The Holy Dance

Photo courtesy of Nail Kesova Dede, Mevlevi Sheikh

Dance only where you mortify yourself and when you tear away the cotton from the sore of lust.

Holy men dance and wheel on the spiritual battlefield: they dance in their own blood.

When they are freed from the dominion of self, they clap a hand; when they escape from their own imperfection, they make a dance.

From within them musicians strike the tambourine; at their ecstasy the seas burst into foam.

You see it not, but for their ears the leaves too on the boughs are clapping hands.

You do not perceive the clapping of the leaves: one must have the spiritual ear, not this ear of the body.

Close the ear of the head to jesting and lying, that you may see the resplendent city of the soul.

Mathnawi Book 3, vv. 95-101

(from the words of Hazreti Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi)

The Soul’s Serenity

In the name of God the most Compassionate, the most Merciful

The soul’s serenity is a wonderful experience. It is always available to us. A precious gift that unfolds in splendour and beauty the more we enter into its nature.

The soul’s serenity is a light that shines out from within and decorates and illuminates every aspect of your life’s journey.

Enter into the soul’s serenity. Seek it within the stillness of yourself in quiet contemplation. Seek it but seek nothing – just allow yourself to be quietly guided into its healing depth. Seek only by awareness and intention, not by striving or straining. You dissolve, and you are filled.

The soul’s serenity is a place in which secrets and insights are revealed, where guidance is found and expressed within the heart. Knowing this is a profound comfort in all the vicissitudes of life. Through the soul’s serenity, you can begin to understand the journey of life in a different way, that rearranges priorities, judgements and reactions. From this still point within, you can begin to understand that life and its challenges, efforts, joys and disappointment is not what you always perceived it to be. That these are, like Rumi said, waves of froth upon the deep sea of your real being.

You are here to discover the soul’s serenity and to understand your life’s purpose and progress from that standpoint.

Your life is not really composed of the significant events of which you think it consists. Rather, it is from the standpoint of the soul’s serenity by which your life is really weighed and measured.

In muraqaba, we review life’s experience from this standpoint, that of the soul’s serenity. We see the spiritual importance of our behaviour and experiences. The other events and experiences and emotional topsy-turvy are as that froth, ephemeral and of no real substance.

In the depth of our being, in the depth of the ocean of the soul’s serenity, we perceive the real currents of our life and how it moves and shapes us in our spiritual process.

To enter into the soul’s serenity, one need only quieten the mind and allow the heart to be at the centre of our perceiving. In the quietness and stillness of the heart, opened and in awareness, we calmly review and observe and begin to settle in the soul’s serenity. From this, we see the really significant moments, lessons and journeying that our soul is undertaking as the process of spiritual unfoldment occurs.

We chart our course through access to this guidance and insight at the centre of our consciousness, in the serenity of soul-consciousness, the soul’s serenity. Intend it, relax and be still, and learn to enter into it. It will occur without effort, easily, naturally. The soul is you, the serenity of the soul is your innate birthright.

 Alhamdullillah wa shukrulillah – Praise be to God and thanks be to God

Copyright © Mevlevi Australia 2017. All Rights Reserved.

Balance Between Inner and Outer

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

Copyright © Mevlevi Australia 2016. All Rights Reserved.

The Holy Fasting Month Has Begun …

In the name of God the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful

“O you who believe! Prescribed for you is the Fast, as it was prescribed for those before you, so that you may deserve God’s protection (against the temptations of your carnal soul) and attain piety.”

Holy Qur’an Sura 2, v. 183

The fasting month (roza) has been a test for the powerful and the lowly,
Don’t ask, ‘How?’ (chun) For it has come from the Incomparable (be-chun).
It is a day (roze) that has come from beyond the heavens,
Blessing (roz-behi) comes from it that is increasing day by day (roz-afzun).

Hz Mevlana –from his Ruba‘iyat (Quatrains)*

The Islamic fast is like a sieve that sifts the soul,
For it brings hidden particles (of gold) into view.
It is a ‘goblet’ that darkens the shining moon,
And when it is unveiled, it gives light to the seventh heaven.

Hz Mevlana –from his Ruba‘iyat (Quatrains)*

What hidden sweetness is found in this empty stomach! Man is like a lute, neither more nor less:
When the lute’s stomach is full, it cannot lament, whether high or low.
If your brain and stomach burn from fasting, their fire will draw constant lamentation from your breast.
Through that fire you will burn a thousand veils at every instant – you will ascend a thousand degrees on the Way and in your aspiration.
Keep your stomach empty! Lament like a flute and tell your need to God! Keep your stomach empty and speak of the mysteries like a reed!
If you keep your stomach full, it will bring Satan to you at the Resurrection instead of your spiritual intelligence, an idol instead of the Kaaba.
When you fast, good character traits gather round you like servants, slaves, and retinue.

Hz Mevlana - Divan-i Kebir**

*from The Quatrains of Rumi by Ibrahim Gamard and Rawan Farhadi
 **from The Sufi Path Of Love by William C. Chittick

 

The Importance of Spiritual Exercises

The Importance of Spiritual Exercises (Click to read)

The Heart is the Astrolabe of Love

The Heart is the Astrolabe of Love (Click here to read)

Journey of Life

Bismillah ir Rahman ir Rahim
In the name of God the most Compassionate, the most Merciful

Here are steps that you can take in your present life which will help you to access higher planes of awareness and which will enrich your understanding and allow you to enjoy the unfolding of the mystery which is both your universe and the macrocosmic universe manifesting the Divine Will,

Journeying in the heart-space

Copyright © Mevlevi Australia 2014. All Rights Reserved.

Dreams Within Dreams

Rumi said that life is…..
“khayalun fi khayalin fi khayal”
“dreams within dreams within dreams………”

He who is ruled by spiritual intelligence, without being asleep, puts his senses to sleep, so that unseen things may emerge from the world of the Soul.
Even in his waking state he dreams dreams (visions) and opens withal the gates of Heaven.

The Prophet said of this world, which is substantial in appearance, that it is the sleeper’s dream.
You have accepted this statement conventionally, but the travellers on the mystic Way have beheld this truth clairvoyantly, without relation from the Prophet.
You are asleep in the daytime: do not say that this is not sleep. The shadow is derivative, the origin of it is naught but the moonlight.
Know, O comrade, that your sleep and waking is as though a sleeper should dream that he has gone to sleep.
He thinks, “Now I am asleep”, and is unaware that he is really in the second sleep.

From Rumi’s Mathnawi Book 3