The Importance of Gratitude

A brief excerpt from an interview with the Sufi teacher Shaykh Burhanuddin Herrmann, in which he responds to the question:

“What is one teaching that you think is essential to awakening—a teaching that one can stay with all day?”

The interviewer is Rick Archer, the founder of Buddha at the Gas Pump, an online resource that features more than 500 interviews with people whom Rick believes are awakening into higher states of consciousness. For the complete interview, go to Interview with Shaykh Burhanuddin Herrmann.

About Shaykh Burhanuddin Herrmann

Shaykh Burhanuddin Herrmann is a contemporary mystic of the ancient Sufi tradition, called to the path at a tender age. He went through the classic dervish training, which involved an intense daily practice of meditation and prayers under the direct guidance of the Master, accepting his instructions for inner and outer life (including raising a family), extreme solitary spiritual retreats, pilgrimages, and regular challenging tests in daily life.

He received direct transmission of the Naqshbandi Sufi Order, one of the most ancient and authoritative of the forty existing Sufi Orders, known variously through the ages as the “School of the Masters of Wisdom,” the “Way of the Scientists of the Soul,” and the “Path of Love.”

When Shaykh Burhanuddin was 18 years old, he invited to his hometown in Germany the Grand Master and world guide of the Naqshbandi order, Maulana Shaykh Nazim al Haqqani al Rabbani, may his secret be sanctified. When he saw him the first time he fainted in the middle of the street. Meeting a Master, a saint who has gone beyond fears and who lives in the freedom of love is an unforgettable and life-changing experience.
Henceforth he was constantly at his beloved master’s side for thirty-five years, accompanying him around the world spreading the Sufi touch of grace and love.

As a radical lover of the Divine, Shaykh Burhanuddin has an innate capability to convey that longing, he is able to read the souls of people, helping them to remember their own origin, destination, and their task on this Earth.

As an appointed shaykh (spiritual guide), he was trained to develop an eye to detect the expressions of Beauty in Life, whatever shape they may take. He was taught that in order to become human beings we are called to practice love and respect towards the Creator through the Creation and His creatures.

He was taught gratitude for everything that he had and that he had not. Maulana replaced in him the feeling of the need to strive in life, with an unshakable joyful faith that everything, good or bad, is coming from the same Loving Source, and that it carries a message and a teaching for your own evolution.

He finally provided Shaykh Burhanuddin with the means and the drive to present a life-changing self-realization method, the Uwaysi System, in a modern and universal key, beyond any belief or requirements.

For 30 years Shaykh Burhanuddin Herrmann has been leading spiritual growth meetings and retreats all over the world, in service of people’s spiritual needs His simple and revolutionary method, the Uwaysi System, aims to awaken people to the real meaning and purpose of their lives, to remind them of their highest origin and destination, and to help them to live a life of the heart, in peace, happiness, creativity and gratitude whatever their life circumstances may be.

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