Faculty

Aadya Murshida (Dr. Perez-Chisti)

Aadya Murshida is President of the Sufi Universal Fraternal Institute which is dedicated to spreading the Sufi Message brought to the West by Hazrat Inayat Khan. She is an ordained minister in the Sufi Movement and the Creation Spirituality Community representing Universal Sufism and Deep Ecumenism.

She has functioned for 40 years as the head of the Religious Activities in the extended International Sufi communities and has directed a training program that ordains ministers in the Universal Worship founded by Hazrat Inayat Khan. She educates students in the study of the religious scriptures of the world, mysticism, and ethics. The study program has continued for over four decades preparing hundreds of students in interfaith studies as well as counseling modalities that support their progression into chaplaincy positions, prison reform, and social programs that assist those in marginalized conditions. She has studied with master Sufi teachers: Sheikh Muzaffer al-Jerrahi, Sheikh Nur al Jerrahi-Lex Hixon, Javad Nurbaksh-Nimatullahi, Murshid Moineddin Jablonski, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, Pir Hidayat Inayat Khan. She has also had the privilege to work with Master amanuensis Reverend Frida Waterhouse, Dr. Rina Sircar, Sufi Irini Tweedie, and Father Matthew Fox. May Peace and Blessings be upon them all.

She holds degrees in both areas of Psychology & Spirituality and Philosophy & Religion. In academic responsibilities, she was a faculty member in the East-West Psychology Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. She has functioned as Vice-President and Associate Academic Dean at the University of Creation Spirituality in Oakland, California. She has been the Academic Chair of the Global Ph.D. Program at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (now called Sofia University) in Palo Alto, California. She served as a faculty member at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, and Oakland campus for 11 years and lectured at the University of California-Berkeley, Stanford University, San Diego State University, John F. Kennedy University, and Sonoma State University in California.

She specializes in subjects such as World Religions, Sufi Mysticism, Buddhism, and Buddhist Abhidhamma offering original translations from the Pali language. She teaches courses in Sufi Mysticism, Ethics, Eastern and Western Philosophy, Women Saints and Masters, Fourth Wave Feminine Principles, Jungian Psychology, Psycho-spiritual synthesis, and Culture & Consciousness Studies. She continues to mentor Ph.D. students in research methodologies for their doctoral dissertations.

Professionally she has worked as the Director of the Prison Library Project that networked with wardens in the local prisons to bring greater contemplative and spiritual education into the prison libraries and also provided counseling to those on the inside as well as their families. She served as a start-up member of the San Francisco AIDS Hospice program. Serving with the Mission of Charities in San Francisco, she met and worked with Mother Teresa who invited her to come to India. She then organized a pilgrimage of 28 people to visit and work at the Kalighat in Calcutta for the homeless. She was the Coordinating Director of the Emergency Relief Fund International, an NGO that helped transport food and medicines to areas in Somalia and Ethiopia during periods of severe famine.

Publications:

1998, Causation, Correlation, and Liberation in the Abhidhamma, with original translations from Pali. UFI Publications, Washington, D.C.

1998, Sufi Women-Journey to the Beloved. (Contributor). International Association of Sufism. San Rafael, California.

1999, Commentary on Meister Eckhart’s Notion of Emptiness. Toward the One Magazine, Edmonton, Canada.

2001, The Cosmic World-How We Participate in Thee, Thou, and Us. A Journal of Consciousness and Transformational Quarterly-ReVision Vol. 23, Number 3 Transformation Quarterly, Heldref Publications, Washington, D.C.

2003, Women’s Prophetic Contribution to Sufism. Italian International Sufi Journal, Verona, Italy.

2008, Originally Blessed-Love of the Mother of the World. Creation Spirituality Community, Golden, Colorado.

2010, A Feminist Approach to Three Holy Women’s Intuitive Process: Exploring Aspects of Transcendental Phenomenology and Hermeneutics through a Correlation of the Researcher’s Experience. ReVision Magazine, San Francisco, California.

2015, Peace with All-Akbar, the First Interfaith Mogul King. Sufi Movement USA, Berkeley, California.

2017, The Bearers of Light:Cherag Stories, Vol. I, Sufi Universal Fraternal Institute Publications, Orinda, California

2020, Farming the Heart: Ziraat Symbology, Sufi Universal Fraternal Institute Publications, Orinda, California

2021, Sweet Reign-Fourth Wave Feminine Principles, Sufi Universal Fraternal Institute Publications, Orinda, California

2022, Three Rings and Swords-The Bushido Code and Stories of the Samurai. Sufi Universal Fraternal Institute Publications. Orinda, California

Aadya Murshida other interests and expertise extends to phenomenological and hermeneutic research methods, ancient languages, yoga, and martial arts. She holds a black belt in Shorin Ryu Karate and studied with Sensai Jack Saito, and Sensai Richard Kim from the Zen Bei Botokukai in San Francisco. She also studied Kendo and Iaido at the Buddhist Temple in New York City with Reverend Shunshin Kan. She holds a degree in Medicine & Herbalism from Dominican College in Vancouver, Canada.

Dr. Adeeba Mary Meyer, Ph.D., LMFT.

Adeeba Mary Meyer is a Minister (Cheraga) in the Universal Worship Service of Hazrat Inayat Khan, and ordained as an interfaith minister through the Sufi Movement International. She had many years of experience in meditation practice, and had earned a Masters of Heart Studies through Iam-Heart, Institute for applied meditation on the Heart. She currently serves as a Secretary for the Sufi Universal Fraternal Institute (SUFI) Board of Directors. Adeeba is also the Executive Director of Full Heart Family Therapy, and she is a Licensed Marital and Family Therapist in Iowa and Illinois. She received a Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and a Masters degree in Family and Consumer Sciences from Iowa State University. She has been a practicing couple and family therapist for over 15 years, specializing in developmental trauma and addiction. Adeeba is passionate about helping people heal by integrating their whole-self, body, mind, heart, and soul, and in relationships. Her favorite quote (author unknown) is “Become loyal to your innermost truth. Follow the way when all others abandon it. Walk the path of your own heart.”

Phillip Scott

Phillip is of mixed ancestry and thrice struct by lightening. He has walked the Native Path for over thirty years, learning from and sanctioned by traditional Medicine/Holy people, tribal Spiritual leaders, Wisdom keepers and Elders from several Indigenous cultures. Annually Sundancing in the Lakota tradition for over two decades, he is a Ceremonial leader, entrusted to share Indigenous wisdom and traditional healing practices with the contemporary world. Interviewed both nationally and internationally on radio, television and for newspapers, his life, experience and writings have been featured in journals and books. In addition to directing and teaching the programs at Ancestral Voice-Institute for Indigenous Lifeways in Northern California, which he founded in 1994, he maintains a private healing practice, performs Ceremonies, conducts intensives, gives lectures and leads pilgrimages worldwide. He is skilled in survival primitive technologies, has received a Masters Degree from Naropa University and is also a licensed EMT. See Phillip’s class on the scroll bar under “Institute/Courses: There’s More to Healing Than Meets the Eye-Indigenous Medicine Ways.