirr at the centre of the chest which awakens and glows with a golden green light, exhaling “Hu,” purifying and remagnetizing the Ruh with the light of the Sirr.

   Inhaling “Allah” upward into the third eye, the Khafiya, which opens and radiates an indigo blue light, exhaling “Hu,” drawing the light of the third eye down into the Sirr, purifying and re‑magnetizing the Sirr.

   Once again we redirect the breath upward, up from the Khafiya, inhaling “Allah” into the crown center. Akhfa, which opens up and radiates black light, and we exhale “Hu,” channeling the light of the Akhfa into the third eye, purifying and re‑magnetizing the Khafiya.

4. Practice of the Four Immeasurables

   Turn within. Relax while maintaining vigilance. Pay attention to the rhythm of the breath. Breathe more deeply: the breath bathing the heart, washing away all residues, just as if you were to take the heart in your two hands and dip it into the cool brisk water of a mountain stream so that the heart shimmers and springs awake. One sees that one’s distraction and disorientation was a cover over the continually abiding presence of the heart and its action and that this action is the emanation of loving kindness, tender feeling, hence the mind has perhaps interfered /obstructed this flow but the heart’s own motivation is simple, pure, undiscriminating like the light of the sun, it shines on everything, on all beings. We use the words of the Buddha for each form of love.

   • Meta
     We are sending out waves of meta, unconditional love, into the environment. Send out meta to all the beings before you in the garden, city, countryside, across the planet, into the cosmos. To all beings behind you. To all beings above you. To all beings beneath you. To the right. To the left. All are contained within your heart and your heart surges with the liquid substance of unconditional love. To express love is to bear witness, and in bearing witness one observes the condition of beings.
   • Karuna
     And one recognizes that many beings are in pain. When love encounters pain it naturally becomes sympathy, empathy, compassion. There is in the world injury, illness, decay, sorrow, brokenness, the shattering of hopes, fragmentation and despair. When the heart awakens we cannot ignore these things. In this second movement of love one does not hold oneself aloof: resonate in sympathy, enter into the condition of all beings and share their suffering with compassion and goodwill. Every thought becomes a prayer for healing. It is not merely the imposition of a wish that things should be different, but attending with direct presence, with vulnerable open communion with each and every being in its condition. The archetypal image of this consciousness is the image of Christ bearing the pain of the entire world. [Let compassion flow out in the 6 directions].
   • Mudita
     Of course, all is not suffering and despair. There is pleasure, laughter, celebration, fulfilment: The third movement of love. Reach out sharing in the joy rising up from all across the world. Then one reaches beyond the polarity of joy and pain. The waves of emotion rise and fall, conditions continuously change for all beings. [Let Mudita flow out in the 6 directions].
   • Upeka
     Beyond all these fluctuations one discovers an abiding communion, abiding solidarity of all beings who represent life itself in its wholeness. One acknowledges all beings as each of them another manifestation of one’s own eternal nature. This is Upeka: the communion of life in its essence.

     Now sensing the breath flowing in and out of the body. Feel the hard ground under your feet. Return to your outer senses with the intention of retaining the atmosphere of the enlarged sense of the sphere of the heart. Open your eyes.

5. Contemplations on Themes of Nafs and Boundaries in Healing
   • Nafs:
     Turn within and first of all attune your awareness to a state of compassion. Can you become aware of the three layers of your nafs?

     What type of transformation do you see occurring in these layers in this period of your life?

   • Boundaries:
     When do I use my spirituality to avoid dealing with everyday life difficulties?

     How do I keep my spirituality healthy?

6. Prayers

   Recite these prayers and affirmations of Murshid, taking one prayer for a few days. Take each line, perhaps as a separate contemplation. Make a collection of healing prayers and affirmations from various traditions. Write your own healing prayer/s.

   • Healing Prayers

     Nayaz
     Beloved Lord, Almighty God,
     Through the rays of the sun,
     Through the waves of the air,
     Through the All‑pervading Life in space,
     Purify and revivify me, and, I pray,
     Heal my body, heart, and soul.
     Amen.

     Healing Prayer
     By the divine power of Almighty God
     My nerves are healed
     My mind is still
     My heart is at rest
     My spirit in peace
     Peace. Peace. Peace

     To say 11 times last thing at night and whenever desired.
     Heal me, Lord, by Thy all‑sufficient power,
     give me, Lord, Thine own Light to see
     and Thine own Life to live.

• Healing Affirmations

  I come from a perfect source and I am bound for a perfect goal.

  The light of the perfect Being is kindled in my soul.

  I live, move, and have my being in God.

  And nothing in the world of the past or present has power to touch me if I rise above all.

  Every ray of the sun cures me, the air heals me; the food I take has an effect upon me; with every breath I inhale something which is healing, purifying, bringing me to perfect health.

  God’s blessing is in me and around me.

  My body, heart and soul radiate the Healing Spirit of God.

7. Continue practices from previous seminars

   Designing your own manageable schedule to keep these ‘alive’ in you, including:

   • Five Elements
   • Five Magnetisms
   • Chakras ‑ Continue to work in pairs, present and at a distance, to sense the balance of your partner in these subtle energies.
   • Qasab for Healers ‑ see Practices for Rhythm in the Breath for Seminar II. Include this in your own schedule, perhaps once a week.