COURSES & EVENTS
Love and Knowledge in the Light of Unity | the Direct Path
A Beshara Foundation Course
Introductory weekend at Sutton Courtenay Abbey, Oxfordshire
14th – 16th February 2025
(Zoom attendance also available)
10 x bi-weekly online sessions
27th February – 3rd July 2025
Thursday evenings, 19:00–20:30 GMT/BST
This course provides a full introduction to the principles of Beshara in terms of both knowledge and practice. Taking the metaphysics of Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi as a starting point, the course explores what it means to understand oneself and the world in the light of the Unity of Existence.
Contact: besharacourses3@beshara.org
Love Divine: a conversation between Rumi and St. John of the Cross
Meditation and poetry workshops
Fortnightly from 18th January – 29th March
Saturdays: 10:00am – 11:30pm (GMT)
or
Fortnightly from 25th January – 5th April
Saturdays: 10am – 11:30am (Pacific Time), 12:00pm-13:30 (Central Time), and 5:00pm-6:30pm (UK time).
Meditation workshops following a format of reading some lines of poetry with contemplative meditation and shared reflections. There are a few places left.
Jesus Across Space and Time
An interactive seminar
Saturday 30th November 2024
14:00–17:00 BST
The October Gallery, London
An afternoon devoted to discussion of the question: what is the knowledge we can attain if we contemplate the person of Jesus and his function and role in the world of humanity?
The Ways of the Heart IV: Praise and Service
21st November – 19th December 2024
Thursdays, 19:30 – 21:00 GMT
A new 28-day intensive online course combining daily (individual or group) meditation, study and contemplation.
Finding happiness and purpose in today’s world
A Comprehensive Beshara Course for Young Adults
1st October – 3rd December 2024
Weekly on Tuesdays, 19:00 – 20:30 GMT/BST
Online via Zoom
This is a new, pilot course for young people offering participants an opportunity to explore and make sense of the world around and within them. It is designed as a voyage of discovery toward a more fulfilled life. The course addresses the whole person – body, mind and spirit – by drawing on a wide range of sources and techniques.
Contact: besharacourses3@beshara.org
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.
Know Yourself & The Twenty-Nine Pages
Weekly from November 1st, 2024
Fridays 18:00–19:30 GMT
Weekly from November 24th, 2024
Sundays 13:00–14:30 PST (timed for US and Pacific Rim)
Mondays 8:00 – 09:30 AEDT
Weekly from November 12th, 2024
Tuesdays 21:00–22:00 GMT
Note: this group will be studying the Twenty-Nine Pages only
Online study of texts that form an introduction to Muhyiddin ‘Ibn ‘Arabi‘s metaphysics of Unity
Contact: Michael Cohen, london@beshara.org
The Alchemy of Human Happiness
Weekly on Saturdays (USA)
19:00–20:30 CDT online via Zoom
Weekly on Sundays (Australia)
10:00–11:30 AEST online via Zoom
An opportunity to study and explore a recent translation of a seminal work of Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi from his famous Meccan Illuminations (al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya).
This study group is timed for participants in the Pacific Rim.
Contact: Mary Boyd-Brent, mboydb3.11@gmail.com
The Secrets of Voyaging
Weekly on Saturdays
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: The Secrets of Voyaging (Kitab al-Isfār ‛an natā’ij al-asfār).
Contact: Michael Cohen, london@beshara.org
Letters by Bülent Rauf
Weekly on Tuesdays
21:00–22:00 BST/GMT
An online study and reading of the Letters of Bülent Rauf. This is an existing group with a limited number of places. New participants are very welcome.
Contact: Yafiah Katherine Randall
yafiahkatherine@gmail.com
Fusus al-Hikam Study
Weekly on Sundays
13:00 – 14:30 PDT
Online reading group studying chapters from the Fusus al-Hikam by Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi, translated by Jane Clark, Stephen Hirtenstein and Cecilia Twinch.
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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