Andrew Harvey – The Sufi Way of the Beloved

Andrew Harvey – The Sufi Way of the Beloved

Open to the sacred love at the core of the Sufi path and discover teachings and practices that can liberate your soul through a profoundly intimate relationship with the Divine.

Prepare to access your ecstatic depths, savor the nectar of your soul, and walk your path with greater fearlessness and compassion.

In the rapturous lines of a Rumi or Hafiz poem, we discover intimate, sublime and passionate descriptions of spiritual awakening.

These Sufi mystics were “drunk” on the wine of God — with ecstasy coursing through every cell of their beings. They related to the Divine as we would our most cherished lover, bequeathing profoundly beautiful words and stories that inspire us to lay our souls bare before God in a state of deep, ecstatic surrender.

In their mystical stories, there is an unrivaledreverence for the grandeur and majesty of God, not only as a transcendent Source but as the essence of all life. They see God in the petals of a flower, the touch of a child, or the play of light at sunset.

In the eyes of these mystics, all of life is a beautiful song that reverberates with holiness.

Sufi mystics offer us a vision of spiritual life that is at once exalted but also profoundly worldly; they live IN the world but not OF the world. They serve the Divine by illuminating the divinity in all things (and all people) leading to a more ecstatic relationship with life itself.

They are deeply enlightened but also profoundly humble, dedicated to serve the One through its expressions as the Many.

This profoundly passionate relationship with the Divine holds the key to creating a truly divine life as well as creating peace between major faiths, which have been increasingly polarized due to distorted versions of the authentic spiritual realizations at their cores.

The Sufi path is a path of direct experience through dance, poetry, prayer, and communion with the Beloved. It is about a deep level of surrender to the Divine and then birthing a life that expresses that Divine love in the world.

Ultimately, Sufis point the way to the universality of truth, love, wisdom, and a full embrace of major spiritual traditions. They represent the leading edge of Islamic faith and practice: a path of deep dedication to universal love.

That’s why it is so tragic that our vision of Islam has become defined by the most debased and distorted views held by fanatics and proponents of terrorism. Just as we should not define any religion by its most extreme adherents, so must we give Islam a chance to reveal its most sublime, elevated and universal expression.

This can be found in The Sufi Way of the Beloved, a 7-module program that offers you a profound initiation into esoteric wisdom, inspired stories, and profound spiritual practices.

Discovering the Sublime

Whether you are a Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, shaman, or someone who considers yourself spiritual but not religious, you will deepen and expand your spiritual life by spending seven sessions with one of the world’s most passionate and articulate translators of Sufism, Andrew Harvey.

Andrew is well-trained in all the major religious traditions but he has a particularly profound relationship with Sufism. Through his deep insights, scholarship, and storytelling, you will open a door to a new understanding of the importance of this mystical lineage and the role it can play in liberating you into a more devotional relationship with life.

If we are to create true peace between world religions, we need to understand the depths of Islam and its luminous gifts to the world, especially those expressed by the many Sufi teachers and masters who offer us the most accessible teachings.

In The Sufi Way of the Beloved, mystic-scholar Andrew Harvey will bring you into the inmost heart of Sufism to receive the blessing — and experience the initiatory power — of this sacred lineage.

If you’ve ever been curious about the fierce, noble and tender power of the Sufi path, Andrew Harvey is an ideal guide who can bring it vividly to life. He’s not only a scholar of many major faiths, he’s been a long-time student, translator and initiate of Sufi lineages and particularly the poets whose words resound with direct revelation.

Andrew is well known as the author of over 40 books and spiritual classics, including Rumi: The Way of Passion, The Essential Mystics, and The Son of Man, but if you haven’t heard him speak, prepare to be amazed. He’s become one of the most popular Shift Network faculty for a reason: his words are the exact medicine our souls need right now as we traverse a time of great trial on the planet.

He is a tsunami of love-wisdom, pouring forth his adoration for the Divine and his passion for the sacred marriage of mysticism and action. He beckons you into a state of rapture and deep appreciation for the splendor of the Universe while unflinchingly speaking truth about our delusions.

During the seven modules of The Sufi Way of the Beloved, he’ll take you into the hidden chambers of your heart, chambers deeply explored by these mystical “friends” who beckon you into the fire of life-transforming grace.

Not only will you shift your whole understanding of Sufism and discover the heart of this profound lineage, you’ll also understand Islamic concepts in a whole new way.

The power at the heart of this path is too precious for sincere seekers to overlook. Sufism offers a depth charge that can explode your heart into new delights and awaken the ecstasy of an intimate relationship with the Divine.

Sufis are skilled at removing long-held illusions that prevent us from awakening to the bliss of God-contact. By diving into the depths of your heart, you will see the Beloved in the eyes of all who cross your path.

You’ll better understand how to navigate heartbreaks and “dark nights of the soul” to discover a timeless vision of the glory of Creation. You’ll deepen your appreciation for sacred poetry.

Knowing and feeling the magnificence in all life can impel us to start putting love and justice into action to protect our world on every level. It can empower us with the sacred energy we need to undo our habits of exploitation and domination.

By dancing into a deeper relationship with the great Sufi mystics, like Rumi, you’ll learn the REAL story of what it takes to awaken — and how you can apply these lessons in your life.

Sufis are also far from sweetness-and-bliss mystics; they look straight into the heart of darkness to transform it. There is a rigor, depth and sobriety that serve us well as we navigate the many collective challenges we face.

Over the course of this profound journey, Andrew will take you into your depths through a kind of alchemical communion with seven key mystics who offer insights on the stages of initiation you must experience to birth the Divine Human within.

During the seven modules, you’ll:

• Discover a practice of burning in the heart for the Beloved
• Recognize the centrality of the Divine Feminine to Islam
• Receive a profound overview of the Prophet Mohammed’s mystical teaching on divinization
• Understand the true meaning of surrender
• Learn the core Sufi practice of remembrance that enables you to stay aligned with the Beloved
• Understand the role of extreme suffering in extreme transformation
• Learn from the very different examples of 7 of the most renowned Sufi teachers
• Develop a deeper appreciation of the Prophet Mohammed’s teachings and stories
• See how integrating divine intelligence into how we design societycan unite our spiritual ideals with societal principles
• Celebrate the Sufi quest for a more universal understanding that embraces all paths

If you’ve ever been awed by the love-drenched words of a Rumi poem, this is the program for you, one in which your natural mystical devotion is given free rein.

You’ll see the spiritual inheritance of Sufism and Islam with entirely new eyes. You’ll be initiated into an understanding of how the fusion of compassion and passion, equanimity and fire, tender love and sacred activism, can give rise to a sacred life that can change the world.

You’ll weep. You’ll soar. You’ll get very sober about engaging the challenges of our day. And you’ll celebrate the divine feast that we are given to savor in every moment.

What You’ll Discover in These 7 Modules

In this 7-part transformational intensive, Andrew will guide you through the core teachings illuminated by the Sufi mystics and transmitted through the passionate love of the soul.

Each contemplation and training session will build harmoniously upon the next, so that you’ll develop a complete, holistic understanding of the practices, tools and principles you’ll need to engage a sacred view of all of life, as well as how to bring divine intelligence into the way we design our societies and approach our global relationships.

Module 1: The Sufi Vision of the Way of the Beloved

Drawing from mystical commentaries on the Koran and the tradition of the Prophet’s sacred sayings known as the Hadiths, we’ll explore Sufism in a Koranic context as the core love and wisdom way of Islam. You’ll also gain an overview of the seven most important and radical of the Prophet’s Hadiths and discover how they illumine a 4-part path of tremendous rigor, passion and beauty in uniting with the Beloved.

In this module, you’ll discover:

• A vision of the Koran’s mystical sublimity
• An overview of the Prophet’s mystical teaching on divinization
• An understanding of the core map of the path to the Beloved
• A practice of the name of God, Allah, will be offered as a means to sustain absorption and surrender

Module 2: Two Martyrs of Love

We’ll celebrate the work and lives of two Sufi masters who obeyed the Prophet’s Hadith, “die before you die,”martyring their illusory false selves to live in the splendor of presence and radically inspiring the unfolding of Sufism. Al-Hallaj paid for his celebrated proclamation of An-al-haqq (I am the supreme reality) by being executed, but experienced his death in such an ecstatic way that the mystical heart of Islam was permanently transformed. Rabia, Islam’s greatest woman mystic and the first to call God the Beloved, took the path of humble disappearance into the One, leaving us a handful of mystical signposts of the rarest clarity to the path of union.

In this module, you’ll discover:

• The mystical birth in Al-Hallaj’s death and the way it transformed a tradition
• The role of extreme suffering in extreme transformation
• Three of Rabia’s most potent poems
• A prayer practice with Rabia’s great prayer to the Beloved that will help you align with the One

Module 3: The Glory of the Glory

Ibn Arabi

Ibn Arabi, the greatest of all Sufi philosophers and a sublime mystical poet, was born in Spain in 1165. He became a Sufi at 20, and after a lifetime of traveling and teaching, settled in Damascus, where he died in 1223. In this module, we will concentrate on the three most original and inspiring aspects of Ibn Arabi’s work: his revelation of the unique sacred path and dignity of each human being, his exploration of reality as a perpetually fresh unfolding of the One, and his vision of ecstatic sacramental relationship from his account of a revelatory love for a young girl in The Interpreter of Ardent Desires.

In this module, you’ll discover:

• The glory of the Beloved as conveyed to Islam’s greatest philosophical genius
• The blessing vision of Islam and how it reflects the sacredness of the human
• A radical vision of the potential fusion of human and divine love and its revelations
• The core Sufi practice of remembrance that enables you to stay aligned with the Beloved

Module 4: Radiant Bewilderment as the Gate to Oneness

Mystical poet Attar was born during the 12th century in Nishapur in northeast Iran. After wandering the Middle East and India, he returned and settled in his hometown, where he ran a small pharmacy and wrote perhaps the greatest of all long mystical poems, The Conference of the Birds. We will celebrate this astonishing masterpiece and concentrate on three crucial aspects of Attar’s vision: his understanding of the different types of human nature and the subtle addictions we adhere to, his unfolding of his way to the Beloved in a journey through “seven different valleys of consciousness,” and his amazing and paradoxical vision of the last bewildering stages to union with the Beloved and the nature of union itself.

In this module, you’ll discover:

• The rigor and range of Sufi psychology
• Attar’s inspired mystical poetry, a favorite of Rumi’s
• A fiercely realistic sense of the rigor of the real path to union
• A practice of burning in the heart for the Beloved

Module 5: The Way of Passion

Rumi has been called “the rose of glory of Sufism.” The global renaissance of Rumi’s works reveals how essential his message of universal love is for the healing of our world crisis. We’ll explore Rumi’s vision and experience of the way of the Beloved through three essential themes: the role of human love and friendship for all beings in divine awakening, the need to be possessed by divine passion to be born into divine identity, the deep meaning of the dark night process, called fana in Sufism, that prepares the birth of the embodied divine human.

In this module, you’ll discover:

• Rumi’s personal journey to embodying the Beloved
• How to awaken divine passion in yourself
• The new energy released by divine passion in the divinization process
• A practice of invoking a descent of light into mind, heart, soul and the cells of the body

Module 6: The Way of Fierce Truth

An Invocation of the Transforming Presence of Shams

Shams of Tabriz lives in the glory of the poetry and realization of Rumi, where he is called among other things, “a wolf who is a shepherd, a black lion and a sword of truth.”We also have in the brilliant fragments of Shams’s Maquamat,diamonds of fierce transmission that reveal him as an incendiary of truth. Weaving Rumi’s poems, Shams’s words, and stories of Shams from the Sufi tradition, Andrew will present a sustained invocation of Shams’s ferocious and glorious embodiment of the Beloved and the way it continues to challenge all of us to ultimate visceral authenticity. A special emphasis will be placed on Shams’s vision and practice of dance as a way to radical embodiment.

In this module, you’ll discover:

• An initiation into the radioactive grace field of Shams’s mysterious and still alive presence
• An immersion in the cauldron of paradox that is Shams’s teachings
• A vision of sacred dance as a way of embodying divine truth, beauty and energy
• A practice of saying the name Allah with the black light

Module 7: A Sufi Vision for the World

Dara Shikoh (1615-1659) was the eldest son and heir apparent of the Mughal emperor of India, Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Majal. His younger brother, Araungzeb, seized the empire by imprisoning his father, torturing and beheading his brother and having Dara Shikoh’s naked body dragged through the streets of Delhi. This was all the more tragic as Dara Shikoh was an enlightened Sufi mystic philosopher and poet who had a vision inspired by Sufi mysticism of an India united beyond religious divisions in the depths of a mystical love of the Beloved. Had Dara Shikoh become emperor, the history of India and of Islam would have been radically different.

During this last module of the program, you will explore the extraordinary journey of Dara Shikoh’s life, the healing power of his knowledge of the deep union between Hindu and Islamic mysticism, and the significance of his adventure in the identity struggle that is now splitting and wounding Islam and the world. We’ll end with a vision of how the truths of Sufi mysticism could transform Islam and the nature of our reality.

In this module, you’ll discover:

• An introduction to one of the most inspiring sacred activists of Islam
• A vision of the mystical unity of Hindu and Islamic revelation
• A vision of a world unified in sacred diversity through a universal mysticism
• A 7-part body prayer that enables you to realize yourself as the living instrument of the Beloved’s love in action

Join the Global Community

The Sufi Way of the Beloved not only offers some of the most advanced online spiritual teachings currently available, it also offers a thriving global community of support.

Join your fellow students and practitioners from across the world in the interactive conference calls or in our online community to support and learn from each other while you learn to open your mind and expand your paradigm of reality.

This international community is also at the leading edge of a global movement of people who are committed to manifesting a better world for all beings. This emerging planetary movement is rooted in an open heart and stands for the principles of mutual support, cooperation, harmony and reverence for all of life.

Here’s What You’ll Receive

Seven 90-Minute Recorded Class Sessions with Andrew Harvey

Experience a rare opportunity to learn from one of the world’s leading spiritual teachers from the comfort of your own home. Each class session guides you to create the specific skills and abilities to awaken your spiritual potential. Course sessions are on Tuesdays at 5:00pm Pacific.

Seven PDF Transcripts of
Class Sessions

In addition to the high quality MP3 audios, you’ll also receive the entire class transcription in PDF format after each session is completed. This way you can review, print and highlight the most important insights and practices that you’ll learn.

Exercises and Questions for Each Lesson

After each lesson, you will then have the option to do related exercises, practice new tools and answer questions in order to accelerate your learning.

The Sufi Way of the Beloved Bonus Collection

• In the Fire of Grace
  Video with Banafsheh Sayyad

• Dancing As the Beloved of the Beloved
  Audio Dialogue with Andrew and Banafsheh Sayyad

• Rumi & the Way of Passion: Igniting the Divine Fire in Your Heart
  First 2 Sessions of the 10-week Digital Course with Andrew Harvey

• The Path to the Beloved
  Audio Dialogue with Charles Upton

An Unprecedented Opportunity to Join The Sufi Way of the Beloved Virtual Training

We feel honored that Andrew Harvey has chosen to partner with The Shift Network to offer this exclusive online training. This is a rare opportunity to interact directly with a modern mystic and renowned scholar who draws upon age-old wisdom and to connect with a global community of like minds and hearts who are doing this important and transformative work.

Through this powerful online format, you’ll not only save time and money on workshop costs (plus travel, accommodations and meals, which would cost thousands of dollars). But you’ll be able to benefit from Andrew’s incredible teachings and exercises from the comfort of your home — at your own pace!

If you are serious about deepening your spiritual life and your expression in the world as a spiritual activist, then you owe it to yourself, your loved ones and our world to take this one-of-a-kind training with Andrew Harvey.

If you’re ready to take the next step on your powerful spiritual journey, click the register button below to reserve your space now