Love is the merchandise

which the world demands.

If you store it in your heart

every soul will become your customer.

- Hazrat Inayat Khan -

 When it comes to love we are all “customers.”  Like moth to flame, we are irresistibly attracted to this “merchandise” because somewhere deep inside us we know loves’ worth.  The heart is a wellspring and font of love. There is an art to entering this abode and a price to pay: the willing and gradual surrender of our limited self to the unlimited.

 Understandably, such a prospect may fill us with apprehension, uncertainty and the impulse to turn away.  And yet...like the moth, something draws us to this firelight; this merging we call love.  As we orient our life toward the heart, we discover tenderness, bravery, and courage so real and palpable that we willingly turn.  Turn, kindly and steadfastly, toward our vulnerabilities: toward our hidden places, toward the ways we have been less than true to ourselves and in our relationships with others; toward that which has hindered us from embodying our deepest ideals and values.  All of these limiting, self-protecting habits are what the Sufi’s call the accumulated “rust” on the heart. Sobering and healing, when befriended, looked into deeply, understood, and used wisely, our conditioned vulnerabilities becomes polishing agents revealing our innate wholeness, nobility, and luminosity.

 So, dear friends, take heart, this is our lineage - the path of love and befriending that human beings across all contemplative traditions have walked for millennia.  Experiential and highly relational, this course is an invitation to explore what it’s like for each of us to enter and relax, purify and polish the mirror of the heart.  Together we’ll engage in guided meditation sessions, dyad and small group inquiry, silent individual and group practice, poetry and story, daily home assignments intended to create an ongoing continuity of awareness, and structured and spontaneous moments of conversation and inquiry. 

 As a mother would protect her only child with her life …
cultivate a boundless love towards all beings.

 - Buddha -

NOTE:  ABOUT THE ONLINE FORMAT

 This online program is grounded in silent and guided meditation practice, structured dyad and small group inquiry arising out of your experience as a participant and through contemplations offered by Saki. Particular emphasis will be on the cultivation of self-knowledge and the qualities of the heart such as love, tenderness, courage, and vulnerability.

 Intent on developing a harmonious and unified continuity of awareness, the course shares many of the qualities akin to taking a retreat in your own home. To create bridges between sessions, Saki will assign suggested exercises and reflections before and at the conclusion of each session.

 We invite those of you who sometimes tire of the audiovisual aspects of online Zoom programs to focus primarily on the spoken word when the visual dimension becomes arduous and unproductive for you. However, we will ask you to use the audio and visual dimensions of Zoom when working in breakout sessions.

 In addition to the small group work, there will be ample time for questions and comments in the large group.