Not Knowing in Rumi's Tradition



On the weekend of 15th-16th March, Sheikh David Bellak of the Mevlevi Sufi Order, Rumi's lineage, gave a guest teaching to members of the Manchester Zen Peacemaker Circle. On Saturday in Howard's house, Shaikh David gave a generous account of his own spiritual journey and his time in Turkey with the late Suleyman Hayati Dede, late heart-master of the Whirling Dervishes in Konya.

Shaikh David gave much advice relating to what the Zen Peacemakers call Not-Knowing, and he gave a rough model of the spiritual path in terms of four stages:

1 Not knowing that you don't know
2 Coming to know that you don't know, and letting go of fixed conditioning
3 A 'knowing' that opens up beyond this (the focus of 'Rememberance'/Zikr in the Sufi tradition)
4 Not knowing that you know!

He also led some chanted Sufi meditation with us in the Mevlevi way.

On Sunday a few of us met with Shaikh David in John's house and learned more together, then finally visited the William Blake exhibition in the Whitworth Gallery, suggested by Kaite.

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