-- By Tom Phillips
A few years back, just starting out on the Road to Dotage, I wrote about the benefits of walking around in circles -- the spiritual practice of circumambulation. That essay described walking around various holy sites in India, and later circumambulating an elephant sculpture in New Jersey. As one's dotage advances, the circles get smaller. And so it is that this year I have ended up in the most minimal of all circular paths -- turning on a dime, AKA whirling.
I had only whirled once before -- in the 1970s, at the ashram of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in Poona, India -- where a friend and I were visiting out of curiosity.
My most ecstatic time was in the whirling class, where we learned the basic technique of the Sufi Dervishes. Contrary to all my previous learning and experience, I found if you keep one foot in the same place and your eyes on a level plane, it’s possible to spin around indefinitely. We beginners did it with one foot planted and the other pushing around in a circle, as if we were riding a scooter on a dime. We held one arm straight and looked out over the fingertips. I felt no dizziness at all. The world, trees, buildings, clouds and sky, just rolled around over and over again like the walls of a whirlpool. The picture was not blurred at all, just moved faster and faster, round and round.
This experience was so deep and inexplicable that I never tried it again after we left the ashram, and to this day don’t know if I could repeat it. It seemed like a magical window, opening on an area of truth that could not be set down in words... (from "A Beginner's Life.")
Recently I took up whirling again, for reasons of health and safety.
Most of the obituaries in the paper now are about people my age, and common among the causes of death is "complications of a fall." I'd noticed that my balance was not what it used to be, especially when getting up in the middle of the night. My sister-in-law, a physical therapist, explained that in old age the liquid in the inner ear tends to dry out and crystallize -- and a good way to keep it sloshing around is to turn, turn, turn, a few times every day.
So I began to turn, and remembered the lesson at Rajneesh's place. Looking out over my fingertips, I see the room rotate, revolve, wobble, level out, then speed up, and elevate slightly as the radius on the floor expands. Turning a hand inwards I close the circle, and what happens next is different each time. I'll talk to the hand, sing to the room, or just spin and watch, watch and spin, until the timer goes off at five minutes. Then it's time to slow down, cool down, end with hands vertical next to the face -- eyes on the painting on the wall straight ahead -- and watch as the picture frame oscillates right-left-right and then slowly settles back into a fixed object. This I try to do once each day, adding few shorter whirls whenever I can slip one in.
At this point, a largely self-taught beginner, I have no thoughts to offer on the meaning of whirling.
Sufis say: "..the steps themselves are few and simple, but like a top, unless you are perfectly centered, you cannot disappear into an infinitesimally thin axis so that everything you take yourself to be is whirling around you, and you are that existence which has no physical residence."
Rumi, the 13th century poet and dervish, described how it feels: ".. to struggle with the notion of one's self, like a dying, bloodstained bird, fluttering in the dust..."
As for falling: I hadn't had a serious fall in decades, but shortly after taking up whirling as protection against it, I fell. Twice. First while hiking on a hillside, next while falling asleep on a wobbly kitchen stool. Each time I landed on my right shoulder, and the second fall tore the rotator cuff off the bone.
Was this a divine warning? A consequence of hubris? A bump in the road? A random coincidence?The beginning of the end?
How would I know? Surgery this week, "fluttering in the dust..."
-- Copyright 2018 by Tom Phillips
A few years back, just starting out on the Road to Dotage, I wrote about the benefits of walking around in circles -- the spiritual practice of circumambulation. That essay described walking around various holy sites in India, and later circumambulating an elephant sculpture in New Jersey. As one's dotage advances, the circles get smaller. And so it is that this year I have ended up in the most minimal of all circular paths -- turning on a dime, AKA whirling.
I had only whirled once before -- in the 1970s, at the ashram of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in Poona, India -- where a friend and I were visiting out of curiosity.
My most ecstatic time was in the whirling class, where we learned the basic technique of the Sufi Dervishes. Contrary to all my previous learning and experience, I found if you keep one foot in the same place and your eyes on a level plane, it’s possible to spin around indefinitely. We beginners did it with one foot planted and the other pushing around in a circle, as if we were riding a scooter on a dime. We held one arm straight and looked out over the fingertips. I felt no dizziness at all. The world, trees, buildings, clouds and sky, just rolled around over and over again like the walls of a whirlpool. The picture was not blurred at all, just moved faster and faster, round and round.
This experience was so deep and inexplicable that I never tried it again after we left the ashram, and to this day don’t know if I could repeat it. It seemed like a magical window, opening on an area of truth that could not be set down in words... (from "A Beginner's Life.")
Recently I took up whirling again, for reasons of health and safety.
Most of the obituaries in the paper now are about people my age, and common among the causes of death is "complications of a fall." I'd noticed that my balance was not what it used to be, especially when getting up in the middle of the night. My sister-in-law, a physical therapist, explained that in old age the liquid in the inner ear tends to dry out and crystallize -- and a good way to keep it sloshing around is to turn, turn, turn, a few times every day.
So I began to turn, and remembered the lesson at Rajneesh's place. Looking out over my fingertips, I see the room rotate, revolve, wobble, level out, then speed up, and elevate slightly as the radius on the floor expands. Turning a hand inwards I close the circle, and what happens next is different each time. I'll talk to the hand, sing to the room, or just spin and watch, watch and spin, until the timer goes off at five minutes. Then it's time to slow down, cool down, end with hands vertical next to the face -- eyes on the painting on the wall straight ahead -- and watch as the picture frame oscillates right-left-right and then slowly settles back into a fixed object. This I try to do once each day, adding few shorter whirls whenever I can slip one in.
At this point, a largely self-taught beginner, I have no thoughts to offer on the meaning of whirling.
Sufis say: "..the steps themselves are few and simple, but like a top, unless you are perfectly centered, you cannot disappear into an infinitesimally thin axis so that everything you take yourself to be is whirling around you, and you are that existence which has no physical residence."
Rumi, the 13th century poet and dervish, described how it feels: ".. to struggle with the notion of one's self, like a dying, bloodstained bird, fluttering in the dust..."
As for falling: I hadn't had a serious fall in decades, but shortly after taking up whirling as protection against it, I fell. Twice. First while hiking on a hillside, next while falling asleep on a wobbly kitchen stool. Each time I landed on my right shoulder, and the second fall tore the rotator cuff off the bone.
Was this a divine warning? A consequence of hubris? A bump in the road? A random coincidence?The beginning of the end?
How would I know? Surgery this week, "fluttering in the dust..."
-- Copyright 2018 by Tom Phillips
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