Wearing God: Mevlevi Whirling and Stripping Away the False Self

Daliah Merzaban describes the experience of being undressed of the ego while turning in traditional Mevlevi whirling attire

In the past couple of years, I’ve been grateful for the opportunity to turn during our monthly global meditations on Zoom, led by our Sufi teachers and attended by friends from around the world. This has allowed me to more regularly wear the traditional Mevlevi garments donned by dervishes during the Sema, the whirling ceremony.

There’s something magical about the process of getting dressed for the Sema because, paradoxically, I feel as though I am being undressed. Despite the multiple layers of weighty fabrics a whirling dervish drapes over their body, my experience is that even weightier layers of the mental and emotional clothing are stripped away.

Learning to turn is a process of learning how to spin on my own axis with greater grace, precision and presence. This is so much about being undressed of my worldly self, and I truly experience this from the moment I place the tennure over my head after reciting the opening lines of the Quran facing the kibla, the direction of prayer. The tennure is a flowy white gown reminiscent of the shroud of the dervish’s ego. Each time I put it on, I somehow know I will not be the same when I take it off: a little more of my false self will be dissolved in the ocean of my essence.

Threshold Society Mevlevi whirling dervishes at Sema in London, December 2019

Then around my waist I tightly wrap the tiyg-bend (meaning “sword-belt”) and try to ensure the pleats of the tennure are spread evenly around me. This isn’t always easy to do alone. Sema is traditionally a communal gathering, allowing the dervishes to help each other get dressed. As beautiful as it has been to have had virtual gatherings since the onset of the Covid pandemic, nothing can replace that sense of togetherness.

Over the tiyg-bend I place the alif-lamad, a black wider belt long enough to wrap around the waist about one and a half times. This belt represents the Arabic letter alif, which is also the number one, testifying to the unity of God. Over the tennure is a short, white, long-sleeved, collarless jacket called a dasta-gul, a bouquet of roses. Covering the whole of one’s attire is the khirka, the long black cloak that represents the covering of the grave of the ego.

Turning in this traditional Mevlevi attire is the only time in my life that I sense I am going out into the world and being seen by others while naked and bare. This is a paradox because the whirling outfit is, in actuality, quite elaborate and heavy. And yet, the more I do it, the more I discover that nothing sits more lightly on my skin. It is, in a sense, like preparing to be invisible, to wear only the light and lightness of God.

Consider these lines of Mevlana Rumi:

Those who wear clothes look to the launderer,
but the naked soul wears illumination.
Either withdraw from the naked
or take off your clothes like them.
If you can’t become wholly naked,
take the middle way
and take off at least some
of what you wear.

[Mathnawi II, 3524–25]¹

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Remembering the Sufi Shaikh Who Made Rumi Popular in the West

Daliah Merzaban reflects on forming a heart connection with late Mevlevi Shaikh Suleyman Hayati Dede

It was through seeing a photograph of late Mevlevi Shaikh Suleyman Hayati Dede several years ago that my heart learned how to deepen a connection with a being I’ve never met in the flesh. In this black and white image, Suleyman Dede is seated wearing a suit, with a single white rose on either side. He sits before an open window, lips pressed together in a subtle smile, eyes gazing lovingly at a beloved beyond the camera and, in my imagination, a Beloved beyond space and time.

Late Mevlevi Shaikh Suleyman Dede

Dede’s smiling eyes captivated me so deeply that I kept the picture as the background image of my phone for months, so his face would be the first one I saw in the morning and the last one I gazed upon before sleeping.

Sometimes, I would imagine the photo was taken in the early 1980s in Konya, Turkey, and that the beloved he was smiling at was me, then a little girl thousands of kilometres away in the Canadian prairie city of Saskatoon. As someone who never met her own grandfathers, the mysterious connection forming in my heart for this Anatolian grandfather healed a void of male affection in my childhood.

I can’t explain in any rational way why I was gripped by love for Suleyman Dede, the teacher of my own shaikh and shaikha, the first time my eyes met his in this photograph. Nor can I explain why the connection and guidance I receive from Dede only seems to flourish, like the roses in this image, with each passing year. It is one of the mysteries of this path, a gift from the Most Loving One and the Supreme Giver of Gifts, Ya Wadud, Ya Wahhab.

Of course, it isn’t merely through an image that a heart connection with a murshid, a saint or a prophet is formed. It is through getting to know their character, which I’ve glimpsed through anecdotes shared by my teachers, like this one describing an Ottoman gentleman whose generosity and kindness was so sincere that he would offer to do their laundry.

Suleyman Dede is widely credited for being the reason that Mevlana Rumi’s poetry is now popular in the West; during trips to the United States in the 1970s, he planted the seeds of love for Rumi in hearts far beyond his Turkish homeland. These seeds continue to blossom today, 37 years after Suleyman Dede passed into the Unseen in Konya on Jan. 19, 1985.

On the Sufi path, forming a heart connection with one’s Pir, or the founder of the particular order to which one belongs, is of paramount importance for a dervish. Deepening in love for my Pir, Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, has happened through the gateway of grace opened by my teachers, Kabir and Camille Helminski.

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Freedom from Food: The Gifts of a Three-Month Fast

Daliah Merzaban describes the taste of Love concealed beneath pangs of hunger

“Keep your body hungry,” was the advice a spiritual guide gave as a few friends and I embarked on a three-month fast earlier this year. In addition to Ramadan, we set the intention to fast during the two preceding months — Rajab and Sha’ban — as well.

In one way, it felt impossible; at first, I had to battle resistance even to say yes to the invitation. My mind was afraid of giving up my morning coffee during busy days at work. I worried how fasting might thwart a social life that was already constrained by pandemic lockdowns.

But in another, more visceral way, there was excitement at the prospect of traversing a trail I’d never journeyed before. I’ve always found fasting nourishing for my heart and body, but I never imagined fasting the equivalent of three Ramadans at once. I was curious to discover what lay ahead in this mysterious new land.

My teacher’s encouragement to keep our bodies hungry wasn’t necessarily about adhering to a strict set of “rules” as much as about pushing the limits of our hunger by listening carefully to our bodies. There’s wisdom concealed beneath pangs of hunger that isn’t audible when we rush to satiate cravings.

According to one tradition, Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, advised reserving a third of the stomach for food, a third for drink and a third for breath. With his wisdom in mind, I decided to have single small and nourishing meal each evening, thereby skipping the early-morning pre-fast meal called suhoor. I also cut out most sugar, which has been a crutch I have used to numb pain since childhood.

Some days, especially in the first month and a half, I was far from satisfied with the amount I’d eaten. I would succumb to overeating or late-night snacking. My body would end these days with a sense of uncomfortable fullness.

On other days, I was granted the strength to push through the cravings that arose. Instead of filling the craving, I would breathe air into my belly, imagining it was food. I allowed the hunger to be there, witnessing the discomfort as lovingly as I could. Eventually, the cravings would pass. My body would end these days with a sense of lightness and ease.

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Prophet Muhammad and the Garbage Thrower

True power and compassion flow when validation comes from within

Of the many stories relating the beautiful character of the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, the one I’ll call The Tale of the Trash has been the most present in my life.

From a young age, my mom would tell me and my sisters this story to describe how the Prophet of Islam acted with mercy. The version in my memory goes something like this:

Muhammad lived in a house, much like ours in Canada, perhaps with a front porch and a small front lawn. There was sometimes a fence around the lawn and sometimes the house was situated along a tree-lined cul-de-sac, depending on where we lived. We moved a lot.

One of the prophet’s neighbours, a grouchy woman with deep frown lines on her forehead, would come by every day rain or shine, and throw a little garbage on his doorstep like she was delivering a morning newspaper. And every morning, the Prophet would go out like he was picking up the paper and carefully collect every piece of trash with his bare hands. Every banana peel and used plastic cup, and dispose of it.

He wouldn’t get angry. He wouldn’t fight. He wouldn’t react at all. He’d just gently clear away the mess, and go on with his day.

(Obviously it’s absurd to imagine banana peels or plastic cups or picket-fenced green lawns in the deserts of seventh century Arabia, but allow me to indulge the version of the hadith that nestled itself in my heart as I was growing up.)

This pattern repeated month after month. Until one day, the Prophet went out to pick up the trash like he was collecting the morning paper, and found nothing. The woman hadn’t been by that morning.

This is where the essential message of the story is revealed. Rather than feeling relieved at the prospect of being left alone, the Prophet became concerned. He suspected something must be wrong. He promptly walked over to his neighbour’s home and asked of her whereabouts and condition. It turned out she had fallen ill. The Prophet asked permission to visit her and prayed by her side for recovery, health and wellbeing.

The woman was so moved by Muhammad’s compassion that the hostility she felt toward him quickly dissolved. Eventually, she embraced Islam, that state of being where a human accesses and bows to the Divinity found at the inmost place within the heart. Where we find the Self of and in God.

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Listening to the Reed

It would be impossible to separate my heart’s awakening with my Sufi master Rumi from awakening to music, and in particular the music of the Turkish reed flute, called the ney.

Outwardly, I suppose it wouldn’t seem surprising for a disciple of the Mevlevi tradition of Sufism to be drawn to the mystical instrument described in the opening lines of Rumi’s poetic masterpiece, the Mathnawi. Mevlana’s description of the ney is the entry point into a universe of 26,000 verses conveying in extraordinary detail the human being’s journey toward union with the Divine Beloved.

Turkish reed flute, photo by Uzma Taj

Yet for someone like myself, who had never learned to play an instrument, my desire to approach the ney came as an absolute shock. From the moment I unexpectedly birthed that elusive first sound about three years ago, I’ve sensed that this instrument is seeking to teach me something about my essence, and more precisely, how far I’d strayed from my Self. I, like the reed torn from the reed bed, was dry and void of life until the Breath of Love enlivened my heart. It was, truly, an experience of love at first sound.

Rumi says:

Listen to the reed and the tale it tells,
how it sings of separation:
Ever since they cut me from the reed bed,
my wail has caused men and women to weep.
I want a heart torn open with longing
to share the pain of this love.
Whoever has been parted from their source
longs to return to that state of union.

[Mathnawi I, 1–4]

Looking back at the past few years of my journey as a dervish striving to embody Rumi’s guidance, it is as though these lines have come to life in my body. They have resonated against the inner lining of my being and ignited a fire that has consumed many self-limiting beliefs that were holding me back. Studying the Mathnawi and living and breathing Mevlana’s teachings has opened me up to greater creativity than I ever fathomed possible. A once hollow existence is now brimming with more music, poetry, companionship and love than I could have ever imagined I deserved.

Something stirred in my heart with that first note from the reed that is difficult to put into words, other than to say there was a palpable longing to connect to the Mystery behind the sound. It felt magical. In that single, breathy note, it was as though beauty became real for me. For the first time, music became a possibility. I’d never imagined myself as a musician. During my turbulent childhood years, there wasn’t space for me to explore this possibility. So, as with so many of our human gifts, that potential lay dormant, waiting to be ignited. Which brings me to a few more of Rumi’s opening lines in the Mathnawi:

This flute is played with fire, not with wind,
and without this fire you would not exist.
It is the fire of love that inspires the flute.
It is the ferment of love that completes the wine.

[Mathnawi I, 9–10]

My understanding of these lines has deepened as my feet journey on the hot coals of awakening. The reed is a superb metaphor for an awakening human being, slowly emptying of the beliefs and psychological conditioning that erect barriers to the Divine Breath seeking to resonate in our bodies. To reconnect with our deepest voice, we need to be carved and hollowed like the reed.

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Prayers Are Answered in the Still of the Night

A week and a half before Ramadan, I was awake in the early hours of the morning, consumed by a feeling of vulnerability. I’d just finished recording my debut song and part of me felt afraid to share it, afraid of how it might be received.

The fear of rejection gripped my body. 

As I tried to comfort this anxiousness with zikr, I looked out the window and saw the moon, in bright yellow, peek up over the eastern horizon. I can’t recall ever witnessing the moon appear so close to the earth before, probably because my new home offers me a view of the sky I’ve never had before.

It was mesmerising to watch it climb slowly, becoming whiter and whiter as it rose. Likewise, the constriction gently let go of my body and was replaced with an overwhelming sensation of lightness rising within. In this space of stillness, the words of a new song started flowing from the depths of my heart.

I scribbled the lyrics into my notebook. They felt like a gift, an affirmation from my Sustainer, my Rabb, that I needn’t worry; I could trust the inspiration coming from my Inmost Heart and share it without fear. The song that arrived in the wee hours of that morning, called In the Still of the Night, is about the power of night vigil: The practice of deep night-time worship that I’m especially devoted to during Ramadan. The chorus speaks of how it is during this time that sincere prayers are heard — and answered.

This Ramadan, I’ve been reflecting on the mystery of prayer. My understanding of the concept has evolved over time. I used to see prayer as an act of asking the Divine for what I want, usually specific worldly possessions and pleasures, whether they be love and relationship, a new job, a new home, etc.

That is certainly part of it; being able to articulate to Allah what I don’t want in life, and what I do want, has helped me to cultivate healthy boundaries and brought about a lot of positive changes in my life in recent years.

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Whirling through life: Reflections of a female whirling dervish

Whirling is a seven-centuries old form of full-body worship emblematic of the Mevlevi tradition of Jalaluddin Rumi — and a practice I’ve woven into my spiritual routine over the past couple of years. Each time I begin whirling, there are a few moments my mind’s eye lingers in the image of a flower sprouting from the soil and slowly growing, budding and opening into full bloom.

Also known as turning, it begins by tilting the head toward the heart and crossing the arms at the chest, right over left, with the fingers wrapped slightly over shoulders. After bowing down before my teachers in the Seen and Unseen, I rise upright into a shape resembling the Arabic letter Alif and start rotating counterclockwise. Slowly, I uncross my arms and glide my fingers down the centre of my body toward my belly, as though a seed is being planted in the root of my being.

Then, again slowly, I move my fingers back up over my solar plexus and past my heart before outstretching my arms into the air, as though they are spreading out like the petals of a flower opening into its full splendour. This flower is swaying in the breeze, delighting passers-by with its fragrance and, all the while, firmly rooted in the Earth.

This image reminds me that with all the beauty of movement embodied by whirling, it is most importantly about grounding. 

It took me a long time to understand this. I recall the first time I saw whirling dervishes during my first visit to Istanbul in 2010. My sister and I saw a pair of them spinning counterclockwise in their white, flowy gowns at a restaurant near the Blue Mosque. I felt dizzy just watching them and assumed that this “dance” transported the dervish into some trance-like, ecstatic state.

My experience with the Mevlevi form of whirling has been quite the opposite: It is while turning that I feel the most rooted in my body.  This has been an important teaching for me. As someone with an active connection to the imaginal realm, I can easily lose touch with the anchor of my body. I have a tendency to forget to breathe deeply and at times entirely detach from the sensations of my gut, legs and feet.

By engaging every part of my physical form with each 360-degree rotation, whirling strengthens my core, improves my balance and enhances my awareness of the Heart, the dimensionless point in the centre of my being where I am closest to Allah.

Sema ceremony at St. John’s, Waterloo church in London, December 2019

In order to turn gracefully, the dervish’s left leg must be fixed on the floor, which in practice I find hard to do. It feels something like trying to embody Al Qayyum, the Quality of the Divine that means the Self Subsisting Source of All Being. My shaikh has likened Al Qayyum to a pole connecting the world of Spirit and the earthly realm, crossing through the human heart. The more centred I become, the more my left leg can hold position. The opposite is also true. If I get caught in the chatter in my mind, my body wobbles.

The right leg, meanwhile, rotates around the left, much like the embodiment of the Divine Name Ya Hayy, the Ever Living One. This interplay between Ya Qayyum (axis) and Ya Hayy (motion) is a constant reminder that life flows most beautifully from solid roots.

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When Prophets Come Alive

I recently accompanied my murshid on a spiritual retreat in Turkey, along with a group of dear friends and seekers. We sat in the presence of sufi teachers and visited shrines, including the House of the Virgin Mary in Ephesus and the tombs of Mevlana Rumi and Shams of Tabriz in Konya.

One of the lessons that resonated with me was the idea that we can relate to prophets and saints like Muhammad, Jesus, Mary, Buddha or Rumi not merely as historical figures, but as sacred personalities who belong to all humanity, rather than a particular religion, ideology or nationality. They represent transcendent qualities accessible through the collective human consciousness.

The House of Mary in Ephesus, Turkey (Photo by David John Ward)

We open ourselves up to a direct experience with these sacred figures when we bring our lower selves or egos (called nafs in sufi terminology) into alignment with our hearts. In sufism, this is achieved by cultivating consciousness of the Divine Reality, or Allah, through zikr, or remembrance. Over time, such practices heighten our spiritual radar and we grow more and more into our greatest humanness, where direct experiences with the Beloved permeate all circumstances of life.

As Mevlana Rumi says:

Our body is like Mary.
Each of us has a Jesus inside.
If a pain and yearning shows up inside us,
the Jesus of our soul is born.
If there is no pain, no yearning,
the Jesus of our soul will return to its origin from
the same secret passageway he came from…
If there is no pain, no yearning,
we will remain deprived
not benefiting from that Jesus of the soul.
(Translated by Omid Safi, in Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition)



Understanding that prophets and saints reside in the potentiality of every human’s 
experience opened a deeper dimension of intimacy and connection for me. It’s also obliterated the cultural and religious divisions that I’d grown up believing separated people.

In my journey, I’ve felt connected to prophets and saints not merely because I’d read about them and appreciated their stories. But because shifts in my consciousness have given me a direct sense of who they were and how their qualities have manifested in my own experience.

One of my first such encounters was with Khadija, Muhammad’s first wife. She came into view just as my consciousness was awakening to the dimension of Spirit that I’d been blind to after a lifetime of being trapped in my mind. A single mother managing a multinational business, Khadija exuded strength and confidence, so much so that she had no qualms about proposing marriage to the much younger Muhammad, her employee.

More than admiring her audacity, though, I started to notice how her courage to live 
outside social norms was transforming my own way of being in the world. It was as 
though she came alive inside of me: I gradually turned off all the cultural and familial noise and pressures standing in the way of charting out my own path. A wholly receptive feminine energy, Khadija revealed herself in the intuitive part of me that feels an unbreakable heart connection to the Divine even in the face of prevailing mainstream pressures that rejected this, in her time and mine.

By Mariam Choudry

Sacred breezes like Khadija’s have swept over me at many points on my journey, awakening qualities I wasn’t aware existed. Recently, for instance, I had my first deep contact with Imam Ali, Muhammad’s son-in-law and cousin. I was initially startled because Ali is famed for being a great warrior who fought many battles at the prophet’s side. I didn’t fathom such masculinity could exist in myself.

And yet after spending some time reading about Ali’s devotion to Muhammad, parallels emerged. Ali offers an example of how to arrive fully armed to our inner battle ground where the fight for the soul, or jihad, takes place. A big part of me, especially in the past couple of years, has been bold in confronting many painful psychological wounds blocking my path to spiritual maturity, always with abundant self compassion.

The Ali in me has the gentle courage to bring unhealthy patterns of behaviour rooted in childhood trauma and religious and cultural conditioning into conscious awareness and allow the spiritual alchemy of zikr to transform and heal them. The more I peel away the veils of my lower self and realign my psyche toward Compassion and Love, the more I grasp Ali’s presence and appreciate why the Prophet said, “I am the city of knowledge and Ali is its gate.”



Moments of insight like these remind me that journeying on the sufi path puts me in direct contact not only with my living teachers, but with a lineage of saints, prophets and friends of God. In my own tradition of Mevlevi sufism, rooted in the teachings of Mevlana Rumi, I sometimes imagine the dialogue between Shams of Tabriz and Rumi happening within me.

Shams ignited the flame of Divine Love in Rumi by daring him to view reality from a 
different vantage point. I experience Shams, Arabic for sun, as the inner witness 
objectively observing my thoughts, feelings, sensations and emotions and shining a light on where I need to pay attention. His luminous being challenges me to question familiar patterns of thought and behaviour, and rub away the layers of tarnish that separate me from my spiritual heart.

The more polished my heart becomes, meanwhile, inhibitions melt away and I shock myself with creativity and ideas. Writing flows more easily, and I’ve developed a love for singing, learning to play music and whirling that I couldn’t have imagined possible even a couple of years ago. It’s here that I catch a glimpse of the radiance of Rumi, through whom that Divine Creativity surged in tens of thousands of verses of poetry.

With each step I take to open in receptivity to wisdom coming in from the Unseen, I’m pick up subtler frequencies of spiritual perception. Sometimes it’s as though I can tune into an intimate and lively sohbet, or spiritual conversation, taking place in my heart, where humanity’s sacred teachers blow insight and truth, if I am still enough to listen.

Translating Love’s Confusion: Hollywood and Misreading Rumi

The 2010 Hollywood celebrity fest chick-flick Valentine’s Day opens with Reed Bennett, a florist played by Ashton Kutscher, proposing marriage to Morley (Jessica Alba), as she wakes up on Feb. 14.

Evidently startled, Morley initially accepts, sending Reed on a joyful mission to let everyone know his sweetheart said “yes”! But his elation is short-lived. A few hours later Reed finds Morley in his apartment packing her bag as she hands back his ring and walks out on the relationship entirely.

Just then, as movie’s downtrodden protagonist leaves the scene, the narrator — a radio show host named “Romeo Midnight” — drops a word of wisdom that sounds a tinge sufi.

“It’s Romeo Midnight back again.
And if those topsy-turvy feelings have got you twisted inside out, think of the poet Rumi who 800 years ago said: `All we really want is love’s confusing joy.’
Amen, brother.”

 

When I watched this movie shortly after its release, I was bemused at the irony of hearing a 13th-century Islamic poet and scholar quoted in a cheesy American blockbuster seemingly unwittingly. A Persian poet of love, Rumi is often uprooted from his historical context and polished for resale for Western audiences who may not realize his object of affection isn’t a romantic love interest, but the Divine Beloved.

Heart of Steel, by Livlu Ghemaru

Rumi writes in a transcendent and inclusive way about love and loss, so his wide-reaching appeal isn’t surprising. Yet it can be frustrating to see him conspicuously taken out of context. Not only is he often divorced of the Islam, or Self Surrender, his poetry conveys, Rumi’s words can be used to propagate unrealistic ideals of how romantic love is the magic key to personal fulfilment and happily ever after.

I’ve certainly been swept up in these sentimental pursuits, especially in my 20s. My upbringing combined Egyptian influences and North American popular culture (Hollywood and Disney included), particularly in the late-1980s and 90s, both of which dictated I needed to find love, get married and have children to be whole.

Measured against these standards, I was a failure. Before 25, I’d broken off two engagements, and for many years after that my love life was one long dry spell punctured by a handful of dates and a couple of agonizing encounters with unrequited love. A resentful inner critic insisted I was to blame, and that persistent hollowness in my core could only be filled with romantic love, which I felt I couldn’t be worthy of; I couldn’t get the part.