This article continues our Elements of Mastery column in which we explore the art, craft and spiritual practice of Dance leading and mentoring.
As a young wanderer in 1969, I first met my spiritual teacher, Sufi Murshid Samuel Lewis, dancing in Precita Park in San Francisco. I realized quickly that life was taking me on an extraordinary adventure, and that my primary task was simply to be open, to listen, and to welcome the awesome blessings that were pouring forth from this God-realized dervish. I embraced the dances he shared with us as opportunities for ecstasy and as pathways to higher consciousness. I loved the community drawn together around this unpredictable, funny and wise elder. Adorned in our colorful robes, I experienced beauty in each and all of the dancers, and spiritually, I felt I was arriving home.
Now, more than forty years later, I feel the same yearning for ecstasy and the genuine awakening of my heart. Whether I am leading a dance, playing music for a dance, or dancing a dance, I recognize that with every step, and every breath, the transformative potential of this sacred practice is powerful beyond limits.
In considering ecstasy and devotion, we are talking about the inner life, what Hazrat Inayat Khan calls the realm of "vibrations." Heart-awakening means just that: the awakening of our hearts from the stupor of isolation, disconnection, and fear, to become alive in the magnetism of spiritual realization. HIK also teaches us that the essential ailment of the human condition, from which all other illnesses and imbalances arise, is a "coldness of heart." Thus, our warm embrace of the Beloved, in whatever form, brings healing to our hearts and lives.
Elements of Mastery in Dance Leadership
- Solar Radiance — being positive in one's offering, confident in one's direct link to one's teachers and lineage teachings.
- Embodiment — giving one's embodied focus to the practice. "Left foot, right foot" — the Dances call us from distractions of mind-mesh into the vibrancy of embodied presence.
- Calm abiding — relaxing into the practice, which naturally encourages everyone in the circle to be relaxed and engaged.
- Fana — being effaced of one's own personality, devoting oneself to the practice, and tuning to the needs of the group.
The training of Dance Leaders mostly involves our own training in spiritual practice. The elements of mastery described above are not learned from a book. They involve our own experience, as Dance Leaders, of the awakening, from within, of our own hearts. As Rumi says: "Close the language door. Open the love window."
— Murshid Abraham Sussman