The Journey Home: The Who, What, and Why of Beyond Names

In this first episode of Beyond Names, Dr. Habib shares a little from his personal spiritual journey — from growing up in a conservative Christian family in rural Texas to discovering Sufism, embracing Islam, and earning advanced degrees in spiritual healing, spiritual counseling, and spiritual formation.

He opens up about loss, doubt, religious wounding, and healing — and how the search for meaning eventually led him to a deep, heart-centered spirituality that transcends labels and welcomes all.

You’ll also learn what this podcast is about, who it’s for, and what to expect in future episodes — including interviews, reflections, and simple spiritual practices to help you reconnect with your true self and the sacred, however you name it.

The episode closes with a guided practice to help you center in your heart, settle your spirit, and begin your own journey inward.

Transcript

Welcome to Beyond Names — I’m Dr. Habib.

This is a space for spiritual seekers and soulful misfits, for the curious and the committed, for those grounded in a tradition and those who aren’t sure what they believe.
 Whether you call the Divine Allah, Yahweh, Elohim, Brahman, Higher Power — or you’re still searching for language that fits — you are welcome here.
 Together, we’ll explore the intersection of spirituality and daily life, the wisdom of many traditions, and the ways we return to our True Selves, to our Source, to the light we carry within.
 I’m so glad you’re here. Let’s begin.

I love to talk about anything and everything God-related and spirituality-related, whether you call the Divine Allah or Yahweh, Elohim or Higher Power or you don’t know what to think about God. 

What I hope to achieve here is to spirituality more accessible to anyone and everyone -- whether you’re young or old, religious or not religious – to expand our ideas about what spirituality is and about how we can experience spirituality -- to help people realize how they are already engaging spirituality and help them grow in how they do so, regardless of their tradition or no tradition.

A bit of background -- 

I grew up in a conservative Christian family going to a very conservative church in a small Texas town. I grew up feeling that I did not fit in – either in my family or in the church. When I left home, I turned away from anything to do with the church or religion. My father died when I was in my early 20s, as did my only sibling, my older brother. About the time my mother died, when I was in my 30s, I figured out that the way I’d been living was not working. At that time a coworker introduced me to Sufism, which is Islamic mysticism. At that point in my life, I was carrying a lot of wounding from childhood. I was reactive to anything that reminded me of the church I grew up in, including words like God, Lord, sin, etc. So, when a coworker introduced me to Sufi spiritual practices, like chanting in Arabic, I had the attitude of – “Don’t tell me what that says or what it means. I just want to try it and see how it feels.” I didn’t really have any idea what spirituality meant, so I approached these practices like an experiment. What I found when I started doing Sufi practices was that I felt more calm, more at peace, grounded, centered, stronger, and so on. I began to attend the talks of a Sufi shaykh. When he said that if a person who is Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, and the people of any other religion, knew their religion well, they would know that there is only one religion, the religion of love and peace and mercy – that statement landed in a way that nothing in my childhood experience of church landed -- that statement landed in my heart as truth. So, I started studying Sufism informally at first, and then continued on to get a Masters of Divinity from the University of Sufism. After studying Sufism for about eight years, I converted to Islam. So yes, this guy from a conservative Christian family, with a Jewish last name, who grew up in rural Texas, is now a Muslim Sufi – a Muslim Sufi who has a strong multifaith-interspiritual approach to spirituality and spiritual practice. After completing the MDiv, I continued my studies at Claremont School of Theology, getting my doctorate in spirituality and spiritual formation in Christianity and Islam.

Over the years of studying and practicing Sufism, I’ve had these moments of what Sufis call tasting – moments of experiencing what some might call unity, or oneness, or universal love, or absence from the self and immersion in the One Love. Over the years of study and practice, my faith in the One God has grown exponentially. And it has become my passion to help others find the sense of meaning and purpose that comes from connection with Source, however you define or name that Source. 

I would like to emphasize that I have been at a point in life where I told myself something along the lines of – “I don’t know if God exists, but if He does, He doesn’t seem to answer my prayers and I’m really mad at Him.” So, while I love my tradition, and I know that traveling the path of a Muslim Sufi is the path for me, I believe there are as many paths as there are hearts. I believe diversity in beliefs and traditions serves a purpose, and I’d much rather talk about what’s common in our experience of spirituality than argue about differences. I’d rather explore together what is common in our search for truth, meaning, and understanding; what is common in our search to find and understand that something greater, something more, however we name it – whether you are deeply devout or not religious at all, whether you’re Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, or just curious.

So that’s a bit about who I am. As for the what of this podcast, hopefully we’ll have a mix of my musings as well as interviews with interesting guests so we will be to hear a bit about our guests’ spiritual stories and spiritual journeys. 

We’ll explore the intersection of mind and body with heart and soul, the intersection of spirituality and our everyday experience – in art and culture, in activism and social justice, in nature.

We’ll have conversations that hopefully will make spirituality more accessible to anyone and everyone -- whether you’re young or old, religious or not religious.

And hopefully we’ll have a little time at the end of each episode to experience different spiritual practices.

As for the why -- I mentioned earlier that my Sufi shaykh taught that if we know our religion well, we know that there’s only one religion, the religion of love, peace, mercy, justice, and freedom for all without separation. When we look at what’s happening here in the U.S. – in our educational system, our economic system, our judicial system, our entertainment industry, our political system, our government, and so on, we seem to be off course. Disrespect and disregard seem to have become the norm. 

When we look at what’s happening the world over, we seem to not know our religions well. And we seem to not have learned from our history of misusing religion. 

We have used it to separate and divine rather than to join and support each other in realizing our highest potential. 

When I say highest potential – I believe that each of us have a higher self and lower self, an angelic nature and a clay nature – we carry both divine light and earthly matter. We carry both the multiplicity of the earth and the Oneness. In the earthly multiplicity, we are divided into duality. We have light and darkness. But in our core, in our essence, we are pure light. In the multiplicity that exists, it is important that we strengthen the unity and Oneness within us, for you can only be in multiplicity without being lost when you are connected to Oneness, to Source. 

When the soul came into the body, the ego was separated from the soul and given a free will – the freedom to choose between the dark and the light. When we choose the light, we find our home. We are made to choose light, to let it shine, and to return home.

When we look at what’s happening in the world, there are struggles all over the world. 

If we look at these struggles, they are a struggle between darkness and light, which has always been on this earth. Just as duality is a means to come to unity and multiplicity is an expression of unity, the struggle between darkness and light is a constant movement in this world. But there are periods where the movements intensify, and we are now in such a period. All over the world we see how light and darkness clash. When we live in such moments as this one, when many people are spreading darkness, it is very important to reflect and contemplate every day to be clear where one is standing, what one wants to be, and what one wants to contribute to this world. It is important to be clear about choosing the path of love and light. When we choose the path of love and light, doing so carries a responsibility in our intention, attitude, words, deeds. How we behave towards ourselves and each other matters. In days of such turbulence, it is important to take time to connect to who we truly are, to connect to the blessings you carry and to connect to Source from which everything comes. It is for us to know where we are standing, to know what we want to contribute, to participate in letting the light within us grow, to intensify that light within us and to express that light. 

There are many people on earth who have chosen the path of love and light. When we pray, meditate, chant, and so on, we not only grow the light within, but also through growing the light, we return to our True Selves, we see each other, we strengthen each other.

Back to the statement that if we know our religion well, we know that there’s only one religion, the religion of love, peace, mercy, justice, and freedom for all without separation. 

I think of religion as a means of returning to our origin – however we define that origin. For a Christian, that origin is named God, or in Aramaic, the language most religious scholars agree that Jesus spoke, Alaha; for someone Jewish, that origin is named HaShem, Adonai, Elohim, El Shaddai; for a Hindu, Brahman; for a Muslim, Allah; and so on.

If our religions and our various spiritual paths are not returning us to our origin, whether we call that origin our Higher Power or Great Spirit, we’re off course.

When we look at the world today, we seem to be off course. We seem to have lost our way.

And a whole lot of us have experienced wounding in our experience of religion. Many of us must do a great deal of healing to clear childhood misconceptions from our hearts, minds, and bodies. Many of us do not and will not return to our origin by going to church, or going to the mosque, or the synagogue. 

In a 2022 study of spirituality conducted by the National Opinion Research Center, engaging in art and time in nature is right up there with prayer in terms of how we experience spirituality. 

In comparing this 2022 study with the Fetzer Institute’s 2020 study, many people seem to be feeling more doubt, less connection (to a higher power and to each other), and less engagement with their spirituality.

Yet the study also showed that nearly every spiritual activity we do contributes to our sense of spiritual growth and mental well-being. 

So, my hope is that the musings, interviews, and conversations we’ll be having here will help us expand our ideas about what spirituality is and about how we can experience spirituality. Hopefully our conversations will help us learn more about engaging spirituality in the activities of our daily lives, help us consciously grow our sense of connection to each other and to our higher power, however we name it; help us carry that heartfulness as we move through our lives; and thereby help us do better and be better – help us find our way – help us experience the joy, and peace and contentment that comes from returning to our origin, of returning to our True Selves, of returning to our spiritual home.

Hopefully that’s enough about the who, what, and why to get us started.

Now, let’s do a practice – a visualization that anyone can do regardless of your tradition or no tradition.

Let’s begin by taking a deep breath.

Let yourself physically and energetically settle in.

Please set the intention to relax your eyes, your jaw, and your shoulders.

Please take a deep breath into your base – feeling your breath fill your back, your belly, your hips.

Take a moment to feel what’s going on in your mind, body, heart, soul.

Do you feel agitated to the point that you need to do this practice as a walking meditation or you need to move your body in some other way?

Do you need to do something to settle your mind and ground your body before you do this practice? 

Or can you take what you’re experiencing physically, mentally, and emotionally and bring it into the practice? 

Please set the intention to hold your emotional, mental, and physical experience lovingly and compassionately.

Gently return your attention to your breath.

You may find it helpful to elongate your exhale a few times.

Feel your chest and your belly rise and fall with your breath.

Feel your breath flow in and out -- gently and naturally. 

Let the process of inhaling and exhaling be a process of settling in, of inner traveling, deepening, and inner awakening. 

Allow your attention to focus on your bodily heart and move from your bodily heart to your energetic heart, your spiritual heart.

Allow the busyness of the mind to rest in the spaciousness of your heart, like your mind is going to rest on the big comfy couch of your heart.

You may find it helpful to place your hand on your heart.

You may find it helpful to feel your breath in your chest area while you focus on your energetic heart.

Allow your physical, mental, and emotional experience to be held by your heart.

Visualize energy flowing out from your heart expanding to hold all that you are and all that you experience.

Inhale, taking the energy and light of inhaling and bring it to your heart and press it into your heart, and then exhale. 

Again, inhale, take the energy and light of inhaling and press it into your heart, and then exhale.

And now visualize your body as the earth rotating around the sun of your heart.

And begin a gentle circling counter clockwise of your upper body.

Visualize your heart as the sun radiating light out to your mind and body. 

Visualize your heart as the sun, shining light forth to your physical body, to your energetic body, to all around you, to all the solar system.

Be aware of your inner world. Be aware of the strength, the beauty, the longing for peace and harmony that you carry.

Remember, you were made to go back home.

Let this gentle circling be a practice of always returning to your heart. 

Exhale all the barriers to your realization of your True Self.

Inhale only light.

Be so far away from every darkness that you release your ego, so that you return to your True Self, so that you are only light.

Open to the light that you carry. 

Open to the light of your soul shining through your heart.

Allow the love that you carry, the mercy, the strength, the courage, the light that you carry to expand. 

Exhale all the distraction, all the worries. Let it all go.

Inhale light that fills your heart, light that fills every atom, cell, and molecule, light that shines forth until there is only light.

As we draw to a close, make a note of how you’re feeling -- of the state of your mind, body, heart, and soul. 

Notice whether something came up in this practice that you would like to follow up on. 

If so, please make a commitment to yourself to do so.

When you feel complete, please be slow and soft and gentle with opening your eyes and returning to being present.

May we honor each other and see the dignity that we all carry.

May we strengthen each other. 

May we all have the courage and the compassion to stand up against injustice and the forces of darkness.

May you realize all the strength and courage and beauty and light that you carry.

May you consciously participate in growing your light.

May you let it shine forth -- bringing your love and light to all your life.

Thank you for joining me on Beyond Names.

May something you heard today help you reconnect with the light in your own heart.
 May you grow in compassion, clarity, and courage.
 May you find your way — again and again — back home to yourself, back home to the Divine, however you name it.
 If today’s conversation or practice spoke to you, I’d love for you to share it, leave a review, or reach out.
 Until next time, peace be with you. May you be light, may you carry light, and may you share your light.