How Beauty Evokes Love in Sufism

"I have been fortunate during my spiritual training to have been inspired by some extraordinary teachers, people who came into my life as if by chance, but whose presence and effect on my soul could not have been prayed for, much less imagined. One of these teachers was for a period of time the owner of a café in Vancouver where I sometimes enjoyed being served a cup of frothy Turkish coffee. Murray, as he was sometimes called, was the only person to be found in western Canada who could actually read, write, and fully understand Ottoman Turkish (Turkey, pre 1926). He was discovered and asked to serve as a translator for Suleyman Dede, a Mevlevi shaikh who was trained in the Ottoman era. It was destiny, pure and simple, for Murray turned out to be a hidden master, descended from the esoteric aristocracy of Abkhazia (Circassia). Murray was a hidden Sufi, avoiding adulation, camouflaged sometimes as a carpenter, a café owner, and even occasionally as a fisherman on the high seas. He and his wife Maisie always welcomed me like family, and I was drawn to them by a spiritual fragrance and charisma impossible to conceal".