The Rumi Forum & Better Understanding Club of ODU Screened a documentary about Rumi’s life and his way of approaching God.
The program started with a documentary screening about Rumi’s life and his way of approaching God. Afterwards, the atendees had discussion about Rumi and defintion about Sufism with members.
Rumi kept his spirituality outside himself. In order to come to God he had to have a reference point, and the sheikh in Sufism serves as the reference point through which you come close to God. Rumi always had a companion around him. First he met Shamseddin Tabrizi to whom he had a tremendous love. Rumi learned the “sama”, the dance of the whirling dervishes, from Shams. The important point here is that Rumi never regarded himself as the sheikh, although his father left this position to him after his death. Here Rumi experts points out to the fact that ‘we go astray when we begin to regard ourselves as the religious post around which the whole world revolves’. That could be an explanation of why Rumi has always had a huge number of enthusiastic followers from different religious and non-religious groups. We do dialogue when we come to each other’s presence and wisdom. We know that this wisdom is what we lack but we know also that it is out there.