COURSES & EVENTS
Restoring the Broken Order
Learning from Ibn ‘Arabi
Saturday 20th April 2024
14:00–17:00 BST
The October Gallery, London
An exploratory seminar on some themes from the Wisdom of Breathing Out in the Word of Seth, the second chapter of Ibn ‘Arabi’s Fusus al-Hikam (The Ringstones of Wisdom).
Love and Knowledge in the Light of Unity | the Direct Path
A Beshara Foundation Course
Introductory weekend at Sutton Courtenay Abbey, Oxfordshire
16th – 18th February 2024
(Zoom attendance also available)
10 x fortnightly online sessions
29th February – 4th July 2024
Thursday evenings, 19:00–20:30 GMT/BST
This is a new foundational course in esoteric education that 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 unity.
Contact: besharacourses3@beshara.org
Colours to the Mast
Weekly from 28th March 2022
Mondays 19:00–20:00 AEDT
A series of online sessions exploring creativity and meaning through Poetry, Writing, Images & Song.
SEE ALSO
STUDY GROUPS
The Alchemy of Human Happiness: Online Study Group
Weekly from late January 2024
Saturdays 13:30–15:30 GMT online via Zoom
An opportunity to study and explore a recent translation of an influential work of Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi.
This group is now full. If you would like to be added to a waiting list for a possible new group, please contact london@beshara.org
Addresses by Bülent Rauf
Weekly from 16th January 2024
Tuesdays: 21:00–22:00 GMT
An online study and reading of Address by 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
An Introduction to Ibn ‘Arabi Study
Mondays 19:00–21:00 GMT
Fortnightly Zoom sessions
This study series is an introduction to Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi’s story and perspective studying The Unlimited Mercifier by Stephen Hirtenstein. The scope of this illuminating book embraces both the inner and outer aspects of Ibn ‘Arabi’s life as each mirrors the other.
The group is underway but is open to anyone interested in joining as each session is fresh and unique in itself.
Know Yourself & The Twenty-Nine Pages
Weekly from 16th July 2023
Sundays 11:00–12:30 BST
Online study exploring the oneness of being in the teachings of Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi
Spiritual Addresses of al-Niffari
Weekly from 3rd June, 2023
Saturdays: 13:30 – 15:30 BST
Online study and contemplation of the Spiritual Addresses by al-Niffari.
Fusus al-Hikam Study
Online weekly from 30th of April 2023
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.
The Reflective Heart
Weekly on Tuesdays
21:00–22:00 BST/GMT
Online study of chapters from James Morris’s, The Reflective Heart: Discovering Spiritual Intelligence in Ibn ‘Arabi’s Meccan Illuminations.
Fusus al-Hikam Study Sessions
Weekly from 4th September 2022
Sundays 10:00–11:30 or 17:00–18:30 BST/GMT
Online study of the Fusus al-Hikam by Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi continuing with A Hud Word.
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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