Dear Yogis,
Tomorrow we get back to our usual program.
Saturday 2pm ZOOM Tarot/art class
Sunday 10am ZOOM Gita Study
Monday 6.30pm The first of the three Hypermobility lectures.
If you want to re-join a class make sure that you are up to date with your fees – pay VIA PAYPAL on the home page of the web site www.yogabeautiful.com.au. If you haven’t joined before, let me know so that I can put you on the list to receive your zoom ID.
The thought for today…..“Some people are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted them from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins their journey of awakening. Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of following the crowd and by choosing knowledge over the veils of ignorance”. (Henri Bergson)
THE SUFI
Not all Muslims take their answers from a book of rules. The State maintains and enforces security and law, but the Muslim population remain drawn to the mysticism and community of Sufi brotherhoods. These adherents seek the inner significance of the esoteric, not just the rules and rituals. They look for the significance of the Sharia, and explore the inner dimension of Islam that is SUFISM.
Rumi was a Sufi. Who is a Sufi? An aspiring Sufi seeks only to please God, and does so in secret as often as possible, turning aside from the material world and its banalities.
You all know the story of Rumi the renowned Muslim poet and Sufi Master who founded the Mevlevi order – the adherents dance in remembrance of the Divine. Rumi was harsh, upright and erudite, but all that changed with the arrival in his town of a vagabond called Shams of Tabriz. Shams performed a miracle – rescuing a precious book from a well without it getting wet. Rumi had read about miracles but had never witnessed one – an ambassador of The Divine Presence had reached Rumi. He knew it and felt it. The sober professor was about to shed his old self and emerge new, but it would not be easy, and not without scandal.
The two influences on Rumi’s life – his father and Shams lifted him up. Both were from the East, had memorised the Quran in its entirety, were teachers of religious and mystical knowledge, and both left their spiritual secrets to Rumi. Once he had been “set-alight” by Shams of Tabriz, he could no longer go back to dry academic knowledge and rituals. Shams urged Rumi to violate every code so that in the eyes of his community he became nothing and was cursed because of it – but from the Divine view point, Rumi would become everything, committed only to God and seeking acceptance only in heaven. He killed his ego’s desire to please others, to be liked and respected. He did everything that his society at the time forbade, he drank, he sang HE WAS FREE. Rumi’s poetry speaks to the inner yearning of the human soul that within Islam only the Sufis understand.
“Come, come whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
It doesn’t matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even though you have broken your vows a thousand times.
Come, yet again, come, come.” (Rumi)
IT’S TIME – JOIN ME ON THE MAT.
NAMASTE. JAHNE
For all of you feeling heavy, foggy, tired and “lacklustre”