The Inayati Order Emergent Leaders Program follows the same rubric as Suluk Academy, with each session focused on a key theme, as well as on Concentration, Contemplation, Meditation, and Realization, but this time from the perspective of a teacher and guide. Here is a snapshot:

Session I: Concentration (Pir Zia Inayat Khan & Naima Brown)

What does it mean to represent the esoteric teachings of Hazrat Inayat Khan?

Overarching Themes

  • Relationship between Guide and Murid
  • Types of Murids
  • Stations on the Path
  • Divine Names for Life Situations and the Art of Personality
  • Concentration Practices
  • Initiation and Guidance Meetings

Session II: Contemplation (Taj Inayat & Gayan Macher)

What does it mean to “guide” another person?  What are the techniques specific to our path?

Navigating the Territory–the Unique Lived Experience–of the Path

Overarching Themes

  • The Flame of Motivation
  • How do we know if we should serve as a spiritual guide?
  • What can a Guide offer?
  • The Art of Contemplative Listening
  • How do we hone intuition/guidance? How do we help another to do this?
  • What are Mujahida (effort) and Mushahida (presence)?
  • What does it mean to be present? To behold another person?
  • What You Experience as Guide and Teacher
  • What questions and challenges tend to arise?
  • How do the spiritual and psychological interrelate?
  • The work of psychological purification for guides
  • How do we work with projections and boundaries?
  • What are typical pitfalls? How do we prepare for such challenges and approach them when they arise?
  • Unfolding the Inner Dimension of Spiritual Practice
  • Learning a mode of knowing outside the mental
  • Going deeper into the heart practice—beneath concepts, and what “should” feel
  • How the heart comes to contemplate it’s own nature
  • Fana—Baqa: Navigating the process of letting go and change in its various forms
  • What is the terrain of Fana-Baqa? How do we help others work with Fana and Baqa within themselves?
  • What are the passages of a soul? How do we support each stage?

Session III: Meditation (Himayat Inayati & Kainat Norton)

What does it mean to be a spiritual teacher for another person or a community? What are the proven techniques, innovations, challenges and questions that arise?

“The dervish brings a living God into the market place.” — Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Overarching Themes

  • The Teaching of Meditation (An Overview)
  • The Process of Self-Disclosure
  • Self-knowing, Allowing, Aware Presence, Detachment, Independence, Knowing the Divine – Witnessing, Tasting, Intimacy, Unity,
  • Awakening in Life
  • Listening to the Spirit of Guidance
  • Inner and Outer as One Being
  • Mediation on the Path of Love and the Path of Light
  • Exploring Different Paths of Meditation
  • Feminine, Masculine, Sensory, Visual, Auditory
  • The Teaching of Meditation (Summary)

Session IV: Realization (Pir Zia Inayat Khan & Naima Brown)

What does it mean to serve as a representative of the Message in the World?

Overarching Themes

  • God
  • The Need of the Time
  • The Six Activities
  • Divine Names for Spiritual Development
  • Practices from Murshid’s Instructions for the Murshid
  • The Adab and Ethics of representing the Inayati Order

Please contact Jennifer Alia Wittman, [email protected], with any questions about the Inayati Order Emergent Leaders Program and it’s curriculum.