how do you pray?

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I pray to God by having daily conversations w/ him.

SpaceCase

I pray in a conversational style too, but lately it seems to be one sided. God has been silent lately and I eagerly await getting back to a close relationship with Him where the diologue flows freely, I receive much knowledge about mysef, events in my life, other peope's lives sometimes, and things I should pray about.

you into any sufi stuff, rumio?

anyway, as the only other non-christian poster so far, i thought i'd bung in my bit.

i pray by talking, same as others have said here. but that includes respectful contemplation, acts of respect/reverence, acts of thanks, pleas for help, and some really good humdingers of (incredibly respectful - not) rows! depends who i'm talking to. sometimes, it's just trying to tune in with my surroundings, if i'm out in nature, although i do do it when in an urban environment too (difficult - all those people! eek!).

if i'm doing any specific work (you'd probably call them "spells", but, believe me "work" is better, cos they're bloody hard work), such as healing or whatever, then i use rituals and ritual ways of doing it. nothing elaborate - if i can't access divinity when i'm in a car park, wearing whatever i'm wearing, etc., etc., then the tools take over the intent. (this is why i worked solo for years, before i got into any organised witchiness).

i can't meditate to save my life, really - can't turn my brain off - so i do guided stuff instead, which gives my left hand brain something to do and my right hand brain can get on with the business. dancing is a powerful way of changing consciousness for me (hence i asked about sufism, rumio), also drumming. but loads of things - kneading dough, gardening, cooking (spot the Earth sign... )

it all depends on why i'm praying, i suppose.

how long ya got?

the short answer is yes I'm into sufi stuff, that's what I'm about really

my main focus is the Mevlevi tradition known commonly in the west as the Whirling Dervishes, started in Turkey in the 13th century by Jalal-al-din Rumi ( hence my user name). Rumi is my spiritual guide and master, at least in spirit. My avatar shows a selection of head-gear worn by Mevlevis, I have the one you can see at bottom left. I've done some whirling at various times, I've got the whole costume that I bought in Turkey, but it's hard to find people who are doing it right in my (opinionated!) opinion. The combination of movement, music, ritual and prayer in the sema (whirling ceremony) I think is extremely profound and powerful and that's basically what I want to do with my life, it's just a matter of finding, or creating more likely, the right context.

ooooh, amazing. i've been to turkey, but always to the more touristy bits (it's not a great idea for a western woman to venture into anatolia, from what i hear). my brother-in-law is turkish (although he's about as sufi as a pint of lager).

i do like some of rumi's poetry, too, although i loathe the way it's been hijacked into the new age, "meditations for today, isn't everything lovely, and we can all be as peaceful as peaceful things cos everything's so nice!" nonsense.

i'd love to hear more about the whirling, as (to repeat myself), i'm a bit of a trance dancer on the quiet, although i seem to do it naturally, without any forethought. (it's also one of the ways witches raise energy, by the way).

this thread could run and run

I first did whirling on a trance dance camp in Wales just over three years ago now. It wasn't a sufi event but right at the end the teacher said we were going to do a sufi ritual which I was cool as I was just starting to look into sufism at the time and we did this bit of whirling and to cut to the chase it totally changed my life there and then and since that time I've been pursuing sufism as my spiritual path and converted to Islam in the process. I suppose you would call it an altered state thing that happened but it was a real turning point in my life, just from five minutes of whirling.

The New Age hijacking of Rumi is very annoying but there are people who are on the case in de-bunking it; I've been involved in a few things myself in terms of presenting Rumi properly, arranging talks etc, and I intend to do more, insh'Allah. Rumi was a Muslim, which people seem to find a tad unpalateable for some reason and would prefer that he was some kind of all-purpose spiritual dude who'd recognised the limitations of religion yadda yadda yadda but I'm afraid not. He never missed a prayer and was a highly respected Islamic scholar (as well as an ecstatic mystic given to dance, singing and poetry). Any wisdom etc that people think he had came from the depths of his Islam, not from anywhere else. Of course he was iconoclastic and unconventional in terms of challenging ossified practice and assumptions about religion that people tend to make, even in his own time, but you have to be very careful in interpreting all that to suit a modern agenda that doesn't really recognise spiritual commitment and discipline.

Rumi lived in Konya which is in Anatolia. Not being a woman it's hard to comment about travelling there from that point of view but if you wanted to go I really wouldn't worry about it. I met loads of people in Konya and some of them were women who'd travelled there on their own. I think if you mentioned that to Turks, at least the ones that I know, they'd be very upset at the notion that Turkey was unsafe for women. Maybe further east, Anatolia is a big place, but Konya is a modern city for the most part and I felt very safe there, especially as it's the most Muslim of Turkish cities so there are no bars and drunkeness on the streets etc. and the only 'tourists' you get there are ones that have gone because of Rumi. It's a fantastic place, the tomb of Rumi is there (the Mevlana Museum) and it has a lovely feel around the whole area. I intend to go back as many times as I can. They put whirling 'shows' on for the tourists but you can dig around and I was very fortunate to meet lots of genuine Turkish sufi people while I was there.

or even dance and dance...

hope so, whichever it is.

it sounds fabulous, rumio. i used to run druid camps, and we'd have all sorts of stuff, although, sadly, never whirling. sounds a bit like the spirit of music camps used to be (although i never made it to one, tragically), and rainbow circle, oak dragon, et al. (know a few people who used to run those). tribe of doris camp has always appealed to me...

i expect parts of SE turkey are safe to travel to. i'm Ms Worrying Womble, though, so i tend to err on the side of caution...

that particular camp was run by this Amoda person, she called herself 'the urban mystic', would you believe? anyway all it was was loads of dancing really, which she tried to make out was something really profound and talked about kundalini quite a lot as though that was what we were doing somehow by jumping around for hours on end in a big tent. but then she did the whirling bit at the end and I realised why I'd been led to go there. there was a kind of half-assed sweatlodge as well. I used to do a fair bit of stuff like that. I lived at Beneficio briefly, don't know whether you've heard of it. It's a tipi community in Andalucia, its part of the Rainbow thing you mentioned. Didn't like them much to be honest.

I have to admit I'm a tad picky.

Carefully.

me too - it's hard to sift through all the white light-channelling, crystal abusing, bliss bunnies, and some of those camps are magnets for such numpties, i'm afraid.

never been accused of being such myself, for some reason...

I tend to spend more time venting at God than "praying". I handle prayer as a conversation. He is one of the few beings that don't care how long I talk or how many times I go over the same thing from every possible direction.

I tend to go over and over things trying to dissect them and no one wants to spend the time listening.

I'm depressed right now because I've gotten out o the habit of praying.

SpaceCase

That doesn't sound like prayer to me. MST3K?