Wearing God: Mevlevi Whirling and Stripping Away the False Self
Daliah Merzaban describes the experience of being undressed of the ego while turning in traditional Mevlevi whirling attire
In the past couple of years, I’ve been grateful for the opportunity to turn during our monthly global meditations on Zoom, led by our Sufi teachers and attended by friends from around the world. This has allowed me to more regularly wear the traditional Mevlevi garments donned by dervishes during the Sema, the whirling ceremony.
There’s something magical about the process of getting dressed for the Sema because, paradoxically, I feel as though I am being undressed. Despite the multiple layers of weighty fabrics a whirling dervish drapes over their body, my experience is that even weightier layers of the mental and emotional clothing are stripped away.
Learning to turn is a process of learning how to spin on my own axis with greater grace, precision and presence. This is so much about being undressed of my worldly self, and I truly experience this from the moment I place the tennure over my head after reciting the opening lines of the Quran facing the kibla, the direction of prayer. The tennure is a flowy white gown reminiscent of the shroud of the dervish’s ego. Each time I put it on, I somehow know I will not be the same when I take it off: a little more of my false self will be dissolved in the ocean of my essence.
Then around my waist I tightly wrap the tiyg-bend (meaning “sword-belt”) and try to ensure the pleats of the tennure are spread evenly around me. This isn’t always easy to do alone. Sema is traditionally a communal gathering, allowing the dervishes to help each other get dressed. As beautiful as it has been to have had virtual gatherings since the onset of the Covid pandemic, nothing can replace that sense of togetherness.
Over the tiyg-bend I place the alif-lamad, a black wider belt long enough to wrap around the waist about one and a half times. This belt represents the Arabic letter alif, which is also the number one, testifying to the unity of God. Over the tennure is a short, white, long-sleeved, collarless jacket called a dasta-gul, a bouquet of roses. Covering the whole of one’s attire is the khirka, the long black cloak that represents the covering of the grave of the ego.
Turning in this traditional Mevlevi attire is the only time in my life that I sense I am going out into the world and being seen by others while naked and bare. This is a paradox because the whirling outfit is, in actuality, quite elaborate and heavy. And yet, the more I do it, the more I discover that nothing sits more lightly on my skin. It is, in a sense, like preparing to be invisible, to wear only the light and lightness of God.
Consider these lines of Mevlana Rumi:
Those who wear clothes look to the launderer,
but the naked soul wears illumination.
Either withdraw from the naked
or take off your clothes like them.
If you can’t become wholly naked,
take the middle way
and take off at least some
of what you wear.[Mathnawi II, 3524–25]¹
Sufi poetry often refers to the nakedness needed for a soul seeking to sincerely awaken. Nakedness for me has a lot to do with vulnerability — the vulnerability that allows us to be honest about our brokenness and realise in humility how totally we depend on the Divine. So much of the transformation possible in Sufism happens when I am willing and receptive to the wisdom of the present moment, which can only be understood when habitual thinking and conditioned reactions are removed from our emotional bodies. In practical terms, this involves an often arduous and painful process of self-reckoning and requires vulnerably expressing and tenderly holding the grief of childhood and ancestral traumas.
And yet, for the short while I’m wearing my whirling attire, I feel many of the layers of conditioning I usually wear are somehow effortlessly stripped away. Even on a surface level, the turning outfit renders the physical body almost invisible because only the face and hands are seen. There is no need for attachment in any way to my worldly persona.
Unlike times when I get ready for an outing in the physical world, I don’t need to do my hair. Instead, I pull up my curls into a ball at the top of my head that can nestle comfortably under the sikke, a tall, honey-coloured camel-hair felt hat that symbolises the tombstone of the ego. I don’t need to choose an outfit or think about what shoes to wear. Nor do I wear any makeup or jewellery. Whirling asks nothing of me but a willingness to let go of my false sense of I, and entrust this body into the loving arms of the Universe, which is itself constantly spinning.
For the whirler to function as an energy centre, drawing blessings from the Unseen through the right palm and distributing them into the manifest world with the left, the person’s false self must first, in a sense, be erased. Perhaps that explains the palpable emptiness I increasingly feel every time I take part in this sacred embodied form of worship.
The hours before our meditation starts involve a ritual of preparing sacred space that I have come to love and look forward to. I cleanse and purify the whirling space in my kitchen. I buy flowers, usually roses, and burn rose-fragranced incense. I play recorded ney flute improvisations to fill the room with the spontaneity of life that we experience the more we can live in surrender to the Divine will.
Then I turn to tending the sacred space within. I set out each intricate and meaningful piece of the whirling attire carefully onto the bed. I do ablutions, splashing cold water on my body to energetically prepare it for worship. I try to empty my mind with zikr, the repetition of Divine Names.
The more I allow myself to be undressed by Allah, the Divine Reality, the deeper the trust that develops in my heart. It is only the experience of this love of Allah that could have convinced my intellect to allow this body to spin in circles without the fear of falling, nausea or dizziness. In the early days of learning how to whirl, these uncomfortable sensations led me on many occasions to consider giving up because it seemed illogical to keep trying. Before it becomes easy and enjoyable, turning is quite intensive and tiring on the body and mind.
This is part of the mystery and magic of whirling that my heart so loves. I cannot explain rationally the force that holds me up. Or how the turning clothes that in the beginning felt so heavy now feel so light. I cannot comprehend how I can spin without getting dizzy and wobbling clumsily from side to side. Nor can I explain how I can quickly stop without tumbling to the ground.
The internal sensations are also profound. I feel lighter after whirling, a little more anchored in my being — and I can carry this greater coherence into my everyday life. Such is the blessing of Sema, which has become a central and beloved form of worship in my spiritual practice.
A friend recently brought me back a little ceramic plaque from Turkey that sits on a shelf in my living room. On it is etched the image of a whirling dervish, and the following lines attributed to Mevlana Rumi:
I saw many humans on whom there were no clothes.
I saw many clothes in which there were no humans.
The first line reminds me of the times when I am so empty of my habitual thoughts and emotional reactions that I can radiate Love and be fully present without the obstructions of my thoughts and ego reactions. The second line is equally true, conveying times when I’m so fixated on my egoic reactions that I completely lack the presence needed to be fully human. Perhaps it is the fluctuation between the two that keeps the dervish spinning.
It is my hope and prayer that the more I am undressed by Sema, the more those unreal layers can be stripped away, revealing the naked essence of my True Self. I tried to express this longing in a poem last December written around the time of Rumi’s Urs, a Sema ceremony marking Mevlana’s return to the Beloved:
Wearing God
Covered in cloth, yet
naked
Undressed, yet
fully clothed
Bare, yet
showing no skin
Anonymous, yet
spotlit
Nude, yet
layered in fabric
Exposed, yet
shrouded in serenity
Concealed, yet
wearing no disguise
Dead, yet
spinning with life
See what resurrects
when the body wears
only God
- Jewels of Rumi, translated by Helminski, p. 76
