I was brought up in a secular Jewish home. My parents didn’t go to synagogue — even on high holidays — and I didn’t have any Jewish education. As a matter of fact, when I was younger, I thought that people who were "into God" were kind of crazy.

When I was 20, I developed Hodgkin’s disease. I went through chemotherapy and radiation and began reading books like Bernie Siegel’s Love, Medicine and Miracles. I listened to visualization tapes like Healing Through Chemotherapy and Radiation to help ease the side effects. I learned a lot about the mind-body-spirit connection, how disease can have much to do with one’s thoughts.

Toward the end of my treatment, I began dating a man who was reading a lot about Sufism. When we broke up, I saw myself for the first time in a new way — I became aware of my own selfishness. I must have had a real desire to transform that. I saw for the first time how my own habitual actions could harm myself and others. I first started reading about Sufism as a way to connect with this man. I read Rumi, Idries Shah, Gurdjieff, etc. In the beginning, I literally did not understand what I was reading. I didn’t fit in with anything I had ever come in contact with before, so I had no frame of reference for it.

After a couple of months however, I started to contemplate God on my own for the first time. I was shocked. I had a huge desire to connect with other people who were thinking about God, who were remembering God. I was fascinated with the ‘mysterious’ way Sufism was presented in the reading I had done and I looked for everything I could find on the subject. I would strike up conversations with Muslim cab drivers.

One day I was browsing in a bookstore and I picked up a magazine called Sufi Review. I saw in the back that there was a Sufi bookstore in New York. I went there as soon as I could. I was invited to a zikr, the Sufi ceremony of Divine Remembrance, during which the divine Names of God are chanted. I had no previous experience of spiritual community and hadn’t intended to join one, but met the Shaykh there, Lex Hixon, and was very drawn to the way he expressed the teachings of Sufism, Islam and spirituality.

Firstly, he emphasized that every sacred pat leads to truth. He encouraged people to see the beauty in their religion of birth, whether that was Islam or not. However, in Sufism, Islam takes on a dimension of universality that can embrace anyone.

The Qur’an itself is a universal book, accepting the prophets of every tradition, including Abraham, Moses and Jesus. "La ilah ilallah Muhammad Rasulallah," the affirmation of Unity in Islam, means, "there is no Reality apart from Ultimate Reality and humanity is its principle of Self-revelation." God alone is worthy of worship because God alone exists, and humanity is the complete expression of Divine Love. There are 99 attributes of God, or Allah, mentioned in the Qur’an. Some are severe, like "the Judge" or "the Majestic" yet every chapter in the Qur’an begins, "In the name of God, the most Merciful and the most compassionate" Sufism teaches that if we call on God, as Merciful that is how we will experience Him.

One practice in our Sufi order is that the Shaykh gives each dervish (initiate of a Sufi order) certain names of God to repeat on prayer beads. This is a tool. When I am caught up in anxiety, stress, or negativity, I can turn to God. I can call out to God. This is humbling. "Allahu Akbar" means that God is greater than anything we can conceive of.

Muslims pray five times a day. There are times when I am able to do this and times when I cannot. In our understanding of Islam, there is no compulsion as far as external practice is concerned. The desire to take on practices comes from one’s own heart. There can never be imposition from outside — this is the path of passionate love for God.

Participation in community and with spiritual practice has made me more and more mindful, and more aware of myself — my habitual reactions and patterns. I am more likely to catch myself in moments of anger, judgment of others, self-denigration, etc. whereas ten years ago I may not have been able to notice these qualities in myself. Spiritual practice helps clear my vision, helps me to see the goodness in humanity — to trust that every single thing that happens comes from God.

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