About Our Past Guides and Teachers
Our Guides from the past
We invite deep and experienced leaders to share and guide our spiritual retreats. Here are some who have joined us in the past.
Sheikh Gayan Gregory Long
Gayan is an acclaimed drummer, composer, leader of the Dances of Universal Peace, spiritual mentor, retreat leader, and storyteller. He has dedicated his life to awakening human potential through music, devotional practices, pithy teachings, and community celebration.
Gayan is a direct disciple of Pir Shabda Kahn, the lead teacher of the Sufi Ruhaniat International’s school of western Sufism.
He has shared the Dances world wide and and led retreats with some of the foremost spiritual leaders of our time.
Murshid Allaudin Ottinger
A lifelong dedication to music, gathering people together and pursuit of the miraculous, led him to a study of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. This in turn led him to find "Sufi Dancing" in the college town of Lawrence, Kansas circa 1976. More experiences in Sufism followed, which led to a deep darshan with Murshid Moineddin Jablonski in the spring of 1978. Allaudin led hundreds of Dance and Sufi meetings in Kansas City, worked closely with the Sufi Order Center in Lawrence in sponsoring Pir Vilayat and many other traveling teachers, and took teachings with Korean Zen Master Soen Sa Nim. These days Allaudin spends a lot of time with an award winning children’s music group, working for an event production group and traveling worldwide for the Sufi work. Three Sufi inspired CDs produced by Allaudin in the last few years include the Two Niles for Imam Bilal Hyde, his own well loved collection of Dances, Zikrs and Tavern Songs called, In The Everywhere and Always and Saladin, the epic poem by Murshid Samuel Lewis, as read by Wali Ali. Current projects include working to make his Kansas City home and land a green oasis in the city.