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The old sutras like the poet T.S.Elliot talk about "the still point of the turning world", and as in all essential mystic wisdom it is meant
literally as the key passage to the dimensions of the spirit. Some of the rituals of the past that went with it have been lost and some have been kept, wherever the local religious consensus permitted and/or cultivated such practices.
These are practices which can release the individual from the psychological burdens of a small personal life into the liberating absolute experience of the collective and its sense of unity, of oneness with the world. The Sufi world has kept such a practice in the ecstatic whirling. The saint-poet of the 13th century, Jellal u din Rumi, is the founder of the sufi order of the whirling dervishes, as he put together the Asian agrarian ecstatic whirling practice with the inner esoteric knowledge of sufi mysticism. He spoke in verse, being one of the world's greatest poets of all times.
In today's world where all authentic traditions find their meaning again, we understand such valuable practices under a new light. We can see their use beyond the content of local cultures and beliefs as pure vehicles of consciousness through the realms of the spirit. In simple words, they can always introduce us to the universal experiences. Likewise whirling takes us to the universal experience of ecstasy.
Today, to make the effort as westerners towards such an experience we need to place our minds in our culture's equivalent frames: altered states of consciousness, trance states are good metaphors to draw from as well as the meditative and the psychotherapeutic approaches. Yet for this endeavor, the steps are simple, like the guidance, all it takes is commitment and a few hours of practice.
Vico Nahmias had been leading whirling groups the past years in Athens and in London. He was doing this through seminars and session workshops. Whirling sessions went on every week in Athens with a growing interest. He took his groups through all the steps securely, towards the integration of the energy of whirling into our everyday lives, showing it to be a gift of a tool towards our joy and fulfillment.
The practice of the dervish whirling dance is one of the quickest and most self sustaining ways to a transcendence into the altered state of
practical spirituality.
Whirling is a good opportunity for a mild work out, like going for a hike for an hour or two as it leaves the body feeling refreshed and
energized as well as shifting the mental state.
Exercised with the necessary meditative approach needed to pass through the levels of consciousness and with proper guidance it enables the
practitioner to enter in a short time the realms that an adept meditator will sometimes take years to accomplish. The reason for this may lie in the power of centrifugal force that will equalize away the grounding force of weight.
Even Conscientiously meditating persons will take a long time to bring their system to the hormonal maturity needed to experience the ecstatic feeling, let alone further integrate it in everyday life.
The wonderful Sufi and especially the Mavlevi tradition has brought to us as an organized practice what was probably once an unstructured Asian farmers' dance in ritualistic festivities. Back in the turbulent 13th centuryThese Asian people were pushed by the advancing Mongols towards the Mediterranean coast.. Among Them was the Persian family of Jelal u din Rumi, the unique poet and founder of the Mavlevi Sufi order Today from Tangiers to Lahore people whirl happily whether within the Sufi context or without, as an expression of the need towards the experience of personal fulfillment through dance. The beauty and attraction of some of the whirling stars brings crowds to stadiums to enjoy.
Inevitably the whirling practice has outgrown the Moslem context and is progressing as a content-free practice to fulfill the need for an
experience of the ecstatic feeling. In the west, we understand it (in modern day parlance) as a legal way to produce endorphins which are the hormonal prerequisite to the ecstatic experience.
From sculptures, scriptures and figurines it appears that Ancient greek culture as well as other cultures, had some equivalent or
similar practices. So we could say that whirling seems to be a universal archetypal practice connecting us to the sublime ecstatic state we all feel such longing for.
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