A series of three courses designed to provide students with a broader insight into the value of embodying the fundamental teachings of our Ruhaniat Sufi lineage, through engaging with some deep, practical, individual and group experience with the core spiritual practices those teachings suggest.
The Dances of Universal Peace are a joyful, embodied, sacred practice of sound and movement, using mantras from the many different spiritual traditions of the world. The chants and movements are powerful, but simple and repetitive, and easily accessible even to beginners and the less physically able. Everything is taught in the moment so anyone can join even if they have never tried it before. They are meditation in action, and bridge the gap between the meditation cushion and everyday life, training us to meet one another and ourselves in compassion and body-centered awareness.
During the dark time of year we gather for story and music to uplift the spirits and gently guide the soul as we all journey between the worlds, through powerful nighttime dreaming, and within the subterranean oceans within the sacred geologies of our past. We offer the de-light of our “being together” as a kind of delicious food and liquid joy to the God of the Hearth. May His Light be strong!
Learn to speak and sing this timeless and potent prayer to Our Lady, “The Lady of Deep Waters” in its original mother tongue: Aramaic. There is something totally ennobling and grand about tasting and hearing the sounds, images, and feelings of these ancient words and letters. When spoken with deep devotion, curiosity, and the natural courtesy that bees have for the flowers of the field, we open ourselves up to the deeper layers and unique gifts of the prayer and of sacred language.
Did you have a grandmother, or a mother, or even an auntie who showed you how to wrestle and tumble deliciously with the Divine in nature? Was there anyone who reminded you that your instinctual gratitude and majesty, born of the diligence of your hands and voice, were what inspired the deeply sacred courting of your own individual creative soul?