Choosing Love Over Pleasure or Safety

Re-enchanting the world with God, the beloved, Omid Safi and teacher Joshua Michael Schrei explore the push-and-pull relationship we have with the divine. 

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This week on Sufi Heart, Omid and Joshua get into:

• The many types of love we experience with the divine 
• How the seeker was first being sought by God
• The possibility of tying together the sensual and the spiritual 
• Nature as a living saint and master of seasons/cycles 
• Remembering the greater picture that we are all a part of 
• Balancing transcendence and imminence 
• Considering how we relate to lack and longing 
• Being in ecstatic union with the beloved 
• Knowing that God is present both within and without moments of consummation
• How the treasures of our lives are often related to the hardships we have endured
• What activism could look like in the political and social climate we are living in
• Re-enchanting the world and suffusing it with divine love 
• The ripple effect of global events and how everything is interconnected
• Pontificating how we can build a just, loving society 

Check out Joshua's podcast, The Emerald, where you can explore more of the human experience through a vibrant lens of myth, story, and imagination. You can also keep up with the podcast via Instagram.

About Joshua Michael Schrei : 

Joshua is a podcaster, mythteller, teacher, and a lifelong student of the cosmologies and mythologies of the world — in particular, the Indian subcontinent. Throughout a lifetime of teaching, study, meditation and yogic practice, wilderness immersion, art, music, and public speaking, Joshua has sought to navigate the living, animate space of the imagination and advocate for a world that prioritizes imaginative vision. Joshua has taught intensive courses in mythology and somatic disciplines for over 20 years. He is the founder of The Emerald Podcast, which combines evocative narrative, soul-stirring music, and interviews with award-winning authors and luminaries to explore the human experience through a vibrant lens of myth, story, and imagination. Less a traditional podcast and more a multi-layered sonic journey, The Emerald aims to reawaken the lost promise of oral storytelling tradition — the transmission of the direct felt experience of wonder and awe, and the rekindling of our relationship with spirit. Keep up with Joshua on his website. 

“In any great love affair, in every great love-making, there is always that moment where you lose track of where your body ends and the beloved's body begins. There is no more notion of who is the lover and who is the beloved; there's only the moment and pure absolute pleasure and bliss. That's in some ways what the mystics are trying to get to. They're trying to get to that place where the boundary between you and I, lover and beloved, human and divine, becomes very blurred.” – Omid Safi

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