Zikar is a contemplative practice from the Sufi tradition. It is often translated as remembrance. Through spoken or singing repetition of sacred phrases, combined with simple body movement oriented to the heart, one opens to remembering their true nature. The vibrational field created through chanting, along with orienting to the heart and its powerful energy field (the electric field is 60X and the magnetic field 5000X more powerful than the brain) help us move beyond our ego mind to tune to our energy field and the larger energetic field of the cosmos.
The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung in his writing in Aion explores several pairs of opposites that arise in the contemplation of Christ as an image of the archetype of the Self. In Jungian terms the Self is the archetype (an innate, organizing wisdom pattern in each of our psyche’s) of wholeness, that creates balance, self regulation and healing. It can be thought of in religious terms as the “God within”.
In meditation I was drawn to combine the practice of Zikar with the contemplation of the tension of opposites Jung describes in relation to Christ as an archetypal image of the God within; what the Sufi’s orient to in there Zikar practice. The following audio file recorded at a Sunday World Meditation (now renamed Entering Into the Mystery) has my commentary on Zikar from a depth psychological perspective along with a beautiful singing Zikar that holds these opposites.
