Welcome to Why Not Me? Embracing Autism and Mental Health Worldwide. Hosted by Tony Mantor. Broadcasting from the heart of Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee. Join us as our guests share their raw, howlful stories. Some will spark laughter, others will move you to tears. These real-life journeys inspire, connect, and remind you that you're never alone. We're igniting a global movement to empower everyone to make a lasting difference by fostering deep awareness, unwavering acceptance, and profound understanding of autism and mental health. Tune in, be inspired, and join us in transforming the world one story at a time. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me? Embracing Autism and Mental Health Worldwide. Joining us today is Salima Adelstein, a renowned Sufi mystic, master healer, and spiritual guide whose life's work centers on illuminating the divine essence within every individual. She has dedicated over 35 years to mentoring seekers on their path to spiritual awakening, purification and embodiment of god's love as co-president and academic dean of the university of spiritual healing and sufism she shapes transformative programs in spiritual healing and ministry she founded the farm of peace a sufi retreat center fostering inner peace and connection she's a co-author of a drop in the ocean of love she teaches globally blending ancient Sufi wisdom with modern spirituality to inspire authentic, heart-centered living. She has a great journey to share with us today. So before we dive into our episode, we'll be back with an uninterrupted show right after a word from our sponsors. Thanks for joining us today. Oh, thank you so much. It's really an honor. Thank you for doing this. You have a beautiful service that you're offering. Appreciate what you're doing. Oh, thanks for your kind words. It's my pleasure to have you on. If you would, give us a little information on how you started doing what you do today. I was an energy healer before I got involved in Sufi spiritual healing. Before that, I was actually a special needs teacher and also working in a children's hospice program. So most of my life, I've been involved in a service profession, helping people find out sort of the truth of who they are and the beauty that they carry inside. I got involved in Sufism because I was continuing to search for how can we continue to help more people understand the beauty of who they are and the truth of their being and bring out their innate strengths and what makes them unique and beautiful and give their talent a chance to shine in the world. You mentioned you work with those with special needs. Can you give us a little more information on what range of people that you've worked with? I worked with adolescents and those adolescents had a variety of different what was then called learning disabilities or what they called emotional disturbances. But it really was an unfair way of characterizing them. They needed a different way of learning than what traditional public schools offered. They exhibited sort of for what public school teachers back in the 70s might have considered strange. Okay. They just needed somebody to understand that they learned differently. They wound up acting out a lot because they were not knowing how to cope. And they acted out enough that they got themselves kicked out of public schools. So our school was an alternative for those children that needed a strong educational environment without the pressures of the public school. Once they were in your schools, what was the objective? Our goal was to bring them back into the public school arena. We found was they were finally having success at our school and they didn't want to go back. So we then started an elementary school and a high school so that they could finish and feel that sense of pride and success in learning that a lot of them didn't. Wow, that's just so good to hear. What happened next? From that, what I noticed about myself, and this is what the students would say to me, Salima, you have a way of healing a place inside of me that felt broken. That's a huge compliment. That's when I started to explore alternative healing and started to look more at what is this whole field of alternative healing. Because basically what I was doing was just sharing love with them and helping them learn how to love themselves. Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes perfect sense. What were some of the challenges you faced when you first started this? When I started the healing work? When you started the school system for them? When I started the school system, the challenges, because we were an alternative private school, there weren't as many challenges as you would expect. The challenge was really working with the public schools and helping them relook the way that they see their students. I lived in Massachusetts at the time, and back then there was a state law. It was called Chapter 750. To get a child into our school, the parents had to go to the governor of the state of Massachusetts, have their child declared emotionally disturbed, actually a certificate from the governor. Wow, that seems a little extreme. I was so outraged. I worked with a group of people to start what is now known as the federal law, chapter 766, so that the children wouldn't have that kind of stigma attached and their parents wouldn't feel like, oh my God, what did I do so wrong that my child has to have this kind of stamp on them in order to just get a good education? Our students have gone on to college and, you know I met one of them when was it About three or four years ago And she just said to me I can believe I found you again You made such a difference in my life I'm married now. I have kids. I've got a good job. I love life. Yes, that's an awesome testimony to what you've done within that school system. Are the majority of the people that you work with autistic? Or is it a variety of those with special needs? It's all of it, yeah. It's not limited in that way, especially now at the university. You know, we have employees, for example, at our university who are on that autism spectrum. We have students who are on that. We have some students that have different kinds of mental illness. So it's really not pigeonholed in that way. That totally makes sense. Where are you located now? Because of COVID, we are now online. So we are global. We have students at the University of Sufism and Spiritual Healing that are from as far away as Australia. They sometimes stay up till 3 a.m. in the morning because of the time chain. But we really have students all over the world now who attend our programs. Wow, that's great. Do you do the classes live or are they taped and then people can just look at them and go through them at their convenience? So we do do it live. Okay. Three times a year for five to six days, depending on the program. We have shorter programs that meet over the weekend and those programs are live and then they get a recording that they can listen to again. They also get support from the other teachers in between the time periods that we have the classes at the university. Students can come and get a master's degree if they wish, if they stay with the program for four years, or they can just take it because they have a desire to learn. For example, we offer a course in living and dying in dignity for someone who might want to work in hospice or might want to help be a birth doula. One of my students is now a birth doula, you know, helping to work with midwives and bringing a new life into. That's a whole course. You also can just take a weekend program and learn a little bit about it. Yeah. So now your school, you have to have so many hours, so many credits, all those things to get a diploma so they can go to college. Is that an accredited school still? I'm no longer involved in that school anymore. That school still is in existence. And yes, they do. They now even, I think, have a sailing program for students who want to learn how to sail and have their education aboard a boat. They've expanded the program quite a bit since I was there in the early 80s. That school is still located in Massachusetts, correct? That school is in Massachusetts, yes. So it's still ongoing and growing. Still ongoing and growing, yes. Okay, I get it. You're not part of the school anymore. What you are is a place the kids can go to for further education. It is. We offer Masters of Divinity degrees. that you don't have to have a bachelor's in order to attend the program. We'll just offer you a certificate. They're called Masters of Divinity degrees, and we have them in four different areas for people. We have them in spiritual healing, which helps people either become healers or learn how to heal themselves. We have a program in spiritual ministry, which helps people become chaplains in either a hospital or a school or a religious organization. We have a program in peacemaking for people that want to learn reconciliation skills and learn how to have more peace within themselves and peace in their family and peace in the world. And as I said, we have this living and dying and dignity program, as well as just programs that really teach people how to be good human beings. Yeah, that's great. Now, when someone comes to you for a master's, is this the same type of master's they would get at any other college? Is it fully accredited? Yes, it is. And some of our students have gone from our master's program into a PhD program, not in our program, but they've taken the transcript and then applied to a PhD program to get their PhD and our master's degree is recognized and they haven't had a problem transferring those credits. That's really good. With everything that you have going on, what do you do? What is your day-to-day and what does it look like? So my day-to-day mostly consists now of teaching. So I'm teaching a lot of those classes, preparing the curriculum, redesigning the curriculum, adding new programs, as well as reaching out and letting the public know about the work that we do. So much of our school, as we call it, it was a hidden secret. A lot of people didn't know about it. So part of doing podcasts like this and going to different conferences and speaking engagements gives people an opportunity to learn about who we are and what we do and who we serve. How do you aggressively get out there to let people know what you do? I mean, you just mentioned podcasts and various other things. To get people around the world to know what you do, it takes a concentrated effort to get this done. So how do you go about doing that? What I found is what works best is when people have the opportunity to experience what we do. So we offer very short programs that will give people just an opportunity to see, oh, what is Sufism really all about? What is the spiritual healing really all about? We have what we call a Sufi circle, which is just an evening program once a week that gives people an opportunity to have experience of the spiritual healing, to have a lecture, to have their questions answered. And those are the ways that we try to be accessible for people to experience what we have. We find that once people experience it once people feel the peace that comes once people feel that universal divine love that they want more Okay Why didn you stay in the schooling part of it where you could still nurture these kids and teach them so that they could get to a level of further education? What made you decide to change your pathway? I think two things happened. Number one, the students that graduated from our program, they were really looking for what's next. So it made me start to question, well, what's next? Yes, they now have a high school diploma, but what's next? How do we help them develop themselves into the most complete human being so that they're living fulfilled and happy lives? That got me interested in the healing aspect, right? Most people don't feel good about themselves, whether you're artistic, whether you have mental illness or whether you quote unquote are a normal human being, right? Most people have gone through experiences in their lives where at some point in their life, they've been hurt or they've built up a defense or they've been wounded or somebody has teased them or made fun of them to make them forget who they are in truth. And that's how I got interested in it. It was like a natural evolution of my own growth and development. Sure. That makes sense. Let's say you have someone that comes to you. Let's say they're autistic. They've been picked on. They've been bullied. They've gone through a whole lot of difficult times in their life. They just don't understand what's going on. How do you work with them to get them to a level where they can understand? This way, hopefully, they can continue working for their goals of being able to live the life that everybody wants to live. Like any human being in our society today, most of how we see and perceive the world is through our mind. What I do and what I help people do is take a journey from your mind, which is going to tell you all kinds of thoughts, into a deep wisdom in your heart. We say that the heart carries treasures, the heart carries a divine love, and the heart also carries wounds. So part of the work is how do we identify what those wounds are and how do we become aware of what's needed so those wounds heal? The majority of time, what is needed in those wounds is love, compassion, caring, and what I would call the washing away of the stain of that wound in the heart. Okay. Yeah. So don't take this wrong. This world is a very harsh world. Absolutely. Won't take that wrong at all. It's very true. Thanks for saying it, Tony. It is so true. You have people out there that will hear this and what you're trying to do. The first thing they're going to have is very negative thoughts. Absolutely. Deal with that all the time. You're going to have those that will just doubt it. They're going to say, yeah, wash away my pain, right? they will question everything that you're talking about. That's why I say experience is the best teacher. It's like back in my special ed days, one of my students, you know, they were in so much trouble in school that they didn't have the wherewithal to actually learn anything. So many of them at 13, 14 and 15 didn't know how to read yet. So I was teaching basic phonetics, you know, this sound, the A sound, is ah. And one of the students raised their hand and said, Miss A, I don't like that sound. And I said, why? And they said, when I say ah, it opens my heart and I've got all this pain in my heart and I don't want to look at it. That's pretty deep. My kids were very smart by what their old teachers may have said about them. And I said, okay, let's just stay with it. Instead of running away from it. Let's just stay with it for a moment and keep bringing that sound into the heart and watch. We now know research-wise that sound has a vibration and that vibration has an effect on our vibration. Those hurts and pains are at a lower vibration. As we say sacred sound, an ah is one of those sacred sounds. As we say sacred sound, it's raising the vibration. And that's why when we take a big sigh, right? Feel a release. That's the start of the healing process. Okay, that's good. However, there is just so much going on in this world right now. That's right. And it seems like every time you try and be positive, there's always a negative. Sometimes there's two negatives. It's just a really, really hard world out there right now. And it just seems like everyone is living on the edge. There's more pressure. There's more stress. How do you get past that stress that they're feeling from the world? Every day, they have to go out and live in that world. Your world, it's a great place. It's a nice place. It makes you feel good. Yet when they're out there in a job, trying to make a living, trying to make a life for their family. It's tough. How do you help them get past that? For me, it's not a matter of getting past the feeling, it's holding the feeling in a completion. On one hand, we have the goodness, right? On the other hand, we have what we're seeing a lot in the world now, a lot of evil going on in the world. Both of those opposites exist within in each person, as well as being out into the world. We have light in us. We have darkness in us. There's a middle road that's in between those two. That middle road between those two is where we find inner peace, is where we find what I would call divine love, which transcends the opposites. And it's helping people reach and understand and have spiritual practices that support that middle ground. So that when something happens in the world that in the negative side of things they know how to balance it to achieve wholeness Okay What would you like to tell people about what they need to know on what you're doing, what you're trying to accomplish, what you are accomplishing, and what your goals are for the future? So the important thing for me is for everybody to remember the essence of who you are. The essence of who you are is pure light and pure love. We have been brought up with a variety of different experiences that cover over that. What we're trying to do is uncover all of that to get to truth, the truth of who you are in that essence. That's why the the offering I want to offer your audience is called the five C's of inner truth. It's a video series as well as workbook exercises to help people find that. And then to find, oh, I have, for example, jealousy within my being because I look at somebody out there that doesn't have the same maybe disability that I have or the same difficulties in navigating life that I have or has more money than I have. And those kinds of things prevent us from living the fullest life that we can live. So in this video series, we're teaching people how to move beyond that to find that inner truth. Yeah, those are good words and they have a lot of great meaning behind them. There's a cute story I can tell you that I was sharing with somebody else earlier today. Okay. There's a story of the river fish and the ocean fish, the sea fish. The sea fish, bright colors, beautiful colors. And he meets the river fish, who kind of is brownish, sort of dull color fish. And the river fish looks at the sea fish and is a little bit envious and jealous of the bright colors and how beautiful he looks. Ocean fish says to the river fish, Oh, come, come into my world and I'll show you my world and all the beauty in my world. And you'll get to see all the wonders of this world. So the river fish says, oh, yes, I would love that. And starts to follow the ocean fish towards the ocean. And as he gets closer to the ocean, what he notices is his gills start to get tight. He's having difficulty. He feels himself starting to fade away. and the ocean fish realized, oh, the river fish, his home is in the river. That's where he thrives. It's not for him to be like me. That's what we're talking about when I talk about finding the inner truth. And when you do, it makes your outer world easier to manage. Yeah, that's a great story. And it's got a great meaning behind it. I used to meditate. And when I meditated, my world was beautiful when I meditated and closed my eyes. And then like you said, I had to go out into the world and it wasn't such a great place. Yeah, I get that. Now, in these spiritual practices, right, that start with that, ah, in these spiritual practices, I now can do with my eyes open. I don't need to close my eyes and be quiet. I can do while I'm walking. I can do in the car while I'm driving. I taught my niece when she was eight years old and she was fighting with her four-year-old sister. And she says to me, auntie, this works. I did it. And my sister stopped crying and stopped aggravating me. Right? That the reason why I love this work so much and why I'm so dedicated to wanting to share it is because it helps us in the world. Right. I can't disagree with you. Great philosophy. Give us the information on how people can contact you and follow you. They can contact me through the Sufi University, and it's www.sufiu.org. We also have a link I'll share with you, Tony. It's a free offering of the five C's of inner truth. And you can take that on your own time, whenever you have a chance, listen to the videos. My two colleagues are on there as well. And then do the workbook, then the exercises, and then we'll take you on the journey with us. Yeah, that sounds great. In closing, is there anything you would like to tell people that you really think is very important that they hear and understand about what you're doing? Sometimes when we're able to look at the world through different eyes, what can appear as difficult and as awful, we can sometimes see beyond and to see that it's helping us build something within us that's important for our own growth and our own development. and to help us create not only the best life for ourselves, but make us even better people. And the more that we can understand each other, the more we can get along with each other, the more that we can be more compassionate towards each other, the better world we'll be helping to create. Yeah, that's true. No doubt about that. This world needs all the help that it can get right now. You got it. Absolutely. Well, this has been great. Great information, great conversation. I've really enjoyed this. I really appreciate you taking the time to join us today. I appreciate you having me on your show and look forward to sharing more with your audience as they get to experience the five C's of inner truth. Thank you so much. It's been my pleasure. Thanks again. thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to listen to our show today we hope you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you if you know someone who has a story to share tell them to contact us at why not me dot world One last thing, spread the word about Why Not Me. Our conversations, our inspiring guests, this show, you are not alone in this world.
