About Munir
Munir is a Sheikh in the Sufi Ruhaniat International order and a leader of the Dances of Universal Peace. A musician and guitarist, Munir has brought the Dances to camps and retreats throughout the world since 1995, including Russia, Canada and New Zealand. He has taught Sufism at Nine Gates Mystery School since 2011. A nonprofit arts administrator, he professionally led Dances of Universal Peace International to its present organizational structure. He also worked for 30 years as a professional body-worker and healer. A senior mentor for the Dances of Universal Peace, Munir is former Executive Director of Dances of Universal Peace International and of Oneness Project.
From my earliest memory, I had a sense of something deep and incredibly sacred about life. I was raised in a traditional southern (US) household and was active in the protestant Christian church for the first 30 years of my life.
In my early 30’s I experienced a spontaneous awakening. My usual mind-filters came down and in my mind’s eye I experienced the beauty, agony, love and overwhelming ecstasy of life as a total movement. My life began moving in new and unpredictable ways. The rest of my life up until now has been coming to terms with this one experience.
In 1987 I studied Creation Spirituality with Matthew Fox and Brian Swimme at the Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality (ICCS). ICCS opened me to a wealth of possibilities for embodying the universe and going forward with a creative life.
In 1995, I began leading the Dances of Universal Peace and soon after that took initiation into the Sufi Ruhaniat International order. The Sufi is an expression of an undivided life. As an initiate, my deeper resistances to living from true nature came to the fore. Meditation, contemplation, inquiry and other practices have been important for me in continuing to accept the truth. In May, 2007, I was initiated as a Sheikh in the Ruhaniat.
If we strive to be awake and true to our deepest nature we may gradually begin to understand that a guiding force has had the upper hand in our lives. This may initially only be apparent in hindsight. In fact, we are each “being lived” by something tremendous, far beyond mind’s capacity to know. Surrendering to that can take a lifetime, but being true to it takes no time at all.
My role as a Sufi guide is to help others come to an understanding based on their own experience of the limitless freedom and capacity within their own nature.
Sufi Guide
One might ask, what is a Sufi teacher or guide and how does one become one?
I think we all know what it means to take a step in life and then find out that it demands more, calls one out more, than we could have imagined. A new vocation or job and becoming a parent are examples of roles that can turn out to be much more challenging than we anticipated.
For me, being a Sufi student was like that. When I took initiation I was motivated to find a closer inner relationship to Murshid Samuel Lewis, the founder of the Sufi Ruhaniat International and the Dances of Universal Peace. Taking initiation was for me a genuine impulse, but without much understanding of what being a Mureed (Sufi student) and having a Sufi guide would mean. My guide continually brought the truth and an unconditional love to me. No matter what I brought to him, I was met with kindness, understanding, and also firmness. Turning me back onto my inner resources, perhaps with a practice and/or an admonition, I learned to find answers within myself for my struggles and difficulties.
Over time I began to see that I had stepped into a different dimension in terms of my relationship with the Divine. I had said, “I don’t understand what still keeps me separate from God and from others. But I see that I do this.” That was the truth, and accepting the truth starts to unravel our wrong ideas about ourselves and life. I was finally getting that how I viewed myself was not entirely true, and eventually that meant that everything I thought about myself was up for grabs.
We may understand something intellectually, but not until we have experienced the truth of it and passed through the fire of it does it become part of our DNA. We have moved to a different level of knowing.
I began to see that my Sufi guide, just by being present in my life, was having a profound effect. I could no longer hide from myself, especially in the areas that had gone unacknowledged. I had unfinished business with my relationship to life to attend to.
A Sufi guide is someone who is able to offer guidance in this domain of sacred awakened relationship. One becomes a guide to others by evolving with life circumstances with honesty, self-effacement and love. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj said (and I’m paraphrasing) “If we want to be of help to others, we have to be beyond help ourselves.” This means that we take no stand for ourselves except the truth. Truth is the same as love … it is not different. Being “beyond help” means one does not need anything from others in order to be fully at peace with oneself. Only when we have no self-interest can the love within as guidance be available to others.
I have been called by my teacher and the Murshids to function as a guide within the context of the Ruhaniat order. Others function as a guide within their spiritual community, family, circle of friends, or neighborhood. This role is not conferred by having “earned” or striven for something, but is simply “recognized” by others because they sense we have evolved within ourselves enough that they trust our judgement and mentorship. This mysterious process is brought about by truth and love acting in our lives.