Songs of One Breath is a weekly online space with Jilani Cordelia Prescott to explore the direct, joyful experience of mysticism through practice. Each Friday she shares chants, mantra, breath practices and body prayer drawn from a range of traditions, offered as grounding, comfort, and a pathway of the heart toward deeper connection and spiritual freedom. You are warmly invited to join live on Zoom (or via Facebook Live) at 2.30pm London time, and it is free. If you enjoy the class or the podcast, and would like to support Jilani’s work, donations are welcome via PayPal.
Some young people once encountered a very wise old being. When they asked for help making their spiritual ideals into reality, he replied:
“The first line of defence is the moral teaching of kindliness, tolerance and compassion.
These belong to all religions and to atheism and to philosophy and to science. They can be advocated at all times and before all peoples. If they do not stand as ideals, conflict will necessarily follow.
Christ came to teach not theology but love. Mohammed came only with the Message of Unity, and Buddha taught that it was an attitude, not a form, which raised one into the peace of Nirvana. The religious will accept the ideas of love, harmony and beauty and the irreligious will accept the ideals of love, harmony and beauty.
So you can find a common standard whereby all may join. In this way the Sufi Message in time will help greatly to spread the spirit of human brother and sisterhood and so establish peace upon Earth.”
Murshid Samuel Lewis
In the real samadhi, one has not only union-with-God but with all humanity; when one is helping others, one is helping oneself, and when one is really helping oneself, one is helping others. (Oct 7, 1967)
At one point in my life, I became totally and absolutely pessimistic to the point that I was a sort of left-handed masochist – I began expecting pain. My life readings have all been consistent. During one of them I finally began to see my whole karma, the justices in the injustice. If you take a single life there’s always injustice, but if you take a whole series, it all balances out. This has given me a much greater capacity for pain than almost anybody I meet. If I have a sort of composure, it isn’t a real composure, it’s a composure of having gone through such a tremendous quantity of pain that other things don’t, by comparison, bother me. Perhaps, in the end, that’s wisdom. (October 2, 1968)
Every inhalation is God’s gift to humanity and every exhalation is humanity’s sacrifice to God…
Given a problem, meditate on the problem. Then meditate on “Toward the One”, or fikr (Breathe out La illaha, breathe in El il Allah) 20, 33 or 101 times. Now re-concentrate on the problem. There should be an influx of Kashf or insight that will help throw light on the problem.
Breathe identifying yourself with breath. Breathe holding Darood, ie “Toward the One”, with each inhalation and exhalation. Identify yourself with the breath; identify with the Darood. This helps to free you from identification with the body.