Abraham Sussman

Murshid Abraham Sussman is a senior teacher in the Sufi Ruhaniat International and a senior mentor teacher of the Dances of Universal Peace. Together with his wife, Murshida Halima Sussman, he guides SamaSangha (SAMA), a Sufi Ruhaniat community in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Born in October 1945, just after the end of the Second World War, he came of age as a seeker and wanderer in the 1960s, reading widely in spirituality — but it was meeting a living teacher that set the course of his life.

That meeting came in 1969, in San Francisco. In his own words: "As a young wanderer in 1969, I first met my spiritual teacher, Sufi Murshid Samuel Lewis, dancing in Precita Park in San Francisco. I realized quickly that life was taking me on an extraordinary adventure, and that my primary task was simply to be open, to listen, and to welcome the awesome blessings that were pouring forth from this God-realized dervish." He took bayat (initiation) with Murshid Samuel Lewis in early 1970, becoming one of Murshid Sam's original mureeds, and was — and remains — in awe of the beauty and power of the community that grew around him.

Music has carried his transmission from the beginning. Abraham sang in the original Sufi Choir, founded in 1969 by Allaudin Mathieu among the students of Murshid Sam, and he has been inspired ever since by Murshid Sam's request of him to "write New Age psalms." That request led him deeply into the Dances of Universal Peace. He co-founded the Guru Blanket Band, which played what the Ruhaniat describes as "mantric rock and dervish roll," and his recordings include Voice of the Heart, In Peace: A Call to Unity, and, in collaboration with Murshid Saadi (Neil Douglas-Klotz), Beginnings and Bridge: The Way of the Spiritual Traveller. With Halima he created the music for the Dances of Universal Peace Foundation Dance and Walk Manual.

Abraham met Halima at the first Mendocino Sufi camp in 1972, and they have been together ever since, settling in Cambridge and raising a family of four sons. Since 1972 they have led gatherings of the Dances of Universal Peace in Cambridge — through the 1970s and early 1980s, a Dance and Meditation gathering that met twice weekly. From this home base they travel the world as "peace activists," sharing the Dances and the Sufi Message; in recent years their journeys have taken them to Russia, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, Holland, Latvia, and Spain, and the friends made along the way have themselves become part of SamaSangha.

Alongside the spiritual path, Abraham has walked a parallel path of psychological healing. After degrees from Yale College (1967) and the Harvard Graduate School of Education (1972), he earned his doctorate in clinical psychology from Antioch/New England in 1988. He has served as Clinical Director of Agua Viva Associates and of the SOMA Counselling Center, and continues to work as a psychotherapist, with — as his Ruhaniat biography puts it — "a deep respect for the healing power of love, relationships and community." In that same spirit of service he has been a Co-Chair of the Ethics Council for the Ruhaniat and for the International Dance Leaders Guild.

Among the other teachers who have mentored him, Abraham names the seer Frida Waterhouse; Karmu, the Cambridge healer whom Murshid Sam dubbed his "Black Christ"; and the Mexican psychiatrist Dr. Salvador Roquet. Within the Ruhaniat, his living guides have been Pir Moineddin Jablonski and Pir Shabda Kahn. His reflections on the inner art of the Dances are gathered in his article "Dancing the Heart Awake," written for the Dances of Universal Peace Elements of Mastery series, where he reminds dance leaders: "Leaders are called to serve. The awakening of humanity is everyone's collective responsibility." He is also, his biography notes, a gardener, a former soccer coach, and a candlemaker.