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One God | 31 March 2023 | Songs of One Breath | Jilani Cordelia

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.

As we approach the festivals of Passover and Easter, which both fall during the holy month of Ramadan this year, I’m reflecting on all the powerful and beautiful potential for peace and justice which could be our focus at this time, if we choose. Let us remember our similarities more than our differences.

The following prayer, authored by Christian, Jewish and Muslim clergy was used in many places in inter-religious worships around the time of the Gulf War in 1991:

Eternal God, Goddess, Source, Creator of the universe, there is no God but You.
Great and wonderful are Your works, wondrous are your ways.
Thank You for the many splendoured variety of Your creation.
Thank You for the many ways we affirm Your presence and purpose, and the freedom to do so.
Forgive our violation of Your creation.
Forgive our violence toward each other.
We stand in awe and gratitude for Your persistent love for each and all of Your children: Christian, Jew, Muslim, as well as those with other faiths.Grant to all and our leaders attributes of the strong; mutual respect in words and deed, restraint in the exercise of power, and the will for peace with justice, for all.
Eternal God, Goddess, Source, Creator of the universe, there is no God but You.
Amen.

Songs of One Breath 24/3/23 Ramadan Mubarak

Our soul is blessed with the impression of the glory of God whenever our lips praise God.– Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Commentary by Murshid Samuel L. Lewis (Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti):

This praise is the one thing which surely pierces the mind-mesh. In the first place, the praise we give to God is the one praise for which we cannot possibly expect return; this lack of expectancy of return shows unselfishness, and unselfishness is the one thing that blesses the soul.

Estaferallah

Ya Shakur Allah, Ya Hamid

Allahu Akbar Ya Salaam: Almighty Peace

Lokah Samasta Sukhino Bhavantu | 17 March 2023 | Songs of One Breath | Jilani Cordelia

Love, Lover and Beloved | Songs of One Breath | Urs of Hazrat Inayat Khan 2023 | Jilani Cordelia

May Peace Fill Your Soul | Songs of One Breath | 10 March 2023 | Jilani Cordelia

Love is the Essence of All Religion, Mysticism and Philosophy | Songs of One Breath | 3 Feb 2023

Buried Treasure | Songs of One Breath 27 January 2023 | Jilani Cordelia

Aad Guray Nameh
Jugaad Guray Nameh
Sat Guray Nameh
Siri Guru Devay Nameh
I bow to the Primal Guru
I bow to the Guru woven throughout time
I bow to the True Guru
I bow to the Great Guru hidden within

Meditation from ‘A Book of Self Re-Education’ by Raden Ayou Jodjana

Om Mani Peme Hung – To be the Jewel in the Lotus Flower unfolding in the Heart of All, To be the Jewel in the Lotus Flower unfolding is the highest call!

TEAR DOWN THIS HOUSE
Rumi as translated by Coleman Barks

A hundred thousand new houses can be built
from the transparent yellow carnelian* buried beneath
and the only way to get to that is to do the work of demolishing
and then digging under the foundation.

With that value in hand,
all the new construction will be done without effort.
And anyway, sooner or later this house will fall on its own.
The jewel treasure will be uncovered, but it won’t be yours then.

The buried wealth is your pay for doing the demolition,
the pick and the shovel work.
If you wait and just let it happen, you’ll bite your hand and say,
“I didn’t do as I knew I should have.”

This is a rented house. You don’t own the deed.
You have a lease, and you’ve set up a little shop,
where you barely make a living sewing patches on torn clothing.

Yet only a few feet underneath are two veins,
pure red and bright gold carnelian.
Take the pickaxe and pry the foundation.
You’ve got to quit this seamstress work.

What does the patch-sewing mean you ask?
Eating and drinking.
The heavy cloak of the body is always getting torn.
You patch it with food and other restless ego satisfactions.

Rip up one board from the shop floor
and look into the basement. You’ll see two glints in the dirt.

*carnelian- a pale to deep red or reddish brown variety of quartz with distinctive crystals arranged in slender fibers in parallel bands used in jewelry, a mystical stone.

20 January 2023 | Songs of One Breath | Jilani Cordelia

Thought draws the line of fate.– Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Commentary by Murshid Samuel L. Lewis (Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti):

This is true not only in prayer but in all things. Every exhalation sends something out, and every inhalation draws something in. That which is expelled carries a message, as a flying dove going upward. As soon as another thought is received into the mind, it impedes the upward journey of that breath-message. When any act, thought, speech, or desire strikes the mind-mesh, it is propelled downward toward the earth plane and brings with it the results of a movement which is at the same time personal and individual, and also cosmic, in the sense that the whole sphere endeavors to keep its balance and sends back the compensatory vibrations to those sent out by us.

To overcome this action, Fikr is practiced in some form. In daily Fikr or Darood, when a thought is accompanied by a Divine Breath it can automatically arise through the meshes of the mental net and pass through Djabrut to the Arsh, the throne of God. That is to say, the automatic wish of the average person can rise no higher than the thought or will behind it, but for the spiritual person, the initiate, whose thought and desire are accompanied by Darood, these automatically rise above the mental world into the empyrean unless another thought deliberately interferes. Practice of concentration with Fikr perfects this process.

30 December 2022 | Songs of One Breath | Mary | Jilani Cordelia

Shlama l’ki Mariam Shlama, melit taibuta maren amki, barikta b’nasha

Ave Maria Grazia Plena

O Madre de Dios

21 October 2022 | Songs of One Breath | Murshid SAM | On Breath | Jilani Cordelia

Towards the One, the perfection of Love, Harmony and Beauty, the only Being, United with all the Illuminated Souls who form the embodiment of the Master/Message/Messenger/ Mystery/Miracle/Mother, the Spirit of Guidance.

Sheikh Muiz Brinkerhoff writes:
Many of the world religions indicate a particular direction toward which the body should be oriented during prayer, and some even align the altar and the building in which worship occurs.

Traditionally Christian Churches were constructed so that the long axis of the building aligned east/west, with the altar placed at the east end, so that worshippers faced east during services. Muslims the world over orient their bodies during prayers, so they face the shortest distance to the Ka`aba, in the center of the Mosque in Mecca, and this direction is indicated, in all Mosques, by the Qibla or niche. Other traditions place the altar in the center of a circle whose circumference is anchored at the four directions.

Orienting oneself, knowing specifically where one is at the moment, is crucial for any journey, physical or spiritual, for how can one begin, with any hope of success, without knowing where one is, and in which direction one is setting off.

Rather than suggesting that the body be oriented in one particular outer direction, or towards a physical altar or niche (qibla) during prayer or worship, Hazrat Inayat Khan gave his students this Invocation. The Sufi approach is that God/Goddess/Source is truly All That Is, and further, that all Creation and all experience are but Veils over that Absolute Reality. Once one realizes that this Radical Unity is beneath and behind every experience, then every direction, every orientation becomes Holy and Sacred, and the most important orientation is inward, towards that Unity, to penetrate the Veils that conceal the Face of the Beloved.

Thus we begin by orienting ourselves, our entire being, internal and external, toward The One.

When in ourselves there is inharmony, how can we spread harmony?– Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Commentary by Murshid Samuel L. Lewis (Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti):
The best way to develop strength is to achieve unity. This comes out of the practice of concentration. Concentration need not be limited to a few minutes a day or week when one performs some exercise given in the teachings. Concentration may be practiced every hour, every minute, every breath—especially through Darood. Then one does not have to seek unity, unity will seek one.