Sufi Teacher Ihsan Chris Covey: Love, Longing, and Surrender to the One Being

Hitting bottom, a near-death encounter, surrender, traumaand healing, longing and belonging, “dying before you die,” poetry, and music—from a Sufi perspective.Rumi said, “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” In this episode of The Spiritual Context podcast, Sufi teacher Ihsan Chris Covey shares his experience of finding God in the depths of despair, and of learning to let go while facing death quite literally at the bottom of a river.Weaving together the poetry of Hafiz and Rumi with his lived experience, Ihsan introduces us to the Sufi path as a universal way of opening the heart to the One True Being. He illuminates the paradoxes of the spiritual path: in descending into darkness, we may be born into light; what we yearn for is already closer to us than we can imagine; in dying before we die, we become fully alive; and in transforming ourselves we find the world transformed.About Ihsan Chris Covey: Ihsan Chris Covey is a Sufi teacher (murshid) in the SufiWay, a contemporary expression of the universal Sufism first established in the West by Hazrat Inayat Khan. He leads the Sufi Way group in the Denver, Colorado area, and hosts the monthly interview series Walking with Wisdom, where he explores lived spirituality through intimate, reflective conversations with teachers and practitioners of the Sufi Way.  An educator and consultant supporting whole-person health and wellbeing, Ihsan is a lifelong student of nature, comparative religion, poetry, music, and philosophy.Learn more about The Sufi Way: https://www.sufiway.org/Tune into Walking with Wisdom:  https://training.sufiway.org/checkout/Course/36371Books and poems mentioned in the interview: I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy by Hafiz (Renderings in English by Daniel Ladinsky) “Tripping over Joy” by Hafiz (included in I Heard God Laughing)“My Brilliant Image” by Hafiz (included in I Heard God Laughing)“The Guesthouse” by Rumi (included in The Illuminated Rumi, rendered into English poetry by Coleman Barks) “Childhood Friends” by Rumi (included in The EssentialRumi, rendered into English poetry by Coleman Barks) Music: Ben Bigelow (https://www.youtube.com/@BenBigelow3)Timestamps:00:00 Hitting Bottom: I Heard God Laughing06:32 Endarkenment: The Healing Inward Movement15:13 Surrendering to What Wants to Happen: The Process of Healing23:33 Surrender at the Bottom of a River: A Life and Death Situation30:25 From Preacher's Kid to Sufi Teacher37:39 Sufism: The Self-Cleaning Capacity of the Human Heart41:39 How Sufism found Ihsan46:04 Maybe I Need a Teacher?50:41 A Teacher is the Deepest Friend and Guide59:42 Understanding Chillas: Personal Spiritual Tasks01:06:23 Experiencing the Divine in Everyday Life01:09:25 Zikr: The Practice of Remembrance01:17:21 Seeing God in Other People01:23:44 Longing for the Beloved01:33:39 Becoming a More Loving Person01:42:31 Beauty01:48:55 Navigating Thoughts and Feelings01:54:00 Student Question: The Role of Music in Spirituality02:04:05 Student Question : Changing the World02:11:07 "That Was Unexpected"02:11:58 "The Stunning Light of Your Own Being"