Doing the Beautiful

These four talks, given at Sharpham Trust in Devon, UK, in the summer of 2025, focus on Ihsan, which is translated as “Doing the Beautiful” and understood as “Worshiping God as if you see God, and if you do not see Them, They nevertheless see you.” The talks explore the stages, or valleys of the path, as described in Attar’s classic text The Conference of the Birds, and the four traditional stages of the nafs, or “lower self”, the seeker must move through on the mystical journey.