Toward the One: A Sufi Gathering of Remembrance

Join us at Vali Soul Sanctuary on March 1st, 2025 from 6 to 8:30 PM in honor of Murshid Thomas Atum O’Kane. This gathering will be open to guests and will focus on Sufi teachings and practices. You can learn more about Sufism and Zikr through the descriptions below.

Pir Netanel Mu'in ad-Din Miles-Yépez and murids of the Inayati-Maimuni Order will offer the Hazrat of Inayati Sufis and a sohbet on the life and teachings of Murshid Thomas Atum O'Kane (1945-2024), former Secretary General of the Sufi Order and founder of the Spiritual Guidance Wisdom School. Murshid Atum was Pir Netanel's first Sufi mentor and a close disciple of Pir-o-Nagid Zalman Suleyman Schachter-Shalomi.

*An InterWorld Event produced in collaboration with Ishq Gardens, HeartFire Festival, and the Inayati-Maimuni Order*

At this Sufi Gathering, we will have the great honor of studying and practicing directly with the guidance of a recognized Sufi master and spiritual guide. In addition to being the head of the Inayati-Maimuni Sufi Order, Pir Netanel Miles-Yepez is also a professor and department chair at Naropa University, co-founder of Charis Foundation, and accomplished author. You can learn more about him in the bio below.

Considered a leading thinker in the InterSpiritual movement, Netanel Miles-Yépez, D.D., is an artist, philosopher, religion scholar, and spiritual teacher. He is co-founder of Charis Foundation for New Monasticism & Interspirituality, which is dedicated to the emergence of a newly conceived contemplative life in dialogue with all of the world’s great wisdom traditions. Netanel studied History of Religions at Michigan State University and Contemplative Religion at the Naropa Institute, before pursuing traditional studies with such spiritual luminaries as Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, founder of the Jewish Renewal movement, and Father Thomas Keating, founder of Contemplative Outreach. He is the author of many books, including The End of Religion and Other Writings (2023) and the editor of The Common Heart: An Experience of Interreligious Dialogue (2006). Currently, Netanel lives in Boulder, Colorado, where he is the Chair of Religious Studies Department in World Wisdom Traditions and the Director of the Keating-Schachter Center for Interspirituality at Naropa University.

netanelmy.com

The Inayati-Maimuni Order is committed to a path of spiritual development based upon both Sufi and Hasidic principles and practices. In this order, the Sufi lineage of Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1927), the first Sufi master to bring Sufism into the West, has been joined to the Hasidic lineage of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (1924-2014), founder of the Jewish Renewal movement. But because it is not the first time that these two mystical paths associated with Islam and Judaism have been brought together, we endeavor to connect to and renew the spirit of the original Egyptian Sufi-Hasidism practiced by Rabbi Avraham Maimuni of Fustat (1186-1237), our forerunner, who successfully combined these paths as far back as the 13th-century. For this reason, we are called the Inayati-Maimuni tariqa, honoring both Hazrat Inayat Khan's vision of Sufism as a universal approach to spirituality and Avraham Maimuni's radical innovation which made a peaceful marriage between Jewish Hasidism and Islamic Sufism in a time of conflict between the Abrahamic traditions. Founded in 2004 by Pir Zalman Sulayman Schachter-Shalomi, z”l, and his khalifa, Pir Netanel Mu’in ad-Din Miles-Yépez, the community is currently led by the latter, and based in Colorado. More information on the history of Sufi and Jewish interactions, and how these two lineages have been fused in the Inayati-Maimuni tariqa, can be gleaned from this dialogue with Pir Netanel Mu’in ad-Din, based on his book, The Merging of Two Oceans: Nine Talks on Sufism and Hasidism.

inayati-maimunis.org

Murshid Atum was among the most accomplished students of Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan (1916-2004), the former Secretary General of the Inayati Order, and the founder of the Spiritual Guidance Wisdom School. He first met Reb Zalman in the late 1970s, and soon after had a dream in which the latter said to him, "I have come to help you become who you really are." From that time on, he was under the guidance of both Pir Vilayat and Reb Zalman. Reb Zalman supervised both his Master's Thesis and Doctoral Dissertation, and Atum continued to visit him in Boulder until the end of his life.

...Perhaps you have heard of Rumi and Hafez - their ecstatic inspired poetry of divine love and mystical intoxication - where the teachings of Sufism emerge through the lens of metaphor, imagery, and an intense engagement with the human experience.

...Perhaps you have heard of the whirling dervishes - their mysterious dances of endless spinning and circumambulation - mirroring the movement of the celestial bodies in the microcosm of the human bodies, connecting with the elements and angelic realms.

...Maybe you have even heard of the Chaikhanas and Caravanserais of the Silk Road...

Zikr

Or perhaps you've heard of Sufi Zikr - a powerful practice of meditation, movement, chanting, and prayer - seated together in a ring (or "Halqah"), we chant the magical syllables and the sacred holy names of The One, to invoke Remembrance and bask in the Presence.

You may have even heard of the great Indian master, Hazrat Inayat-Khan - whose son initiated our teacher's teacher as a Sufi lineage-holder and wisdom-keeper.

You might know Inayat-Khan's famous book "The Mysticism of Sound and Music" - and his devotional Indian Qawwali music, his early lectures on "oriental philosophy," or his pioneering work of bringing all four schools of Sufism to the West and creating an entirely Universalist Sufism, which also led to later developments like the popular "Dances of Universal Peace."

Sufism

All of these phenomena come from the direct transmission lineages of Sufism, which are passed down through initiation and traditional training - whispered teachings and twighlight language, from teacher to student, generation to generation, over thousands of years.

So welcome to Universalist Sufism, a religion of Love - where the worldly human journey and the cosmic mystery of the divine are seamlessly wed together as one path - where we develop our latent capcities by walking this path of remembrance and polishing the mirror of our heart.

Join us on Saturday, March 1st, at Vali Soul Sanctuary in Boulder CO, to discover and encounter some basic foundations of these beautiful teachings and practices from this ancient tradition.

Recurring Event!

This event is the beginning of an ongoing and recurring practice of public Zikr circles and special occasions hosted by InterWorld/HeartFire together with Pir Netanel and members of the Inayati-Maimuni Order - oriented around Sufi traditions, InterSpirituality, and the arts.

Meet the Hosts

This event is being produced and hosted by the InterWorld Insitute in ongoing collaboration with the Inayati-Maimuni Order and related partners / affiliates as a special offering by HeartFire Festival Productions.

Jem Ceremony

As a part of that collaboration, we may end the gathering with an intuitive and spontaneous prayer circle with collective music (experimental freestyle creative jamming) ...singing, drumming, dancing, poetry, insights, and bibliomantic exerpts of Sufi texts, in honor of the elements of life and the sacred mystery of being...

This poetic and creative component is an innovation of traditional Sufi Jem Practice, being developed and co-facilitated with Pir Netanel's student, Inayati-Maimuni Khalif and HeartFire/InterWorld co-founder: Yasha S. Wagner. You can learn more about Khalifa Yasha in his bio below.

Yasha S. Wagner is a PhD-researcher and innovator in the field of psychology, community organizer and Founder/President of the InterWorld Institute, a 501(c)3 nonprofit for holistic wellness education whose past “Worldchangers” initiatives have included HeartFire Festival events, Sanctorum Ecovillage centers, and more. Yasha is also an initiate of world spiritual traditions and a khalif with the Inayati-Maimuni Order, authorized to facilitate spiritual practices and retreats. He is a certified martial arts instructor in the Cheng Man-ch’ing lineage of T’ai Chi and Qi Gong. As an educator and mentor, Yasha has offered breathwork classes and dreamwork coaching for about a decade. As a multilingual polymath, he has traveled around the world since early childhood, studying and sharing diverse cultural traditions and arts.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

The Vali Soul Sanctuary, 6717 Valmont Road, Boulder, United States