The Sufi Healing Activity

bowlcandlesOverview

The Sufi Healing Activity is an international organization dedicated to nurturing and developing spiritual healing in our time. We are rooted in the teachings of Sufism and particularly in the teachings of Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan, and incorporate the healing legacy offered through all the great spiritual traditions. We include in our teaching the findings of modern scientific research, psychotherapeutic work and medical practice.

A commitment to healing includes one’s own personal healing and involves ongoing purification and clarification of ones consciousness and conscience.

The essence of our work includes:

  • Skills that help one increase the healing capacity of the heart, the words, and the glance; strengthening insight and intuition, and developing physical, mental, heart and soul magnetism.
  • Meditative practices that awaken and develop the subtle nervous system.
  • Tools for self-assessment and self-care.
  • The Healing Service – a sacred service that offers absent healing through prayer, concentration, breath and attunement to the Divine Presence. This service is offered to those who request it.
  • Healing retreats foster a deep and healing communion with life, and the source of life. The retreatant works with techniques of meditation, breath, sound, light, the heart, magnetism and presence to open access to the source of ones deepest yearnings.
  • Transformational meditative techniques for those seeking a deeper and more direct understanding of the purpose of their life.

The Sufi Healing Activity acknowledges the benefit of being on a spiritual path. The importance of spiritual development and the transformation of consciousness, as well as a developed conscience are central to the individual’s capacity to heal.

Core Principles

  1. Healing is a natural gift inherent in every human being which can be used to heal oneself and others.
  2. ‘Healing’ could be described as supporting the soul’s journey towards wholeness.
  3. We can heal ourselves through how we breathe, through our diet, our thinking, feelings and attitudes, by cultivating rhythm and balance, and by listening and responding to the yearning of our heart and soul.
  4. Healing ourselves helps to develop our compassion, balance, strength and will; it may prepare us for giving healing to others.
  5. There are many modes of giving healing, from physical touch, directing personal energy, compassionate listening, giving mental suggestions and offering magnetized objects (such as crystals or water), to spiritual healing in the presence of a healer or through prayer and distant healing. The former methods may help to develop a healer’s aptitude for offering spiritual healing.
  6. At the core of all healing is the deepening of the healer’s heart in dedication to serve all beings through the ideal of divine love and compassion.
  7. Sensing that there is a universal life source which pervades creation and infuses matter with life, human beings have often called its creative power and radiance ‘Spirit’, or ‘Holy Spirit’. It is both original perfection and the inherent potential for every being to evolve towards wholeness. Spiritual healing involves prayer, meditation and intercessory resonance between the wholeness of the divine spirit and the one or the group requesting healing.
  8. The secret of becoming a channel for spiritual healing is to rise above the limitations of one’s own preoccupations and view of life, and to attune to the universal divine presence.
  9. The effect of healing may be deeper than appears in the body or mind. The soul is the sacred depth of each individual which is yearning to evolve towards wholeness. Illness and healing often happen in the soul’s chosen time. The healer watches and respects the timing and meaning of symptoms and disease, wishing to be of service in the healing process, and also knowing that illness may be created by the soul as an opportunity to catalyse transformation.
  10. The beneficial effects of healing may enhance health at any level and at any stage of life, including contributing to a peaceful transition in the process of dying.
  11. All healing and self-healing contribute to the awakening of the whole family of humanity to the power of the Divine Spirit to heal.

Transformational Stages

The purpose of training in the SHO is to uncover the natural ability we all have to heal ourselves and to become an ever clearer instrument of divine healing for others. Self-healing combines discerning patterns of disharmony in our lives with perceiving our soul’s yearning for harmony: our potential to grow towards wholeness. The foundation of SHO work is recognizing that the body is a sacred instrument. We develop sensitivity to the layers of matter and the pulsations and circulation of various fields of energy and light which compose what we know as our body. We observe the ways in which we lose and gain energy and health, realizing our power and responsibility to align this vehicle of spirit with our best destiny.

Development of the healer is rooted in the methods of Sufi spiritual training. Through working with breath and mind, we open the interface between matter and spirit. We learn that breath is life, and is the secret of all healing. We experience how breath connects the Source of Life with matter, uniting body, soul and spirit as one ray. We study how to focus and direct the breath and how to apply different breath rhythms. Concentration of the mind develops the power to perceive both the visible and the invisible, and to project healing towards any goal. Healers in particular need to develop the power and subtlety of concentration since they work with the transformation of matter.

The heart becomes the alchemical vessel of the healer: moved by suffering and limitation in the world, and deepened by opening into the compassion and intelligence of the divine heart. The need for support in working at the interface between suffering and grace is borne by the fellowship of healers who become a resource for each other.

Through attunement with dimensions of divine light and life, with the Messiah, the Holy Spirit, with archangels of healing and with healing guides, and by practice in surrender to the divine will, the healer evolves as a channel for divine healing, which could be described as aligning with the Holy Spirit as the lattices of a crystal are aligned with light.

The primary healing activity throughout the Inayatiyya is the Healing Service, performed by a group of SHO members to offer distant healing through prayer and meditation to those who have requested it. Members receive training to conduct the service, and participation is for members or by special invitation. A Seven Month Introductory Course is available in many parts of the world for those interested in the SHO and wishing to take part in the Service. The student is usually guided through this course locally by the leader of the nearest healing circle.

In addition to the Healing Service, the SHO encourages diversity in finding one’s most appropriate healing mode: through working face-to-face, through distant prayer and meditation, through carrying the healing presence into various life situations, and combined with many therapeutic disciplines.

Many further opportunities are offered by the SHO through courses and retreats to deepen the practice of spiritual healing and to take the wisdom of healing out into the world to meet many eventualities of life at home, at work, in hospitals and at the end of life – all of which could be described as amounting to a healing ministry.