Turkiye: Day 6

KONYA
They use coal to keep warm. A very polluted city.

But we were there because it was town of Rumi, the most famous Sufi poet, mystic and theologian.

Sufism is the mystical side to Islam. It is in which Muslims seek to find divine love and knowledge through direct personal experience of God. Sufis seclude themselves for months and meditate to ends to open up a different way of thinking and reach a different level of devotion and Love for God. Self-discipline and concentration on God leads to the belief that by quelling the self and through loving ardour for God it was possible to maintain a union with the divine in which the human self melted away (ie: state of non-existence). Rumi believed passionately in the use of dance, poetry and music as a path for reaching God. The whirling dervishes, a mystical journey, became a ritual in Sufism because of him.

He not only appealed to the Eastern world but also the Western as he was the "most popular poet in America" in 2007 (800 yrs after his death). Yay! I got hold of his book :) His poetry is an observation of nature around him and Love only for God. My cousin debated that if you were to follow Rumi's teaching then there is no room to love another. True, perhaps. But I want to be in love with another! There must be a way and to which what I discovered gave me goosebumps and a sudden jolt of humility. I reasoned that Rumi believed that God is within everyone and every being. And this justifies one to love another :)

But to follow it in the strictest sense, to love everything and everyone around you and to see God in everything and will to them as you will to God brings you to humility as everything around you is far more divine and strips you of your ego self.

I know I shall be filled with love of life if this is what I breathe but (i) I do not exclusively belief in a higher order/power and (ii) even if I do...even if I do have a leap of faith, this is too much for me to comprehend, too big of a change of how I see life and imaginably too crazy of a life...how do I even start by seeing God in us.

CAPPADOCIA
1. Reached Cappadocia in the evening. Some parts were used in the Star Wars movie! DUH coz its so out of this world!

2. At night, we went out to Yasar Baba to be entertained by some folk dance and traditions and ceremonies

Fire dance outside. So full of energy.Belly dancing. My cousin got pulled up to dance with her and lets just say he was more than eager to go *grins*

^8 Cee