Psychology: Beyond Identifications

LMFT; Elizabeth Miller, Ph.D., Katherine Preston, MA, LMFT; , and Amineh Pryor, Ph.D., LMFT introduced the presentations and facilitated lively Q & A sessions with the presenters.

There was a remarkable confluence between the presentations. Introducing the day, Katherine Preston provided an initial framework, stating that “heartbased psychotherapy” rests on the well-established principle that the therapeutic alliance between therapist and client is the single biggest predictor of positive outcome in psychotherapy. The quality of this relationship is increasingly understood as emerging from the therapist’ own being and the awareness they bring to the moment-by-moment unfolding of the process.

Interpersonal neurobiology and neuro-cardiology also increasingly reveal the role of heart in precipitating these therapeutic conditions. Heart has been variously understood as a physical organ, the “seat of emotion,” a metaphor for deep capacities such as compassion and courage, a major chakra, a locus of equilibrium in the autonomic nervous system, and an electromagnetic center that both responds to and influences its interpersonal environment.

All of these dimensions of heart, and its role in healing and therapy, were discussed in the various presentations among which a convergence of themes emerged, including: the relationship between embodied knowing, breath, and heart the connection between heart and “something bigger” that is the source of healing the call to return to heart and the potential for connection that this provides

The relationship between these themes will be explored in depth in a future article.

In the meantime, please mark your calendars for Beyond Identification 2022, scheduled for Saturday March, 12. The theme will be “Heart-Based Treatment of Trauma” and the presenters will be deepening into this timely, highly relevant inquiry into the cuttingedge of psychotherapy practice.

The Beyond Identifications Team

Hamaseh Kianfar, Ed.D. Leili First, Ph.D. Jamal Granick, Ph.D., LMFT Mary Granick, M.S., LMFT Arife Hammerle, Ph.D., LMFT Elizabeth Miller, Ph.D. Katherine Preston, M.A., LMFT Amineh Pryor, Ph.D., LMFT

Sheikh Morshed

From Safa Ali Michael Newman, The Gift of the Robe, San Rafael, CA: International Association of Sufism Publications, 2000, p.55–56.

Sheikh Abu Eshagh Shahryar Kazerooni, known as Sheikh Morshed, was born of Moslem parents, but was descended from Zoroastrians. According to Tazkerat-ol-Olia, it is said that the night the Sheikh was born, people saw a pillar of light radiating from the house to the sky and that the pillar had branches of light going in different directions. From a young age, despite disputes with his parents and grandparents, Sheikh Morshed was insistent on acquiring spiritual knowledge.

It is narrated that when Sheikh Kabir was near death he handed down his robe to his student Sheikh Akkar and told him to keep the robe until the true recipient of the robe comes–a man who would appear only after several years and who would possess many secrets, wisdom, and intellect. Sheikh Kabir told Sheikh Akkar that the sign by which he would know this man would be that the man would suffer an injury upon wearing the robe.

Sheikh Akkar took the robe but kept Sheikh Kabir’s words to himself. When asked by other Sufis whether Sheikh Kabir had given the robe to him, Sheikh Akkar replied that Sheikh Kabir had entrusted the robe to him and had given him a sign about the owner of this robe who would appear when his time came. His statement spread throughout the land. Many pious men came and asked for the robe but none were injured upon wearing the robe.

Time passed but many of Sheikh Morshed’s friends and students came to believe that Sheikh Morshed was the rightful recipient of the robe. Sheikh Morshed discounted his students’ belief but eventually he went to Shiraz to visit Sheikh Akkar. At this time he had not even received his twentieth birthday. When he put on Sheikh Kabir’s robe a scorpion bit him, fulfilling Sheikh Kabir’s prophecy.1

Sheikh Morshed developed a large following. It was said that 24,000 Zoroastrians alone converted to Islam because of him.2

In describing obedience to God, Sheikh Morshed once said the following:

Whoever is disciplined during childhood and obedient to God during youth will remain obedient as he or she becomes older. His or her heart will be lit by the light of knowledge and the source of knowledge will spring from his or her heart. Whoever is undisciplined during childhood and youth but repents when he or she is older will be accepted but it will be too late to become knowledgeable.

The following quotations from Ferdous-al-Morshedieh are also illustrative of Sheikh Morshed’s teachings:

Learn to call on God by your heart and do not like the world so much that you call on Almighty God with your tongue and keep the world in your heart.

The visions of believers come from the light in their hearts. Since futurity is invisible and the light of the heart is invisible, the invisible sees the invisible.3

Sheikh Morshed died in the eleventh century at the age of 73.

1. Ferdous-al-Morshedieh, p. 25. 2. ibid., p. 49. 3. ibid., p. 315.