Meeting My Sheikh- Sidi Sheikh Muhammad Al-Jamal

 In 1979, I sat on a bluff on the Mount of Olives, overlooking the Dome of the Rock.  This stunning mosque is the third holiest in Islam.  Nearby was the Wailing Wall, which was all that remained of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, which the Romans destroyed in 67 AD.  Both places had attracted legions of worldwide pilgrims for thousands of years.

I felt depressed and lonely. Maybe I was a little drunk. During the last several weeks of traveling across Europe alone, I developed a fondness for wine. I loved it more than I care to admit.

Jerusalem was the last city on the journey. Many people consider it the Holy City. 

It draws countless pilgrims seeking truth. People who connected with important events also took place there in the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Perhaps for New Age seekers like myself, it is a site that might be attractive simply because of all those holy people and events—not necessarily because one is an adherent, in a traditional sense, of any of the three.

I came across some interesting things I appreciated, but a vaguely imagined hope for some revelatory spiritual experience in Jerusalem apparently would not happen.  

And just seeing buildings and art wasn't all that great, either.  At least not by oneself.

I viewed myself as a spiritual seeker. I grew up on the San Francisco Mid-Peninsula in the 1960s, during which time I tried psychedelics. I also frequently attended concerts of the SF Music Scene, including The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Big Brother. 

Those carefree times are difficult to imagine today.  We young people thought we were going to change the world.  In the meantime, we'd get VERY HIGH on LIFE and other substances, including shared joints and communal jugs of wine. 

We trusted every kid with long hair!  Once, somebody started throwing unknown pills into the audience at a rock concert.  I instantly took one.

The Carefree 1960's

Though it threw me into a dissociative blackout for several hours, it never occurred to me that I was naive to trust someone who offered free drugs at a concert.  I thought maybe my own head wasn't in the right place. (I later understood that I had taken Angel Dust or PCP. A powerful and dangerous horse tranquilizer.)

I approached spirituality with the same abandon. While this led me to at least ONE serious group—that of a branch of Chinese Zen Buddhism—it also led me down some blind alleys, like the three months I spent as a shaved-head, traveling monk in the Hare Krishna Movement.

I majored in Religious Studies in college, hoping to understand how to be spiritual. I spent a year studying Arabic, which gave me insights into understanding at least one ancient religious language. 

 So, I had previously been willing to join any spiritual group that came my way. At the time, I didn’t see them as cults; I believed they were places where I could significantly change myself with little meditation or effort—just surrender.

Little did I know here in Jerusalem, another spiritual drama was about to begin. And, once begun, it would prove almost impossible to extract myself from

.

As I sat there, a Palestinian youth came over, and we talked while taking in the stunning view beneath us.

His demeanor was friendly. We briefly chatted about religion, and then he offered to take me to the home of a famous Sheikh on the Jericho side of the Mount of Olives.

At this time, before the first Intifada, a tall Western person walking into a Palestinian area faced little danger. The only exception might have been from small rocks thrown by children, mistaking him for Israeli Settlers.

So, following him, I took a sweeping view of the distant desert.  Somewhere over there was Jericho, which claimed to be ‘The Oldest City in the World.’

 I suddenly heard a loud call to prayer broadcast from a nearby mosque. The recording was age-old and scratchy but also endearing for those features. I loved it!

I was brought halfway down the steep street to a nondescript stone house. We knocked, and a couple of Western ladies welcomed us in.

I understood from them that they were long-term students of the Sheikh. 

Little did I know that, within a few weeks, one of them would be my wife.

A few minutes later, the man who would determine the direction of my life from then on opened the squeaky metal door. 

He was a solid, grounded gentleman with a well-maintained beard. His presence radiated wisdom, warmth, and authority, instantly winning me over.

Sidi Sheikh Muhammad Al-Jamal

He reminded me of an Old Testament prophet!

He shook my hand and politely asked me to sit down. 

I don't remember our first words,  but I remember feeling overwhelmed by the exotic unfamiliarity of the situation. 

It seemed like it was a break in the continuity of my thus-far unsatisfying Reality.  And perhaps an Aperture into a new Reality... 

This guy was the Real Deal!  An OldTestament Prophet come to life And right here in the World's Spiritual Disneyland! 

 I was within a mile or two from the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus reportedly prayed in the final hours of his earthly life.

Five times a day, competing  Calls to Prayer from local mosques blared out over the landscape.

Exotic, it was indeed!  I suddenly began to feel myself being drawn into it--whatever 'It' was.

After a short talk, the Sheikh suggested I return the next day.  Walking back to the hotel, I felt embraced by a new sense of the sacred.  The stones in the area were so white that they reflected the moonlight.

Although this effect was almost blinding in the daytime, it gave everything a stunning, other-worldly luminosity at night, particularly that night. 

Very romantic, too, in the broadest sense of the word.

The next day, I returned to the rooms where I had met the Sheik.  The Western women called it the zawiya, or ‘sufi center’ in Arabic.  I was given a binder with typewritten copies of Skeikh’s ‘Subjects,’ which earlier students had translated, typed, and left behind. 

This gave them the cachet of ‘rare manuscripts’ seen by only a select few.  

In our own notebooks, we carefully copied each subject by hand and started again after we'd come to the end.

These poetic, flowery utterances were of great beauty.  They brought to life a new dimension of spirituality for me.  Though I had studied Islam before, I had read little about Sufism.

They spoke of the relationship between Man and God in an entirely new way.  As a kind of spiritual romance--sometimes tragically in separation, in other times in glorious union.

And I was pleased with this ‘easy,’ almost subliminal way of studying, which one could pick up or put down as needed.

After my first full day of studying in the zawiya, the Sheikh came down from his house above and offered another informal talk. 

 Frequently, these began with points of interest in his day or the local public scene.  

Clearly, he was a person of some weight in the local Islamic ulema or clergy.  

On Fridays, he frequently preached at the Dome of the Rock Mosque and was a judge in the Islamic court.

After a few days, he called me up one evening and, with a dramatic flourish, offered me the opportunity to take the bayat or promise to join the Sufi Order with him as my Sheikh.

He promised that if I did this, I would experience God’s proximity in a way that nothing in my prior experience could prepare me for.

 Had I been given time to think about it, I might have thought back to that concert where I readily accepted 'free' drugs and what the strange and unexpected consequences had been.

I readily agreed without knowing how to perform the daily prayers, the ablutions beforehand, or much else, and I was given the name Yunus.

I was hooked.

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