A recorded conversation (YouTube) between Vishen Lakhiani and a guest reflecting on how Sufi principles guided the guest—a refugee and mountaineer—from Kuwait to achieve major adventures. The guest outlines five lessons from Sufism applicable to personal goals: love (self-love and devotion), passion (mastery and learning), practice/discipline (visualization and repeated effort), creating progressive goals (“mini Everests”), and intention (serving others). The piece connects spiritual practice to practical preparation for extreme expeditions and life challenges.
Chapters
What are the five lessons that our audience here can learn from Sufi tradition to help them conquer whatever mountain in life they want to conquer?
The first things is love. So that you love everything that you do, it has to start with yourself, which is loving yourself. So the love of God for me is getting up at 5 o' clock in the morning. I do my meditation, a spiritual meditation that I do it in the morning. And this is something that the first things that I do in the morning that will give me that calm and peace within myself. To be able to love anything that you do, you have to love yourself first. And these things that you do, it has to be something that is good. Not just for yourself, for everyone around you, for everyone that in touch with you.
Now, let's go on to the second idea.
Second for me is passion. So you have to be passionate. I mean, you know, with Sufism, passion, it's a big thing.
How is this idea of passion different from the first idea of love?
Well, love is, you know, when you go into loving something. For me, passion is different because when you're passionate about something, you have to have the knowledge for it. You have to have everything, so you have to read about everything to understand it. You have to get, you know, for me, the knowledge was everything about mountaineering, and I have to understand everything that I do so I can be passionate about. So if I put it this way for you, when I went to the South Pole, I looked at everything negative, right? And then I've learned to turn all the negative to positive. So when I was in the south pole for 60 days, anything that faced me, I knew exactly, exactly how to turn it. But I didn't look at it as negative because I knew now how positive it is and how I can turn it.
So you're talking about passion in the sense of mastery?
Yes.
Becoming so passionate about climbing a mountain or skiing the South Pole that you seek to become a master.
Absolutely. There is a beautiful quote by Razi, it's a great Arab scholar, and he said, the birth of brilliance. And when you find your passion, the minute you find what you really passionate about, then because love is something that you feel, passion is something that you learn to feel and learn how to love. And passion is something that you start having the knowledge for it. I needed to know exactly what is high altitude, how my body react. Okay, I need to go and do some course that I understand the body.
I see what you're saying. It's a passion to learn, a passion that leads to a curiosity.
Absolutely. Learning, learning Is the most, you know, I don't want to be speaking about something that I did not practice. And I want to go there and tell you about this, that dreams come true because I practice it. That everything you can imagine is real. Because if you practice it, you love it, you're passionate about, then why not be able to do it? Like what is. What will be reason not to do it?
I love that idea. Let's go on to the third idea.
Third is the practice. Everything that we do, we have to start with ourselves. We have to practice ourselves. And I mentioned earlier this beautiful verse of the Quran that I always follow that God does not change what's in you until you want to change it in anywhere you go in the world. Doesn't matter what the culture, what the religion, what it's. You have to make that change. And how you're going to make the change is to practice, is to be disciplined. You have to discipline yourself. And. And I think discipline is a massive word that I always. Everything I wanted to do and follow, I always put to myself a red line that I cannot cross. And I have to be disciplined to be able to do it. Then discipline come from practice and might be difficult in the beginning because change for people is always the most difficult things. And you know, for me, I think decision to change. But that decision have to have discipline and practice and passion and love everything that we talked about that will get you to where you are beautiful. Everyone has an Everest in their life. And Everest can be absolutely anything in life. Could be your education, can be your work, can be your family, can be anything. But you can deal with it as a mountain. Now why would I say that? Is that every time I do something I feel that I'm climbing a mountain. And I know when I climb a mountain I have to have some basic things that I need to learn, basic things that I have to have within me. And there is always going to be that sacrifice. But I have to find my goal, I have to find my dream. So if anything you do in life, if you don't have something that you see a little bit too further, like not here, close to you, you need to see where you're going. And I think in Sufism, the visualization, when you visualize things, this is where, you know, I can sit, I can do my meditation like Rumi did, like Shamsit Tabrizi did. They did all the visualization. And then Tabrizi met Rumi and Konya and before they met in person, because he visualize it. And I think I Visualize everything. So in my life, I have. Every time I do something, for me, it's an Everest. It's not just a mountain, but it's a goal that I put myself. So I always have to have a goal or a dream in front of me for me able to go through all the process and all the practice that I do to achieve it.
Beautiful. I love what you said. What you're essentially saying is create mini Everest. Mini Everest. Lots of little mountains, goals that you want to accomplish in life. And let these goals be. Be a map to help you navigate life.
Absolutely. And the final idea, the final idea is the intention. Which is what is your intention by doing any idea you have, any dream, any goal, what is is the intention behind it? If this intention is to make a difference to your community, to your people, to the world, then I guess it's always. It's going to take you so far. Because the good intention, if it's. It's not all about me. It's not, you know, I don't do everything that I do. Everything I do, every time I do it, I do it for somebody else, which is, you know, refugee people in refugee camps, children. For me, I published two children book. I have another five children book coming just to tell children about all over the world that nothing is impossible that you can achieve your dream. I have the story and especially in the Middle east. When I wrote the children book, it was all about teaching, teaching the people to respect other religion in Everest story Dare to dream. I was climbing with the Buddhist. His name is Lakba. We were sitting in 23,000ft and 26,000ft in the same tent. He used to pray to the goddess of the mountain, which is just there ever. And I used to pray for God. And we both were there in this room. And we have one single goal which is to climb that mountain and go. He had the respect. I have to have the respect. He go into this monastery, beautiful monastery. I go inside the monastery and I enjoy it. And I take everything they want to give me. All the energy, all everything that they have. And I'll keep what I believe because that's also something that it's giving me a power to go and climb that mountain. So the goodness of the mountain. This is how we feel. I feel, you know, God is everywhere and I believe the both. But I go with him and we pray together and we accept. So acceptance as well from the intention is the acceptance that you have to accept everything around you. That you shouldn't have any wall, you shouldn't Your belief should not affect your how you look at life.
You're talking essentially about living from intention, having the intention for how you want your day to unfold, the intention for what mountain you want to climb. And even if there's turmoil around you, staying true for that intention.
