Who were the ancient Sufis? How far back can we trace this seed of spirituality and awakeness? Hazrat Andaya Khan says that the germ of Sufism is believed to have existed from the beginning of time and can be traced particularly back to the Hebrew Prophets, who were themselves Sufis. I think it has to have gone long before that, back to the wisdom lineages of the Native original people who came out of Africa. These threads spread for 60,000 years into all places as awake people, until we became divided and confused and the hierarchies of civilization came in.
There is a marketplace in the Middle East that is 9,000 years old. But that is still a drop in the bucket when you’re talking about 60,000 years of living human beings who have been living in harmony on the earth.
Sufism is the seed of native awakened wisdom that has come through all these people. Truth means the dissolving into reality that can happen to anyone. It expresses itself in different stories, but the experience of unity is the same for all people. We can see it in the Native tribes who have maintained their wisdom connections back through all of their ancestors. They all tell different stories, but the worldview is the whether they come from the Americas or from Australia… thousands of miles apart.
I live in they United States, a continent that was conquered not very long ago in human terms. There are still native tribes available who have managed to maintain the thread of their wisdom connections. Think of the Sufis as these original people who lived in the Middle East before any civilizations started building up. I think it was way before the Hebrew prophets. If our stories today are any good, we know that the Hebrew prophets had already fallen into a hierarchy, as seen in their society where women were not equal. That was the point when Sufism became the thread of how to get a divided mind back into unity, rather than the original native understanding of how to stay in unity. But it’s all a worldview of unity.
Women coming back into the story of humanity is a large part of what is waking us up.
We live in an amazing time; as of 2023, it’s only been about five to ten years where TV shows and movies have women as the leading roles. Not just as wives or someone looking for a husband, but as detectives, business owners. Women playing roles that were traditionally male. The roles are played as if women have always existed, which is a departure from older movies that were male-dominated.
How far back does this Sufi tradition go? I think it’s healthy for us today to assume that it goes way, way back, and that our best Sufi teachers are those who have lived this actual lineage of awakeness in known generations. Sufism goes back to a time when mysticism was not a mystery but an equally lived experience, a balanced place of creativity and thought, heart, and thinking. Sufi practices aim to bring us back to this natural state.
There are hundreds of native wisdom speakers emerging, and over the next 10 years, there will be an explosion of information. As white individuals, we should be cautious not to intrude into Native American ceremonies but rather create a container of listening, and let them bring the information to us. We can consume, learn, and discuss what we are given respectfully. A reading list on my website includes valuable resources from Sufi teachers and others with a connection to the Earth and ancient spiritual traditions.
In summary, Sufism has the potential to embrace the reality of our ancient nature and how it guides our practices, interactions, and understanding of self. This is the lineage that goes back all the way to the beginning, connecting us to the spiritually alive human beings who knew their purpose in life.