Living and Dying with Dignity
The Sacred Journey of the Soul
The journey we are all destined to make someday…
For centuries people have thought and spoken about death as a great mystery, and as an expansive unknown. So many of us run away as fast as possible from anything to do with death: learning about it, preparing for it, even thinking about it. Yet it is the doorway to eternal life. Ultimately, one submits to the loss of body function, letting go of earthly existence, disappearing into death, and stepping through the doorway into eternal life.
How can you prepare, or help someone you care for to prepare, for this sacred journey?
The University of Sufism has created a unique opportunity to understand death and dying in a way that helps to shine light on the beauty, holiness and grace available to each of us as we move through the completion of our earthly life and prepare to take the final step into eternal life with God.
Program Information
All are welcome to take part in this program. This program can be taken as part of our Level 3 Master of Divinity track OR as a standalone course.
The five-module course will focus each session on one set of aspects students need to become loving facilitators for those preparing for death and for their loved ones.
Class sessions are held on Zoom and are recorded.
Program Dates
Module 1 – November 9 – 14, 2023
Module 2 – January 26 – 31, 2024
Module 3 – June 22 – 27, 2024
Module 4 – October 26 – 31, 2024
Module 5 – February 22 – 27, 2025
Tuition
Tuition for the program is $9,900, or 20 payments of $495, covering 200 hours of instruction.
REGISTER EARLY AND SAVE:
Register by September 30, 2023 for a discount of $400 (total tuition $9,500).
If you would like to learn more about whether this is the right program for you, schedule a personal call with our admissions director!
Rahma Tracy Caraway
1-800-238-3060 ext 701
admissions@sufiuniversity.org
Payment plans and financial assistance available.
Meet Your Teachers
Robert Ibrahim Jaffe, M.D., M.D.(H), D.D.
Dr. Jaffe is a world renowned Sufi Master Healer and Spiritual Teacher. He was officially given the title of Murshid Murrabai Ruhi (guide and caregiver of the soul), one of the highest distinctions for guiding people towards the world of unity and enlightenment. He has the reputation of healing serious diseases, by Allah, including some that have been unresponsive to traditional medicine and deemed irreversible or terminal.
Dr. Jaffe brings an ocean of love, wisdom and healing to people who are seeking to find the truth, reality and joy of their beings.
Maxine Salima Adelstein, M.Ed., D.D.
Salima helps people to discover and embody the deep truth of their beauty and essence through her work as a healer and teacher. Ms. Adelstein is also chair of the Department of Spiritual Ministry and Sufi Studies and a faculty member. She is a master healer who has helped hundreds of clients heal from illness and lifelong emotional pain. Her heart is filled with the joy and compassion that result from living in the heart of God.
Kamila Carolyn Shenmen, Ph.D., Dipl.Ac., Dipl.C.H., M.Div.
Kamila’s search for true healing at the deepest levels led her to Shaykh Sidi Muhammad al-Jamal and the ancient spiritual healing practices of Sufism. Having found, on the Sufi Way, the peace and healing that comes from opening the heart to God’s Love, Kamila is blessed to be able to share this healing path and its teachings with her students, community and clients. Her greatest wish for every human being is that they come to know the beauty, wholeness and truth they carry within.
P.J. Ayyub Lally, M.D., M.Div.
Amany Shalaby, M.A.
Amany is the founder of Universal Chaplaincy, LLC., a member of the Association of Muslim Chaplains and serves as chaplain to Shaddhilya Sufi Center and the Muslim Women’s Organization. She has eighteen years of experience providing spiritual care for several Shadhiliyya Sufi communities across the states.
She obtained an ijazah (license) from Sidi Sheikh Muhammad Sa’id al-Jamal, who was an imam at al-Masjid al-Aqsa and the Head of the Sufi Counsel in Jerusalem for thirty years. She served for twelve years as the Sheikh’s simultaneous interpreter and she translated twenty books on Islamic spirituality, written by the Shaikh.
Rahima Schmall, Ph.D., RN
In 2004, Rahima was one of the founding faculty of the University of Spiritual Healing and Sufism and the department chair of the Spiritual Healing and Counseling Master’s until her resignation in 2018. Rahima’s life has been a journey of spiritual opening and healing. (you can read her spiritual biography in the chapter, “Illness as a Path to Spiritual Completion” in the book, A Drop in the Ocean of Love. She brings humor and practicality into her teaching, to help each student open their unique gifts and walk toward Allah.
Modules: Living and Dying with Dignity
The Sacred Journey of the Soul
Module 1
Module 1 offers in-depth teachings challenging students to evaluate their own attitudes about death as well as the medical aspects of hospice care, the Sufi way of accepting the end of life and allowing God to help in the journey. Students will learn to expand their hearts to encompass a deep listening to better offer compassion and dignity to the subjects and their loved ones. They also will learn to observe and facilitate the person’s journey through death to what awaits.
- Personal Walking
- Attitudes and Beliefs around death and dying
- Overview of Human Aging, Death and Grief
- Overview of Modern Medical End of Life Care
- Sufi Living and Dying
- Case studies and actual scenarios
Module 2
Module 2 will focus directly on what happens during the dying process and how it is impacted by various illnesses and individual situations. Students will learn the root cause of illness in order to help the patient walk through the pertinent issues to find peace and acceptance.
- Personal Walking
- Supporting the spirit to come alive in Life
- Mercy from Allah
- Helping person and family to surrender more deeply to what is happening
- Looking at different illnesses and their spiritual walking
- Helping to support the family system
- Case studies and actual scenarios
Module 3
Module 3 features what may be the hardest walking in examining the actual physical aspects of the body’s death, grief of loved ones, and how to guide the patients to a good death through understanding and supporting the natural processes.
- Personal Walking
- Transitioning
- How to Have a good death
- Death and the Grief Process
- Caring for the Body in the Sufi way after death: washing
- Funeral, Burial in the Sufi Way
- The Day of Judgement and the Next Life
- Case studies and actual scenarios
Module 4
Module 4 is all about helping patients maintain dignity while encouraging them make the most of the rest of their lives, make the necessary decisions for the end of life plan and to help them understand the prophetic light and how it will help them from this world to the next.
- Personal Walking
- Complete prophetic understanding of the transmission of light during the dying process
- Palliative Care: What does quality of life mean
- Advanced Directives, Living Wills and Medical Decision Making
- Creating a Spiritual care needs assessment and plan
- Case studies and actual scenarios
Module 5
Module 5 is a wrap-up of research projects and offers insight and instruction in helping patients in assisted living facilities. Students will learn chaplaincy care and how to select a quality assisted living facility. This module also offers Sufi teachings on death and dying, insight from the prophets and instruction to aid the soul’s journey.
- Personal Walking
- Chaplaincy Care: Working with Adults, Adolescents and Children
- Assisted Living: what a good facility looks like
- Report on research, service project or internship
- What we learn from the prophets, on loving, living and dying.
- Every Soul Shall Taste Death
- What you can do to help the soul’s journey after death
- Hadith and Quran readings.
- Assessments and next steps
- Graduation and certifications
