Sufi Whirling with Shams al Haqq Farzad
Second Sundays, Sept. 11th, Oct. 9th and Nov. 13th, 2022

The Sufi Message was born out of music. We invite you into the richness of the Inayatiyya musical heritage, and through this to attune in life.

On the second Saturdays, September through November, we will deepen our learning of Sufi Whirling. We will explore Sama, deep listening, as a life attitude and learn to turn as an attunement. This class is open to more experienced students who already have an attunement to Whirling or attend the Sufi Whirling series in the Spring.

The Sufi Whirling series is cumulative, requiring advanced registration and participation in all three classes. A suggested tuition of $45 (on a sliding scale) is recommended for the full series. Please see the sidebar to register.

If you have questions about the content of this series, please email music@inayatiyya.org. For registration, financial and technical questions,  please email astana@inayatiyya.org.

“Dervishes are those among Sufis who adopt a certain method of progressing through the spiritual path . . . They are dreamers and lovers of God; they worship God in nature, especially in human nature. Among the many ways of spiritual development, they have one way which is called Sama’, which is listening to music. They . . . make themselves as a medium of resonance of the music they hear. Therefore, music touches them differently from any other person, music touches the depth of their being. Moved by music, they manifest different conditions, termed by Sufis hal, which means “condition.” Anyone among them who is moved by spirit may manifest the ecstasy, which is called wajd, in the form of tears, sighs, or in dance . . . the bliss of the dervish is understood by very few. But something that one can learn from this is the theory of the whole process of their spiritual development. By making God their Beloved and by seeing God in the sublimity of nature, they create the presence of God. . . By the help of concentration, poetry, and music, joy and pain both are felt more deeply. Therefore, God becomes living, God’s presence is before the dervish in all moods. In the Sama’, their musical ceremony, when once the dervish’s pain had an outlet in some form or other, the condition that follows is that of deeper insight into life”. — Hazrat Inayat Khan, Mysticism of Sound Music