Category Archives: News from ARC

Beatitudes Online Retreat to Begin April 26

Beginning next Sunday 26 April, 6pm UK time, I will be offering an online, progressive retreat for 9 weeks focused around the Aramaic Beatitudes in Matthew. We will revisit the Beatitudes and their relevance to current life concerns, starting with personal healing, then expanding our focus and meditation to our communities, nature and the world. This also allows me the opportunity to update some of the teachings on the Aramaic Beatitudes since I recorded the Sounds True “Healing Breath” series nearly twenty years ago. 

Practices like the Beatitudes, which encourage both depth and connection, shared in a group over period of weeks, can have effects that go beyond our personal self. In our case, we will meet staring just after the new moon and ending on the summer solstice. Since we will be meeting during Ramadan, I may also share an occasional attunement from the Sufi tradition, as well as refer to the Aramaic Beatitudes in Luke. We will be meeting using the Zoom technology (You do not need to pay for an account; check this out at zoom.us). Each meeting will last about an hour and a half, once a week.  Recordings will be made for those who are not able to join live.

Please go to the following home page link to join the special groups.io list for the Aramaic Beatitudes retreat. This is the only way in. I ask that people who join do so for the whole series, rather than just drop in and out. Same as for an in-person retreat, really. Once we begin, the group will be locked, again for security, given various problems that Zoom has experienced recently.

https://abwoon.groups.io/g/BeatitudesSpring2020

Go to the bottom of this page and you will find a link to “Subscribe.” I will be posting all of the Zoom details for this series only through this group. This is partly for security’s sake, and partly to make sure that my Zoom account will handle all those wanting to join. I will also be posting the recordings in this group, in case you miss a meeting, as well as hosting questions and/or sharing.

A donation is requested for this series, and donations can be made via PayPal to: donations@eial.org

(Or if you don’t have a PayPal account, please use the link below this message, where you can make a donation via PayPal of any amount via credit card without an account.)

This retreat will be most helpful for those who have experienced the Aramaic work previously, either through a) an in-person retreat with me, b) going through one of the previous Sounds True recorded series or c) having minimally read The Hidden Gospel. This means that I will not be starting from basic explanations during this retreat, so that we can dive right in together.

For those who are new to the Aramaic Beatitudes in Matthew, you might wish to spend some time with the words before each session, staring with (yes) the first Beatitude for the first session. The easiest way to do this is by downloading the Prayers of the Cosmos teaching audio here.

One can also find the CD online, both here in Europe and in the USA.

If this journey works in your life just now, I hope you can join us. May all we do return to praise Reality!

Yours in peace,

Neil





Neil Douglas-Klotz

March 25, 2020

These are two selections from the meditation and teaching that I shared in the online Desert Flowers group (https://abwoon.org/desert-flowers/) on March 22, 2020.

The first is a short commentary on the Aramaic Prayer of Jesus for today (13 min):

Aramaic prayer text used by Neil in the video here.

The second is a longer healing meditation using Aramaic words of Jesus for the four elements (20 min):

To join the Desert Flowers group, please go to the following page on our site:

Desert Flowers

We are still in the middle of Christian Lent with Passover following a few weeks from now and Ramadan shortly thereafter. These are all traditionally times of going inside more, doing without, changing our behaviour to help benefit others: surrender and resurrection, freeing ourselves from inner and outer Pharaohs (self-constructed fantasies), then receiving a message from Reality that empowers our actions. It is also a time in our culture when selfless leadership distinguishes itself from the “selfie” variety, in all of our institutions. Let’s be part of the former. 

Stay well, stay safe and let your actions match the integrity of your prayer and practice.

Yours in peace,

Neil Douglas-Klotz

Donations for this work gratefully accepted via PayPal to: donations@eial.org

Desert Flowers Special Meeting on Zoom This Sunday: March 22, 5 pm UK time

Dear Friends,

Our thrice-yearly Desert Flowers online group will meet online via Zoom this Sunday, 22 March at 5 pm UK time ( for reference: 10 am North America West Coast time).

I will be sharing a few prayers and practices from the Aramaic Jesus tradition suited for these “virus times.” The group continues to meet, meditate and share over the following two weeks. The one-hour meeting will be recorded, video and audio, and links then posted to the Desert Flowers group.

If you would like to join the Desert Flowers group, please read about it and sign up via the link below:

Desert Flowers

There is no charge; donations are gratefully accepted.

Yours in peace,

Neil

Free webinar on Saturday, 25 January

I am pleased to be sharing an hour webinar online tomorrow with my esteemed mentor Shaykh Fadhalla Haeri, who has been working on a new translation of and commentary on the Qur’an, as well as new friend Issa Baba. The theme is “What does it mean to be a Sufi in the 21st century?” Sponsored by the Beyond Initiative, a project that I very much support.

Register for this webinar at this link for the Virtual event on January 25th, 2020 at 6pm GMT (remember to convert this time to your location).

This webinar will take place on Zoom, so you will need to download this free software on your computer or mobile device. The meeting code is in the poster above. I have been told that the audio at least will be recorded for accessing later.

Yours in peace,

Neil

https://zoom.us/meeting/register/vpQvceGhrT8qSkVSz_oj8uaDvmVO-ZL-nA?fbclid=IwAR1oyWsNP7BCgAWYuOhMfgjWbirAlSINGs766uhfgXkt-63tuxaMEvL7V-0

Gibran’s Little Book of Wisdom Released 

Government is an agreement 
between you and me.
You and I are often wrong.

Fife, Scotland: 2 September 2019

The last of my four “little books” of Kahlil Gibran is now out, this one full of wisdom for daily life–living in community and living alone, plus Gibran’s often trenchant and humorous sayings, stories and verse on politics, religion, and economics. (My European friends will need to wait another few weeks for the release here.)

The book also contains the source of JFK’s famous “Ask not what your country can do for you…” speech, in its entirety. Here’s a short excerpt from Gibran’s article written in 1925:

When the spring sings its hymns, the dead of the winter rise, shed their shrouds, and march forward.

Come and tell me who and what you are. 

Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? If you are the first, then you are a parasite. If the second, then you are an oasis in a desert.

Are you a merchant using the need of society for the necessities of life for your own monopoly and exorbitant profit? Or are you a sincere, hard-working and diligent person facilitating the exchange between the weaver and the farmer and charging a reasonable profit as a broker between supply and demand? If you are the first, then you are a criminal, whether you live in a palace or a prison. If you are the second, then you are a charitable person, whether you are thanked or denounced by people.

The book contains many stories, my favorite entitled here “A Voice from the Storm,” in which the narrator (Gibran?) encounters an ex-political leader now living as a hermit in the mountains, who tells him:

“No, my brother, the West is not higher than the East, nor is the West lower than the East. And the difference that stands between the two is not greater than the difference between the tiger and the lion.”
“There is a just and perfect law that I have found behind the exterior of society, a law that equalizes misery, prosperity, and ignorance. It does not prefer one nation to another, nor does it oppress one tribe in order to enrich another.”

The book closes with a section entitled “Wisdom Beyond Words,” in which we hear some of Gibran’s deepest and most beautiful insights:

Let him who would have wisdom 
seek it in a buttercup or
in a pinch of red clay. 
 
I am still the singer. 
I shall sing the earth, 
and I shall sing your lost dreaming, 
which walks the day 
between sleep and sleep.

I hope you enjoy this last one. it has been an enjoyable two year’s journey for me to select and re-edit one of the best-known and yet under-valued writers of the 20th century, a refugee to America from what was then called “Syria.” Would he be welcome today?

You can order the book through the Abwoon Network site, via various online sources here.

–Neil

Registration now open: “Light of Success” in Columbus, Ohio

The Light of Success:

Achievement in the World

and the Spiritual Life

How to attain our earthly goals and still be happy

 

A workshop with

Neil Douglas-Klotz and Natalia Lapteva

October 26-29, 2017

 

Place: Martin dePorres Center, Columbus, Ohio

Time: Thursday evening 7pm until Sunday 12 noon, Friday and Saturday evenings included.

 

When we embark on the spiritual journey, we often put aside our more ‘mundane’ and ‘common’ desires and purposes, or begin to consider them as being on a ‘lower plane’ altogether. However, it is important for us, as beings of flesh and emotion, to develop, tend and bring to fruition all facets of our lives.

On the path of the inner life, how can we find a way to live harmoniously in the ‘real world’?  If we over-focus on success, we risk being sucked into an endless round of activity—there is always more to achieve—and we can become trapped by what we have manifested. If we suppress our desire to create and achieve, the self usually reacts negatively. Down either path can lie depression and ill-health. How do we find the balance and the joy that can arise from it?

We will use as tools: Dances of Universal Peace, walking and sitting meditation, Sufi wasifa and zikr, practices from world spirituality and modern psychology. Inspired by the teachings of Murshid Samuel Lewis and Hazrat Inayat Khan on “Sadhana—the Path of Attaintment.”

“The love of power, wealth, status and influence are inherent in us. Our conditioned consciousness drives us towards acquiring these assets. As these ideas have no definable end, their quest will inevitably produce some discord, violence and brutality towards oneself and others. Conditioned consciousness and curbing the lower self or ego leads to potential resistance and even depression, unless it connects with the higher self and soul.” –Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri

Registration and Information here.

New Offerings from the Abwoon Network and ARC Books

Dear Friends,

I am happy to announce the following new offerings at the Abwoon Network store site. My thanks to a number of friends who helped make these possible, including Richard Abdul Haqq, Jelaluddin Sturm, Katie Shroth, Jim Gentles, Jannat Granger and Farid Granger.

Love and blessings for the New Year!

Neil

Audio Downloads:

25% discount on all audio downloads at the site until 6 January 2017.

Use this code (once per person):  NEWYEAR17

Vectors of Love

Vectors of Love Live Workshop

A weekend workshop from April 2015 with one of the early trials of the ‘Nomad’s Way’ theme I have been working with. Also includes: the relation of our earliest human memories to some of the “Beautiful Names of Allah’–qualities we already possess, but may have forgotten. Also: the four Daroods that were given to Murshid Samuel Lewis by Sufi Barkat Ali, taught as both chants and Walks. 12.5 hours total: 

http://abwoon.org/downloads/vectors-of-love-workshop/


Sufi Stories LiveSufi Stories Live, Volume One

I have gone rummaging through my archives and begun to unearth some of the best live recordings of Sufi stories and world wisdom tales that I have shared over the past decade. The first volume contains: Mullah Nasruddin’s Jobs, Mullah and the Parrot, The Goldsmith’s Daughter, Mullah’s Missing Donkey, Sufi Stories of Mariam and Jesus, The Shaykh and Halva and Jonah’s Zikr and Story.

http://abwoon.org/downloads/3075/

New Books:

original_meditation_sm

Original Meditation:

The Aramaic Jesus and the Spirituality of Creation

By Neil Douglas-Klotz

A new paperback edition of  “Genesis Meditations” with original cover art by Murshida Fatima Lassar and cover design by Jelaluddin Sturm in Berlin. “One of the best spiritual books of the year”–Spirituality and Health

Today apocalyptic predictions and images dominate popular culture and social media. Yet for most of our history, human consciousness focused on the mystery of beginnings, not endings. Our ancestors felt that the most powerful energy and clearest vision for the future  could be found at our inception.  They meditated on stories of the Great Beginning as the way to go forward.

http://abwoon.org/originalmeditation/

 

A Book of Self Re-education

By Raden Ayou Jodjana

Foreword by Neil Douglas-Klotz

A Book of Self Re-education is a treasure house for all who wish to explore the creative essence of life in the substances of their bodily form. Raden Ayou Jodjana (1888-1981), beloved student of the Sufi Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan and devoted wife of Prince Raden Mas Jodjana, the great Jananese dancer, here expresses the inexpressible teaching of these two great masters as a step-by-step guide to waking up fully inside our human bodies.

http://abwoon.org/a-book-of-self-re-education/