Book Review: Living Presence

A Sufi Way to Mindfulness and the Essential Self

by Kabir Edmund Helminski

“Each moment contains 

a hundred messages from God:

To every cry of ‘Oh Lord,’

He answers a hundred times, ‘I am here.’"

This sweet verse by Rumi is the teaching presented again and again in Living Presence, A Sufi Way to Mindfulness and the Essential Self by Kabir Edmund Helminski. As a translator and interpreter of Sufi literature, Helminski clearly embodies the understanding of the Divine that lives in each of us. He echoes all the great teachings, including ours of Religious Science, in the spiritual practice of turning to the invisible, transcendent source of life. But he does not suggest that we separate from our physical experience. Instead, he invites us to so practice that we may discover this sweet presence that expresses as our very bodies and around us as our world. He describes the work of growing and deepening our vibration as the light and love of life. Reading Living Presence, I felt like his very words were imbued with this light and love. It brought me  inspiration, openness and aliveness drinking in the ‘living waters’ of the Essential Self.

Review by Rev. Ruth Barnhart, a staff minister at Center for Spiritual Living, Santa Rosa.

Living Presence is available from Stepping Stones Books and Gifts.