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)

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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

 

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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