Chai w/ Rumi
Presenter: Saima & Yousuf | Time: Saturday - August 27, 6:00-7:00pm | Location: Healing Space
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Workshop Description
A multi-sensory presentation comprising poetry, music, meditation - an exploration of NonDual seeking on the Sufi path. The session will introduce the attendees to the concepts of Nafs (Ego-mind), Ruh (Spirit), Zikr (Purification), Muraaqba (Deep Meditation), Maqaam (Stations), Fana (Annihilation) and Baqa (Permanence in Truth). Weaved through poetry of Rumi and qawwalis of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, this serendipitous hide-and-seek play of the Lover and the Beloved may facilitate insights into our True nature.
Presenter Bio
Saima Yousuf has been drawn to create art and examine spiritual truth since early childhood. Throughout life, Saima has been curious about what different traditions and mystics have truly meant. She’s been amazed at the similarities and is on a path to find the Heart of it All. Her artistic style aims to spread beauty to her surroundings, by painting reflections, planting gardens, practicing emphatic listening, and designing Zen-like interiors. She pursued art throughout high school, and then went on to major in Fine Arts at TCNJ. One of her greatest memories from college is when Prof Wendell Brooks said that her work resounds with "soul". After starting a family and taking a suitable career path (working at Ethan Allen as a designer), she decided to take a leap of faith. She followed a yearning to work with kids and also make art. Art that points to something which unites yet transcends our human condition. Currently, she cannot believe that she’s living her dream, pinching herself as she runs her holistic art studio in Hamilton, NJ, where she creates art, holds classes, studies NonViolent Communication, and Sufism. The Heart of Art studio also hosts yoga, sound healing, ecstatic dance, and other music events curated with her partner Yousuf Arain.
Yousuf Arain believes each and every one of us is blessed with immense potential and we owe it to ourselves to discover it. What started with training in Engineering & Liberal Arts at Columbia University, followed by a decade-plus career in Finance/Banking, reinventing then as an artist in the field of Music & Design, has morphed into the current Visual Arts and Film-making mystic. These are, and always will be, just labels, in absence of gratitude for all that which paved the path along the way. Being a student of mysticism since childhood, the intellectual understanding was never enough to satiate the longing. Throwing himself on an ascetic path of a Sufi soon after college he set out to experience first hand what had only been touched upon intellectually. The journey to his true purpose continues, in summation, with this realization: Look Inwards, Find Eternity (L.I.F.E.)