This book is about practicing devotion to the Earth and its gifts. Original practices are offered under the themes of Breath, Heart, Step, Listening, Time, and Prayer.
The author explains that the sacred bond between Earth and humanity is damaged, but that it is recoverable. We need to use memory, love, and reverence. Many of us, he writes, are grieving “like a child torn from its mother.” He also uses the image of forgetting to explain how we’ve gotten to the place where we are now at, with our Earth-home crumbling: “Part of what allowed the great forgetting — the desacralization of the world — was the silencing of … forms of prayer, for prayer and praise helped hold the worlds of spirit and matter together. They were a kind of magic. If we are to keep this recognition of who She is alive, we must give our attention; we must offer our recognition. And we can do this through prayer, through praise. That is part of what we are being called to now.”
Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee is a Sufi teacher in the Naqshbandi tradition, a documentary filmmaker, and the founder of Emergence Magazine. He is the authorized successor of his father Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, a Naqshbandi Sufi mystic profiled in our Living Spiritual Teachers Project.
One of the three practices offered on the theme of Heart begins like this — it is called “Immersion in the Heart”:
“Find a quiet spot, preferably outdoors, where you won’t be disturbed. Sit in any position that allows you to relax and remain comfortable for the duration of the practice.
“Close your eyes, put your attention on your heart, and focus on the breath. On the out-breath, visualize or sense energy flowing from the space at the top of the inhale down into the heart. On the in-breath, visualize or sense energy rising up through the chest and neck and then flowing out through the top of the head.
“As you continue breathing and visualizing this cycle, you will begin to feel a subtle energetic expansion in the heart as it becomes infused by the energy of the breath. Place your conscious awareness on this feeling of expansion in the heart.”
Such practices are not entirely original; similar ones can be found in other Sufi teachers past and present; but they are helpfully presented, explained, and applied to modern life in this attractive book.
