COURSES & EVENTS
Open Meetings
Monday 13th April, 2026
From 17:30 GMT
An ongoing open, creative discussion space and e-gathering for sharing thoughts and contributing to the development of Beshara. Please join us in exchanging ideas, having meaningful discussions, the chance to be heard and the chance to listen and for understanding to develop and flourish.
The Nightingale in the Garden of Love
Saturday 7th March 2026
14:00–17:00 GMT
The October Gallery, London
Contemplative reading of the spiritual poems of one of the greatest Ottoman Sufi masters, Mehmed Muhyīddīn Üftade (1490-1580).
Contact: Michael Cohen london@beshara.org
The Practical Wisdom of Ibn ‘Arabi
13th January – 3rd March, 2026
Tuesdays at 19:00 – 21:00 GMT (8 sessions)
Exploring Ibn ‘Arabi’s great metaphysical vision and its many implications for our conduct in everyday life. No previous knowledge is required, all texts provided.
This course is now fully booked. To join a reserve list or to receive notification of a future possible iteration of the course, email besharacourses3@beshara.org
Interweavings: Christian and Sufi Threads in a Divine Tapestry
Poetry and meditation workshops
Fortnightly from 11th October – 21st February
Saturdays: 10:00am – 11:30pm (UK time)
or
Fortnightly from 1st November – 14th March
Saturdays: 5:00pm-6:30pm (UK time)
Workshop series following a format of reading lines of poetry with contemplative meditation and shared reflections.
Daily Meditation
From 6th January 2025
07:30–08:00 GMT
Daily 30-minute silent meditation beginning with a dedication of intent and ending. All welcome.
Contact: John Brown at besharacourses@beshara.org for a Zoom invite
READING & STUDY GROUPS
We host a range of online reading groups for close study of esoteric texts and books. These groups are continuous and spaces arise for new participants from time to time. The groups are held by facilitators but there are no teachers. Participants engage in shared enquiry, conversing, reflecting and eliciting meaning together. We are all students, learning is ongoing and we are as mirrors to each other, intent on coming to know ourselves through the guidance, presence and help of spiritual will conveyed through the words.
Contemplation of the Holy Mysteries
Weekly on Saturdays (starting March 2026)
13:30–15:30 GMT online via Zoom
An opportunity to study and explore a recent translation of a seminal work of Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi: Contemplation of the Holy Mysteries.
Contact: Michael Cohen, london@beshara.org
Fusus al-Hikam Study
Weekly on Sundays from 12th October 2025
13:00 – 14:30 PDT (21:00 – 22:30 GMT)
Duration: approx. 9 weeks
US-based online group studying the Chapter on Seth from the Fusus al-Hikam by Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi, translated by Jane Clark, Stephen Hirtenstein and Cecilia Twinch.
Note: This is an existing group with a few spaces for new participants.
Contact: Maren Gleason, marengleason@gmail.com
Bhagavad Gita – ‘The Song of the Spirit’
From 15th May 2025
20:30–21:30 BST
An opportunity to study and explore the timeless wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita in an online group setting. All welcome.
Contact: John Brown at besharacourses@beshara.org to book a place.
The Secret of God’s Most Beautiful Names
Weekly from Saturday 26th April 2025 (USA) / Sunday 27th April 2025 (Australia)
Weekly on Saturdays (USA)
18:00–19:30 CDT online via Zoom
Weekly on Sundays (Australia)
09:00–10:30 AEST online via Zoom
An opportunity to study and explore a recent translation of a seminal work of Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi. Participation is free but it will be necessary to purchase the book.
This is an existing study group timed for participants in the Pacific Rim. There is room for a few additional participants who would like to join the group.
Contact: Mary Boyd-Brent, mboydb3.11@gmail.com
Fusus al-Hikam Study
Weekly on Sundays
10:00–11:30 or 17:00–18:30 BST/GMT
Online reading group studying chapters from the Fusus al-Hikam by Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi, translated by Jane Clark, Stephen Hirtenstein and Cecilia Twinch.
Colours to the Mast
Weekly on Mondays
19:00–20:00 AEST
A series of online sessions exploring creativity and meaning through Poetry, Writing, Images & Song.
SEE ALSO
ABOUT COURSES
Study
The perspective that Beshara aims at is not a new invention, but one that has been known by a few for thousands of years. The difference now is that this is available to as many people as have the inclination and desire to search for it. Texts reflecting this wisdom have come to us from down the ages, written by exceptional people who have been inspired. These texts must be interpreted according to our time and disposition, but the fundamental human truths they contain do not change.
Above all these texts serve as mirrors to ourselves, so that through engagement with words and ideas we can see deep into our own nature through a process that must be learnt but cannot be taught. A balance that must be found between the rational mind (the head) and the sense of presence or feeling (the heart) for the searcher to enter a state of unitive awareness.
In order to avoid limiting this wisdom to our own individual understanding, Beshara courses concentrate on group study where a shared perspective can be arrived at and the individual students can act as mirrors to each other, just as the texts provide a mirror for the group as a whole.
There are no teachers, or rather each person within the course becomes a teacher not only to themselves but to others. This includes the course supervisors who have experienced this process and so can convey something of its quality – they do not have the answers. The answers come from the individual to the individual, and from the whole to the whole – it is just a question of perspective.
Love and knowledge are often considered the two poles of this quest for self-knowledge – both of these are necessary. Knowledge sets out the terrain to be traversed – where we came from and where we are going. It asks the great metaphysical question ‘How does the One become many?’, and the great philosophical question ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ or, put more personally, ‘What am I really here for?’ Love is the motive force, described by Dante as ‘the power that moves the sun and other stars’. It melts the heart and transcends the narrow confines of selfhood in favour of greater beauty and inclusive identity.
Rumi & Ibn Arabi
The works of two great poets, mystics and thinkers from the 12th & 13th century – Rumi and Ibn ‘Arabi – are favourites for study in depth, as they offer a comprehensive, multi-faceted view that addresses both the unseen world and the visible world as one. The shifting points of view that both these writers freely and thoroughly adopt break up our pre-established patterns of thought and their texts invite students to radically new perspectives.
Students by studying mystical texts from other traditions can learn to correlate ideas, and discover for themselves the single truth that runs through all human thought.
Ibn ‘Arabi famously writes
O Marvel! a garden amidst the flames.
My heart has become capable of every form:
it is a pasture for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks,
and a temple for idols and the pilgrim’s Kaa’ba,
and the tables of the Torah and the book of the Quran.
I follow the religion of Love: whatever way Love’s camels take,
that is my religion and my faith
Residential Courses
Fully residential Beshara courses – such as those that are offered by the Chisholme Institute in the Scottish Borders – involve study, meditation, work and devotional practice.
Meditation focuses on facing the essential reality without intermediary in order to develop intimate awareness of an ever-present reality.
Work – in the kitchen or garden, for example – while of great practical importance, also allows for the expression of service and love. It is also the practice of the constancy of this awareness.
Devotional practices, both individual and collective, are undertaken in recognition and remembrance that anything we receive by way of wisdom, inspiration or ‘enlightenment’ arrives as a gift.
Selected Reading
Know Yourself. An explanation of the oneness of being Ibn ‘Arabi/Balyani Translated Cecilia Twinch Beshara Publications 2011
The Twenty–nine Pages An Introduction to Ibn ‘Arabi’s Metaphysics of Unity, Roxburgh, 1998
The Kernel of the Kernel Ibn ‘Arabi trans. Bulent.Rauf, Sherborne, 1981
The Fusus al-Hikam Ibn ‘Arabi trans. Bulent Rauf 4 vols. Oxford, 1986-91, earlier translations of some of these vols.
The Wisdom of the Prophets by Ibn ‘Arabi trans. T Burckhardt. English trans. A. Culme-Seymour. Swyre Farm, Glos, 1975
Selected poems of Jelaluddin Rumi
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu
Baghavad Gita
Universal Man Abd al Karim al Jili trans. Angela Culme-Seymour, Sherborne, 1983
Apocryphal Gospel of St. John
Mystical Astrology Ibn ‘Arabi trans. T. Burckhardt.English version Bulent Rauf, Sherborne, 1977.
The Spiritual Addresses Niffari Trans. A.J.Arberry, Cambridge, 1978
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