Practical Sufism: A Guide to the Spiritual Path Based on the Teachings of Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Practical Sufism is respected Sufi representative Phillip Gowins’ gentle guide to finding and maintaining your spiritual path. Following Gowins’ own journey through meeting his spiritual teacher Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan and the lessons he learned along the way, Practical Sufism offers insights into the age-old spiritual concerns with attaining happiness, making commitments, and understanding love and death, poignant to any level of spiritual practitioner in language easily followed by the novice. An uplifting and interactive work, this book provides meditative exercises, utilized by Sufi initiates world wide that bring the reader to a state of positive introspection and life altering realization. After quoting the Sufi teachings of Pir Vilayat and other renowned leaders, Gowins reveals their modern translations and practical applications for every day experience. Gowins then instructs the reader through a meditation, allowing he/she to apply his insights to his/her own spiritual journey. He guides the reader from simple breathing meditations to more advanced practices that will allow the reader to envision and then embody the advanced mystic. Written from a place of love for the spiritual journeyman, Practical Sufism is not a fluff piece promising relaxation and instant revelation. It is candid in its assertion that the spiritual journey takes time and practice, but can bring true healing and happiness founded in a greater understanding of the interconnectedness of the universe.

240 pages

About the author: Phillip Gowins is an initiate and representative of the Sufi Order. He had a brief carrier in military intelligence serving in Korea, Hawaii and at various state side training centers. After a short time in credit collections, he spent the next 35 years as a carpenter and cabinet maker. In 1979, after extensively researching Sufi teachers, he found Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan and became one of his many devoted students. While living in a Sufi community in New York City he met his wife Dawn. They married in 1981. In 1987, he and his wife were named representatives of the Sufi Order and were authorized to give spiritual practices and advise and to initiate people into Sufism. In 2000 they both realized that their desire was to help people heal directly. In looking for a medium with which to accomplish this, they discovered hypnosis. In 2002 after extensive training with the National Guild of Hypnotists, they were certified to practice hypnotherapy. Phillip currently lives in Scranton, PA where he and his wife run a hypnosis office, Hypnosis Horizons, Inc.