In the name of God the most Compassionate, the most Merciful
Finding a balance between inner contemplation and outer activity.
This is in some part what the Muslim ritual prayers are designed to do.
To create a balance between inner awareness and spiritual attention and activities of daily life in the so-called outer world.
So we need to create this apportionment of time and focus facing in and out at different times.
The Roman ‘god’ Janus was like this. A doorway which is both in and out.
We need to act and then pause, gather and then distribute.
Do you see how this is a rhythm? – like breathing – of contraction and expansion, or acting and listening, of the experience of life, rising and falling, dying and being re-generated.
All of life is this duality in the created world, and the two complementary opposites acting in balanced harmony to create a unity of the unfolding of creative process.
As a human being, we need to enter into this process harmoniously too. It is both a surrender to nature and an engagement with the reality of expression in our own existence, creating our worlds.
We are simultaneously both dynamic and at peace, submissive or passive, within the process.
We are both a channel and an agent.
‘Life’ unfolds and yet we are also an active participant. But we need to learn how to engage with this fundamental process in the most constructive and harmonious way. And at the heart of this is an awareness and responsiveness to rhythm.
As in music or the waves of energy in nature, in everything, there is this rhythmic process and when we learn most effectively to be in tune with it, or in modern parlance, ‘entrained’, we can function peacefully and most effectively.
In this way, we are both giving and receiving – in many different aspects of being.
An empty space, or clarity, within, in the deepest recess of the heart, enables the human being to be most in tune with the rhythm of the creative process.
To harmonise with the rhythm. To feel its music, to express its beauty.
When the rising and the falling of the waves combine harmoniously, then the vibration of your being becomes an exquisite song of unity. Unity of consciousness, from which comes an ecstatic, rich and fruitful experience of the essence of living. Alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah, wa shukrulillah. Ameen
Whirling Dervishes of Australia 