The Kingdom Within: When Jesus Sounds Like a Sufi
Rediscovering the psychology of Presence that Jesus taught and Sufism preserved
My own journey to this book began through Cynthia Bourgeault’s course Practicing Living Presence: Discovering the Mind of Christ Within. Her teaching reframed the spiritual path as a training in attention rather than a system of belief. She built that course on Helminski’s Living Presence, and after hearing her unpack it, I wanted to go straight to the source. Reading Helminski himself, I could feel what Cynthia was pointing toward: a lived, embodied understanding of what Jesus actually meant by “the Kingdom within.”
Helminski is a sheikh in the Mevlevi Order of Sufis, the lineage that descends directly from Jalāl al-Dīn Rumi. This is the same tradition that turned poetry into prayer and movement into meditation. Its goal is not escape from the world but participation in it through awakened awareness. In that lineage, presence is not theory; it is transmission, passed heart to heart and breath to breath.
The Kingdom, in that sense, is not a place or a reward but a quality of consciousness, a subtle field where the human and divine interpenetrate. The Sufis call this hudūr: being present in the Presence. Living Presence is the art of remembering that field and stabilizing awareness within it.
Cynthia Bourgeault once observed that Islam emerged as “a corrective to a series of wrong turns that had jeopardized Christianity’s ability to follow its own Wisdom master.” Read from that Wisdom perspective, Sufism can be seen not as a rival to Christianity but as one of its continuations, keeping alive the contemplative operating system Jesus taught.
Where early Christian monastics withdrew to preserve holiness, the Sufis brought holiness into daily life. The monk withdrew, the dervish turned. Both sought God, but the Sufi’s path kept the awareness moving in the world.
Helminski’s work reawakens that same embodied Wisdom, a spirituality fully in the world, awake in action, rooted in the heart.
The Kingdom and Presence
“The Kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed… for behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.”
Jesus’ statement is not metaphor. It is a map of consciousness. The “within” he names is not psychological interiority but the subtle field of awareness itself. When attention stops scattering into thought and memory, it begins to rest in its own depth.
This is what Sufis call hudūr, presence in the Presence. Helminski teaches that presence is not an emotion or a state to maintain. It is the natural gravity of consciousness once it is no longer diffused. When awareness returns to itself, it tastes its own radiance.
The “Kingdom” is not reached through striving. It is recognized the moment you stop leaving.
From Sin to Forgetfulness
Helminski reframes sin with precision and mercy. Sin, he suggests, is not moral violation but forgetfulness, a contraction of awareness that cuts us off from the Real.
The Greek metanoia, often translated as “repentance,” literally means “to change one’s mind.” Sufism names the same movement dhikr, remembrance. Forgetfulness (ghaflah) is the root of suffering; remembrance is the cure.
Repentance, then, is not remorse. It is reorientation. Each moment of conscious presence turns awareness back toward its Source. Every breath remembered is a return to the Kingdom.
The Heart as Organ of Perception
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
For Helminski, the heart is the meeting point of the human and the divine. It is not a metaphor for feeling but the subtle organ through which Reality can be perceived. When purified of self-concern, the heart reflects divine light directly.
Here, the Christian Prayer of the Heart and the Sufi dhikr converge. The Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me,” trains attention to descend from the head to the heart. With practice, the prayer begins to breathe itself. The Sufi remembrance follows the same trajectory, from words on the tongue to vibration in the chest to awareness itself dissolving in presence.
Both cultivate what Helminski calls “the refinement of attention.” As attention is polished, perception becomes clear, and the world reveals its hidden luminosity.
Purity of heart, in this language, is not moral perfection but unified attention, the eye made single.
Incarnation and Immanence
In Helminski’s view, human beings are designed as mirrors through which divine qualities can become conscious of themselves. The Incarnation of Christ is the archetype of this possibility, a revelation of what it means to be fully human and fully aligned with the Source.
Sufi metaphysics calls this the “human mirror.” God is not “out there,” occasionally intervening; the divine is continually manifesting through all creation. The task of spiritual practice is to polish the mirror until awareness reflects Reality without distortion.
Jesus embodied this perfectly. He lived from the heart of divine remembrance, where every act expressed alignment with the Whole. As Rumi said, “The spirit of Christ is every moment descending into the heart.”
To live from that same center is not imitation but participation. The Incarnation becomes immanence, the breath of God animating every soul that remembers.
Communion as Consciousness
Where Christianity ritualized communion into a meal, Sufism reveals it as an ongoing exchange of awareness. Every genuine meeting between two hearts awake to God becomes Eucharist.
In this communion, attention is the chalice, love is the wine, and the human body is altar. Presence circulates between hearts as a living current, one field, many forms.
This is what it means to be in the world but not of it. You live in the thick of things—raising children, arguing, working, paying bills—but something in you stays steady. The noise does not own you. You move through the world, but the world does not move you.
That is the stance Jesus modeled and the Sufis preserved: fully human, responsive, and grounded, yet inwardly free. The mystic does not escape creation; they participate in it with awareness.
The Psychology of the Kingdom
Helminski calls presence “a spiritual substance.” It is not a feeling but a subtle energy of consciousness. When gathered through remembrance and attention, it strengthens. When scattered in distraction or reactivity, it weakens.
His teaching echoes Cynthia Bourgeault’s insight that Jesus offered a method of perception, not a system of belief. Both describe a training in awareness: personality serving essence, attention anchored in the heart, action arising from stillness.
Monastic Christianity preserved this for centuries, but Sufism kept it accessible to daily life—remembrance in the marketplace, prayer in the breath, stillness within motion. It is what Jesus modeled before his path became institutionalized.
Living Presence brings it back into practice:
Attention becomes prayer.
Breath becomes remembrance.
The heart becomes the meeting place of heaven and earth.
The Kingdom within is not an idea to contemplate. It is a field to inhabit.
To live this day to day:
Pause. Breathe. Remember. Let the next person you meet be the face of God greeting you back.
This is the Wisdom path rejoined, the mind of Christ expressed through the body of the world.
Blessed be the ones who stopped searching the sky and found the holy city in their chest.
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Thank you for this lovely essay comparing Sufism with Christianity. It’s very interesting to see that Sufism has kept alive the contemplative practice that Jesus taught.🙏 The Sufi concept of “hudur” reminds me of something you once quoted from Cynthia Bourgeault: Don’t try to think about God, just be in the presence of God.✨
I have been thinking a lot about breath - not breathing work (got too distracted trying to do it right or count). But that God breathed into humans.
So I am trying various 'habits' to try remembering my breath is gift from God.
I find it helpful to have a broader base of teachings/ideas all pointing toward the same outcome. Really appreciate your blending of the traditions.