I am not Sufi
“We don’t live in the East or West; we don’t study in the North, nor do we teach in the South. We are not bound in this way, but we may be compelled to talk in this way.”
The dilemma lives in my chest: a constant tension between being deeply immersed in the Sufi way, following a lineage of teachers who walked the Path, and refusing to cage myself within the identity of any spiritual group. Yet here I am: the events I attend, the practices I engage in, the language that falls from my mouth, all of it flows from one specific tradition.
How does one become like the child who transforms into Superman the instant the cape goes on? To step fully into whatever spiritual costume the moment requires without losing oneself in the role? Perhaps this is what the Sufi masters called being “hidden”: not revealing the totality of the internal process because it can never be fully received without becoming performance. The Sufi emerges when dhikr is needed. The student when learning is called for. The teacher when sharing is required. None of these are us, and all of them are real when worn.
I am not Sufi, at least not in the way most people understand the word. Not someone who is Muslim, who calls out to Allah, walks around with prayer beads, and sings the poems of Rumi. I encountered whole communities who are “Sufi”: children born into the tradition, people saying “I grew up Sufi.” But the Path is never born into, only initiated into, with or without a living master. It requires conscious choice, not cultural inheritance. Although these outer forms are true to some extent of my practice, they are worn as the cape, turning an ordinary person into superhero.
Even as I write “I’m not Sufi,” I catch the familiar embarrassment: the ego that just wants to be different, that craves being Other. My chest tightens with the recognition of this old pattern. Yet at the deepest level I can reach, the statement remains undeniable. As Idris Shah said, “we may be compelled to talk this way,” and I am compelled to speak the Sufi way. The Way must take form to manifest, and whatever form it takes becomes the cape, the costume that the outside world sees and experiences. But the Way is not Sufism as such, it is disclosure: the unknown becoming known. It’s what Jesus meant when he said “I am the Way,” or perhaps “I is the Way.” What Moses heard on the Mount: “It is truly I. I am Allah. There is no deity except I. So serve Me and establish connection for My Remembrance” (Quran 20:14). The Path is movement itself: the shift from hidden to seen, inner to outer, transcendent to manifest. To reach and taste the sweetness of the Womb of Nothingness from which I has emerged.
This dilemma unsettled me for years. My body carried the restlessness of someone always searching for a place to truly belong, to feel Home. The ache of spiritual homelessness lived in my shoulders, my throat, the space behind my ribs. Then I realized: all of it is a matter of choice. Choose the costume that requires the least alteration (yes, adjustments are always needed to make the costume fit like a glove, allowing for flexibility, comfort, and above all, Beauty).
This realization came after spending four weeks in Turkey, where I was confronted with a challenge: to act with confidence, to share what the Divine had placed within me, not as a mission to save or heal, but simply because I love it too much to withhold it. Music, gatherings, the shared breath of song: this “it” is life itself for me.
Moving with confidence and courage was foreign territory. My movements had always carried self-doubt like extra weight, my voice uncertain, my presence apologetic. My closest friends might not agree with this sentiment, I had perfected the posturing of confidence, but inside I knew the difference. But to choose to step over that edge (the edge of who you think and feel yourself to be) is to allow the unknown to become known. At a retreat in Brookline, Vermont, I felt my body find sure ground. My voice deepened. My presence expanded without apology. For the first time, I tasted expression free of self-doubt, no longer minimizing its value for fear of taking up too much space. In that confidence, I felt the unknown part of myself enter and take shape.
So as I negate and say “I am not Sufi,” I affirm that I is the Path I take, and it happens to be the Sufi way. In this affirmation, I will let my drum lead dhikr, dissolve in the whirl of Sema while calling Allah, Allah, nothing but Allah, as the cape I wear when the Moment calls forth a Sufi.