Dee Powers, ITCert*
I silently chanted Shafi surrounded by white lights & my favorite animal friends. I was very quiet & very still for what seemed a very long time. Even though I could hear my grandson playing loudly in another part of the house, I was able to be in that beautiful & graceful place. This still place was so active in a very subtle way. I could feel the changes in my body happening so slowly & with such purpose. I remained in this state until I felt complete – probably not more than 25 mins.I felt so refreshed & energized with great joy bubbling up.

Alia Thabit
My 12/10 Shafi Practice (This is written right after, typed verbatim):
Rushed, as usual, my 10 minutes of movement and breathing did not feel as relaxing as it might–I went into the chanting disappointed with myself for not having made more time for the whole thing. But that is how I feel about everything right now. The chanting itself felt sweet and pure.. I noticed about halfway I had lost concentration, and reapplied the sinking and the focus on breath and “sound”–this time it took, and in the final few minutes, my entire space shifted into relaxed sweetness. I have just now remembered about keeping my breath while writing, so am. Maybe will remember to keep it throughout the day.

*ITCert Intensive Training Certification Program

Stay tuned for our next practice segment in two weeks. If you missed Part 1 of this Shafi chant series , click here, or Part 2 click here. Thank you to the Dancemeditation Practice Group for permission to use their words.
Please join us by doing the practice and sharing your experience of the practice here on the blog.

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I continued. I noticed at one point a slight impulse — actually a thin thought — about moving my left leg. My Witnessing Self knew that moving — really a slight fidget – would mean about 30″ to a minute of reconnecting to my deepening relaxation, so I decided not to move but instead to breathe more deeply into the area. Almost immediately afterward I had a brain tantrum — a loud, brash, 2-yr-old blaze of mind activity. There was no emotion, no anger or frustration, but just a mental pattern. My Witness Self recognized instantly that this was my habituated mind reacting to a choice to ignore its subliminal suggestion to fidget my left leg. I realize that fidgeting is my way of avoiding continuous focus and of learning.

This juncture passed and I sank deeper into gravity, into my breath. Over the course of 10 minutes I shifted inward a gear or two. Then I slid my legs down and rested.

On Reflection
Though this chant didn’t reach an expanded place, it was an excellent weight-lifting session. I have difficulty finding a kind way of being disciplined. In recent years in Dancemeditation, I’ve been adjusting harsh, punitive disciplinarian-ness of my professional dance years. I seek strength and clarity which require the cultivation of will, but that will mustn’t be a willfulness reeking of domination (which, oddly, might be a form of greed, yes? Want. want, want, my way, my way, my way, etc.) During the Shafi chant, I glimpsed my rebellious side as a two-year-old rebellion.

Insight
My battle has moved into the mental plane. (The emotional level seems settled.) Rebellion shows up as a mental pattern. This is potent information for me. I ‘feel’ my old emotions — their staleness and non-immediateness, but old mental templates are tough to apperceive. We have a cultural prejudice toward considering the mind as a fresh, fluid, objective territory, but in the Shafi chant I saw that it can be fixed in a rut without the sense of being able to tell, feeling-wise, that this is so.

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Practitioners Writings About Their Experience

Joanna Shellenberger, ITCert**
My day started with a cleaning of my space, which felt like a practice by itself. I also played the Muhyi chant as I was getting ready. I decided to do a fast as well. By 11am, I was ready to start my practice. As I was powering down my phone and computer, I decided to chant without the recording as it felt intuitive to not have any electronics going.

I had every intention of moving but as soon as I made it to the blanket I felt my body sink down and decided to go right into Shafi. At first I spoke the chant out loud but as tears came to me I had internalized it and focused on breathing thought it. An incredible sense of sadness and grief came over me, something I’ve been denying in myself. I had an image of light with millions of hands holding me, allowing me to be in this grief. I just stayed with it, chanting for about 45 minutes. Felt like I was both griever and healer with the help of practice and community. Felt very supported in the space. I wrote for a bit and then a 2 hour sufi sleep followed (much needed). Although this sounds really depressing, it is actually the healing that needs to take place and I’m glad to not tackle it alone. I love this practice because it challenges me more than anything else I can think of but also supports the process at the same time. My thoughts and writing felt therapeutic and not like spiraling downward.
My journal entry from the day:
Sadness — I’ve been avoiding this feeling, avoiding the grief. Searching for manic states to inject life into me and yet deny myself at the same time, my emotions.    I am not alone but sad, unsure. I miss my former life, but this place is gone, empty. I have more life here and now. Yet I feel empty here too, like a part of the past has been erased—Where did I go?
Who am I alone? I seek so much attention, confirmation. Yet, I need to be alone, more often.
Music is like a minefield of heartbreak. Any minute I could be subjected to a memory of then, to what was, to the pain of what is now gone. Maybe I am a minefield too. Where can I modulate this feeling (sadness/grief)? Where can I find a middle ground? Where can I find peace? Forgiveness is entering my heart and yet it hurts, still.
Sadness… this is what I’m running from, this is why I’m distracted, why I suppress and hold back. I am so afraid it will take over me like it has before but it needs to be expressed. The war is over yet why do I still fight to find love? It’s here all along. It’s here in me.

Teresa D Long Hawkes, CDMT* 
Sitting on the couch swaying, breathing, feeling the depth of Shafi melt my mind, I fell out of anxiety into a sensation of being rocked by the love of the Sufis emanating from within. I could feel them all. Deep gratitude washed through me. There is a well of peace waiting just inside me. I don’t dip myself in its embrace often enough. Thank you for keeping us connected to this wellspring Dunya!

Carleen Bevans, IT Cert**
My time started out really stressed, I had spent all day in town getting my car fixed… $ 1450.00 later and too dark to go back up the mountain I grudgingly got a motel room. I was frustrated, angry and just a wee bit out of control.
I decided that it didn’t matter that I would be doing my Shafi and Sufi practice in a motel room, not at all what I wanted but…. surrender has been something that I am practicing sooo… surrender I did. I turned the heat on in my room, got comfortable letting my body sink, sink into the bed, breathing slowly then adding ‘sha‘ on the inhale ‘fi‘ on the exhale slowly, gently surrendering to the letting go of all negative thoughts, seeing the good in what had been happening all day and before I knew it I was no longer tense, angry, frustrated and my room became the universe, I was floating amongst the stars. So peaceful, loving and just being. Amazing what a little surrender, breath and Shafi can do to end the angst.. Thanks to all of my Sufi Sisters for being out there I could feel the presence of much love and joy.

*CDMT Certified Dancemeditation Teacher
**ITCert Intensive Training Certifcation Program

Part 3 of this Shafi chant series will be here in two weeks. If you missed Part 1, click here. Thank you to the Dancemeditation Practice Group for permission to use their words.
Become part of our practice community by doing the practice and sharing your experience of your practice here on the blog.

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Why is personal practice so important? A naf would whisper in our heads that it isn’t, that we are fine without our practice. Go ahead, eat that donut, crap out in front of internet TV, FB the evening away…But practice is solace to our pain. In practice, we recall and re-experience crucial learnings from retreat training periods together. We bring the group, the teachings and the teacher into our daily flow.

At Dancemeditation retreat, we learn many teachings. One core teaching is to approach ourself without tyranny. We practice steady, centered, calm self-witnesses. We move and breathe and chant and explore with a generous dose of compassion for our selves and our small human predicaments. We learn to know we are safe, that we can trust. Our training time is the act of taking our young terrified selves by the metaphorical hand and being the good parent, the good guide, the nurturer, healer, loving deity, the Lover. We  work to become not only the person riddled with darkness but also the person who knows that these darknesses will pass and that we will be okay, that we are fine, that we are lovable and Beloved. When we return home and do daily practice, we integrate the depth of experience we’ve initiated during retreat. In daily practice, we continue to knead the compassionate space we have learned into our flesh.

A practitioner of a Path is one who practices the practices of the Path, but it isn’t just practicing that makes the practitioner. It is also knowing, and remembering why practices are being done. A Path is an awakening. A transformation. Blind adherence is not enough. We need also to turn willingly into the awakening.

When you resist practice, you stand on that threshold. Your foot is lifting to step. Will you crossover? Will you wake? Pat the naf on the head and step in.

I am working with a new chanting. New to me. Otherwise, old as time. Its not important that anyone know what the word is. It’s a Sufi chant. Sufi chanting is called zhikr — remembrance.

My new chant surprises me because the part that is meaning — its literal translation — doesn’t touch the fullness of the experience. This chant must be right for me since, as I do it, I cross a threshold into the place I never want to forget, a place where I feel completely human yet safe and real. Most ordinary days, human-ness is a long string of vigilance and fear. I’m familiar with all that, inured to it.  I seek the place where, like my time as an infant, I was held by my mother or father and they were vigilant for me. I was safe in their arms. They watched out for the wolf and bear, the snake and illness. Those killers. ‘Being held’ is a sweet flavor of giving up into the Moment. Yet the Moment requires surrender, letting yourself be held.

On the surface, the Moment could be any sort of temperature or condition; it could be painful, or it could be luscious. That, however, is just its surface. There is the inside of the Moment. The inside of the Moment is far more than being held and carried. It has a secret wisdom. (Not so secret if you get there but untouchable to most who stand on the outside of the glass window in life.) The importance of spiritual seeking is to find and touch, every day and in as many moments as possible, the inside of the Moment — not forgetting what should never be forgotten.

The inside of the Moment is a lamp in the dark, a vista that is boundless, is newness, is inspired existence, is non-separateness, is freedom, is spaciousness. It is soft like rabbit fur, and a perfect embrace. It is communion, knowing, contentment, and the end of bottomless want. It is the end of fear.

The mesa naturally loves. Trees, air, rocks abundantly give. The sky is slow movement. The sky is slow movement. It takes only slowing and opening to receive.

Slowing and opening. Isn’t that truly what most of our Sufi Dancemeditation practices turn toward? Time—Asr—comes then, sits inside us displaying the diamonds in her pouch. It doesn’t require Ravenrock to receive this largesse, though Path will certainly accelerate here. No. Any small undisturbed room will do.

The words tumble out. Al hamdu lillah.
Breath sinks in. Al hamdu lillah.
What is Allah?
A word. A breath.
What is this Word? The Heart knows.
What is this breath? Life.

A teacher begins as a person outside the self. In Sufi, the Teacher moves from intuition and is guided. Over time, the Teacher forges an internal guidance in the Seeker. We all strive to internalize Trust in Divine Guidance, Trust in Intuition.

That is the meaning of water—Intuition and Divine Guidance.

Seekers find their hearts opening to the Path—that great gift feeling of ‘coming home’. These people are fortunate. They have inner certitude about their experience. Soon, however, they need to choose to gratefully, responsibly cultivate evolution. What does this look like? Arrive with good intention, participate with respect and fullness, then take care of yourself after trainings. Personal practice gives the transforming self time and sanctuary.
In striving for this, we grow to understand the embrace of Path.

What is transmission in our Sufi Way? Transmission is like an infusion of electricity into one’s circuits. In Sufi, during training periods the Teacher prepares students for this infusion, modulates the energy as it pours out and through, then closes and soothes afterward. We all transform during this process. After training periods, the student must care for the lights ignited within. She must care for her emerging self. Personal practice fans the spark or flame the Teacher has ignited.

I have lifted the requirement of daily practice from those in Intensive Training, but I still recommend daily practice—daily ‘remembrance’, as the Sufis call it. Remembrance of our Truth.  I don’t want to police it, not because I’m lazy; I just think it isn’t serving the people who train with me. It puts the struggle for one’s Path outside the self, keeping the self from ‘growing up’, spiritually-speaking. Each of us has to recognize our resistance, our choices. We need to reflect on them and weigh them. No one can put you on your own center. If you want it—inner peace, authenticity, perception, solidity—you have to strive for it. Struggle for it. A child’s little legs must work. It’s best if I step aside there. Go head—have your own intimate self-dialogue about that.

Our questions: What is important to me? Where does real happiness come from? When do I feel most whole? If spiritual path is where we live in Truth, then a regular return to the Doorway is one of the most crucial stages of growth. Retreat training and personal practice open that Doorway. Over the years, I’ve personally come to rely on a brief but focused daily practice, thus my recommendation. I hope for us all that the heart will cry for it and land us in a quiet room, with closed eyes, breathing, moving, feeling the world beyond thought. I hope the practice calls us to it. Wouldn’t that be wonderful…But if not, well, what are you going to do about it?