Beloved Family,

Greetings of the Heart to each of you! Like so many of us, I feel constant gratitude for having such an amazing family which stretches around the globe into One Heart!

Feeling the pressure of global ecological collapse, the threat of war, the constant drumbeat of hatred, vindictiveness and marginalization, gender bias, income inequality, it is also remarkable feeling the singing of the birds around me as mating season is upon us, feeling the gratitude in the budding of spring, of new life with hopefulness and more light.

In our unceasing thirst for Happiness, I want to share a few paragraphs from my Tibetan teacher, the 12th Tai Situ Rinpoche:

“Mahamudra practice is directly dealing with the essence of everything and everyone.

The purpose of the entire practice of Dharma it to attain Buddhahood, there is no other purpose.

And the purpose of attaining Buddhahood is to assist all sentient beings to attain Buddhahood. There is no other purpose.

The purpose of all sentient beings to attain Buddhahood is because it is our destination. It is because it is our destination because it is our potential. It is our essence and until that potential and essence is fully matured we will not stop suffering.

Suffering does not only mean pain, suffering means unnecessarily going in a circle looking for something which can never be found.

Instead of looking for something that can never be found, then one should finally come to one’s sense by knowing what we are looking for is not anywhere, it is inside you.

It is you who you are looking for. You are not looking for anything, anywhere. It is the essence of you. The potential of you, that is what you are looking for.

We go up to heaven and down to hell and circle around in the entire vast limitless space for countless eons, and did we find anything up to today?

We are still looking for and searching for it. Therefore, Prince Siddhartha has attained Enlightenment, which is nothing more, nothing less, than equal potential of everyone and everything, I say everything because there is no everything without everyone. Everything is the soup that we cook and everyone is the us who is the cook, big cook.

We are like a magician who manages to put himself in front of twenty tigers and then he forgets the magic.

We have to rediscover that potential from within, so that it is the twenty tigers which is created by me.”

I’ll be traveling to Florida toward the end of the month to share some teachings. Locally, I'm offering an evening at The Pad Studios in San Francisco on March 6th. Then onto Türkiye and Tunisia in April. I just heard from Lama that our Lama Mountain Sufi Sesshin dates are confirmed, June 24-28. This year I will be joined by Murshid(a)s Abraham and Halima. July brings us to the 52nd Annual Mendocino Sufi Camp!

For our next wazifa practice let’s practice a pair that invokes Protection, YA WAKIL YA HAFIZ.

Much love, Shabda

Wazifa Practice 

Recite 101x

YA WAKIL YA HAFIZ

52. Ya Wakil (yaa wa-KEEL)

Al-Wakil is the only one who is worthy of complete trust in every affair. It is said that the person who trusts completely in Allah is like an infant who knows nothing but to resort to the mother’s breast.

For Sufis, tawakkul means complete trust in Allah. It is a station of realization, not a passing state. There are stages in the development of this kind of trust that correspond to abandoning the qualities of the lower self and at the same time embracing and embodying divine qualities.

Recitation of Ya Wakil calls forth a protection that is full of reliability. It is steadfastness along with resilience and lack of defensiveness. It has cohesiveness. It brings solidity without rigidity. Invocation of Ya Wakil is a remedy for those of us who have deep issues with being able to trust.

In Physicians of the Heart see Ya Muhaimin(7), Ya Hafiz (38), Ya Muqit (39), Ya Wali (76), and Ya Mani' (89). See Chapter 11, Divine Protection.

38. Ya Hafiz (yaa ḥa-FEEḌḤ)

Al-Hafiz means that everything in the heavens and earth, down to the smallest particle, is within the protection of Allah. For human beings, it involves becoming mindful, considerate, respectful, and cherishing deeply in your heart. This makes it exactly parallel with dhikr (zikr), which means “to remember.”

It is in this sense that God says in the Qur'an, “Remember me, and I will remember you.”

Al-Hafiz is protecting and remembering everyone. To realize al-Hafiz is to be conscious of the greatest of secrets, to know the secret, and to keep it. The order, sequence, and timing of the universe are preserved through this quality.

Invocation of Ya Hafiz is useful for all who need protection from fear, despair, and hopelessness. Al-Hafiz is a matrix for the whole family of the divine Names of protection because it contains within itself all the specific qualities they each evoke.

In Physicians of the Heart see Ya Muhaimin (7), Ya Muqit (39), Ya Wakil (52), Ya Wali (76), and Ya Mani' (89). See Chapter 11, Divine Protection.

To hear the pronunciation: Ya Wakil Ya Hafiz

BACKYARD BIRDS