Do You Twist Yourself Like Pretzel to Get Your Needs Met?

I have just completed an 8 week journey doing the Heart of Money Course through Heart of Business. What a life changing course that was. Mark Silver who ran the course is a true gem. What a delightfully inspiring, heartfelt and wise man. Mark is a designated Master Teacher in his Sufi lineage and he teaches about business through his Sufi principles. It’s a very heart centred course. The core practice is Remembrance. Check out his site and download a free mp3 of this practice.

Remembrance is about your relationship with the Divine. I’ve tried meditation before but this practice of Remembrance is way more nourishing than anything else I have tried. At first I was a bit taken back by using Arabic words, like Allah, but now I can’t do it any other way. There’s power in words, and these words have been used for thousands of years. I also like the fact my head can’t get involved in the meaning of the words, so I don’t reject their meanings and grapple whether I am worthy.

Another aspect that we learnt was the 99 Divine Names. Each name is a divine quality, and by reciting the Arabic names, we are looking to the Divine for these qualities. Qualities like compassion, mercy, love, patience etc. In essence we can’t generate these qualities ourselves, but we can receive them from the Divine.

So in taking our needs to the Divine, we open up to receive qualities that meet that need, and then face a world from a nourishing place, not one of depletion.

The trick is to stop doing doing doing to meet our needs, to sit in Remembrance and work out what our needs are. Perhaps its approval, or maybe understanding. This can be an uncomfortable place to be, we are a society that often denies we have needs but try to meet them dysfunctionally. We ask for a quality to meet that need from the Divine and receive it.

I know often my workaholic actions that cause me depletion are mostly done in fear. Fear that I won’t make ends meet, but when I stop and sit in Remembrance, and drink the Qualities of the Divine, the hamster wheel stops inside of me and I can breathe a sigh of relief and see my situation differently.

So what need are you trying to meet by “doing” instead of looking to drink from the Divine?