About the Turn

The Mevlevi order is a Sufi order (sometimes called the whirling dervishes) that is known throughout the world. While you can now read books, listen to CD's and see videos about whirling dervish and their founder Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi (1207-1273), you cannot "know" what it is to turn in the mystical contemplation of the divine. For this you need a teacher and a guide. You also need a sincere determination, as well as physical, emotional, and spiritual strength to achieve the states of enraptured absorption that the Dervish experiences.

The training takes about a year of practicing every day to gain insight into what it is one is actually doing, and a lifetime to refine and perfect it. The teacher (Sheikh/ Sheikha) must be able to transmit the unspeakable to the student. The student, in turn, must surrender parts of him/her self that the ego guards fearfully. The Sheikh must be patient, cunning, intuitive, inspiring, and demanding for the student to "leap over his/her shadow".

The steps themselves are few and simple, but like a top, unless you are perfectly centered, you cannot disappear into an infinitesimally thin axis so that everything you take yourself to be is whirling around you, and you are that existence which has no physical residence. This is the way of the Dervish. This is what Dervishes call "True Love."