{"id":12,"date":"2018-04-28T09:19:04","date_gmt":"2018-04-28T16:19:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.harvard.edu\/agulamali\/?p=12"},"modified":"2018-04-28T21:05:18","modified_gmt":"2018-04-29T04:05:18","slug":"my-sufi-self","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/agulamali\/2018\/04\/28\/my-sufi-self\/","title":{"rendered":"My Sufi Self"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

“My soul is from elsewhere,
\nI’m sure of that, and I<\/p>\n

intend to end up there.”<\/p>\n

– Mowlana Rumi<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Sometimes I feel like an alien, unnaturally existing in the world around me. Unable to authentically be one with the world. Physically needing clothing, heating, cooling, straight floors, and other comforts to separate me from beautiful and destructive nature. Emotionally unable to empathize with the seemingly increasing amount of struggles and information in the hectic world around me. What does it mean to be one with the world? This question is part of central ideas within Sufi Islam, which emphasizes the esoteric and personal spiritual experience of a person. Rather than rejecting emotion, music, or dance, Sufi’s use this and the arts at large in order to become one with the world. For a Sufi, religion is not a sterile set of practices that everyone universally adopted, because this view would reduce the role of an individual into nothing of significance. As shown in the Conference of the Birds<\/em>, each individual has a unique set of challenges and strengths they must interact with on the journey to spiritual enlightenment. This is what allows for people in the past to simultaneously be a Sufi as well as being statesmen, jurists, poets, or scholars.<\/p>\n

\n

“The Universe is not<\/p>\n

outside of you.<\/p>\n

Look inside yourself;<\/p>\n

everything you want,<\/p>\n

you already are.”<\/p>\n

– Mowlana Rumi<\/p>\n

With this understanding, the two quotes from Mowlana Rumi, a great poet, jurist, theologian, and Sufi mystic, can exist together. One’s spirit, the true essence of one’s humanity, is part of the universe and longs to become one with it, but also does not need to escape in order to become one with the world, rather is already able to become one with the world within oneself. This idea is also reflected in another powerful quote by Mowland Rumi, “What you seek is seeking you.”<\/p>\n

In order to artistically represent these profound ideas, I created a paper cut out of a whirling dervish, part of a Sufi order that utilizing circular dances to meditate and visually express their oneness with the world around them. I decided to make this figure as open ended as possible in order to allow the viewer to place themselves in the place of the figure; in a way we are all like the whirling dervish, moving around rapidly, trying to better become one with the world around us. I decided to cut out the figure and paste in onto a seperate page in order to create a distinction between the whirling dervish and the world represented by the background, but also evoke through the similar colors shared by the two that the two figures are part of the same spirit: the world and oneself are one. The red color of the figures hat might not be a common color for the practice, but is meant to symbolize love. Love for God, the world, and oneself is what allows a Sufi to truly become one with the world and better understand God. Love is what melts away one’s ego which prevents oneness with the world.<\/p>\n

These ideas were discussed in the\u00a0 Lewisohn reading that examined Sama Sufi dance as well as the Tuesday lecture during Week 8 that examined the Sufi artistic tradition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that, and I intend to end up there.” – Mowlana Rumi   Sometimes I feel like an alien, unnaturally existing in the world around me. Unable to authentically be one with the world. Physically needing clothing, heating, cooling, straight floors, and other comforts to separate me from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9587,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/agulamali\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/agulamali\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/agulamali\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/agulamali\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9587"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/agulamali\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/agulamali\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/agulamali\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions\/36"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/agulamali\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/agulamali\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/agulamali\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}