The Sufi Path to Heart Wisdom & Divine Guidance with Dr. Salima Adelstein

A Sufi spiritual guide on heart wisdom, divine guidance, and the practice that changes everything.

Sufi spiritual guide and master healer Salima Adelstein joins me to explore the wisdom your heart already holds. 

After 35 years and 40,000+ people guided, Salima offers a grounded path back to your own inner knowing.

• The difference between mind knowledge and heart wisdom
• How divine guidance becomes clear when you stop seeking outside yourself
• Why your resistance is the doorway, not the obstacle
• A simple mirror practice you can try today
• Salima's unlikely path from Cambridge to studying with a Sufi sheikh in Palestine

Free Gift: Explore the 5 C's of Sufism at sufi5.com.

🤍 Find me on Instagram @elena_lipson.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome back to an intuitive life podcast. This is Alina Lipson, and I'm excited. I'm excited to share today's guest with you. You know, we're committed here to bringing on amazing people who have lives that are very different from our own, but also connected by shared values and shared resources that help us reconnect to ourselves and what's most important. So today I'm very, very excited to welcome Selima Adelstein, is a Sufi spiritual guide, master healer, and co-president of the University of Sufism, named as the only female spiritual guide in the US in the Shah Delia. Sufi, yes, I got a thumbs up tradition. She has spent over 35 years helping over 40,000 individuals heal from illness and lifelong emotional pain. Founder of the International Peace Center and co-author of A Drop in the Ocean of Love. She offers seminars nationally and internationally where she loves to help people with the healing that comes from embodying the deep truth of their beauty and essence. That is all the things we love to we love to explore here. So welcome, Selima. I'm so excited to have you. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah. So we chatted a little bit before we hit record, and my my mind already is going like three different directions. But one thing you said was your source of how you became a healer. And I'd love to hear that kind of that origin story of how you found yourself where you're sitting today, being able to help so many people with this. It's not a modality. It's uh, I mean, maybe so two questions. What is Sufism? And how did you become a healer in the Sufism tradition?

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Sure. Um trying to shorten it and but it actually started when I was a little girl and I wanted to be a doctor. And I grew up at a time where girls were nurses, not doctors. And everybody said to me, Oh, you want to be a nurse? And I said, No, I want to be a doctor. And I happened to grow up in a family where I was really encouraged to be what my heart was telling me to be. But unfortunately, I went to work in a hospital and I found out in high school, I don't like the sight of blood, I don't like the smell of a hospital, and I'm going to dedicate umpteen years of my life to doing this. I don't think so. So I let it go. But I noticed that as I was doing the work that I was doing in special education and the work that I was doing in hospice, especially with children, I noticed that my hand would make these funny movements. And I'd felt this light and this vibration as I was either talking with somebody or putting my hands on their body for variety of different reasons. Sometimes when a kid was having a tantrum, just sort of holding them to calm them down. And she said, Oh, yes, my dear, you come from a long line of healers back in the old country, and I was just waiting for one of my grandchildren to figure it out and to decide this is their livelihood. So I'm not surprised at all. And don't you worry about what anybody says. And I didn't understand exactly what she meant by that, except that I have two brothers who were doctors, and I was the oldest girl and the oldest child. And when I left my so-called profession and started out as an entrepreneur as a healer, I fell off this wonderful pedestal that my brothers had me on, and they thought my sister has lost it. And it wasn't until my brother started to refer some patients and started to see the work and the effect of the work that he started to shift and started to say, maybe there is something to this. And as I began to explore that for myself and started to travel around the world learning more about alternative healing methods, I was introduced to Sufism. I was a meditator before that. And I was introduced to Sufism by a uh Sufi sheikh who lived in Palestine. And here I am growing up in a Jewish tradition in Palestine, always told this is your enemy, right? Especially now, with what's going on in the world. And what he taught me about Sufi's spiritual healing totally changed my life, totally transformed everything that I knew about healing, and really understanding the essence and the root of healing and how the connection with in my world, the connection with God, whether you believe it's the divine or a higher power, whatever word in Sufism, we use the word God, and we talk about the divine guidance that comes when we are connected deeply to God. And as he was teaching me all these beautiful Sufi spiritual techniques, I was seeing the most magnificent light because it as I was very intuitive and could see on an inner plane. And I was seeing not only the most beautiful, magnificent lights, but the transformation in people's souls, and seeing them being set free from all the places within us that we set boundaries and we keep ourselves in a prison of our disbelief, if you will. And we're watching those break free and watching people discover all the beautiful gifts and the talents and the things that they've always wanted to do in their life, but held themselves back from it. And it became the most rewarding thing that I ever could think about doing, and so much so that I said, we need to start a university and we need to help people really embody this because it's one thing to talk about unity, it's one thing to talk about divine guidance, one thing to talk about um mysticism, it's another thing to experience it, and that's what our university does is it gives people the actual direct experience of these things, so it's no longer in your mind, but a full body and heart-centered experience of not only divine guidance, but finding out the truth of who you are, and so I I love that story, and I think there's so much, like I think the unity piece really makes me pause a little bit because how you know, how did you end up in Palestine?

SPEAKER_00 7:27

I think as a you know, with a Jewish heritage and doing sort of mystical, there's there's definitely mysticism in Judaism, right? Like the Kabbalah and that deep teaching as well. How did you land there? And then what was it about the teaching itself, or maybe it was the teacher? Sometimes it's the teacher, right, that opened something up in you. What was it that transformed, do you think, within you that allowed you to sort of have that deep knowing? Obviously, you're starting one from like the experience. I'm sure there's more story in between to starting the university. That's a big like decision to make. What was it about the experience that you had in that moment? And I guess how did you land there? And what was it about the experience?

SPEAKER_01 8:07

Yeah, I I landed there by um, I would say by accident. You know, I happened to be teaching a class in um New Mexico on energy healing, and a friend, I had just been traveling around the world and especially in India, and a friend said this Sufi master was in town, and maybe I would like to meet him. So I did. I went and visited him, and there was something so mystical about his presence that I knew that he had something to give me and to teach me, and he felt the same. So he invited me to come and study with him in Palestine. And I have to tell you, I was scared.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

I can imagine. I mean, it's not a it's not a if you're listening to the world news or the you know how we're supposed to feel about certain cultures. I could and I have a Jewish heritage as well, so I'm definitely curious like how what was that process for you? You were scared, but sort of felt that that pull.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

But I felt that pull and that call. And also he carried so much love, so much love that I I was literally attracted to that love. You know how you can look somebody in the in your in their eyes and just see so deep into their soul and their spirit that they just carry you into a world that you've never known before. And I was very much in my mind. And I'm I'm an intellectual and I love knowledge. So what he taught was the difference between my mind's knowledge and my heart's wisdom through the Sufi practices. And it it it really blew my mind, is the only way that I could say it. My mind couldn't grasp it, it couldn't understand what was happening. But there was this place in my heart where I was making separation. I'm a Jew, these are Palestinians, I need to be afraid of them. I was always told these are my enemy. And all of a sudden, through the just the simple thing of remembering God's name, I'm watching my heart come into a place of oneness instead of duality. And I'm saying, oh my God, the places of fear, the places of separation, the places of I was class A number one warrior. If there was something to worry about, you can count on me to worry about it. I thought you said a warrior. I was like, You're a warrior. I am a warrior too. Right. I'm a warrior. And but I was also a major warrior. I think it was also part of my heritage. And all of a sudden, it's like it was just gone, erased from my field. I couldn't find a warry nerve within my being. And it was miraculous for me, that transformation was so miraculous that I realized how often my perception and what I believed was filtering the reality of what I was experiencing in life and not allowing me to experience the fullness and all the beauty that God wanted me to see, not only in myself, but in others.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

I love that. That's so beautiful. I think when we sit face to face with, I would say 99% of anyone, and we let our love lead, right, versus the story, I think we find that connection regardless. So in that way, it feels very human and mystical at the same time. Um, I I love that. I think that's a beautiful sort of journey. And I know you you I want to hear about the university piece as well, but when I was doing a bit of research on the I came up with the, or I didn't come up with it, I found the five C's of Sue Fism. And would you say that's the kind of foundation? And if so, would you share what those are and how they you know invite people in to explore?

SPEAKER_01 12:25

Sure. And we also have a um a free offering for your audience.

SPEAKER_00 12:31

Yes, that link will be in the show notes for sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

That are a series of videos and a little workbook to take you through what I'm just gonna very briefly describe now. And the first thing has to do with consciousness, right? It has to do with finding and discovering your heart's wisdom. And what the heart knows is different than what the mind knows. Our mind is brilliant, but our mind by its nature is duality, it discriminates, it lets me know you're you and I'm me. This is a guy, this is a this is uh a man. I've got a gray sweater on, somebody has a white sweater on. It's the nature of the mind. The heart wants to harmonize, the heart wants to come bring things together. The connection of moving from the heart into the deeper wisdom of the heart requires surrendering the mind to the heart's wisdom. And for someone like me that was brought up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that wasn't an easy journey. And it's not an easy journey for most people. But what makes it easy is love because love becomes a magnetic force, and I'm not talking about our human love because we've all been hurt in some way, and our human love, because it has conditions to it. I'm talking about a divine love that's totally unconditional, and when we feel that within us, it becomes a magnetic pull of our being to connect more to those higher states of consciousness that call our being home. And that's what I felt like when I went to Palestine. I felt like I was being called home.

SPEAKER_00 14:33

Beautiful. And so the the consciousness is kind of the well, I guess these the five C's, and I I'll just share them consciousness, connection, clarity, communication, commitment. Is that because my my initial thought is Sufism is from the Middle East and it has this traditional language and teaching. Is this like a translation of the of the sort of tenets of it, or is it your translation? Like the five C's?

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Is that what every yeah? It's a way of trying to help people understand the universality of Sufism so that you don't stop with what we call the pictures, right? Oh, this this comes from Islam, so I don't want any part of it. Oh, this comes from the Middle East, and I'm more attracted to the South Asian, or I'm more attracted to this. What the five Cs are doing is trying to break down the tenets of Sufism into a really understandable way for those of us that are in the West to understand what it means to answer the very simple questions about who am I? What am I doing here? How do I live the best possible life that is fulfilling and satisfying and purposeful in all the different stages of my life?

SPEAKER_00 16:00

So, would you say when you teach it through the university, is it is it like the tenants and the practices? Is it a type of um spirituality where you have to embrace becoming a Sufi? Is that is that part of the practice, or is it just really living out the tenets of through practices and through I'm not sure I'd love to know more about how how you do that? How do you be a Sufi practitioner, a master, or healer? Are there practices involved?

SPEAKER_01 16:30

There are definitely practices involved, but you do not need to be a Sufi in order to do the practices, and more importantly, it's not about being a Sufi, it's about being your true self and finding your true self, lifting off what we call the veils of our personality, lifting off the veils of our ego, lifting off the, and this is the Sufi healing, lifting off the patterns and the images and the things that we've been taught that influence our beliefs, and the way that we might be um concerned about what would happen if I allowed myself to be as great and as big and as wonderful and as beautiful as God made me to be.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

I love that. So there's like an attraction, I think we have very shared similar language, which we we chatted about before we hit record, which is really interesting because I do think there's a lot of preconceived notions about, you know, what it is. I guess, like I said, my only context was it was Rumi, the poet, who is like a Sufi mystic, right? That's what I've I've sort of seen. Um so when it when someone comes to the university or your teachings, is it is it because they're looking for guidance? Is it because they're looking for answers, or is it like who comes to the university and who into your teachings do you find?

SPEAKER_01 18:07

We have three different types of people, I would say, that come. We have professionals who come that are either doctors, acupuncturists, physical therapists, that want to infuse spirituality into their profession. Lawyers, for example, uh entrepreneurship. Interesting. Lawyers do that's great. But they want to take in and create a wholeness of their practice and infuse in spirituality into it. There are people who need healing who are sick, who have been dealing with either emotional sicknesses or physical illnesses, and come because they want to learn how to heal themselves, and then actually wind up being good healers. Um, but they come because they need healing. And then the third type of people that generally come to the university are people who are spiritual seekers and they just want to grow spiritually, they want to learn more about how do I live a purposeful divine life, how do I continue to tap into the divine guidance that's inside of me that knows truth and is seeking truth and is seeking something that's gonna say, my life here is about goodness. My when I look in the mirror, I have this favorite activity I'd love to to do with um the students and your audience may enjoy it, is really looking in the mirror, right? And really then saying and repeating, when God made me, God made beauty. And then just watch what happens in your mind when you say that, and just say the word I use is a bismula, just say it's okay, right? It's okay. Whatever came up, it's okay. You're holding it in love. Whatever it is, I'm not beautiful, other people are not me, I'm not worthy, whatever comes up, and then you say it again when God made me, God made me, and you just let it sink into your heart and find the place of truth, and then again, notice, and we begin to identify what are those different voices that begin to take you either away from the truth or draw you closer to the truth of your being.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

I love that. I sort of practiced it out in my mind as you said it. And the first one was really beautiful, actually. It's like, oh, yes, okay. And then I said it again, just in my imagination. And then I sort of heard those voices of like, yeah, but what about this? Or yeah, but what about that? Which can be a real gift, actually, right? You can actually see exactly where you're feeling that shame or not enoughness, or you can't feel worthy or fully beautiful until this gets fixed. My my stomach or my whatever or my money or you know, whatever that might be. Yeah, but but yeah, okay, I get it with this. Yeah, that's that's that's a really powerful self-reflection. It'll point you right to your little kinks, right? To your little uh kinks in the hose, I should say.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

Like and I describe it as a a mirror. The heart is a mirror. And you know, I'm sure you you know about those mirrors you can look into where if you're short, they make you look tall. If you're um skinny, they make you look fat. Well Our heart can be the same way. It can give you a distorted perception based on the experiences that we've had in our life, based on hurts or disappointments or what other people have told you about yourself, right? And the Sufi practices are like uh washing of the mirror of your heart, taking the rust out of the mirror so that what you see becomes a clear reflection of that beauty. And then the deeper that you go, this is my favorite part of it, is you begin to see the treasures and the gifts that God has given you to do in this lifetime. So even though we may talk about unity and we're all one, we also are all unique and we all have special gifts and special talents that God gives us. And we begin to discover oh, I've got a jewel in my heart that belongs to me.

SPEAKER_00 23:07

It's so beautiful, it seems very accessible. I had a I had a teacher several years ago who was the core of what she did with anyone who came into her very high-level sort of masterminds and work and coaching, was this concept she called the heart whisper. And um, her name is Lisa Fabriga, and she was just a really beautiful teacher, and she she taught this concept, and it was really uh powerful. And it seems like there's there's a there's this wisdom there that is in the Sufi practice as well. Would you say that that's sort of the access point to maybe some people would call the higher self? Or is that where where you hear God? Like is that sort of the point?

SPEAKER_01 23:42

God, God lives within us, right? And we find that spark of light within us in Sufism.

SPEAKER_00 23:53

So beautiful. It feels like there's a there's um, I guess wisdom is wisdom, right? And mystical wisdom is mystical wisdom. Like in the Kabbalah, there's this uh where you call yourself your masterpiece, you're a piece of the master, you're you're a part of it because you're you're that because you are you're a part of it all. And I think where people find that pain from from the work that I've seen and have done, experienced both as a client and as a mentor, is really that separation from the wholeness of what we seek to be ultimately, right? Whether it's money or love or health or whatever it is, we want to be whole. So, how does someone, if they're seeking this, and this is a it seems like a really beautiful space or portal to step into and sort of cross the threshold? What is what is a starting point if someone is interested in at least, you know, dipping a toe or a finger in and kind of exploring for themselves and seeing what Sufi has to offer in terms of their own healing?

SPEAKER_01 24:49

Yeah, we have a beginning program that you don't have to be a student of the university to be a part of. It's just our foundations class, and you can find out about it through the five C's that we're going to be sharing. And that just gives you the foundations. And some people that for them that's enough, you know, just to get those foundations, not only of the five C's, but also the foundations of the spiritual practices and the the foundations of the spiritual healing. But just a very simple thing that people on their own can start with is just begin to pay attention to which is one of the first things that I learned in Palestine. What does your heart say? And begin to listen to the deep wisdom of your heart, and then to discern what is the voice of God speaking through my heart, and what is the voice of some outside naggie voice, if you will, and what is the voice of my ego, what is the voice of my eye. And the more that you can begin to discern those three voices, the more you begin to live your life in peace and in joy. Because you're not letting anything outside influence what the truth of who you are is inside your being. And then revelation happens from that. What do I mean by that? But then you'll get insights into what do I do with my life next? Right? I grew up. I grew I grew up in the city, right? But what I did with my life next was move to South Central Pennsylvania to the country, divine guidance, right? Who would have thought my mother till her dying day said, I raised my daughter to be a city girl. How can you be so happy in the country?

SPEAKER_00 26:59

Speaking as a city girl myself, who now lives surrounded by deer and raccoons and mountain lions and trees, it's it's a very different energetic, and it's a really healing energetic in a lot of ways. And it really taught me about cycles and how to be yourself through all the seasons and cycles. And the city has things to teach you as well, for sure. But there's something else, there's something else in that in that natural environment. So I totally understand that. Um, what excites you most about Sufis? I'm like, what is it that you'd want to be able to just like plant in the hearts of those who are open?

SPEAKER_01 27:33

Um that's a beautiful question. And I think there's, if I may say so, there's two things. Number one is that only love exists. And when I did enough work in in hospice before I discovered Sufism to know that that's when people were on their deathbeds, that's what they remembered is love. And when they felt the crossing, when they felt it was their time, that's what they would say. All there is is love. Well, let's not wait until we're on our deathbed to discover that all there is is love. That the world exists as a fabric of love, and how different our world would be if we could all see each other as expressions of love. My passion is world peace. I think I'm an optimist by nature, but I'm determined that someday we will see world peace and it will come about when we learn to love ourselves and when we learn to love others and love all that's around us, and whatever happens in our lives, to see it as a doorway to bring us to love.

SPEAKER_00 28:57

Absolutely. Yeah, I love that. I I love that for sure. I was listening to a podcast this morning and they were talking about emotions and accepting emotions. And I'm very much interested in a modality called the internal family systems, which teaches parts. I talk about that often here. And that the the process that they were talking about wasn't exactly internal family systems. It was about accepting being able to feel every emotion that you're feeling, even the resistance that you're feeling to the emotion that you're not feeling, like say someone has a problem, not a problem, but they they have a hard time feeling anger fully. They might have a hard time feeling love fully, and there's a resistance between you and that feeling and how we sort of try to push away the resistance because we want to get right to the feeling, but the resistance has a lot to teach you as well. And so how do you again? I I, you know, I think we all uh either at an intellectual or even at a visceral level understand that love is the access point to sitting in front of a stranger and having conversation or having compassion for someone you disagree with or your child or a family member or first and foremost for yourself. And how do you love yourself with all of the things that you think you need to fix? Right. So, how do you how does I guess maybe how does Sufi approach this, or how do you approach that resistance that we all feel to knowing that this is the way? Like we we know we have wisdom within us because we've heard it a lot of time. We just kind of know as humans, we also know that you know there is something bigger. We also know that um we've had those experiences of feeling fully in emotion and being able to connect to someone or even watching someone be in a full emotive experience, whether it's through sharing like someone who's really in in their gift of dance, like we feel that for we feel that we're like, oh, that's truth. Like we feel someone's really living that purpose. But then we ourselves are humans as we walk through the world, we have these resistance to doing the thing we really, really want to do because we have the stories around it, or we want to be more loving, but we have the stories around it. How do you approach that resistance? Because I do find that's a really like thorny thorn for a lot of people to move through that in a way that like they're always looking for a new do I meditate more? Do I just go walk in nature? Like, what do I do to overcome that gap of wanting to step into whatever it is, whether it's a purpose or an activity or love or emotion, whatever we want in life?

SPEAKER_01 31:21

I think you said something that um it's like we tried to get over the resistance. How can I get rid of this resistance? And and what I would suggest is the resistance is your door. So the question is, how do you open the door to the resistance? How do you say to the resistance what is it that you're trying because generally resistance has its um foundation in some kind of fear? Okay, I'm afraid of something, so I'm gonna resist it. So how can I take that fear and give it a bath of love? How can I take that resistance and be it like a drop in the ocean? When you just put something into the a vast ocean, which is God's love, that resistance is just a drop. So how do we do that? It dissolves in it. So in Sufism, we have all these different what we call divine qualities. So you so we would look and see what would be the divine quality that's asking to come into fruition in your heart through this resistance, and then we would assign that divine quality for your recitation. And in that, as you're reciting this divine quality, the human quality of resistance starts to literally melt away.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

So would that be like a like a chanting or a meditative sort of mantra?

SPEAKER_01 33:14

It could be a chanting, it could be, for example, uh it in in Sufism, a lot of the divine qualities are in the Arabic language. The Arabic language, like the Jewish language, like the Greek language, um, like the Latin language, has a vibration to it, right? That's why it's called a sacred language. So as you're reciting a sacred language, that vibration is taking the lower vibration of the resistance and rate literally raising it to a higher vibration, and in that higher vibration, the resistance breaks down and no and opens the door to if you look at it like a flower that's bursting out from the ground. Right. And then you can smell the beauty of the flower. Then you can smell the beauty of the of the whatever the quality might be of your resistance. Let's say that it's about being more gentle to yourself, right? You're always hard. Oh, I can't do that, it's too hard, right? It's beyond me. So we might give you a quality, a divine quality that has to do with gentleness. And as you're reciting it, it might be the quality of rauf, for example. And as you're reciting that vibration, you're feeling it within your heart. So that's why we say it's a direct experience. It's not just, oh, I'm trying to break this resistance down, but the vibration is actually vibrating with the spiritual heart within your physical heart. And it's that vibration, that sound healing, if you will.

SPEAKER_00 35:12

Yeah, that that I did similar practices in in yoga training and where we chant a sound, very specific sound for a different energy center, and then you you repeat it and repeat it, and there's a vibration, literal vibration in your throat, in your heart, could be in your belly, as you bring it down, and and it sort of you know touches that the energy within that center. So it's almost like you're going into it and letting your body have an experience of that of that, I guess, energetic presence.

SPEAKER_01 35:41

Yeah, and each of our vowel sounds in the English language that right. So in the beginning, when you're learning Sufism, you'll learn about the ah sound. Why? Because it's that ah sound that opens the heart. So if we're looking for a name of God or a name of a divine, right, whatever you believe in, to use a word that has that ah sound in it is by its nature gonna immediately start to open the heart. And most people, in my experience in the beginning, and even back in my special ed days, most people are afraid to open their heart because they've been hurt, because they've been disappointed, because something happened in their lives that said it's not safe anymore. And that's where the resistance is. The resistance becomes like a wall. So back in my special ed days, my kids used to say, Missay, I don't like that ah sound as I was teaching them phonics. And I say, Why, my love? And they said, It hurts. Oh, interesting. I say, Okay, well, let's talk about the hurt, huh? Right.

SPEAKER_00 37:03

So it opens, even though it's uncomfortable, it's still opens something within. Whether it's comfortable or not, right, right, it still opens. I love that a child can recognize that and really because you know, a child is pretty unfiltered and they're just gonna tell you exactly what's going on without intellectualizing it. So that's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 37:22

And in Sufism, we say one of the expressions of Sufism is that we return to be like little children because little children are free, they're free in their expression of their emotions, they're free in being able to forgive and forget, right? How often do we carry grudges for years? Right? That who does that hurt?

SPEAKER_00 37:47

It only you're the one carrying it, right?

SPEAKER_01 37:49

You're the one carrying it, the other person is moving on, right?

SPEAKER_00 37:53

It's like that that anecdote about the two monks who are crossing the forest and they come up across an ocean and an ocean, a river, and this woman who needed to get across couldn't walk across, and one of the monks picked her up and carried her across, and the other monk was just beside himself because they're not supposed to touch women. And he put her down and they kept walking, and he was just fine. And you know, a mile or two later, the other monk is like, I can't, I can't stand it anymore. Like, how could you pick her up? Like, how could you carry her across the river? And the other monk said, You know, I I carried her for a minute and put her down. It looks like you've been carrying her for miles. It's a really like potent example of who's the one carrying the the burden is the one who's still holding on to the the I guess the I can't quite come up with the word at the moment, but the not the why do those words just go away. Just the upsetness of care, you know, that whatever happened, whatever the grudge is, you're care, you're the one carrying it. So yeah, that's that's really beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 38:56

It's so it's lifting and letting go. A lot of Sufism is letting go. We say you're it's it's like um you're trading up, you're letting go of something smaller to have something bigger in your life.

SPEAKER_00 39:11

Beautiful. So you've been studying this and really living it and teaching it for a long time, and it helped many thousands and thousands of people. Has anything surprised you about it or yourself recently as you've gotten into the depths of the teaching and the living and the embodiment of it?

SPEAKER_01 39:29

Every day it surprises me. Like every day I am in awe of the transformation that I see happening in people. Sometimes people who've been in therapy for years and we just finished a school session, a five-day school session, and just to watch the transformation that that happened in five days for our students. I'm grateful and in awe of how simple the practices are and just how transformative they are.

SPEAKER_00 40:09

That's beautiful. I'm I'm excited to share this with my audience and share the resources. Um, is there anything I haven't asked you that you want to make sure you share, or just something that you want to leave us with in terms of your own experience of Sufism and your practice and your teachings?

SPEAKER_01 40:27

Um sort of funny, what's coming to my heart to share is don't let pictures stand in your way.

unknown 40:36

Right?

SPEAKER_00 40:36

Say more about that. Do you mean just the the preconceived notions of it?

SPEAKER_01 40:40

Or yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes we carry pictures like when I was in Jerusalem, right? My picture was the Palestinians are all angry, awful people that are out to destroy my people. It was a picture that I was holding. And the more that I let go of that picture, and the more that I was willing to just be in the presence with the presence, the more I discovered the God in you is the same God that's in me. And that's where the awe and the beauty comes in.

SPEAKER_00 41:29

I love that. I'm I'm so glad that this conversation happened. I think it's really important where we are right now to because I did have pictures. I was like, oh, interesting. Like I I first was excited about exploring mysticism. That's always something that's on my heart. And um just very curious about, you know, oh, first of all, a woman and Sufism, which is something I don't think I had in my mind before. So you you've helped me to break several pictures already just through a conversation, through just, you know, being this sort of beautiful, conscious, but also real human who just sort of teaches something that it feels very universal, but also very specific, has has this. I mean, what is like it's it's many, many, many, many hundreds of years, thousands of years old. Am I correct?

SPEAKER_01 42:16

Yeah, exactly. And one of the other beauties, if I may say so, is Sufism isn't about sort of closing your eyes and having an experience and then dealing with life. Okay, which is what my meditation practice was. It was great. I loved it, right? But then I had to go out and open my eyes and deal with life. Sufism is about bringing the love and all those other beautiful divine qualities into your life, so it integrates your inner world and your outside world, and that's one of the real beautiful things that I continue to enjoy about Sufism because it's endless.

SPEAKER_00 42:59

I love that. That feels like a really sweet little place to end and to remind everyone that in the show notes there will be access to a series of courses and learning about the five C's, consciousness, connection, clarity, communication, and commitment, which feel very, you know, Western world words. I'm really curious to see how they how they connect and go through. I think people can relate and I think we all understand what those mean, but through the lens of Sufism, I'm I'm very curious to see what those are um are like.

SPEAKER_01 43:29

And we've made the um URL very simple. It's it's a little, it's a new one to the one that I think you have. It's Sufi5.com. Sufi5.com. Perfect. We'll make sure to share that like in Frank, i at five.com.

SPEAKER_00 43:47

The number five.

SPEAKER_01 43:48

The number five, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:49

Wonderful. Okay, that will be in there as well.

SPEAKER_01 43:52

Yeah, just keep it easy for your audience to access it.

SPEAKER_00 43:55

Amazing. Sufi5.com. Well, Selima, thank you so much. I just want to honor how you just so openly shared your your experience of Sufism, your journey, and what led you to this beautiful life in university. And I'm sure the I'm sure it goes much deeper than our you know little 45-minute, 50-minute conversation here. And I'm I really hope people just open their hearts and minds to click through and to learn more about it. It feels very potent, it feels very universal, it feels very needed right now where people can maybe turn off some of the other things like scrolling in social media and tune into something that will help each of us to really reconnect, which is what we all want. We want to be able to have a resource where we can go within and be guided to our next step because that's where we all are. We're like, what is our next step? That's what we all want to know.

SPEAKER_01 44:52

And then living our life in peace. It means peace. Living your life in peace. I miss the chaos and the craziness that is currently existing in our world today.

SPEAKER_00 45:05

Yeah, and a walk through the world as that instead of adding to the other. What is that is happening. Thank you so much. And thank you everyone for listening. Please check out the show notes. And if you have any feedback or want to share a message with Salima, who did become a doctor in a different way, right? Not the doctor of your brother's world. Um, please feel free to. There's a little heart at the end of the, at the beginning of the podcast notes, but you can also find me on Alina underscore lipson on Instagram. Feel free to share any notes, and I will be sure to pass anything on to Salima. And yeah, I'd love to hear your reflections. So thank you for listening. Salima, thank you for being here. And we'll see you. Yeah, and we'll see you on the next episode.