RE: Heavenly dance
ORIGINAL: venetian
ORIGINAL: Sacredstar
I learned that Sufism was often attacked by Islamic fundamentalists right from the earliest times. Hence a lot of their poetic vocabulary is symbolic: 'the beloved' refers to God not to an earthly romantic attachment.
Yes it is written that they are Gnostics just like the early Christian Gnostics that were also called heretics. Yes, the lover and the beloved and the sacred union with the divine. However, it is also easy to forget that GOD loves through man hence why the sacred physical temple is so important.
You don't seem willing to 'get' it and never have. The living Sufis in all the nations covered in that programme say that the wording is totally symbolic. What people then do in their physical lives is up to them, and I don't at all suggest that Sufis are all ascetics. Most marry, etc. But the vocabulary of Rumi is stated by the Sufis themselves, and even by Rumi, to be completely symbolic.
Sufis don't particularly feel that the body is "so important" - that's just your personal 'take' on thread after thread.
Oh yes I do get it David and I understand the philosophy and experience well in the same way as you understand it. The only difference is that I live it.
However, I also get what some have missed and what GOD has taught me - that GOD is everywhere.
I unite with the Sufi's on total surrender and with the Buddhists on zero attachment to physical (or any other) reality.
Through this we can become Divine Love in manifestation on the earth plane united with GOD.
PS To put it in another context as explained in the bible you can get to the state of being when 'we become the Christ', the lover and the beloved become one, true oneness with the source. As Jesus says in the Gospel of Thomas and other scripture 'the two become one'.
Love beyond measure
Kim xx
RE: Heavenly dance
PS
Also David if you read the life story of Rumi you will discover that many of the poems that he wrote to the beloved were for his spiritual teacher who was a man, it was not until he lost his spiritual teacher that he went into total dispair and was forced to surrender. After this he then made his breakthroughs with divine love and his understanding of the true relationship with GOD.
He wrote this when his spiritual teacher died.
"Who dares say the immortal one has died?
Who dares say that the sun of hope has set?
An enemy of the sun has climbed onto the roof
Closed his eyes and declared the sun has set."
After he came to terms with his loss and detachment, he discovered that at whatever door he knocked, in whatever strange town, he would find God there, for the door was that of his own heart and GOD lived within.
being love
Kim xx
RE: Heavenly dance
Honestly, Kim and David, I do wish you two would stop squabbling. It does you no credit.
Love
Sunanda xxx
RE: Heavenly dance
Sunanda beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder !
And as David so rightly says 'behold we are the temple of the living God' 😉
I have learnt that God does indeed work in mysterious ways and as long as we walk in joy and a smile on our face all is well. 😀
We are often advised not to take things so seriously and I think that is very good advice. 😉
Love beyond measure
Kim xx
PS some do not look for credit or praise
RE: Heavenly dance
ORIGINAL: venetian
it's not 'destruction' in a negative sense - it's change.
I agree, David. It's moving energy on to a new and higher level. Even in our every day lives we shed skin cells, parts of our thinking, old emotions etc that are no longer relevant to our growth and sense of being. We literally are changing in order to allow room for the new. For me Lord Shiva's dance fits in with the endless tide of birth, demise and renewal - it's a spinning wheel of endless change.
Spot on, Sunanda, about the description of the dance of Nataraj! This dance is called Tandava. Lord Shiva is traditionally depicted as dancing in a crematorium covered in ashes, grieving over the loss of his first wife, Sati.
However, there's another type of less well known dance that Lord Shiva/Nataraj engaged in called Lasaya. This is very different. This is a dance of peace and beatitude, of creation and caress. He dances with his wife, Parvati, and together they form a new divinity which is half male and half female: Ardha-nareeshwara.
I love the juxtaposition of these two dances. One is of death (leading to a clearing of space for the new), and the other is of hope and renewal.
Whilst in our human lives some seek to attain enlightenment by overcoming the rebirth cycle, here we have deities who provide comfort in their movements that life and death are a natural part of the human experience. It makes living life on earth bearable to have gods dancing to the rhythm of our wordly experiences.
I think this is one of the reasons that my faith provides me with comfort about the idea of experiencing death. It's not something that I am fearful about.
Cub