New to Sufism?

Northwest Sufi Camp occurs within the stream of Universal Sufism, an approach to the essential Unity of All There Is while recognizing the illuminating wisdom of all the world’s spiritual traditions.

At its core, Sufism is a path with heart*: it is a path because there are known and acknowledged teachings and practices that stretch endlessly behind us, passed down from teacher to student for millenia. It is a path because the teaching provides us a way forward, using our daily lives as the grist for the mill of our spiritual development.

It is a path with heart, because we have found that the heart of the human being is where unity is experienced, tasted, and the fountain where Love arises in our lives.

At Northwest Sufi Camp, we can’t guarantee an encounter with God – the Divine, the Great Mystery, known by Any Name or No Name – but we can guarantee opportunities to drink deeply of a love so great our hearts can’t contain it. Through shared movement, song, silence, learning and play we allow our hearts to expand little by little, poco a poco, until we can no longer trace a boundary between our Self and the One.

In the lineages that trace back to Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan, we use the following Invocation at all our gatherings:

Toward 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**
The Spirit of Guidance

*A Path with Heart, Jack Kornfield (© 1993)

** The term “Master” refers to the Great Teacher, the One who has mastered. Many substitute the word “Messenger”. An esteemed teacher in the Ruhaniat lineage, Murshid Mariam Baker, has expanded our access to this unspeakable knowing, recommending, “the Master, Message, the Mystery, the Miracle, the Mother.”